SHANGHAI, Sept. 11 — Some Chinese Internet users seeking the popular search engine Google today instead are now instantly routed to GlobePage, which calls itself the "premier Asian search engine."
Others typed in the letters www.google.com and were seamlessly linked to www.online.sh.cn, or Shanghai Hotline. "One of China's best Internet content providers" reads a banner on its opening page. It is run by China Telecom, the dominant fixed-line phone and Internet company.
The diversions are an intensification of an effort to block access to Google that began last week, and they appear to represent an unusually strong campaign to funnel Chinese Internet traffic into sites the government deems friendly and safe.
Analysts described the reroutings as an attempt to trick Chinese users by replacing the United States-based search engine with Beijing-backed services that offer carefully filtered content — the equivalent of ordering a Grand Cru and getting grape juice.
"This is the furthest they've ever gone to try to create a dumbed-down Web," said Duncan Clark of B.D.A. China, a telecommunications consultancy. "They determined to provide only a Web that's fit to see."
Since China first began regulating Internet access in the mid-1990's, officials have oscillated between embracing the new medium as a way to invigorate China's economy and viewing it as a dangerous forum for subversion that could undermine the authoritarian government.
Many experts argue that China has so far succeeded in taming the Internet. Some 46 million Chinese now have access to the Web, and it has become an integral part of business and academic life. But the authorities have used a variety of high-tech methods to make it difficult for government opponents to use the Web or spread their message widely.
The new controls on Google and another American Internet search engine, AltaVista, at least temporarily reverse a trend toward looser restrictions that took hold during the past year, when China unblocked access to some major media sites, including those run by The New York Times and CNN. Those sites remained available to Chinese users today, though some people reported that China's Internet monitors now selectively deny access to news content on those sites.
Authorities have applied particularly heavy pressure on the media before a leadership transition scheduled to take place in November. Jiang Zemin, China's president and Communist Party Secretary, is expected to hand over at least some of his duties to a new generation of party officials.
While China's media watchdogs always scrutinize content on the Internet as well as on television and in newspapers, officials often increase censorship during times of political stress.
Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., is immensely popular in China
because it provides nearly instantaneous links to millions of Chinese Web
addresses and documents. Google offers Chinese users a special page that makes
it possible to search for Web content in Chinese characters. But unlike rival
search engines like
While the authorities have blocked access to popular Web sites in the past, some local users expressed outrage today as Internet censors began automatically rerouting them to other search engines that Chinese officials like better. Some of them described the redirecting as an expropriation of Google's Internet address and a violation of the company's intellectual property, with one correspondent speculating that the behavior could cause "a big international lawsuit."
"Changing a Web address is clearly a serious violation of China's own laws," a correspondent using the name Fantast wrote on an Internet bulletin board. "This kind of behavior, if it continues, will turn into a disaster for the country."
Another user, with the online identity Emos, added, "I would like the government to give some reasons why it is doing this."
Users who tried to access Google were redirected to sites that have registered with the Chinese government and follow strict censorship procedures. Many of them have reported record traffic in recent days. They include Tianwang, a search engine run by Beijing University; Baidu.com, financed by American investors; and Yahoo.
The contrast between the favored sites and Google can be stark. A search for information related to Jiang Zemin on Google turned up 154,000 references. The first one listed was a link to a Web site bitterly critical of the Chinese president run by Falun Gong, a religious sect the Chinese government has sought to suppress.
An identical search on Yahoo produced just six references. The first one is the "Life Story of President Jiang Zemin" written by the People's Daily, the voice of the Chinese Communist Party.
Chinese officials have not publicly explained the blocking of Google or Altavista, and people contacted at China Telecom's Internet arm said they had no idea why their users were being shepherded to sites they did not choose to visit.
Beijing Legal Times, a government-controlled newspaper, reported that China Telecommunications Administration and Public Security Bureau shut down Google because it contained "harmful content."
The report also claimed that Google provided services for American intelligence agencies, though it offered no evidence. It said that when the name of "a certain, unnamed state leader" was fed into the search function, one of the first sites to pop up was "an insulting game directed at him."