China Lifts Blocks on Facebook, Google, Twitter at Beijing APEC Meet

China on Thursday presented its best face at APEC summit by lifting blocks on the global domains of social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, apart from Google and YouTube for the first time and even allowing web search of the Dalai Lama at the conference venue.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum media centre has allowed reporters to access social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and video-sharing website YouTube. Access to such sites is essentially restricted by the Chinese government elsewhere in the country.

This is the first time China has loosened its Internet restrictions for a major international event. As the APEC's officials began their meetings in Beijing at the newly-built conference centre, ahead of November 10's world leaders meeting to be attended by US President Barack Obama among others, Beijing shed its heavy pollution overnight and glowed in the autumn weather providing big relief to smog weary people.

The clean weather was ensured after shutting down thousands of factories all around Beijing and nearby cities cutting down the sources of pollution. But a big surprise awaited the international media as all controls on the Internet were lifted at the massive APEC media room fitted with scores of laptops which connected with high-speed Internet unlike the excruciatingly slow connectivity in the rest of the city.

Scribes could easily log into global domains of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google which can not be accessed in the country without the help of VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection. Media personnel could even freely search for the Dalai Lama news over Google which otherwise is totally banned.

China controls its Internet with massive firewalls to block the international social media from having a negative impact on the population.