YouTube Blackout in China?

ABC’s Jan Simmonds from New York:

Late Tuesday, if you tried to log onto YouTube from China you weren’t going to have much luck. 

The a video sharing website was suddenly blocked to users in China Tuesday evening, coincidentally after a video which appears to show police fatally beating a Tibetan protester began to pile up a large number of hits.

The video, initially posted several days ago, is a fake according to the Chinese government.  The official Xinhua News Agency, citing an unidentified official with China’s Tibetan regional government, reported Tuesday that the video came from sources tied to the government-in-exile of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, and was pieced together from different places.  Indirectly responding to queries about YouTube not being accessible in China,  Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said, "Many people have a false impression that the Chinese government fears the Internet. In fact it is just the opposite."

China has occasionally blocked YouTube in the past to prevent access to videos that criticize or shine an unflattering light on its policies. 

The footage, first posted in as a seven minute video by the Tibetan government in exile in India, purportedly to show a person named Tendar being beaten to death by police after a riot in Lhasa, the Tibet region’s capital, on March 14 last year. There has been no independent confirmation that the footage is authentic.

Tensions have been high in the region of late as March 17 marked 50 years since the Dalai Lama escaped into exile in India after Chinese troops crushed a Tibetan uprising.

On behalf of YouTube, a spokesman for Google (whom owns YouTube), said he couldn’t comment on the Chinese government’s reason for the block, but that they  told the AP that they were “looking into it and working to ensure that the service is restored as soon as possible."