When Wikileaks first broke, one of the juiciest pieces of China gossip was about the Google fiasco from earlier this year and how they "were orchestrated by a senior member of the Politburo who typed his own name into the global version of the search engine and found articles criticising him personally." Now we have a name: Surprise! It's Li Changchun, the Propaganda Chief, a man so sensitive that he already "accidentally" had an entire Chinese city GFWed because it shared his name. more ›

It was probably expected that, like the recent Afghanistan war and Iraq war dumps on Wikileaks, the newest release of U.S. diplomatic cable transfers would no doubt contain a lot of stuff everyone knew already, but that at least a few of the confirmations would include amusing details and at least some connections would come as a surprise... like the stuff about China. more ›

This article was also posted on Gizchina. Check it out for daily tech, gadget and 'Shanzhai' news! more ›

The Google problem is officially over! While Google itself announced being able to obtain a new ICP license for China two weeks ago, last night, the authorities finally issued a statement of their own confirming the fact. more ›

So what has the whole Google China debacle taught us? In an article on The Diplomat adding to Rebecca MacKinnon's excellent analysis on Google's ICP renewal, it's shown us that the Chinese government actually has three ‘narratives’ for its Internet strategy: it's "completely free," it's censoring its citizens and oops, wait a minute, we meant "protecting" its citizens. more ›

So the fake homepage ploy worked! Last night Google.cn was able to obtain a new ICP license, allowing it to stay operating in China. But was this a good thing? A round up of the opinions below.
• Giving Google its license was a show of political savvy, according to Paul Denlinger of The China Vortex, but the company is still in big trouble here in China. Despite being safe for now, it's worked itself into an incredibly vulnerable position in the country.
• In fact, they kind of blew it, according to Henry Blodget. Now it's not just censoring websites, it's effectively done as a search engine. All you can do on there is product and music searches.
• "It's really like they're back to Square Two... (not as bad as it could have been, but not as good as Google’s position at the end of last year, when it had about a third of the search market and was in second place behind Baidu)" says analyst Mark Mahaney of Citi.

It's been a little over a week now since Google first announced that it would be renewing its ICP license, and thus opening up at least one page on Google.cn before the redirect to Google.co.hk in order to do so... and nothing has happened. The company is still waiting for the Internet officials to get back to it. While most people aren't very optimistic about that happening, the company seems to be hoping that throwing up its ICP license number on the G.cn front page will somehow help its chances. more ›

Back in March, after negotiations fell flat with the government on censorship, Google "pulled out" of China, redirecting people who entered Google.cn to its sister site in Hong Kong. Now, since that's run afoul of Chinese laws, Google.cn is back up! Kind of. more ›

We usually dedicate our coverage of Chinese news coverage to China Daily, which tends to have the most excitingly daffy and/or in-your-face-propaganda titles we've come across. But perhaps we just don't look enough at official CCP mouthpiece Xinhua; today's find was quite a doozy. more ›

Try searching for anything inane at all on Google.cn or Google.com.hk (otherwise known as the "new home of Google.cn") and you will now get a connection reset. We tried searching for "shanghai" and all we got was the white screen of death. more ›

It's the Monday after G-day and it seems like, despite lecturing the Internet search company from CCTV and its other mouthpieces, China has yet to block it. Phew. Which makes this fun little Internet tool still relevant - it compares searches between Baidu and Google. Apparently, a good 85% of search results are different! Who woulda thought (hint: maybe everyone)? Anyway, I've been amusing myself this morning doing side-by-side searches of controversial terms. You ought to try it too: baigoogledu.com.cn/ more ›

• If you're like us, the fact that your Bank of China card has says "UnionPay" rather than, say, "Visa" or "Mastercard" is probably irksome at best. Good luck purchasing anything from a non-Chinese merchant! As it turns out, the World Trade Organization is kind of annoyed with the lack of Visa, Mastercard and AMEX representation, too - but for a different reason than you are. [Business Week]
• If we weren't, you know, a site about China (and related news), we might not even have realized Google had made its long-anticipated exit last week, tangibly-speaking. Indeed, it seems as if a lot of the "what will China do without Google?" hysteria has been coming from outside of China. Fear not: a blogger from Beijing has changed that. Seriously though, are we crazy or has Google leaving totally not changed anything? Sure, you now get a blank page instead of a "server not found" when you search for 'Tiananmen,' but come on. [The New Yorker]
• Is China's "organically-grown" food really organic? That's like asking whether or not out GDP really grew 8.9% in 2009 - only the CCP knows. What does appear to be fairly certain, however, is that forced labor has been used to harvest apparently organic goods, on at least a few occasions. Get your Google on, Whole Foods! [The Energy Collective]

