China looks to ease Wikipedia controls
The site appeared to have been unblocked in several major cities including the capital Beijing, where China will host the summer Olympic Games in August.
News of the unblocking came on the same day that Hu Jia, one of China's most prominent dissidents, was jailed for three-and-a-half years for "subversion of state power" over six articles he published on the Internet.
His Wikipedia entry was accessible, suggesting that Chinese authorities had unblocked the entire site, and not just sections as they often do.
The International Olympic Committee has been pushing for China to open up the Internet ahead of the Games.
The English version of the BBC, as well as Blogspot, a Google-owned blog site, have also been opened up recently.
"I don't think it's a sign that suddenly they will loosen up what Chinese reporters are going to write, or what Chinese bloggers can post," said Rebecca MacKinnon, a media and Internet expert at the University of Hong Kong.
China tightly polices cyberspace, and Chinese web users see a stripped-down version of the Internet — minus sites belonging to rights groups and other others deemed by the country's communist rulers to be subversive.
Some news sites are also kept off the Internet in China.
The ministry of public security, which monitors the Internet, and the ministry of information industry were not available for comment.
The opening up of Wikipedia appeared to apply mostly to the English-language version, although one Internet user in the city of Chengdu reported being able to access the Chinese version as well.
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