China hijacks search engines over Dalai Lama award, analysts say

China may be using the internet to get back at the U.S. for awarding the Dalai Lama with a Congressional Gold Medal, analysts say.

Web surfers in China or thoseusing Chinese internet service providers have reported they're being redirectedfrom Google and Yahoo tothe Chinese-ownedBaidu search engine, according to the Search Engine Roundtable, a website that monitors internet search trends.

Google's YouTube video-sharing portal and Yahoo's Flickr photo site were also blocked, according to other technology analysis sites, including Techcrunch.

While China routinely censors internet content and blocks web pages, the country is engaging in a form of economic sanctions by hijacking U.S. search engine traffic, according tothe Roundtable.

"Some have accused Baidu of hijacking the traffic, but we think it's likely that China is upset with the U.S. over the award it granted to the Dalai Lama and is retaliating by hurting U.S.-based search engines," the Roundtable's Danny Sullivan wrote on its blog.

The White House awarded theDalai Lamaits highest civilian honour on Wednesday, marking the first time a U.S. president has officially met with the exiled Tibetan Leader.

Bush also called for an end to "religious repression" in China.

Chinese government officialsresponded by saying the United States had "gravely undermined" relations between the two countries.

Google confirmed the redirection in an email to the Roundtable website.

"We've had numerous reports that Google.cn and other search engines have been blocked in China and traffic redirected to other sites," a spokesperson wrote.

"While this is clearly unfortunate, we've seen this happen before and are confident that service will be restored to our users in the very near future."

In 2002, Chinese public security authorities redirected Google searches to numerous smaller websites, including Baidu.