Google’s departure from China has created a frenzy in the Western media, but the Chinese media has remained relatively quiet. The reason? The Chinese government has ordered the Chinese media to follow a list of specific instructions when it comes to any reporting on Google’s move to relocate its search engine to Hong Kong. more ›

So the fallout begins. Two days after Google’s announcement that it would no longer censor search results in China, Go Daddy, the largest Internet domain registration company, announced Wednesday that it would stop offering new “.cn” domain registrations in China. more ›

• But first - Hey! Look at this gallery on China's Communist Party mouthpiece Xinhua - maybe the CCP ain't so scawwy aftwer aww. [Xinhua]
• Ever heard of the Panda attack? It's a lot less adorable than it sounds - it was known as the "first case of organized cybercrime in China" after a worm attacked and funneled information from anybody who opened its email. It also provided a rare glimpse into the Chinese world of hackers. [Wall Street Journal]
• Caixin has an amazing profile on Wang Yali, a Hebei official who was raped by her second-grade teacher and then created a new fake identity for herself - one that rose to become a CPC official, a mistress of high-ranking members and businessmen, and the honor of one of Hebei's "Ten Outstanding Female Leaders." [Caixin]

• Meet this 6-year-old, who has 15 fingers and 16 toes, enough to outnumber the current world record of 25. He lives in Harbin. [People's Daily]
• The Rio Tinto trial for Stern Hu and three other Rio Tinto employees has ended, though a verdict on the charges of accepting bribes and stealing commercial secrets won't be announced for a while yet. [New York Times]
• So yeah, Google wasn't able to make it in China. But will any of these touted Chinese internet giants - Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba - really be able to make it out? [New York Times]

All those weeks of talks finally came to a head early this morning, as Google stopped censoring its search results in China. Instead of google.cn, users are being directed to an uncensored version of google.com.hk in simplified Chinese. On the company's official blog, Google’s Senior Vice President David Drummond says that routing through Hong Kong is a legal move, although the Chinese government can still block access to the site. By doing so, Google can continue to offer its search engine to Chinese users outside the jurisdiction of mainland Chinese law, a move the WSJ quotes a source as saying seems to be an “elegant solution if it were to hold,” but China will most likely not allow it to continue. more ›

Some time around 2.50am this morning, Google turned the plug off G.cn and Google.com.cn, and redirected users to Google.com.hk with this message "欢迎您来到谷歌搜索在中国的新家" ["Welcome to the new home of Google Search in China"]. Users in mainland China using Google.com also reported being automatically directed to Google.com.hk (we found this to be true on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari. Chrome did not direct Google.com to Google.com.hk). Using the Google search bar on Firefox and Internet Explorer also returns results through Google HK. more ›

• There's a terrible drought happening in Yunnan right now, with agricultural losses reaching 700 million RMB in Kunming alone. As with every national crisis, this one prompted a visit from Premier Wen to one of the areas hardest hit. There, he delivered the message that no one would go without drinking water. By the way, did you know today was World Water Day? [Go Kunming]
• Chinese media's animosity to Google is rising quickly as the company is poised to pull out - one paper has accused it of working with U.S. intelligence agencies, another hissed at it to stop pushing a political agenda. So this one guy has quipped that maybe Google should have googled "opium wars." Um. I've heard comparisons to the wars from the Chinese, but... [Silicon Valley Watcher]
• Speaking of which, Chinese netizens who feel caught between Google and the government have written an open letter to both, asking them for more information so that everyone would know what's going on. [RConversation]

The art of China-watching is imprecise at best, and hardly deserves yet to be called Sinology. The explanation, or blame, for this often frustrating situation lies mainly with the way the Chinese conduct their affairs. To say the Chinese have a penchant for secrecy is almost an understatement.

• "In recent months, protests over the severe illnesses caused by China's heavy industries have resulted in a crackdown on polluters. Leading the charge has been the state-run media, which the central government is now using to gain control over corrupt local authorities and powerful commercial enterprises." [Environment 360]
• The family of a 69-year-old grandmother who was buried alive by demolition crews has won compensation: five houses and 600,000RMB. The grandmother had tried to stop an excavator with her own body. She somehow fell into a ditch, but the excavator continued shoveling, burying her with a load of earth. [China Hush]
• Wen Jiabao has dismissed claims that Chinese foreign policy is becoming more assertive, saying, "There are already views about China’s arrogance, China’s toughness, and China’s inevitable triumph. You have given me an opportunity for me to explain how China conducts itself" in a defensive speech at a press conference. [Economist]

