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The Guardian site blocked in China

China has blocked The Guardian's website, the British newspaper said Wednesday.

The Chinese censorship-monitoring site GreatFire.org alerted the newspaper of the blockage though the mobile iPad apps are still working, the newspaper said in an article.

The Guardian is not sure why the site is being blocked as they haven't published any particularly harsh articles on China recently:

The reasons for the Guardian block are unclear – no China-related stories published by the Guardian in the past two days would obviously be perceived as dangerous by the country's leadership. One article, published on 6 January, explores tensions in China’s ethnically-divided north-western region Xinjiang, but the Guardian has covered the subject before without any noticeable fallout.

The Guardian's block comes just a few days after China unblocked the Chinese-language websites of Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. It's another example of the strange relationship the Chinese government has with foreign media. While China has taken some steps forward with foreign reporters — unblocking websites, granting press cards to Bloomberg correspondents, etc. — it has taken a step back with its own. The government is now requiring Chinese journalists to take classes and pass a new ideology exam in order to keep their press cards.

Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico.