As China prepares to celebrate 30 years of communist rule, Chinese Internet users are reporting online surveillance and roadblocks.

The Chinese government has a notorious track record for limiting Internet freedom and cracking down on online dissident activity in the lead up to significant national days.

It is being reported that sites such as Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International were unavailable in China yesterday.

Twitter and other social networking sites are also among the more common targets of the Chinese government.

Government Internet censorship is so common in China that the filtering system used by authorities has been dubbed ‘the Great Firewall of China'.

It was reported in September that foreign news outlets, often seen as hostile to the Chinese government, were receiving emails carrying malware attachments that would allow outside parties to observe or destroy data, although no link between the emails and the Chinese government has yet been proven.