After featuring the political calligraphy of Bo Xilai prominently on its front page for two consecutive days on Feb 8 and Feb 9, Chongqing Daily appears to have done an about-face in its treatment of the municipal Communist Party chief. Today, it was Chongqing mayor Huang Qifan that occupied much of the paper's front page. more ›

We heard the bad news yesterday -- Weibo users on Sina, Sohu, NetEase and Tencent have until March 16th to register with their real names and identities, failing which they will no longer be able to post or retweet updates. Sina Weibo, the market leader in the microblogging segment, appears to be already feeling the heat. more ›

The Weibo accounts hosted by Sina, Sohu, NetEase and Tencent will require real name and ID number registration from all users by March 16th, with unregistered users to be denied posting and forwarding capabilities. The announcement was made at the Beijing Weibo Development Management Regulations Seminar held today in Beijing. more ›

US billionaire Warren Buffett may have appeared on this year's chunwan (春晚), CCTV's Chinese New Year gala show, but even that wasn't enough to turn around the long-standing decline of the annual affair. Barbara Demick and John Lee of the Los Angeles Times write that increasingly heavy-handed censorship has caused several heavyweight celebrities to drop out of the show and driven viewers away: more ›

Evan Osnos of The New Yorker does a wonderful job summing up Chinese reactions to the controversial and much-debated Stop Online Piracy Act which many have likened to China's "Great Firewall": more ›

American broadcast news icon Charlie Rose speaks with Gary Locke. It's one of the first interviews we've seen Locke give since he was appointed US ambassador last summer. more ›

The Beijing municipal government announced new rules yesterday requiring internet users to register on Chinese microblogging platforms with their real names before they are allowed to publish posts. Under the new so-called "Weibo Development and Management Regulations", microblog users would still be able to continue to post under nicknames, but each account can now only be activated if they are first tied to a real identity. Users who do not register within the next three months may find their accounts frozen and unable to publish new posts. more ›

The State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) may move to ban all cut-in advertisements during soap operas on all TV channels, including CCTV. more ›

In a throwback to the bad old days, a loose collection of Chinese nationalists got together in the Shanxi provincial capital of Taiyuan on the afternoon of November 17th, to "angrily denounce" four "traitorous sellout" publications based in Guangzhou (汉奸媒体), by burning several hundred copies of the publications. The news outlets named by the group are the Southern Metropolis Daily, Southern Weekend, Southern Weekly and the Yangcheng Evening News. more ›

Andy Greenberg of Forbes thinks so. He writes:

In recent months, administrators of services with encrypted connections designed to allow users secure remote access say they’ve seen strange activity coming from China: When a user from within the country attempts to reach a server abroad, a string of seemingly random data hits the destination computer before he or she can connect, sometimes followed by that user’s communication being mysteriously dropped. more ›

Chinese author Murong Xuecun, described by some as being the best in his generation, recently popped up on Shanghaiist's radar for his account of an attempt to visit Cheng Guangcheng with a few of his friends. His profile in the New York Times, written by Edward Wong, was much discussed among China observers. Here's a video by Jonah Kessel which appeared together with the report more ›

Here's yet another tragic reincarnation of the Yueyue story all over again. A 5 year old boy named Longlong (龙龙) passed away from critical injuries in Linyi, Shandong Province after passersby ignored his mother's plea for help to rush him to the hospital. more ›

An “Entertainment Restriction” (限娱令) has been issued by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) to impose further restrictions on entertainment shows of provincial TV stations, Netease reports. Dating and other 6 kinds of programs will be restricted, and only 2 entertainment shows will be allowed to air during prime time (7:30pm to 10pm) on one provincial satellite channel weekly. more ›

"Our ability to question and criticise the party and the government was not made possible by the powers-that-be, but by technological advancement. They are unable to completely control new media. If they were to shut down the internet and shut down Weibo, this would make international news and point to a complete reversal, as well as failure, of the reform and opening up of the CCP -- no one would be willing to take this step. As much as the Agitprop is frustrated by the current situation, the party isn't made of steel." more ›

This may come as a surprise for many, but the crazy-popular, females-only singing contest, 'Super Girl' (快乐女声), has been pulled off the air permanently after the show bid farewell with its finale last Friday! more ›

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 ›

That's right. The Internet in China is really more like a massive intranet. Hal Roberts of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society writes that 96% of all page views in China are to web sites hosted within China. Also: "The extremely high proportion local web traffic in China may be the result of the success of the Chinese government in blocking the international sites, like Facebook, YouTube, and Blogger, that are generally the biggest destination in other countries. Or it might be because Chinese people like to read content written in Chinese by other Chinese about Chinese topics run by Chinese people. It is likely some combination of the two factors. But the end result is the same. The most direct battleground in the fight over control of the Internet in China is local — it’s happening on the local Chinese services that are the source of almost all Chinese web traffic but are required to censor content by the government." [Read more here] more ›

