Local officials are still trying to strike the proper balance between transparency and the traditional Chinese methods of information dissemination (or lack thereof) which we have all become so familiar with — namely, "monitoring," "controlling" and "blocking." If the government had been open about the details of the "unusual death" of the girl in Weng'an on June 22nd, could it have prevented the destructive mass protests nearly a week later? That is the question......

The China Digital Times leads us to a story in Jianghua, in Hunan Province, where local party officials are hanging signs throughout the city claiming that some forms of petitioning the government are illegal. The signs declare, "If you petition illegally, the penalty is imprisonment," or "Attack those who don’t petition legally," or “Wage a war for standard, orderly petitioning." The Digital Times suggests that this is the local government's response to a central government......

As usual, Roland Soong of EastSouthWestNorth is on top of the incident, busy piecing together all the information he can find. He informs us that Weng'an is now a sensitive word, the uncle of the female student is still alive, and the body of the student is still resting in a refrigerated coffin awaiting autopsy despite this popularly-believed story. Soong also observes that the Xinhua story (which all Chinese media are made to carry) opens......

Several thousand rioters have gathered in Guizhou's Weng'an County, torched a police station, ransacked government buildings and overturned police cars, after allegations of a cover-up over a 15 year old girl's death blew up. Ming Pao reports the son of the county's vice-deputy mayor had raped and murdered the girl along with another youth and tossed her body into the Ximen River. Police only detained the suspects for five hours and released them without charge.......

Among driving rain, rough winds and other remnants of yesterday’s tropical storm, the streets of Hong Kong are teeming today with the usual bustle of high-powered businessmen and equally serious shoppers. But there’s something new on the streets of the island metropolis: Chinese patriotism. According to a recent survey by the Public Opinion Program at the University of Hong Kong, a 58% of Hong Kongers of Chinese descent now identify themselves as Chinese or Chinese......

Jesus seems to be making a comeback in the PRC. Since the introduction of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox missionaries to China, many of them to Shanghai, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, Christianity has been a popular minority religion. While practice abated during Mao’s hay day, China has experienced a resurgence in past years. Just two weeks ago, we reported that Orthodox priests were allowed to lead a service in Shanghai for the first time......

For those with little money and fewer scruples, a new business is taking off in town — wedding venue scalping. With this being the popular marriage year of the Olympics and lucky number 8, demand for reception spaces has been at an unprecedented high throughout the city, forcing many to contact the new wedding banquet resale moguls who reserve spaces in advance and charge desperate couples a fee to use them.A Hong-Kong based human......

With the upcoming Olympics and the subsequent global attention, the government obviously wants the nation to look its best, which in China sometimes translates to quashing dissent. Two European-based human rights groups working together as the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders recently published a report declaring that the government has stepped up attempts to quiet dissidents, citing four people arrested for Olympic Games protests, including Hu Jia, who was sentenced to three......

Olympics China Rises: Restricting the foreign press Reuters: China urged to curb executions ahead of Olympics China Herald: Another Olympic mishap: problems in getting tickets Channel NewsAsia: Hong Kong toughens rhetoric to avoid Olympic Games protests ABC News: Athletes banned from Beijing opening ceremony China and the U.S. Blogging For China: America opens its doors, slightly, to Chinese tourists People’s Daily: First Chinese leisure travelers to U.S. greeted by music, hospitality Washington Post: In......

The last installment of Al Jazeera's series on China in the program People and Power investigates the Lhasa Express, the 4000 km train line linking Beijing with Lhasa. Exclusive interviews with members of the Tibetan government in exile and recently escaped Tibetan prisoners echo the familiar refrain that the Chinese government is encouraging a massive influx of Han Chinese to Tibet, but zero coverage of the flip side. In other Tibet-related news: Bloomberg: Acting......

... was when Ali Khameini was elected the new supreme spiritual leader of Iran right after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, but it was also part of a significant event in Chinese history that for now still remains too taboo to talk about. Here are a collection of stories from around the internet which are well worth a read:Blogging for China has translated an amazing set of first-person accounts of the incident: here, here and......

Scene of devastation at Juyuan Middle School (聚源中学) in Dujiangyan (都江堰) The government has announced the start of a massive probe to find out why close to 7,000 schools classrooms have been destroyed and promised that anyone found responsible for shoddy construction will be severely punished. A great many of the casualties we've seen so far are students and teachers who were still in class when the quake struck. From AFP:"If quality problems do......

In the days following the earthquake a number of stories have started surfacing about Sichuan's enormous migrant labor force and their concerns for loved ones back home. Out of the many laborers that have moved into China's rapidly developing urban areas, more come from Sichuan than any other province. A recent article from the Wall Street Journal tells us:According to official figures, eight million migrant workers come from Sichuan. But the official figures exclude many......

Photo by Sabershadezero After a long and sometimes chaotic winter, the recent heatwave has been much celebrated around the city. Outdoor dining is back, the windows are open, and the locals are sporting this season's hottest pajama fashion. But with all the good weather there's a silver lining or, perhaps more accurately, a poisonous death haze. This is that magical time of year where all the tiny particles in the air heat up and......

This just in from the AP:The Chinese government plans to meet with a private representative of the Dalai Lama in the coming days, state-run media reported, after weeks of pressure from world leaders. The official Xinhua News Agency said it had learned of the development "from official sources." It quoted an unnamed official as saying there had been requests repeatedly made by "the Dalai side for resuming talks." The BBC said that the Dalai Lama's......

