14 DAY TRIAL // Google claims the Chinese government is intentionally causing problems for local users trying to access Gmail in order to make it look as if its popular service is unreliable.
For the past couple of weeks users in China have reported significant problems when trying to use Gmail. These have ranged from a complete lack of access to intermittent one.
In other cases the connection was being severed when users attempted to send, search or load email, even though they were successfully logged in.
This might have look like technical issues on Google's part, but according to a company spokesperson, there weren't any.
"We have checked extensively," a Google representative told the Financial Times. "This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail," he stressed.
The problems started when the Chinese government began tightening censorship in an attempt to crackdown on calls for protests inspired by pro-democracy movements in the Arab countries.
This wouldn't be the first time when tensions develop between the Beijing government and Google. Back in January 2010, the company reacted angrily to a attack against its infrastructure that targeted intellectual property and the Gmail accounts of Chinese activists.
Even if it didn't directly say it, Google hinted at official involvement. This hypothesis was later enforced by a leaked cable from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, which quoted a local source as claiming the attack was the work of China's Politburo.
Following the incident, the company stopped censoring search results, closed its offices in mainland China and moved its local operations to Hong Kong.
In addition to the Gmail problems, a lot of users have reported being unable to access the website set up by the company to offer information about people missing following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.