Though reports are varied, it now appears that the current death from the Wenchuan earthquakes is somewhere between 17,000 and 20,000 (latter figure from the Time China Blog, although most of the media is still reporting the official count at a more conservative 15,000. It's still to0 early to say just how high that figure will climb once everything is said and done, but an earlier Time's estimate put that number at around 100,000 (their......

By Julien Bertrand and Derek Sandhaus As mentioned earlier, not a day had passed since the earthquake hit and we were already seeing cynical reactions from media outlets like The First Post blaming the devastation on China's rush to modernization, but the vast majority of the coverage has been positive and supportive of the country in its time of crisis. Just yesterday, the New York Times wrote a piece on the overwhelmingly positive reaction to......

The environment NY Times: Disaster Set Off by Colliding Land Masses NPR: Geology, Engineering Contribute to Quake Damage Probe International: China's deadly quake: Is the Three Gorges Dam to blame? Treehugger: China earthquake threatens nearby dams, environment Rescue efforts The Guardian: Ill-equipped soldiers face losing battle in huge rescue operation Press TV: China rejects foreign rescue teams NY Times: Quake toll rises; China struggles to reach victims Xinhua: Wen: 90 more copters for quake......

In this weekend's edition of Opinionist, we present to you the China-relevant portions of Lee Kuan Yew's latest interview with Haslinda Amin of Bloomberg News. At 84 this year, Lee was Singapore's first Prime Minister and current Minister Mentor. In this excerpt, Lee gives his take on recent anti-Chinese sentiment, China's challenges going forward and what China can learn from Singapore in handling the Western media. The full transcript (PDF) of the interview can be......

In a new interview with Radio Free Asia, Ching Cheong (程翔), chief China correspondent of the Singapore-based Straits Times, who was imprisoned for over 1,000 days on espionage charges and released earlier this year, gave his thoughts on the recent talks between Beijing and Dalai Lama envoys, Taiwan's relations with the mainland and nationalistic fervour among Hong Kongers. On the arrest of Hong Kong student Christina Chan during the Olympic torch relay there, Ching Cheong......

Following up on our previous post entitled "Attack on an American volunteer by anti-Carrefour mob in Zhuzhou, Hunan," we were contacted today by James Galvin, the unnamed American volunteer mentioned in the story which has now gone on to receive coverage by the Associated Press. In his email, Galvin provided his first-hand account of the alleged incident outside a Carrefour Sunday night in Hunan Province. He feels the story has gotten blown out of proportion.......

Al Jazeera: "Transformed from being the land of bicycles into a land of cars, China's booming economy is driving up demand at a time when car sales are slow elsewhere in the world. Al Jazeera's Tony Cheng visited the Beijing motor show which showed much promise in making China the future of the automotive industry." Al Jazeera: "More than 80,000 people were killed in traffic accidents in China last year, making the country's roads the......

Danwei informs us that Carrefour.com.cn is currently "undergoing a website update and maintenance", but CarrefourS.com.cn is alive and hopping with nationalist messages and other "user-generated propaganda". Crazy times.......

Hot off the press: a CNN-affiliated website The Sports Network (also http://sport.si.cnn.com) has just been hacked by a group called HackCNN, and this was the message placed by the hackers on the website: The Sports Network seems to have regained control of the website in the meanwhile, and here is the message we now find on their homepage:Please Note The Sports Network website and other major news sites have been hacked by a political entity......

Photos from Hélène Franchineau Shanghaiist's Paris correspondent Hélène Franchineau brings us these photos of a demonstration conducted by the Chinese student community there on Saturday in protest against the western media's biased reporting of events within China. On the same day, similar protests were conducted by the Chinese community across the United States. The anti-CNN demonstration which took place outside CNN's studios in downtown Los Angeles attracted "thousands of Chinese Americans and overseas Chinese"......

Since we broke the story on CNN's site outtage in China yesterday, the story was picked up by top US blogs such as Mashable and Gawker, although mainstream media continue to be strangely silent blissfully unaware of what happened. CNN's PR machine has since leapt into action as it seeks to explain what happened. This morning we received an email from CNN Worldwide's Director of Public Relations, Jennifer L. Martin, directing our attention to their......

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......

April 1st marked the birth of Comme à la maison, the new French online magazine based in our beloved city. Directed to a young (half of it between 25 and 40 years old) and growing readership (more than 6,000 baguette-eaters are said to amble their way around Shanghai these days – compared to 5,000 Germans and 3,500 English), this new online publication clearly defines its aim as dealing with “art de vivre” (the art of......

They did it last month, and they did it again this time. A second trip organised by Beijing for a closed group of journalists (from Reuters, ABC News, and France's Le Point, among others) to Xiahe, Gansu, has been disrupted by a group of between 15 and 30 young monks who burst out of a building at the L*br*ng Monastery, demanding for human rights, freedom and the Dalai Lama to return to Tibet. From The......