Ang Lee, in a recent trip to Vancouver BC, talks with the mayor and Vancouverites about a proposed bill that would deny tax money to filmmakers whose content does not reflect Canadian values. On a recent trip to LA, Lee was asked about how new "President" Ma Yingjiu (馬英九）of that province which has been, is, and always will be part of China, will affect the movie bidness there, to which he replied that this is......

We found on the Foreign Ministry website a question that was posed to Jiang Yu regarding Jack Cafferty's China remarks at a Tuesday press briefing and her response:Q: In covering the Beijing Olympic Torch Relay in San Francisco recently, CNN's commentator Jack Cafferty attacked China, saying that Imported Chinese products are "junk", Chinese people are "basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years." How do you comment on......

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/microsoft/L_China_Nationalists_on_MSN_Messenger_heart_China'; Like Wang Jianshuo and Eric Hu, we were pretty surprised to see that this is what our MSN messenger looks like at the moment. Says Eric:Over half of my Chinese-Chinese friends on MSN have put the badge on their contact names, in defiance of all the anti-China bullying that they’re undoubtedly reading about in the Chinese newspapers, watching on the Chinese news, and scouring over on the hundreds of blogs and......

Chen Liangyu (陈良宇), the former Mayor of Shanghai and member of China's Politburo, was sentenced to 18 years in prison after being found guilty on taking bribes and abusing power. During the course of the trial in Tianjin, it was revealed that amount of money stolen of Shanghai's pension fund, $480 million USD was 10 times worse than initially believed, somewhere in the neighborhood of 33.9 billion RMB ($4.8 billion USD). If you remember, back......

UPDATE, Friday 9:45 am: The show will go on ... at Windows Tembo. UPDATE, 5:27 pm: This just in via email from the promoter: PRESS RELEASE Dandi Wind will NOT play Shanghai’s Shelter this Friday, April 4. Due to the heightened sensitivities around live music in Shanghai at the moment, Dandi Wind will not play the Shelter this Friday. However, she remains committed to performing in Shanghai if at all possible. For further updates, people......

Following last week's expulsion of 20 Hong Kong journalists from Lhasa that was roundly criticised by the Hong Kong Journalists Association, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China has issued an updated call for China to grant reporters unhindered access to Tibetan areas:"Reporting interference is not in the interest of the Chinese government which is trying to show a more open, transparent and accountable image to the world," said FCCC President Melinda Liu." As of March......

"The Communist Party is like the parent to the Tibetan people, and it is always considerate about what the children need.The Central Party Committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans."- Zhang Qingli 张庆黎, Member of the 17th CPC Central Committee, Secretary of the CPC Tibet Autonomous Regional Committee - [Source: IHT, h/t Inaction Hero]......

Frank Hsieh (left) of the DPP and Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang It's just four days to Taiwan's presidential elections, and the latest turn of events in Tibet have loomed large in the rhetoric on both camps. Here are a few things that Frank Hsieh 謝長廷 (DPP), currently lagging in opinion polls and the underdog in the race (mainly because of the corruption charges against his predecessor), has said:"As we look at Tibet, we......

The situation in and around Tibet Reuters: Tibetan riots spread, security lockdown in Lhasa AFP: Foreign tourists in China not allowed into Tibet: tour guides Reuters: Nepal closes Mount Everest over protest concerns PTI: China intensifies border vigil along Nepal-Tibet border Reuters: Visitors recount Tibet violence, tell of troops What China says China Daily: 11th Panchen Lama condemns Lhasa riot Xinhua: Shops reopen, vehicle back on streets as Lhasa calms Xinhua: Religious leader, locals......

It’s shaping up to be a bad week for the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (the catchily acronymed SARFT) – and it's still only Wednesday. Recent events surrounding bans of video sharing site Tudou and then actress Tang Wei (汤唯) seem to suggest that SARFT is slipping into farce. First off, there were attempts to mash Tudou due to alleged pornographic content on the site – as we reported a few days ago.......

Sohu, that bastion of hard-hitting news on the Chinese internet, serves up a video of pretty female reporters at the NPC [h/t CDT]: Meanwhile, Radio Free Asia alleges Beijing police have detained 1,000 petitioners with grievances against the government before the start of congress.This is a video shot by petitioners at the Gongyi East overpass. Several hundred of them had gathered here to meet with foreign journalists but their plans were disrupted by local police:......

Xinhua: Foreign reporters enjoy greater freedom covering China's "two sessions":Andrew Kirillov, Beijing bureau chief of the Itar-Tass News Agency in Russia, appeared joyous when registering to cover China's upcoming "two sessions", not only because he was to witness the important political event again, but he would find it much easier to locate interviewees. "In the past, deputies to the National People's Congress were not easy to contact," recalled Kirillov, who first came to China in......

A group of Shanghai residents who had applied to the government for the right to hold an anti-maglev protest were rejected by the government. Despite this, small numbers of them intended to go on another "walk" in order to publicly air their grievances. This time, they were stopped by some other residents. According to this AP article, this is what happened: Residents in armbands used a megaphone to warn people not to "linger here too......

Dr Zhao Baige (vice-minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission) said yesterday that there was a "very serious process" currently taking place regarding the review of China's infamous one-child policy. Her comments were typically tentative but the admission that the policy is under scrutiny from high level officials has been taken by many China-watchers to mean that a gradual relaxation of the rules could be on the cards. "I cannot answer at what......

From Reuters:A group of lawyers and human rights campaigners are objecting to China's "re-education through labour" system which allows China citizens to be sent to prison-like camps without trial. The government calls the system a humane corrective alternative to jail. But in practice, police use it to hold tens of thousands of people including protesters, thieves and addicts. In another parallel universe, there is the Internal Security Act inherited from the British by countries......