Insightful as always, here's Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei.org, commenting on internet censorship in China on Australia Network News. Note his comparisons with David Cameron's and Hillary Clinton's own attempts in reining in social media. more ›

And the clampdown has begun. more ›

Despite being blocked, Google+ still has the power to ruffle feathers here in China as news outlets have been abuzz recently concerning Google's deletion of thousands of Google+ accounts that were not using real names. As interesting as that may be, the real story here lies not in why "JrzyShoreGrrll1993" or "sher@mie:)" should keep their profiles, but rather in the numerous internet activists who have a much less stupid reason to use a pseudonym. more ›

Yo dude. I saw that thing you weib'd the other day. What was that about 'let's shave the characters for "Justice" into our back hair and walk around naked down Nanjing Road'? Yeah, that wasn't a good idea, broseph. They're going to find you now - better move to Berlin! I hear they have great medical care and they're not that into non-Germans, but I think they'll make an exception if you have art/literary festival street cred. They're way chill dude, and everyone cool is moving there! more ›

In a tweet sent just hours ago, Lady Gaga celebrated the news of China's lifting of the ban on her album "Born This Way". To be honest, we weren't even aware that the album was banned here to begin with, but this should come as no surprise -- many other conservative countries have banned the album for its outright pro-gay content. Lady Gaga has just wrapped up a tour of Asia. Earlier this month, the city of Taichung, Taiwan declared July 3 "Lady Gaga Day".
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According to unconfirmed reports now widely circulating on Sina Weibo, Deutsche Welle, Germany's international broadcaster, has been trying, but failing, to get in touch with the office of Xiamen Vice Mayor Zang Jiebin (臧杰斌) who claimed recently that Germany's commonfolk "have a very hard time accessing the Internet" and that Germany's control of the internet exceeds that of China's. more ›

"The commonfolk in Germany have a very hard time accessing the Internet. Not only do they have to jump through hoops to get approval, it's also very expensive. In the West, there is a great focus on ideological mangement, and they go way further than we do in their control of the Internet. Therefore, we can say that our country is very civilised, very democratic, and everybody should feel very fortunate." more ›

It's unfortunate that this sort of news has seemingly become routine this year: "A Tibetan writer and magazine editor, Tashi Rabten, has been sentenced to four years in prison for what Chinese authorities call separatist activities in a Tibetan region of western China, according to a report by the International Campaign for Tibet, an advocacy group based outside of China. Tashi Rabten was the editor of Eastern Snow Mountain, a banned literary magazine. He had been held since April 2010 in detention in an unknown location. He was among a group of young Tibetans at Northwest Nationalities University in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province, who had written about a widespread Tibetan uprising in 2008. Three other Tibetans who worked with Tashi Rabten on the magazine received prison sentences of three to four years in December 2010." [New York Times] more ›

This is definitely a story to make your skin crawl and stomach turn. In an effort to encourage blood donations in the early 90s, Chinese “bloodhead” companies told peasants in Henan Province that they could donate blood plasma for money—meanwhile, the donors would also get blood plasma made available to them in return for their donations, in addition to monetary compensation. The catch? The blood they would receive would not necessarily be their own, but from a general pool of other donors’ blood, and there would be no background check for HIV. The result was the biggest public health debacle in China, massive government cover-ups along with the jailing of whistleblowers, and entire villages contracting HIV/AIDS. About 55,000 people were said to have been infected, but estimates go as high as 200,000. more ›

Internet censors have pulled the plug off the state-owned Shandong provincial news portal SDnews.com.cn (山东新闻网) after a screengrab of a banner commemorating the death of former president Jiang Zemin (江泽民) began circulating on Sina Weibo, China's number one microblogging platform. It is unclear if the banner was published live on the homepage of the news portal, or if the screengrab was taken from a tribute mini-site that had been prepared for the event. more ›

Nothing unexpected here, but it still feels somehow satisfying to see it confirmed. China Digital Times translates a leaked internal memo detailing the directives to China's 50 cent party (五毛党, wǔmáodǎng, or paid pro-government internet commentators) in their efforts to "circumscribe the influence of Taiwanese democracy": more ›

ibribery.com, where Chinese could go and report incidents of bribery, has been shut down by the authorities. Chen Hong started the website after seeing a similar idea in India. It got 200,000 unique visitors in two weeks before censors banned users inside China from accessing it. Chen closed the website over the weekend. more ›