The Beijing Times and the Beijing News, two influential newspapers that have made a name for themselves for their bold reporting have been taken over by the city's propaganda bureau. more ›

• China's communists celebrate with 'red tourism' [AFP] "Sixty years after founding the People's Republic of China, the communist regime is keeping the revolutionary fires burning while promoting its version of history through "red tourism" destinations such as that in the eastern city of Wuhu."
• Google to "Develop" 10,000 Hangzhou SMEs [JLM Pacific Epoch] "Google plans to "develop" 10,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province over the next three years, reports Today Morning Express quoting Google Greater China Director and General Manager of Sales Song Zhongjie. Song said Google plans to double its Zhejiang distributors and employees in 2009. The Hangzhou government aims to help 10,000 SMEs enter the e-commerce industry each year, said Song."

According to renowned photographer Bao Kun, the photography expositions in China did not follow international practice of dividing works into documentary versus art categories. This occurred as a result of historical reasons and led to a series of problems. As a national competition judge many times, Bao Kun has identified many altered photographs winning documentary prizes. After the problem with was exposed, he contacted the China Photography Association. He found that the Association was ready to rescind the award but then it realized that with so many other altered photographs winning awards, it would be a disaster to rescind all those awards. Thus, the awards stayed. Bao Kun thinks that the competitions should be separated by category and the higher quality judges are needed. more ›

This morning, I heard the news that half of Beijing’s bottled water is counterfeit. I was horrified. It seems that illegal factories fill the used plastic bottles from the tap or with perfunctorily filtered water. The bottle tops and tape that they use to seal the bottle look identical to the genuine ones. The bottles aren’t sterilized and the number of mold fungi and e. coli bacteria that have been found in such water can easily make drinkers sick. An industry report quoted by Beijing Times calculates that more than 100 million bottles of such water were sold last year. The profit derived from these illegal sales exceeded 1 billion RMB, or about $12 million. As a Chinese, I am used to reading about dangerous fakes. But this case really enraged me. This is water that many of us drink every day, after all. And the whole reason people pay extra for bottled water is for the quality—and safety. The Beijing Times did a story a couple of days ago that revealed the illegal business has been going on for five years. One unlicensed water bottler told the newspaper: “I filter the tap water before filling the bottle because I am a moral person and I don’t want to get people sick.”

Shanghaiist’s first memory of public sexual harassment in this city dates back to high school, when buses were extremely crowded and rules about what boys shouldn't say and what they shouldn't touch had not yet been implemented. Actually ... wait a minute ... has anything changed since sexual harassment laws were put into place last year? (Yep, last year.) Ms. Sun, in this Beijing Times report, obviously doesn’t think so after she was molested by a 40-something-year-old man on the bus. She called police, who later took both of them to the police station. Sun said she sought the help of one male passenger who was sitting next to her, but he said he couldn't be a witness because he didn’t notice the encounter -- he was watching TV. Sun was told to leave the station and the middle-aged molester was asked to stay. The story doesn't say what happened after that. more ›

This is funny. ShanghaiDaily.com has stopped time-stamping its stories with the text "Beijing Time" because many news sources -- including several other state-owned papers -- assumed that Shanghai Daily had simply copied the information from a paper called the Beijing Time (there actually is a Chinese-language paper called the Beijing Times). (To the right, see an example from Sina.com, which, it seems, got the erroneous attribution from Xinhua.) The Shanghai Daily editor explains on his blog: more ›