In the first sign of opening up on the political front, China has decided to lift ban on foreign websites, including Facebook and Twitter, in the new multi billion dollar Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ) to encourage more foreign investment, a media report said on Tuesday.
The opening up will be confined to the Shanghai FTZ, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported. A number of Foreign websites including that the New York Times would be permitted in the FTZ.
The NYT website in China was blocked after it carried out a story alleging that the family of former Premier Wen Jiabao accumulated USD 2.7 billion assets.
Government sources who were knowledgeable about the decision told the Post that the authority in charge of the Hong Kong-like FTZ in Shanghai, the first such zone on the mainland, would also welcome bids from foreign telecommunications companies for licences to provide internet services within the new special economic zone.
Social networking websites Facebook and Twitter which took the world by storm creating an integrated social media encompassing the world remained banned in China from 2009. But at the same China's own twitter like microblog network Sina Weibo grew leaps and bounds in the past few years.
In the last few years the microblog accounts reached about 300 million emerging as alternative media in the country challenging the monopoly of the state media. China has the world's largest Internet user population, with 485 million.
The ban became more stringent as Facebook and Twitter played key role in political movements in the Middle East in recent years, and Beijing is concerned about the impact of new media on social stability. Although China's economy is now already the world's second largest, just behind the United States, Beijing keeps tight control over the media.
It blocks access to several internet websites through the Great Firewall of China, the colloquial name for the Golden Shield project which is operated by the Ministry of Public Security.
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