China: Top Domain co.jp Blocked Temporarily

The Chinese Great Firewall had blocked top domain name registry, co.jp temporarily for more than 30 hours between June 15 and June 16. This is the first time the GFW blocks a top domain registry.

According to Yahoo! Japan [jp], the blocking had lasted for 1.5 days and there hasn't been any explanation from the Chinese side on why the top domain, co.jp was blocked and unblocked. The blocking started late at night on June 15.

Tech blogger William Long pointed out [zh] that Japanese site using .com (such as www.asahi.com) and .jp (such as china.kyodonews.jp) as their domain names were unaffected. Netizens made the joke that the blocking of co.jp might have been a revenge on yomiuri.co.jp for spreading the message that the father of Great Firewall, Fang Binxing, had been arrested back in April. However, William Long believed that it was just a technical error.

isun affairs has screen captured the connection reset message when visiting co.jp websites on June 16:

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