They even took down the country specific access points - including Google.com.HK...

karlsun · on Nov 9, 2012

This is pretty par for the course, given the once / ten years party congress that is going on.

Every year around June 4 (anniversary of Tiananmen "incident") and typically around Oct 1 (national day) Google gets blocked for a few days.

China is much more adept at censoring the Internet than everyone thought 5-10 years ago.