I'm traveling on business today so I unfortunately can't investigate and stay on top of this story like I would like to. Apparently Flickr images are being blocked for the majority of Chinese Flickr users. According to Flickr it is definitely not a technical issue on their end.
Our technical staff have looked into this and determined that it's not a technical issue from our end. Evidence suggests that our image servers are being blocked for many users in China.
Theories on how and why Flickr is being blocked in China are running rampant. Lots include this being a first step possibly by the Chinese government to strong arm Flickr into removing or disallowing certain content for and from Chinese users possibly because of posts related to June 4. This is not based on any evidence but it pure speculation but it really doesn't seem that far fetched to me.
Again, I'm really sorry that I'm traveling today and can't keep on top of this but I'll definitely be checking on it tonight and tomorrow to see where it goes.
Thanks very much to Catherine for the tip on this story.
Wow for being away on business you sure covered this nicely. I saw it come across my feed reader and was like, what?? This is crazy.