I have been trying to log on to Bullog for the whole day without much success. At first I thought it was just a technical glitch. Thanks to a tip from Austin Ramzy at the Time China Blog, I now realise that the PRC Net Nanny may have finally moved in and shut down the entire site. When I started googling about it, I realised that the news was already all over the Chinese language blogosphere. I understand from some of the Chinese bloggers at Douban 豆瓣, another popular portal, that Bullog’s owner Luo Yonghao remains calm about the situation.
Luo is obviously not inexperienced in dealing with this kind of trauma inflicted by China’s notorious censorship regime, as we can see from the following summary of major events since the inauguration of the site:
31 July 2006 Bullog officially inaugurated
8 August 2007 Bullog launched a blog called “I don’t support the Beijing Olympics”
18 August 2007 The blog “I don’t support the Beijing Olympics” was banned
19 October 2007 (During the 17th CCP National Congress) Bullog was forcibly shutdown
19 April 2008 Bullog’s traffic exceeded 1 million hits for the first time
In May 2008 Bullog managed to gather more than 1 million Yuan donations for the Sichuan earthquake victims. Luo Yonghao personally delivered the money to the affected areas
14 June 2008 A popular blog Shengren Benzun (The Honourable Saint 圣人本尊) was shutdown
24 November 2008 Famous blogger Qian Liexian’s blog (钱列宪博客) was shutdown
17 December 2008 Nine Bullog bloggers were forbidden from accessing their blogs
24 December 2008 Bullog lost two of its most popular bloggers: Ran Yunfei 冉云飞 and Baozuitun 饱醉豚. For more details please check HERE
Today (9 January 2009) afternoon, Bullog’s domestic server has been shut down. International access has also been denied.
9 January, 2009 at 4:01 pm
As of about one hour ago, all comments related to the shutdown of Bullog at Window Live cn are no longer accessible.
11 January, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Hands up if you would prefer me to act surprised, as opposed to saying “told you so”.
29 June, 2009 at 2:21 pm
[...] Bullog is harmonised [...]
19 July, 2009 at 2:12 pm
[...] Shortly after the launch of Charter 08, popular web portals such as Legal World (Fa Tianxia) and Bullog.cn were forced into closure. Now it looks as if both Fanfou and TECN have been closed down too. [...]