Communist China has blocked the word “Egypt” from the country’s wildly popular Chinese Twitter-clone service, while coverage of the political turmoil has been tightly restricted in state media.
China’s ruling Communist Party is sensitive to any potential source of social unrest as recent years have witnessed increased unrest in rural China. A search for “Egypt” on the Sina microblogging service brings up a message saying, “According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results are not shown.”
The service has more than 50 million users.
News on the Egypt protests has been limited to a few paragraphs and photos buried inside major news websites, but China Central Television had a report on its midday broadcast. China’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the events in Egypt.
