Chinese government bans access to Israeli Internet site

Chinese Internet users have been blocked from accessing Chinese content on an Israel-based Web site since the beginning of July, diminishing site traffic and the company's profits, a spokesman for the site said Thursday.

The "shvoong.com" site allows users to post short essays and book abstracts, and then pays them a modest share of the site's advertising revenues, based on their posts' popularity.

Web site director Eyal Rivlin said the site hosts almost 2 million articles in 24 languages. "The China ban has reduced traffic on the site from 50,000 visitors a day to 30, 000," he said. Rivlin added that half the site's content and one fifth of its visitors are from China.

Shvoong is a Hebrew slang term describing the state of being on a roll.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said at a regular briefing that he had no information on the ban.

The Chinese government has become increasingly vigilant about policing Internet content and has blocked English and Chinese versions of popular Web site Wikipedia since 2005, apparently because of entries on the country's sensitive spots - Tibet, Taiwan and other topics.

Rivlin said the company doesn't monitor the site's Chinese content, but removes items that draw user complaints.

The Chinese are actually making the freedom of speech inaccessible, he said.

Recent efforts to access the site in China showed that links dealing with medicine, Marxism and American newspapers tend to work, while those related to literature do not.

The company is considering legal action through international trade organizations, Rivlin said, but has found efforts to contact Chinese authorities fruitless.

"We are trying to penetrate the mystery of Chinese decisions," he said.