The have periodically been discussions about "opening up" in China. Fore-instance the party where split in the decision to crack down on the Falun Gong movement who also included many party members. Likewise were there some opposition to the violent crack down on Tiananmen square. Hardliners seems to win.

It is a trick, and old Chinese trick. You call out to your enemies to come for negotiations, and then kill them

why would people be checking a news site that was previously blocked? do you go everyday "oh, let me try cnn.com... oh, still blocked. let's try tomorrow?"

Well, first of all, it's not every day that a news event on the scale of 9/11 happens.

As for how I discovered they were unblocked, I got a phone call from my Mum early in the morning after the attack (the attack happened during the Chinese night time) and went in to the office (which had the only available internet access), and one of my colleagues told me that the bbc and nytimes were no longer blocked.

Not sure how he found out they were unblocked, but he'd been there most of the night.

Then once you know one is unblocked you try them all :-)

I guess it's for the tourist that where in China when it happened.

You might follow a link from somewhere?