A Crack in the Great Firewall

'Chinese Internet users taking advantage of temporary access to Google's social networking site, Google+, have flooded U.S. President Barack Obama's page on the site with calls for greater freedom in the world's most populous country.

"Oppose censorship, oppose the Great Firewall of China!" one user posted, one of hundreds of comments in Chinese or by people with Chinese names that dominated the site over the weekend.

Beijing's blocking of websites and censoring of search results for politically sensitive terms is known colloquially as the "Great Firewall of China." With sites such as Facebook and Twitter blocked, self-censoring homegrown equivalents like Sina Corp's microblogging platform, Weibo, fill the void.

It was unclear why Google+ was accessible for some users in China for part of the past week. A Google spokesman said the company had not done anything differently that would have led to the access. One Google executive told Reuters that the company had noticed the opening early last week.

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