BEIJING - The New York Times says China has blocked access to the newspaper's website.
It says the move comes days after Beijing defended its right to censor online content it deems illegal.
The newspaper says computer users who logged on in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou received a message saying the site was not available when they tried to connect on Friday morning.
It says some users were cut of as early as Thursday evening and that the site still was not accessible from Beijing on Saturday.
It still isn't clear if the move is meant to block specific content on the Times website or if it is a return to stricter censorship of the Internet in general.
Beijing loosened some media and Internet controls during the 2008 Summer Olympics -- gestures that were meant to show the international community that the games had brought greater freedom to the Chinese people.
A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry refused comment, saying the department does not deal with websites.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which regulates the Internet, could not be reached for comment.
Earlier this week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao defended China's right to censor websites that have material deemed illegal by the government, saying that other countries regulate Internet usage too.
During the August games, China allowed access to long-barred websites such as the British Broadcasting Corp. and Human Rights Watch after an outcry from foreign reporters who complained that Beijing was failing to live up to its pledges of greater media freedom.
The New York Times said Beijing had blocked the Chinese-language website of the BBC, and websites of Voice of America, Asiaweek, and Ming Pao, a Hong Kong newspaper, earlier in the week. But apart from Ming Pao, the sites were all accessible Friday, it said.
China has the most online users in the world with more than 250 million, but it has also put in place a sophisticated system to police websites for sensitive material and routinely blocks sites that support Tibetan independence or the region's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
