2004–2008: Several blockades and reversals On June 3, 2004,
Wikipedia was blocked in some cities in mainland China (such as
Beijing), but
Wiktionary was still available. On June 11, other
Wikimedia projects were blocked. On June 17, the
IP address block appeared to have been lifted, but the website was still inaccessible to some. On June 18, all of Wikipedia except the Chinese version was unblocked, and the status of the Chinese version was unknown. On June 20, Beijing's access to Chinese Wikipedia still seemed abnormal. The blockade was lifted on June 21. On September 23, Wikipedia was partially blocked. On November 9, 2006, many users reported that the
Chinese Wikipedia had been unblocked, which was the first time the Chinese mainland could re-access it since the blockade lasted for over a year on October 19, 2005. In April 2008, all language versions except Chinese Wikipedia were unblocked.
2010–2013: Blocking of Chinese-language Wikimedia projects and encrypted connections On November 28, 2010, the Chinese version of
Wikisurvey plaintext (
HTTP) was blocked by the HTTP connection reset, but the encrypted version (HTTPS) can still be viewed commonly. In early 2012, Chinese
Wikinews was blocked by HTTP connection reset and DNS contamination, which has yet to be lifted. At the end of May 2013, the encrypted version (
HTTPS) of
Wikipedia in various languages became inaccessible in mainland China, while the plaintext version (HTTP) pages of Wikipedia, which do not contain sensitive words, were unaffected. On December 19, 2013, due to the adjustment of the
CNAME record of the domain name of Wikipedia in each language, users in mainland China could directly access the encrypted version (HTTPS) of
Wikipedia in each language and the plaintext version (HTTP) pages without sensitive words.
2015–2019: Blocking of Chinese Wikipedia On the afternoon of May 19, 2015,
Chinese Wikipedia became inaccessible in
mainland China due to an HTTP connection reset and DNS contamination of "
zh.wikipedia.org". Users can get around this by modifying the local host's file or changing the
DNS server and accessing the encrypted version of Wikipedia (HTTPS). Still, the Wikimedia Foundation cannot change the IP address of Wikipedia. The block did not affect Wikimedia's other projects (except Chinese
Wikinews, which DNS contaminated) and foreign language Wikipedia. In mid-June that year, the Wikimedia Foundation implemented mandatory encryption (HTTPS) for its projects. Later in the same year, the Cantonese (desktop version only; mobile version was blocked at the same time as other language versions on April 23, 2019), Wu (same as Cantonese), and Uyghur versions of Wikipedia were soon blocked using the same means as the
Chinese Wikipedia. In December 2015, after
Wikimedia switched to mandatory encryption throughout the site, rendering keyword filtering ineffective, all language versions of Wikipedia were briefly made inaccessible in
mainland China via the blocking of its IP address. The block was lifted shortly after, and most items were again directly accessible. On August 24, 2018, the
Great Firewall adopted SNI detection to block
Chinese,
Japanese, and
Uyghur Wikipedia domain names, which made it invalid to bypass the network blockade by modifying the host's file or changing the DNS.
After 2019: Wikipedia blocked in all languages Since April 23, 2019, the entire Wikipedia site (
*.wikipedia.org) has been completely blocked in
mainland China, and its home page and all language versions cannot be accessed commonly. The blocking method is
DNS pollution, among which the Chinese, Japanese, and Uyghur Wikipedia also have HTTP connection reset and
SNI blocking. On the next day, the entire Wikipedia site was blocked by
SNI blocking mode based on being contaminated by DNS the previous day. On May 14, the Wikimedia Foundation confirmed that the Chinese government had blocked all Wikipedia sites since April. On May 17, the Wikimedia Foundation issued a statement urging the
Chinese government to unblock Wikipedia. On May 8, 2019, other major Wikimedia projects (such as
Wikimedia Commons,
meta-wiki,
Wiktionary, etc.) were temporarily inaccessible due to DNS contamination, which lasted until the early morning of May 10 before returning to normal. Since June 10, 2019, the mobile version of Wiki Commons has been blocked, and the DNS parsing query found that the parsing result was abnormal. After verification, it was contaminated by DNS, and the desktop version of Wiki Commons had not been blocked for the time being (it was later blocked in December of the same year). Since July 2019, the
English version of Wikinews and the Chinese version of
Wikiquote have been blocked. After verification, the English Wikinews were contaminated by DNS, while DNS tainted the Chinese
Wikiquote and the SNI-based HTTPS connection reset. In October, the mobile version of the Chinese Wikiquote was also blocked. Since November 2019, the mobile version of the Chinese Wiki Academy has been blocked. The DNS parsing query found that the parsing result was abnormal. Since December 2019, the
IPv4 address (198.35.26.96) of the
San Francisco-based
Wikimedia Foundation server has been blocked, which makes other parts of the Wikimedia Foundation's projects (such as Japanese Wikinews) inaccessible in
mainland China. During the two sessions in China in May 2020, the IPv4 addresses of the Wikimedia Foundation's servers in Singapore (103.102.166.224) and Ashburn (208.80.154.224) were officially blocked. IPv4 access to all Wikimedia Foundation projects in mainland China is almost completely blocked. In addition, the IPv4 addresses of the Wikimedia Foundation's media server upload.wikimedia.org in San Francisco and Ashburn (198.35.26.112 and 208.80.154.240) were stopped for an unspecified period. As a result, the Wikimedia Foundation's media servers are not directly accessible in mainland China. On October 24, 2020, a man was issued a warning and ordered to stop accessing the global internet by police in
Zhoushan City in East China's
Zhejiang province. Authorities said he used the wall-turning software
Lantern () to search for information on Wikipedia and was visited by police to "check the water meter." This is the first case in mainland China where someone has been explicitly punished for browsing Wikipedia. The official website of the
Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee announced that from the first half of 2019 to October 2020, the man repeatedly used the that to "illegally access Wikipedia to obtain information". The official announcement also listed the man's name and address of his apartment complex. ==Reactions==