At one internet provider, China Mobile Hong Kong, the disconnection – of a kind known as a drop-action – indicates direct involvement by the telecommunications company. “A drop action is a specifically configured element of a DNS firewall environment,” he said. April said. “It’s not something the owner could have intentionally or accidentally set up.”
China Mobile Hong Kong, an arm of China Mobile, the Chinese state-owned company, declined to comment. Two others tested by the Times, SmarTone and Hutchison Telecommunications, which is controlled by local conglomerates, did not respond to email requests.
Users of PCCW, another local carrier, told The Times that their access to the site was also blocked. A spokesman declined to comment.
While the site may seem like a quick look at Chinese censorship on the mainland, the methods differ sharply from the sophisticated system in China.
With China Mobile, SmarTone and Hutchison, the process of linking a website address to the range of numbers a computer uses to search it is interrupted. The practice is similar to recording a wrong number under someone’s name in a phone book. If you know the real number of the person, you can still call them.
On the Chinese mainland, on the other hand, the hardware of the Great Firewall – as Beijing’s system of filters and blocks is known – actively connects. In the phonebook comparison, the call will not go through even if you have the correct phone number.
The Hong Kong blockades are ‘very easy to get around and awkward’, he said. Tsui, the professor, said. Yet he said the authorities may not want to control the internet as strictly as Beijing for fear of deterring the global banks and international companies that have made the city their headquarters in Asia.