BEIJING, July 3 — Japanese mobile chat app Line appeared to be blocked in China, after numerous netizens have complained that it has been inaccessible since around 10pm on Monday night.
On Tuesday morning, the Tokyo-based instant messaging app posted a message on its China’s Twitter-like Weibo official account acknowledging that a technical error has occurred in China and it is working hard to resolve the issue, without providing further explanation.
The inaccessibility of the mobile chat app has triggered netizen discussion on Weibo, with many of them suggesting the use of the virtual private network (VPN) to access the messaging platform.
“After Facebook and Twitter, now they are including Line (to be blocked), are you trying to cut off all the international connection from us and we are only allowed to use the local software”, a Weibo user responded.
“They have censored Gmail and Google, why can’t they block Line? It is best to censor every foreign communication tools,” sneered netizen Wang Junfeng.
Most of the online users who left the messages on Line official account were seeking for answers. Some netizens even linked the block to the Pro-Democracy march in Hong Kong on July 1.
Line was introduced to the Chinese mainland market in December 2012. The number of users has reached 400 million worldwide and it is expected to reach 500 million users within 2014.
The Chinese government has launched a month-long crackdown on popular instant messaging platforms, including WeChat which is run by Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd since May 27.
The campaign aimed to clamp down people who were spreading rumour and information related to violence, terrorism and pornography.
It was reported that WeChat had removed at least 40 accounts with content about political, economic and legal issues in March. — Bernama
