The ongoing riot in Tibet displays China’s Internet censorship prowess at its finest. Other countries pay attention and jot down notes. It turned out blocking YouTube and Google News is just an initial salvo.

BusinessWeek reports the Chinese government has banned journalists and tourist from entering Tibet to control the flow of information. To make matters really worse, there is a stricter measure implemented over the Internet.

All comments in different blog-hosting companies are filtered to be consistent with the news release from state-controlled media companies including China Central Television and Xinhua News Agency.

Even popular search engines like Baidu, Yahoo! China and MSN China are playing safe to avoid suffering the same fate as Google News. These leading sites only add news coming from state-owned media companies.

It goes to show how China is obsessively compulsive when it comes to suppressing freedom of speech and flow of information. However, it should not underestimate the power of the frustrated online mob for it has the power bypass all these controls.

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