(Clearwisdom.net) CHINA'S industrious Internet censors have hit on a new tactic. Until last week, they had focused on blocking access to websites containing material deemed inimical to the Chinese Communist Party. Now they are targeting search-engines that might lead users to such material. Two Californian search-engines - Google and AltaVista - can no longer be accessed through Chinese internet providers.

Google is particularly popular in China because of its ability to search for pages in simplified Chinese characters. Altavista also has a Chinese-language capability, but Google not only provides links to web pages, but also to copies of those pages stored on Google's computers. Even if a server is blocked, its content can sometimes still be read.

China has its own search engines, but they do not provide access to web pages stored outside the country. The government would be far happier if foreign search engines followed the example of Yahoo!, an American company whose Chinese search facilities offer sanitised results. A search on Yahoo! in simplified Chinese for the banned Falun Gong found only one web site, that of an anti- Falun Gong group, together with more than 180 news items culled from the official Chinese media. This year Yahoo! signed a pledge circulated by China's government-backed Internet Society which commits signatories not to disseminate information that might threaten state security or social stability.

The authorities are becoming particularly worried about possible threats to stability in the run-up to the Communist Party congress in November, an event which this year will involve extensive leadership changes. The party does not want [persecuted] groups such as Falun Gong [to be seen or heard]. Determined users in China, though, will always find ways of skirting around controls. There are ways into Google other than by typing in the regular www.google.com - for instance, by using a numerical address.

An American think-tank, RAND, published a report last week on the Internet in China. It said that while China has done a remarkable job of finding counter-strategies to what it sees as the negative effects of the e-revolution, time is on the side of its opponents.