According to a Chinese publication (that's based here in Shanghai), Google will announce on Monday the day it will finally shutter its operations in China: April 10. China Business News quoted an unnamed Google employee, but follow up calls to Google headquarters have been met by a resounding "no comment." Also no word on whether "operations" means just the search engine or its many other services. Guess we'll find out next week! more ›

• OK, so it's not exactly common to see the phrases "environmental protection" and "five-year plan" in the same sentence. But China's gotta start somewhere, right? Not only are government officials striving to increase the breadth of across-the-board greening programs (the Vice Minister of MEP, Zhang Lijun, was quoted as saying that “the two pollutant control programs that [China] relies on are not enough.”), but also on measures to expand transparency, like a website where the environmental quality of more than 100 cities can be viewed - and is updated daily. [Greenlaw]
• Execution: it's not just for mentally-ill drug smugglers anymore. Lu Jun, a former World Cup referee, is facing the death penalty over allegations that he fixed, among others, a match between South Korea and Japan in 2002. World Cup officials have vowed to make the process of referee selection more "independent" and plan to send their 200 current refs to somewhere called "Anti-corruption Rectification Education Camp." Sounds fun! Yahoo! UK & Ireland Sport]

"The Internet is a tidal wave that is going to be impossible for anyone to keep out," Twitter co-founder Evan Williams was quoted as saying during an event at SXSW in Austin, TX. "In places like China it is hard to say how long those firewalls will be able to hold up." more ›

The big piece of news over the weekend is that Google is now, in fact, 99.9% certain it will be shutting down its China search engine operations after negotiations... well, didn't go so well? more ›

We've documented the will-they-won't-they saga of Google possibly leaving China over hackers and censorship and what not. And then we documented the are-they-aren't-they saga of Google and China talking their problems out. Well, at least Google's CEO thinks both parties are going to reach a conclusion soon: Eric Schmidt told reporters at a media summit that "We are in active negotiations with the Chinese government... something will happen soon." more ›

In a seeming Schrödinger’s cat scenario, Chinese officials have refuted a Reuters report claiming that China is in negotiations with Google. Because the back-and-forth claims are a little tricky to follow, we broke it down to a he-said-she-said format. more ›

• As Beijing political season heats up, Chinese blogger Wan Xiaodao has created a how-to list instructing would-be "corrupt officials." Highlights include not writing a diary, living in a nondescript house and not training the next generation to take your place. We're all for dissent, rebellion and free speech, but we always thought part of being corrupt was having money, as well as the thing that come along with it. [china/divide]
• The Great Wall. Terra Cotta Soldiers. Sea of death? Apparently, there a body of water up in Xinjiang that's been causing trouble for centuries - and China has decided to build a railway bridge over it. With a price tag of nearly 4 billion yuan and on track to be completed in just two years, the railway extension seems to be aimed only at cargo - namely potassium salt - which, last we checked, wasn't threatened by death. [China.org.cn]
• Now this is dissent we can get behind! A so-called "naked" blogger - that is, a netizen who has disclosed his real identity to the government and agreed to have his online movements monitored - has taken to his own blog to satirize the "Great Firewall," the Chinese pre-occupation with "walls" in general and the current porn witch hunts. [Global Voices Online]

• Superiority complexes aside, being a vegan in China will do you no good. No sooner than the dust settles on the melamine milk scandal, "tons" of Hainan Island legumes have tested positive for isocarbohos, a "highly-toxic" pesticide. Sanya's government defends the contamination by explaining they value tourism over agriculture. [The New York Times]
• The latest spin from Beijing? Housing prices will "stabilize" this year after their "fast rise" last year. Can we say "euphemism"? [WSJ China Real Time Report]
• RE: Google, the U.S. is considering taking China to the WTO. The good news? The WTO has deemed the sentiment worthy! The better news? If China refuses, the U.S. may come out and name Chinese officials and individuals suspected of cyber-espionage.[Business Week]

• Beijing's hell-bent on making Hainan the world's best beach destination, and they've got an accomplice that was literally banned in the country just a few decades ago: the game of golf. While the island's government gleefully bulldozes ancient villages Cultural Revolution-style, we're just wondering whether or not a Tiger Woods-type scandal is in China's golf future. [Foreign Policy]
• It seems that Americans are now officially scared of the 21st century being China's time to shine. It also seems that they're ambivalent to this prospect. Curious? Yes. But so too is the fact that a major publication is only now reporting on this. [Washington Post]
• This just in! United States and Europe have been pushing China's buttons on a number of controversial issues as of late out of concern that their dominance in matters of international relations may be a casualty of China's rise. [People's Daily]