China blocking Gmail services

Google has said that the Chinese government is interfering with its email services in China, making it difficult for users to gain access to its Gmail program, amid an intensified Internet crackdown following widespread unrest in the Middle East.

Google Inc. said its engineers have determined there are no technical problems with the email service or its main website.

"There is no technical issue on our side; we have checked extensively. This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail," the company said.

China has some of the world's strictest Internet controls and blocks many popular social media sites, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The government has intensified those efforts after pro-democracy protest erupted across the Middle East in January.

A Google spokesperson said users in China, the world's most populous Internet market, have reported having intermittent problems with the service since the end of January.

Problems include difficulty accessing the home page for Gmail and problems sending emails when logged into the service. The instant messaging function is often not working as well.

Google officials said the blocking appears to be more sophisticated than other problems experienced by users in the past because the disruption is not a complete block.

Google has had highly public run-ins with the Chinese government.

In January last year, Google announced that it would no longer cooperate with the government's requirement to censor search results for banned sites. It also complained about major attacks on its website by Chinese hackers, suggesting the government may have been instigated the attacks.

Attacks were also mounted against email accounts by activists working on human rights in China at that time.

Google moved its Chinese-language search engine to Hong Kong, which operates under separate rules from the rest of mainland China.

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