Return to Normalcy
Chinese users have been unable to access Line and KakatoTalk since July 1. But the two Korean messaging apps are expected to resume service as early as this week.
According to sources in the telecommunications industry in Beijing on July 14, Line and KakatoTalk will resume service soon, more than two weeks after the messaging apps went dead. All of Line's services are still unavailable in China, and it is also still not possible to use KakatoTalk except for text and voice transmission.
Neither China or Korea have explained why the services are blocked. Some experts appear to know the exact cause, but they are reluctant to talk about it before China announces service normalization. At first, there was widespread speculation that it might be related to Xi Jinping, president of China and Communist Party chief, who was on a state visit to Korea. However, it does not relate to specific countries, since other services like Microsoft's OneDrive and Yahoo's photo-sharing website Flickr are blocked as well. It is not related to technical glitches of the two mobile messenger service providers caused by errors in servers or networks either.
Some in the industry think that the phenomenon is attributable to the Chinese government's efforts to upgrade the Great Firewall aimed at controlling the Internet in the nation. Hence, Beijing is expected to strengthen its control of the Internet. Related to this issue, the Wall Street Journal reported, “The Chinese government has blocked Internet and smartphone services whenever it is necessary, including the 25th anniversary of China's military crackdown on student protests in Tiananmen Square.” The newspaper added, “Presumably, the government blocked new overseas services, which are difficult to censor, due to recent pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.”
After the Chinese government initiated the “Central Internet Security and Informatization Leading Committee” responsible for regulating the Internet in China last February, ten local governments formed this group by June. President Xi Jinping is the head of the group, and Premier Li Keqiang and Liu Yunshan, who are both members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of the China Central Committee, are the group's deputy heads.