More than half of the 27 journalists imprisoned in China are ethnic Tibetan or Uyghur, says the Committee to Protect Journalist (CPJ) in a report posted on its website. more ›

After featuring the political calligraphy of Bo Xilai prominently on its front page for two consecutive days on Feb 8 and Feb 9, Chongqing Daily appears to have done an about-face in its treatment of the municipal Communist Party chief. Today, it was Chongqing mayor Huang Qifan that occupied much of the paper's front page. more ›

State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) has officially launched CCTV America in its bid to capture a greater share of the global audience. The new operation, located out of a brand new studio in Washington DC, will be produced by about 100 journalists in 15 bureaus in North and South America, offering viewers four hours of programming daily in three programmes: Biz Asia America, a business news broadcast; The Heat, a talkshow; and Americas Now, a news magazine programme. more ›

Simmering discontent among Hong Kongers with travellers and birth tourists from the mainland has reached a new flashpoint after members of the HKGolden.com forum raised more than HK$100,000 to take up a full-page advertisement in Apple Daily featuring the image of a locust overlooking the city skyline of Hong Kong. more ›

In the surprising 2011/2012 Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders, China almost skirts the bottom at number 174 out of 179 possible spots. This places them one measly notch higher than Iran (175), who is just coming off the 2009/2010 election protest involving rampant violence between the media and government, and 22 places below Iraq - the country responsible for the most reporter killings (151) in the last two decades. In an equally frightening bit of trivia, just two years ago the same slot was occupied by North Korea! Reporters Without Borders states: more ›

Raw footage from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA): The Associated Press opens its latest full news bureau in Pyongyang located inside the KCNA headquarters. more ›

Watch the documentary after the jump... more ›

Here's more on the DaVinci media extortion case to which real estate mogul Pan Shiyi recently alluded to. The Singapore-based furniture company has accused a CCTV journalist by the name of Li Wenxue (李文学) of fabricating his reports and extorting 1 million yuan from the firm. Ho Aili, Beijing correspondent of the Straits Times, writes: more ›

Chinese President Hu Jintao expressed his concerns on Monday about the Westernization of the Chinese culture, and called for greater efforts to strengthen China's cultural influence worldwide. The remarks are the latest in a growing series of attempts by the Communist Party to control promote Chinese culture. more ›

"I look at the DaVinci case and I'm reminded of something that happened over a decade ago. At that time, we were often extorted by the media. They'd often say to us: The negative reports we have prepared for you have all been typeset and are ready for print. Bring your ad dollars in exchange for them. We were miserable. Eventually we published two books in which we detailed all our mistakes, customer complaints and criticisms from other industry insiders -- and the extorting journalists stopped appearing." more ›

"The first social responsibility and professional ethic of media staff should be understanding their role clearly and be a good mouthpiece." more ›

Xinhua News Agency columnist Li Hongmei has done it again with yet another eye-popping commentary, entitled "India's undue worry about China results from inferiority complex". Here are a few gems from the article: more ›

The State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) may move to ban all cut-in advertisements during soap operas on all TV channels, including CCTV. more ›

Xinhua News Agency recently blew big money on ads in New York City's Time Square, but apparently people still have no idea what it is they sell. more ›

Hell hath no fury like a CCTV reporter scorned. We told you previously about the 35 security guards who attacked three young men outside a KTV in Kunming, leaving one dead and two hospitalised, only to realise later that they had beaten up the wrong guys. To clear things up, the Kunming Public Security Bureau and Dabanqiao Neighbourhood Committee Office held a press conference which lasted all of five minutes yesterday. And what a catastrophe it was. more ›

"Our ability to question and criticise the party and the government was not made possible by the powers-that-be, but by technological advancement. They are unable to completely control new media. If they were to shut down the internet and shut down Weibo, this would make international news and point to a complete reversal, as well as failure, of the reform and opening up of the CCP -- no one would be willing to take this step. As much as the Agitprop is frustrated by the current situation, the party isn't made of steel." more ›

