***LINKEDIN SITE DISRUPTED IN CHINA***

[pillabachapk]

Access to the networking site LinkedIn was disrupted in China on Thursday, following online calls on other sites for gatherings inspired by protests against authoritarian regimes across the Middle East.

It was not immediately clear whether the blockage on domestic Chinese Internet lines of LinkedIn, one of the few foreign networking sites not previously blocked by Beijing, was due to state censorship.

LinkedIn -- which recently surpassed one million users in China -- said it was aware that access to its service was blocked for some of its users in the region, but declined to specify the source of the blocking. "We are looking into the situation now," a spokesman said.

The disruption, however, comes in the wake of a rash of detentions in China after an overseas Chinese-language website, Boxun, spread a call for "Jasmine Revolution" gatherings to press the Communist Party to make way to democratic change.

Attempted demonstrations in Beijing and elsewhere on Sunday were tiny and swiftly extinguished by swarms of police.

A rash of detentions and censorship of online discussion of the Middle Eastern protests suggests Beijing remains nonetheless nervous about any signs of opposition to one-party rule.

The idea that China could succumb to the kind of unrest rocking authoritarian governments across the Middle East was absurd, a senior Chinese official said.

"The idea that a Jasmine Revolution could happen in China is extremely preposterous and unrealistic," said Zhao Qizheng, former head of the government's information office, according to a report on Thursday in the Wen Wei Po, a Hong Kong-based newspaper under mainland Chinese control.

"In a city of 15 million people, to have a few people standing around has no practical significance," said Zhao, apparently referring to the fizzled protest in Beijing.

"But we're also sure that there are a few people who hope that some kind of turmoil will break out in China."

LinkedIn has no reputation as a magnet of dissent.

Long-term disruption to the site would exclude LinkedIn's 450 million users from the world's biggest Internet market. That could hurt its planned initial public offering in New York and anger the United States, which has criticized Chinese Internet censorship.

Last year, Beijing feuded with Washington after Google Inc complained of censorship and online hacking coming from within China.

DETENTIONS, "JASMINE" BLOCKED

Zhao's remarks were Beijing's highest-level public response so far to online calls for "Jasmine Revolution" protests.