Typing in the keywords for crypto exchanges Binance, OKEx and Huobi on
Chinese search engines is currently pulling up no results.
China's stance towards decentralized cryptocurrency trading appears to be getting even tougher. Chinese journalist Colin Wu and crypto news site 8BTCnews
have both claimed that as of June 9, search results for some of the
world's leading cryptocurrency exchanges are pulling up zero results.
Cointelegraph's
staff in China have themselves searched for cryptocurrency exchanges on
the search engines and confirmed that results are not accessible.
However, a compound search such as "Binance Academy" or "Huobi Research
Center" does still seem to be passing through the censors.
If
the situation continues, this appears to be the latest step in
Beijing's increasing censorship of cryptocurrency-related information
via social media. On June 7, Weibo — China’s Twitter-like microblogging
service with over 530 million monthly active users — suspended accounts belonging to multiple popular Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto-related content creators.
Colin
Wu, or Wu Blockchain on Twitter, has noted that searches for Binance,
Huobi and OKEx are not showing up for users of Baidu and Sogou, two
major Chinese search engines. In addition, both Wu and 8BTCnews claim
that Weibo has imposed the same black-out measures, with Wu noting that Zhihu — an analog to Quora — has also followed in step.
Censorship measures form just a part of China's attempt to restrict various cryptocurrency activities, including mining and fundraising themes,
deeming the latter illegal. Areas being targeted include financial and
payment institutions' provision of services related to cryptocurrency
and token financing platforms that could be used as fiat-to-crypto
gateways.
The crackdown on mining
has focused on the government's concerns over the industry's carbon
footprint, especially in areas such as Inner Mongolia. At least three mining companies — BTC.TOP, Huobi and HashCow — have announced they are ceasing activities on the mainland.
As
of yet, representatives from the targeted exchanges have not made any
public announcement regarding the apparent social media censorship
measures.
Binance could not provide comment on the situation but
noted note “that Binance does not currently hold exchange operations in
China.”
source link : https://cointelegraph.com/news/chinese-search-engines-block-results-for-top-crypto-exchanges
