Beijing's tightly scripted, carefully choreographed tour for a select group of 26 foreign journalists from 19 media organisations including the Associated Press, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the South China Morning Post, Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao, Taiwan’s Central News Agency, Al-Jazeera and Russian and Japanese media, was upstaged by 30 young Tibetan monks, some clearly emotional and weeping, who pushed their way into a news briefing at the J*kh*ng Temple, as you see in......

Ching Cheong, the chief China correspondent of the Singapore-based Straits Times that was jailed in China for supposed espionage but freed recently, has made his first statements after his well-deserved rest. He lost more than 30 pounds (13.6 kilograms) during the more than 1,000 days that he was in prison. Here are Ching Cheong's quotes, compiled from various news sources quoted below: On his innocence:I have never done anything that endangers national security or harms......

Just three days after Straits Times journalist Ching Cheong regained his freedom, China has released yet another media man — Yu Huafeng (喻华峰), general manager and deputy editor of the Southern Metropolis News《南方都市报》, the Guangzhou-based paper that is one of China's boldest and most critical papers. According to AP, this is the Yu is the third journalist to be freed this month. Li Changqing (李长青), a former writer with Fuzhou Daily《福州日报》, was apparently released on......

The last time an anchor from our favourite TV channel made it to the news, he created such a brouhaha that culminated in the eviction of one coffee company from the Forbidden City. In the news this time is New Zealand-born anchor Edwin Maher who for many years before arriving in China was a weatherman with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The Los Angeles Times published a profile of Maher that started it all off. It......

Looks like a high intensity lightning bolt hit someone at the China Daily recently that foreign journalists want to know the truth about China, so they decided to do an article to inform their readers, just in case they, erm, didn't already know. Here's an excerpt from the story:French journalist Caroline Puel wants to present the real China to her readers, who are eager to know more about the country with the Beijing Olympic Games......

This is not news the government wants to hear in the run-up to the Olympics, but here's a statement that the Beijing-based Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC) just sent out (h/t to the Peking Duck):Dear Members, Recently some foreign correspondents have been detained, harassed and physically roughed up -- two incidents Tuesday alone. The FCCC board thought you'd want to hear about what happened. One of the journalists who experienced problems had not been......

Even as UNAIDS is busy fighting allegations that it had inflated estimates for years in an alarmist effort to raise funds, Beijing has reported that HIV/AIDS cases are up more than 50% so far this year. Angela Sun of Current TV visits a village in Hebei Province (she did not say where exactly) where many of the residents contracted HIV through government-sponsored blood selling schemes. The plight of AIDS villages has been covered by many......

Wondering what the Chinese media are saying about Lust, Caution? We found the following story from the Information Times (信息时报) entitled Survey: Fans rushing to imitate positions in Lust Caution 调查:影迷争相模仿《色,戒》经典床戏 dated 7 Nov on Xinhua — yes, the website everyone goes to for high-quality Chinese journalism. Shanghaiist was so inspired by the spirit of investigative journalism exhibited by this reporter that we decided we had to translate the whole story to share with you.......

So in the meanwhile, Youtube remains blocked. Shanghai blogger John Pasden of Sinosplice informs us that Youtube wasn't the only unlucky fella. Revver.com and Dailymotion.com also appear to be hit. And of course Google Video was never accessible in China to begin with, so that's a no-count. But the mainstream media don't seem to be bothered with the Youtube block. If you don't believe me, just compare for yourself by clicking here and here. For......

On finding out about the Youtube block, these were the first reactions of Chinese blogger Ken Wong:昨晚YouTube发布了香港分站也即繁体中文站时，我还可以正常访问所有YouTube站点，而今天一大早起来，就发现已经全部撞墙了（广州电信ADSL）。看了一下昨晚读者朋友们的反馈，他们也和我一样。暂时还不知道该说什么好，或者一个字就够了：扌喿！ Yesterday when Youtube released its Hong Kong / Traditional Chinese version, I could still access Youtube normally, but this morning when I woke up, I found that it had been bummed (I'm on Guangzhou Telecom ADSL). Comments on yesterday's post from readers suggest they experienced the same thing. I don't really know how to respond to this, except......

