We were having some problems with accessing our website a few months ago and had to jump through hoops to post blog entries; here’s an article describing why.  Selected portions below:

Depending on how you look at it, the Chinese government’s attempt to rein in the Internet is crude and slapdash or ingenious and well crafted. When American technologists write about the control system, they tend to emphasize its limits. When Chinese citizens discuss it—at least with me—they tend to emphasize its strength. All of them are right, which makes the government’s approach to the Internet a nice proxy for its larger attempt to control people’s daily lives.

 

All of this adds a note of unpredictability to each attempt to get news from outside China. One day you go to the NPR site and cruise around with no problem. The next time, NPR happens to have done a feature on Tibet. The GFW immobilizes the site. If you try to refresh the page or click through to a new story, you’ll get nothing—and the time-out clock will start.

Since our website is hosted on a server in the USA, we were on the inside looking out.  So apparently something that was written tripped something somewhere and someone thought we were potentially dangerous.  Or something.  Just part of living in China and keeping in touch with the other side of the world, I guess.