Blocked in People's Republic of China
The tracker lists 37 complete bans and 2 partial restrictions in People's Republic of China.
People's Republic of China's "Great Firewall" blocks most major foreign platforms by default. State-monitored domestic alternatives take their place, and unsanctioned VPN use is illegal.
BBC News
The BBC website has been blocked in People's Republic of China for years. In 2021, the Chinese government formally banned BBC World News television channel.
Bluesky
ChatGPT
Blocked by the Great Firewall. Domestic AI alternatives are heavily promoted and regulated.
Deutsche Welle
Discord
DuckDuckGo
Blocked by the Great Firewall since early September 2014, and still unreachable from the mainland. The authorities have never said why it was blocked. It remains accessible from the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, which sit outside the Great Firewall.
Grindr
Grindr was removed from Apple's App Store and Android app stores in People's Republic of China in January 2022. Grindr's official Help Center lists People's Republic of China as a country where the app is delisted.
KakaoTalk
Blocked in People's Republic of China since July 2014 following a government crackdown on instant messaging apps, citing terrorism concerns. The Citizen Lab reported that the block was primarily implemented via DNS tampering and HTTP request filtering.
LINE
Citizen Lab measured Great Firewall DNS tampering and HTTP filtering of LINE domains from mainland People's Republic of China, disrupting chat, contact, account and in-app-store functions. LINE said its messaging service was inaccessible in mainland People's Republic of China; current access requires a circumvention route.
Medium
Blocked by the Great Firewall for hosting dissenting views and unfiltered information.
New York Times
The Chinese government blocked the NYT website following an investigative report into the wealth of the family of then-Premier Wen Jiabao. Later, in 2016, Apple removed the NYT news apps from its People's Republic of China App Store for "violation of local regulations."
Odnoklassniki
Blocked by the Great Firewall in mainland People's Republic of China.
Blocked by the Great Firewall ahead of the annual National People's Congress.
Quora
Blocked by the Great Firewall.
Reuters
Both English and Chinese versions of the Reuters website have been blocked in mainland People's Republic of China for years via the Great Firewall.
Rumble
Signal
Snapchat
Spotify
Spotify has never opened a mainland People's Republic of China service and does not list the territory among its supported markets. The site is also unreachable from Chinese networks rather than merely absent: OONI recorded anomalies in about 96% of measurements of spotify.com from People's Republic of China.
Substack
Substack is blocked by the Great Firewall in mainland People's Republic of China.
Telegram
Threads
TikTok
ByteDance launched Douyin for the Chinese market in 2016 and released TikTok as a separate international version in 2017. TikTok is blocked in mainland People's Republic of China by the Great Firewall; only Douyin is available domestically. The two apps share core short-video technology but run on separate servers with independent content libraries, algorithms and moderation policies.
Tumblr
Blocked by the Great Firewall due to censorship and adult content.
Twitch
Viber
Viber's messaging and calling service was blocked on mainland Chinese networks during the 2014 crackdown on foreign chat apps; it was reachable only through a VPN in contemporaneous testing.
Vimeo
Wikipedia
X
YouTube
GitHub
Subject to intermittent DNS poisoning and blocks. GitHub Gist is permanently blocked, while the main site is often heavily throttled.
Zoom
Not officially banned but heavily restricted by the Great Firewall; joining meetings is possible but hosting is often unreliable, connections frequently drop, and most users rely on a VPN for consistent access. Zoom suspended direct sales and new individual signups in mainland People's Republic of China in August 2020 but still operates in the country through licensed local partners — Bizconf, Suirui Zhumu and Systec Umeet — which handle sales, support and compliance on its behalf.
Data updated:
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