Internet search giant Google recently revealed that a number of its services have been blocked by China’s Great Firewall because of the 18th party congress being held in Beijing since Thursday, for the election of the country’s new leader - Xi Jinping.

With the once-in-ten-years meeting for the transfer of power in China being attended by over 2,000 Communist Party delegates from all across the country, Google said that its online services which have been blocked in China include: google. com; mail. google. com; google. com. hk; drive. google. com; docs. google. com; play. google. com; and maps. google. com.

As a result of the blocking of several Google services in China, the hook up to Google domains on GreatFireWallofChina. org shows up the following message: “No servers were able to reach your site. This means that your site is most likely NOT accessible from within mainland China.”

With Google’s popular search engine as well as its widely-used Gmail email service being among the services which have been blocked by China’s Great Firewall, a company spokeswoman has clarified that Google has checked out the affected services, and has found “nothing wrong on our end."

Meanwhile, about the blocking of Google’s services in China, the Google-operated online "Transparency Report" website, which evaluates traffic to Google’s sites all over the world, has revealed that traffic to the company’s China services witnessed a sharp plunge on Friday evening.