Urumqi unrest - Beijing controls reporting and Twitter

From Urumqi, Xinjiang, Peter Foster observes how effectively Chinese authorities controlled international reporting of the unrest:

"Beijing has moved swiftly not only to calm the streets but also to control the reporting environment, corralling the large international media presence in a single hotel.

They’ve done this not by force, but by the simple expediency of limiting internet access to a single location (a hotel off the People’s Square), and like animals on the plain who graduate to the last waterhole in times of drought, the world’s journalists have had little choice but to congregate here."

Also interesting is how the authorities quickly cut internet access for Urumqi residents and blocked Twitter in China.

You might think that Beijing learned lessons from Teheran's failure to effectively counter Iranian protestors' use of social media tools to organize unrest and spread the word. But the swiftness of Beijing's move suggests that the authorities prepared well in advance for such situations.