In response to vehement protest, the National People's Congress plans to abridge proposed legislation that would've allowed authorities to secretly detain those suspected of terrorism and national security threats. more ›

• Dead fish have formed a 2-km-long, 2-meter-wide belt in a reservoir in northeast China. "The water has turned dark and stunk since the thick ice layer completely melted early this month. More and more dead fish have appeared, making the odor even stronger," said a worker of the Tuanjie Reservoir in Liaoning. [China.org.cn]
• Gao Zhisheng, in his first exclusive interview since he resurfaced two weeks ago after a year of captivity, said he didn't wish to discuss his disappearance and that he was planning on quitting his activism in hopes that he can reunite with his family. [Associated Press]
• Things are amiss at Foxconn, the company that manufactures iPads and iPhones for Apple. It's had a whopping four suicide attempts by employees in the last month. [Telegraph]

Over a year after he first disappeared outside his own home, human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Gao Zhisheng has resurfaced near his hometown. Gao told the New York Times that he was no longer in police custody, but couldn't give any details abut where he was the past 13 months. He also suggested that he had no plans to return to his work as a human rights defender, saying "right now, I just need to calm down and lead a quiet life." Goodness gracious. more ›

A little bit of light was shed on the saga involving human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng this week, but his whereabouts remain shrouded in mystery. Speaking with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Foreign Ministry spokesman Yang Jiechi denied that Gao had been tortured, but claimed he had been sentenced to prison for subversion. However, Yang did not clarify whether he was referring to a new sentence or citing the suspended sentence handed down to Gao in 2006 for having written an open letter to President Hu Jintao claiming Falun Gong adherents had been mistreated. more ›

There are a record 237 candidates in the running for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, amongst them: the internet (god, that's lame). Even more interesting than the inclusion of an inanimate intangible thing though, at least for us China news hounds, is the amount of Chinese dissidents on the list. more ›

• A shuttlecock fight of epic proportion [theage.com.au] "Emerging superpower China annoyed neighbouring Malaysia this week as an unprecedented Chinese domination of badminton's showpiece event — the All-England Championships — led to heated claims of match-fixing."
• Rumor: Focus Media Executives In China May All Resign [Digital Marketing Inner Circle] "In what is some hot gossip circulating in the digital marketing industry in Beijing is that former Focus Media CEO Tan Zhi will collectively resign with the other Focus Media executives once the executive adjustment plan post the merger of some of its businesses with Sina.com."
• Chinese Officials Prohibit Blizzard's Lich King Expansion [Life from Wired.com] "Chinese World of Warcraft fans will have to wait even longer to enjoy the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, as the Chinese government has twice rejected applications for its release."

Fresh off the press: A video of the secret police who watched over AIDS, environmental and democracy activist Hu Jia (胡嘉) day and night while they were under house arrest from July last year to March this year has just been released (h/t to CDT). more ›

Zhu said that after 10 minutes of treatment Bai's lung cancer had been cured and he would recover quickly. more ›

Shanghaiist recently saw this RFA report (in Chinese, and not normally accessible within China) about the continuing struggles of the property rights protesters and hunger strikers in Shanghai. It says that on February 17 five protesters left Shanghai for Beijing, where they planned to continue their housing related petitions. On the 24th, they were caught and forcibly taken back to Shanghai, where they have been held in administrative detention since. Among them was Liu Xinjuan, who was sent to the Minhang district mental asylum shortly after arriving back in Shanghai. According to someone the RFA interviewed, Liu is actually not crazy, despite what seems to be patent evidence to the contrary: her actions reveal a (delusional) belief that social justice and political liberties exist in China. more ›

Shanghaiist found this report from Human Rights in China (to state the obvious, not accessible within China) about hunger strikers in Shanghai. Here are the first few paragraphs: more ›

Members of the Fangzhou Congregation, a house church in Beijing's Chaoyang district (they gather in apartments or other non-official sites to meet and worship) received some surprise visits last Sunday afternoon, January 15. At around 4:30 pm, two uniformed Beijing police officers and two plainclothes police (well, no one knows if they were really police) came in and said that they had to do some investigation of this congregation. The police accused the church of “disturbing the peace" (扰民）and illegal assembly, owing to the fact that the place where they had held the Sunday services had not been officially sanctioned. The usual type melee ensued, with accusations flying back and forth and tugs of war with video cameras. Why all the brouhaha over some small, insignificant house church? Because of the people in it, who are all notorious troublemakers. Yu Jie is an outspoken writer and intellectual that founded China's first PEN association, a pro-freedom of expression writer's group. Gao Zhisheng is a lawyer, and Wikipedia has this to say about him: more ›