

There was much excitement yesterday at the news that internet restrictions would be dropped in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, leading to a (in the words of one of my colleagues) ‘Facebook Concession’. Unfortunately, that potential concession is not to be, Xinhua reports.

The management measures over the Internet at the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone will be consistent with the rest of the country’s, official sources were quoted by the news portal people.com.cn as saying on Wednesday.

This was in response to a Tuesday report by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post which said that the upcoming Shanghai pilot zone will bypass the Great Firewall and see uncontrolled access to some banned websites including Facebook, Twitter and the New York Times.

The Great Firewall has been lowered within China in the past, most notably at the University of Macau’s Guangdong campus, which is governed by the laws of the Special Administrative Zone despite being on the mainland. Attendees of the Fortune Global Forum in Chengdu in June were also given full, uncensored access to the wider web.

[Image credit: Jonathan Kos Read]



