WASHINGTON (AFP) -- China has eased restrictions on access to the U.S.-based online encyclopedia Wikipedia after blocking the site for nearly a year, a researcher says.

Andrew Lih, a Chinese-American researcher who has worked at Columbia University and Hong Kong University, said in his blog this week that Beijing authorities began opening up access October 10. Lih said the English language version of Wikipedia was "widely accessible" while the Chinese version had "spotty access."

"This shows what many Great Firewall observers know already -- blocking is not uniform across the country, and depends on specific municipality and ISP (Internet service provider)," Lih said. "Nevertheless, this is encouraging and will certainly allow many more contributions to Wikipedia from China users."

Wikipedia said on its site that it learned about the easing from two Chinese contributors on October 10.

"They indicated that the English Wikipedia and most others could now be accessed, but the Chinese Wikipedia remained blocked," the website said.

The move came several months after China's biggest Internet search engine, Baidu.com launched an online encyclopedia modeled on Wikipedia.

Entries on Baidupedia are however censored by the Chinese government.

The Chinese-language version of Wikipedia, which relies on voluntary users and contributors to ensure its neutrality and objectivity, was enjoying soaring popularity until Beijing blocked access to the site late last year.

Beijing bans many portals to eliminate "harmful" content, including pornography and violence from their websites.

But it also categorizes politically sensitive material and some religious content, such as those from Falungong, as "harmful" and regularly shuts down websites containing such information.

Following the easing of Wikipedia restriction, the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders praised the website for refusing to yield to the Chinese government's censorship requests in contrast to portals such as MSN, Google and Yahoo.

"We congratulate those in charge of Wikipedia, especially (founder) Jimmy Wales, who could have chosen to censor their own site to get official blessing," the group said in a statement. "Instead they stuck to their principles and spurned self-censorship. Their determination has paid off inasmuch as Beijing has partially reversed its decision. It is an example that other Internet giants could follow." The group said the unblocking of the English-language site was aimed at appeasing its critics and that it hopes for the unblocking of Wikipedia's Chinese version, "which is obviously the one that people most want to consult in China."