China took one step closer to a future space station last night, with the successful launch of their Tiangong-1 space lab module. The most exciting (and brow-raising) bit about CCTV's (rather drab) coverage last night was their strange CGI rendition in which America, the Beautiful was used as their space launch music (see video on right)! Back in 1970 when China's first rocket was launched, notes The Guardian, the music of choice was the Cultural Revolution song The East is Red. How far we've come since then!!! more ›

Earlier today, at the World Economic Forum in Dalian, the ever so smug and smart-alecky CCTV host Rui Chenggang (芮成钢), successfully put himself in the limelight once more by asking US Ambassador to China Gary Locke, "I hear you flew here coach. Is that a reminder that US owes China money?" more ›

Regardless of (or maybe because of) the fact that the Guo Meimei controversy was made famous by online outrage via microblogs, netizens this week have come out strongly against a recent cover story in the Chinese Marie Claire (check it out for yourself in Chinese here.) Sina held a poll asking Weibo users what they thought of the piece and 87% said the magazine shouldn't print it because the media "should have higher values." Many are calling for the magazine to cancel the piece entirely, leading us to believe that most netizens don't know anything about media. Hey Weibo, if you guys don't want people talking about her, maybe YOU should stop talking about her. We really can't blame Marie Claire on this one - even we want to read what they call Guo Meimei's surprisingly "simple" answers about her life and shopping habits. more ›

Bert van Dijk, the Shanghai correspondent for Het Financieele Dagblad and De Tijd, says most of the western media has read too much into Chinese tycoon Huang Nubo's plans to buy 300 square kilometres of land in Iceland to build a new resort. He says, buying a part of Iceland sometimes is just that: buying a part of Iceland:

What I’ve been told by a Zhongkun representative is that Huang wanted to buy a farm in Iceland to transform it into a resort. This farm was officially for sale, but was only for sale including the 300 square kilometers of land. It could not be separately bought. This ‘forced’ Huang to buy the whole lot, even though about 99% of this well reported 300 square kilometers is not useable, because it is either solid stone rock or water. Beautiful stone rock and water, yes, but not something to easily turn into something like a strategic bridgehead for the Chinese, let alone the legislation issues that would require. more ›

Exporting China's Development to the World, a weblog with a mouthful of a title run by a group of anthropologists from Macquarie University (Sydney) and Free University (Amsterdam), tells us of how China is expanding its efforts in controlling influencing Chinese-language media outside of China. more ›

The Beijing Times and the Beijing News, two influential newspapers that have made a name for themselves for their bold reporting have been taken over by the city's propaganda bureau. more ›

WOMEN who were born before September 17, 1989, and claim to be virgins can enter the Zhouluo Wild Osmanthus Fragrans Festival in Changsha for free. more ›

And the clampdown has begun. more ›

As the grand game of push-the-blame taichi continues, the ball has now fallen in the court of the Beijing National Railway Research & Design Institute of Signal & Communication Co Ltd, whose railway signals equipment is now being blamed for the Wenzhou train collision. more ›

By now, as you may imagine, the Ministry of Truth, aka Propaganda Bureau, has lost a pretty significant part of its ability to control media coverage of the Wenzhou train crash. Journalists are defying earlier orders by the bureau to not "investigate the causes of the accident" and to “use information released from authorities as standard”. They have also taken to Sina Weibo to release tidbits of information they have discovered in the course of their investigation that they may or may not succeed in getting to print. more ›

One for your RSS reader: Bert van Dijk, the Dutch journalist based in Shanghai who writes for Het Financieele Dagblad and De Tijd, two leading business newspapers in The Netherlands and Belgium, has now started to blog in English at ReportFromChina.com. more ›

The China Economic Times is dismantling its investigative reporting team after pressure from the Communist Party. According to CMP, people inside CET are saying a "ridiculous leader" reportedly came to their offices and broke up the investigative unit. The head of that unit, Wang Keqin, reacted to this on his Weibo, saying "Where political power burns books, it will ultimately burn people also. Where political power begins to suppress the voice, if it is not stopped, its next step will be to destroy the witness!" more ›

Are you still not convinced that former president Jiang Zemin (江泽民), is alive? Here's proof that our good old friend is alive and kicking. more ›