Why the Chinese aren't tweeting about the Hummer purchase

Twitter, for better or worse, is infiltrating businesses all over the world. So when a newsworthy event such as The Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company Ltd.'s purchase of General Motors' Hummer brand makes the news, you'd expect a ton of tweets about it. So what are the Chinese saying about the deal? Um, nothing:

It seems that as of today, the Chinese authorities have blocked internet access to Twitter, Flickr (Flickr reviews), Bing, Live.com, Hotmail.com and several other sites. Wordpress (WordPress reviews), YouTube (YouTube reviews), Blogger (blogger reviews) are also blocked.

According to early reports on Twitter (Twitter reviews) and on blogs it seems that the Chinese authorities want to quiet down the entire major social networking and social media part of the web ahead of the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen massacre on June 4th.

I'll be interested in hearing Shel Israel's reactions to this. He's already tweeting about it. And Shel has a personal interest in this; as I noted last summer, Israel was one of several participants in a China Business Network-sponsored visit to China. As he noted at the time, correcting an impression of mine:

The role the Chinese government has in this trip is granting a visa and stamping my passport. The China Business Network is New York-based and has no affiliation with the government.

Obviously the China Business Network is adversely affected by this, as are (of course) the Chinese people.

Then again, if you're a Twitter-hater, this is the ideal time to visit China, I guess...