So, like we told you, the word "democracy" (民主) was mentioned 60 times in President Hu's report to the 17th Party Congress. The China Media Project fills us in on other top buzzwords. “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” (中国特色社会主义) was mentioned 52 times, “scientific development” (科学发展) was a distant second at 38 times, “opening and reform” (改革开放) was mentioned 34 times, just edging out “harmony” (和谐) at 33. “Deng Xiaoping Theory” (邓小平理论) made 10 appearances and......

Remember the little 8 year old girl Zhang Huimin whose father made her run from Sanya, Hainan all the way to Beijing, wearing out 20 pairs of shoes and covering a staggering 3,560 km in 55 days? This time, another girl, Huang Li (黄澧), 10 years old, had her hands and feet bound by her father before being thrown to swim in the chilly waters of the Xiangjiang River (湘江) for 3 hours. Apparently, her......

Has Cosette finally found a reason to smile in China? Richard Spencer of the Daily Telegraph shares with us some juicy moments at a press conference announcing the signing of a joint venture between musical impresario Sir Cameron Mackintosh and the state-owned China Arts and Entertainment Group, including the following anecdote from the Vice Minister of Culture, Ding Wei: Ding Wei also said he was of course delighted to be overseeing the arrival of musical......

SEE UPDATES BELOW And no, that is not the name of some rock band! If you woke up today wondering where everyone in your neighbourhood has gone, pack up all your belongings RIGHT NOW and leave. From the AP, via TIME: China's commercial center of Shanghai was evacuating 200,000 people on Tuesday ahead of the expected arrival of Typhoon Wipha, potentially the most destructive storm to hit the city in a decade, local media reported.......

World Car Free Day, September 22 Ever thought of what you're doing to offset your carbon footprint? This Saturday, instead of driving your car or taking a taxi, why don't you try taking public transport, cycling or walking instead? Residents will be asked to avoid driving private cars within the Inner Ring Road, and while compliance is not mandatory, driving will be banned outright in some areas. Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节), September 25 As the mercury......

We had a good laugh when we saw this "patriotic" banner by Chinese blogger Xiucai ("秀才") which reads: "Joyfully welcome the 17th Party Congress, building a harmonious society together. Xiucai is a good comrade. This site has temporarily shut down comments and forum features." [h/t to Rebecca Mackinnon] The truth is, as the 17th Party Congress looms closer, Chinese bloggers have been having anything but a party. MacKinnon also points us to an excellent post......

People who made the news this week Zhao Yan (赵岩), the Chinese journalist jailed in 2004 while working for the New York Times is expected to be freed this weekend. Zhao was charged for revealing state secrets after a Times report was published that correctly predicted the retirement of Jiang Zemin (江泽民) as president and Communist Party chief. He was also accused of fraud for taking RMB20,000 from a village official. Prior to joining the......

On the left, you have an image submitted by the Yangzhou Evening News to the 17th Annual Chinese Journalism Awards, for which it won a Class I award in the Best News of Jiangsu province, as well as a Class III photojournalism award in the national round. Lots of inspiring pictures and smart captions that would befit any award-winning page (see details of pictures here on ESWN). Some smart chap then decided to do......

Ching Cheong, the Hong Kong journalist who was chief China correspondent for the Singapore-based Straits Times, is ailing in prison somewhere in the Guangdong province right now. On 22 April 2005, Ching was apprehended by Chinese security agents in Guangzhou, where he was to meet a source who had promised to give him a copy of a politically sensitive manuscript on former premier Zhao Ziyang. It took one and a half years before he was......

