LinkedIn China access restored

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Networking site LinkedIn said Saturday access to its service in China appears to have been restored after it was blocked following calls for Middle East-style rallies in the country.

“We’re now seeing indications that access to the LinkedIn service has been restored in China,” company spokesman Hani Durzy told AFP.

“We will continue to monitor the situation.”

A China-based AFP journalist was able to access LinkedIn on Saturday. However, the website just-ping.com, which monitors web accessibility around the world, said the service was still not available in parts of the country.

The site was blocked in China in recent days after the launch of an online campaign for weekly “Jasmine rallies” in 13 Chinese cities — a reference to Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution” — rattled government officials already uneasy about the unrest in the Middle East and North Africa.

China, which has the world’s largest online population at 457 million, has a huge Internet censorship system that blocks content deemed objectionable by the ruling Communist Party.

Government censors in China have long barred access to foreign social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and in recent days have heavily censored online chat about the wave of unrest sweeping across the Arab world.

LinkedIn, which describes itself as the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 90 million members in more than 200 countries, filed last month to stage an initial public offering in the United States.