It’s great to be able to use Wikipedia again. It’s is a fantastic source of knowledge that is always growing and it has been blocked for most of the three and a half years I have been in China so seeing it again is a little like the Berlin Wall coming down.
If I try to understand the mentality of the Chinese leaders I can see why the Great Firewall is in operation but to block information sources in a country that is trying to fast forward into the developed world seems counter-productive to me. Maybe there is a wind of change blowing, and it will be beneficial to millions of Chinese to be able to access Wikipedia. I have discovered that Chinese people have an appalling ignorance of the rest of the world. They’re worse than the inwardly focussed Americans. Now they have another tool to change that.
I am turning my mind to publicizing my site and its blogs now so it was a big relief to find I could get into the Technorati site. In the two months since I started playing with blogging I have not been able to get into Technorati but today, when I really needed it, I got in and did what I needed to do to be noticed by that major blog search engine. Why is it good for China too? Because a lot of Chinese will also get the attention of the world and because blogging is a wildfire phenomenon today and any country who tries to pretend it is not there will be bypassing the benefits that are attracting millions to it.
Well done China for taking a couple of bricks from the wall.