We told you about some Chinese journalists probing the Fenghuang (凤凰) bridge collapse getting harassed and beaten by local thugs, and EastSouthWestNorth has followed up with a translation of a fascinating first-hand account of the assault on People's Daily《人民日报》reporter Wang Kefei (王克非). He was accompanied by journalists from China Youth Daily《中国青年报》, the Southern Metropolis Daily《南方都市报》, the Economic Observer《经济观察报》 and Oriental Outlook 《瞭望东方周刊》, some of whom were also attacked. The attackers are allegedly men working for......

China reporters probing bridge disaster "beaten" [Reuters] Chinese journalists probing a bridge collapse that killed dozens of people said they were harassed and beaten by local thugs, exposing the state-run media's see-saw struggle between control and candor. China blows up collapsed bridge in search for more victims [Xinhua] The new bridge which collapsed four days ago was blown up early Friday morning in a desperate effort to find out more victims as chances of finding......

The Chinese internet is currently abuzz with all sorts of reports and rumours of what went on at Yao Ming's wedding at Shanghai's Shangri-La Hotel on Monday. Earlier in the day, we called up our friend Sebastien Lathuile, who is floral meister at the hotel, thinking we could get some inside scoop or even pictures of the event. Unfortunately, all he could tell us was that he was not personally involved in the event and......

There have been several reports about an Foreign Correspondents' Club of China report which found that 95 percent of foreign journalists weren't happy with reporting conditions in China despite the promises made by the Chinese government to loosen restrictions starting Jan. 1 of this year and leading through the Olympics next year: The study, published Wednesday by the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China, is based on responses of 163 members from the foreign press in......

Despite some pretty damning arguments regarding the plausibility of blending cardboard and caustic soda into baozi, steamed pork buns, the internets are chattering again: Government conspiracy and cover-up! The fake buns being fake is itself fake! It's a bit like unpicking the speech of an 8-year-old who has just discovered double-negatives-- It's not not Opposite Day, not!-- but we'll do our best. Officials searched Beijing high and low for cardboard buns, and concluded that overzealous......

Our round-up of some of last week's highlights from China's English-language blogosphere: Angry Chinese Blogger takes a look at a draft copy of a coming report from the World Bank regarding the cost of pollution in China, and finds that recent reports of Beijing using its global influence to have certain pieces of information excised from the publication are apparently true. Looks like we can start chalking up China's famed "for the good of society"......

Shanghai Daily tells us that all businesses in Xintiandi and along Huaihai Road, "especially foreign-brand stores", must add Chinese names to their signs and must do so before this Sunday. According to Yang Jishi, of the Economic Commission in Luwan District:This is part of a long-term project to crack down on foreign-language-only signs, which not only are a barrier to understanding for most Chinese, but also violate the law on language Hmm. What law, we......

Imagethief: Are Chinese journalists too credulous at press conferences? : Journalists everywhere have been guilty of occasional credulity. Nevertheless, it seems to me that China's media is at a rather different state of overall development than Western media. It also carries with it the legacy of having grown quite recently from filling a much different social role than Western media. This is not meant to be a comparative criticism, or a judgment on whether Chinese......

Much has been said about the Shanxi province slavery scandal, and China (and the world) has been shocked by footages of child slaves being beaten and whipped and forced to work under harsh conditions in brick kilns. For those of you who have not caught up with what's happened yet, EastSouthWestNorth offers an excellent translation (and a must-read!) of an article that first appeared in yWeekend detailing how Henan journalist Fu Zhenzhong (付振中) uncovered the......

FDA: Throw away toothpaste made in China This is in the US. In China, remember not to drink Evian. Two Die, 70 Hurt In Chinese Earthquake At least two, including a five-year-old boy, were dead and about 70 injured when an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 on the Richter scale hit Yunnan, a south-western Chinese province, late Saturday. Report: Chinese vice premier dies at 68 - CNN.com Vice Premier Huang Ju, a key......

China to take up currency row directly with US Congress "Tough-talking Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi is to meet with key Congressional panels during her visit to Washington this month for a "strategic economic dialogue" launched by the two powers in December, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said." Survey on standard of living for migrant workers A survey found that the standard of living of migrant workers isonly about one half of that of city......