China has blocked Youtube

China has blocked the video-sharing Web site YouTube but has not offered any reason or explanation for the ban. Mountain View-based Google, which owns YouTube, said it began noticing a decline in traffic from China about noon Monday.  By early Wednesday, site users insider China continued to encounter an error message: “Network Timeout. The server at youtube.com is taking too long to respond.” “We do not know the reason for the blockage and we are working as quickly as possible to restore access to our users,” said Scott Rubin, a spokesman for Google. It’s not the first time users in China have been unable to access the site. In March 2008, China blocked YouTube during riots in Tibet.