The Guardian’s website has been completely blocked in China, according to a censorship-tracking website.

The website was first blocked on Tuesday, Jan 7, according to the website greatfire.org. Numerous attempts to access the site from multiple browsers, devices and locations across Beijing all failed without the aid of firewall-circumventing software.

China's leadership is known to block websites that it deems a threat – Bloomberg and the New York Times have been blocked since 2012, when they published lengthy investigations revealing the vast wealth accumulated by the families of senior leaders, the Guardian says.

The reasons for the Guardian block are unclear – no China-related stories published by the Guardian in the past two days would obviously be perceived as dangerous by the country's leadership. One article, published on Jan 6, explores tensions in China’s ethnically-divided north-western region Xinjiang, but the Guardian has covered the subject before without any noticeable fallout.

It is also unclear whether the block is permanent or temporary. The Chinese-language versions of Reuters and the Wall Street Journal were blocked in November, but unblocked shortly afterwards.