Anti-CNN.com, a website set up to protest the Western media's "distortion" of recent events in Tibet, has been hacked according to The Dark Visitor. There's a clue in the name as to what anti-CNN.com is all about but, in case you haven't heard of it, here's how they define themselves:This website is estabished to expose the lies and distortions in the western media. The site is maintained by volunteers, who are not associated with any......

This Sunday, kick back and enjoy this discussion on press freedom in China on Al-Jazeera's 101 East. The show begins with an excellent backgrounder on the current state of press freedom by Tony Chen who interviews people like Melinda Liu, Newsweek's Beijing bureau chief and president of the Foreign Correspondents Club of China; former CCP official Bao Tong who is now under house arrest, and Huang Tianliang, the former chief editor of Bai Xing......

The video on the right is SMG's report on the global tour that the Olympic torch is currently on. Things are all bright and sparkley, everything is going according to plan, and the torch will be taken to places where it's never been before, including Almaty, Kazakhstan. No mention of the challenges the Olympic torch relay has faced, no mention of the protests that has dogged the torch everywhere it has gone, and no mention......

Sina.com have officially entered the war of words over CNN's Tibet coverage with an online petition that is currently up to 1.14 million signatures. This latest development in the ongoing row over doctored and mis-titled photographs is breaking over on China Daily:The website's appeal read: "Violent crimes of beating, smashing, looting and arson broke out in Lhasa in early March, but Western media organizations such as CNN and BBC have churned out untrue and distorted......

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......

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......

An Associated Press video on the Taiwanese Presidential elections Just in time for Easter, YouTube has come back from the dead after an absence of around a week. As we reported last week, the block was most likely due to certain sensitive content, a move that has left some people questioning whether Google/YouTube were involved at all. Unfortunately, its resurrection doesn't appear to be fully complete — some video clips don't seem to load......

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......

International news channels such as CNN and BBC are also getting routinely blacked out. While we think this is a really poor way to deal with all the shit that's going on, we have been there many, many times, and survived. Time to turn on your VPN again, people! And if you still don't know what it is, let me tell you it's the only way to maintain your sanity here. Shanghaiist highly recommends the......

China commentary just took a new turn … well several twists and turns, followed by a rapid descent into a mind-bending ideological vortex. Confused? That’s the point. No, really. That’s the point behind Sp!ked Magazine’s campaign against China-bashing in the media. The campaign became high profile across the British media following editor Brendan O’Neill’s article And the gold medal for China bashing goes to … Since then he has recently weighed in on Bjork’s Shanghai......

"There are many people studying Chinese now. I hope that all of you reporters, and the other ladies and gentlemen in attendance, can take up the study of Chinese. I believe that Chinese is one of the easiest languages in the world to learn. Otherwise, how can you explain why 1.3 billion people have chosen it as their mother tongue?" — Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi (杨洁篪) in a press conference yesterday morning [h/t......

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.......

By Kenneth Tan and David Feng Not good news: Tudou may be in for a squashing by the Chinese mainland authorities, specifically, the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television. A Sohu IT report claims that the presence of porn -- a big no-no on the Chinese Internet -- was all that it took for the potato (which is the Chinese translation of "tudou") to be squashed. The squashing is long-term and has no set......

BAIDU RAPPED FOR SPREADING THE PICTURES; CHINESE COPS ARREST 10 SUSPECTS IN SHENZHEN We told you in an earlier story how Baidu, China's most popular search engine, was making it oh-so-easy for everyone to find pictures of Edison Chen engaged in naughty activities with various Hong Kong starlets. Conduct a Baidu search for Edison Chen's Chinese name "陈冠希", and Baidu will offer up automatic related keyword searches for "Edison Chen Sex-Photo-Gate", "Edison Chen Gillian Chung......

... but it's been found to be a photoshopped fake. From Southern Metropolis Daily [Translation by ESWN]: In November 2007, the 12th annual China International Photographic Arts Exposition was held. Ye Weitang's won a golden award in the Social Lives and Customs section. Beijing Times Photography Supervisor Luo Yonghong raised these doubts: In the photo titled , there were several spots in which digital alterations clearly occurred. A1 and A2 were clearly the same......

Amsterdam-based World Press Photo earlier this month announced the winners of its annual photo contest, the world's largest and most prestigious for press photography. Shanghai-based photographer Ariana Lindquist, an American who shoots for the New York Times, TIME and other publications, won first prize in Arts and Entertainment for her portrait of a girl in an anime costume at Shanghai Stadium. We think the least all Shanghaiist readers could do is buy Ariana a drink......