According to LiveJournal, China has officially blocked the popular online blogging site from its citizens – equating to about 1.8 million blogs, of which 8,692 are self-reported Chinese bloggers. SixApart, the company behind LiveJournal, claims this has happened before, for no apparent reason. The director of worldwide strategy Ginger Tulley stated: "We would just follow our standard procedures, which honor free speech." China is known for frowning on free speech, especially if it involves negative opinions about how the government runs the country.
According to Xiao Qiang, founder of the China Digital Times, the move is meant to be just in time for China"s National People"s Congress meeting in Beijing: "The security is tight and the control is upgraded because they don"t want [political voices]." Xiao believes the government was concerned about a few bloggers, or possibly just one entry, but decided to block out all of LiveJournal anyway.