TIME's Beijing bureau received a note this week from the customs department that 62 copies of its May 14, 2012 issue entitled The People’s Republic of Scandal were being "safeguided by customs" to be "dealt with". Read Hannah Beech's account of their fruitless attempts to get their magazines back: more ›

Today is World Press Freedom Day but instead of celebrating the freedom of the press, Chinese netizens have decided to mark the "Tweet Deletion Festival" (删帖节) because the date 5-3 sounds like "I delete" ("我删") in Chinese. more ›

The news of former CPC star Bo Xilai's suspension has gripped China, with everyone offering their two cents (or five mao). We've brought you a round-up of comments. 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 ›

"Designed for press photographers by press photographers", The Press Photographer's Year is a competition among UK news media that recognizes and showcases press photography. This year, two winners for digital film and multimedia are China-based press photographers Sean Gallagher and Dan Chung, with reporting by Tania Branigan. Adam Dean, now a Beijing-based photographer, also won first prize for his photo essay covering troops in Afghanistan last year (see those here.) Definitely take a minute (if you have a VPN) to watch the very beautifully crafted videos below. more ›

Scene at yesterday's press conference at the Foreign Ministry according to Reuters [h/t to Imagethief]:

[Foreign Ministry spokesman] Liu Jianchao was asked what he thought of Sunday's incident, when the television journalist also called the American leader a "dog," and replied all leaders deserved respect. more ›

Two Japanese reporters Shinji Katsuta of Nippon Television Network Corp, and Shinzou Kawakita of the Tokyo Shimbun were briefly apprehended, beaten by police and forcibly taken to a border police facility while they were in Kashgar trying to report on the deadly attack which killed 16 policemen. After a protest by the Japanese government, the Kashgar police and the local foreign affairs department apologised to the Japanese reporters. Austin Ramzy of Time Magazine was also in Kashgar, and reports that he was on the same flight with a man that had lost his lower right leg and was strapped to a stretcher that flight attendants say was one of the border guards injured in the attack. This video, filed by Ramzy, shows the area around the police station where the attack took place. more ›

Oops of the Day 2: Jack Cafferty, CNN commentator more ›

Amnesty International's website is unreachable for journalists covering the Olympics one day after the organization issued a harsh report criticizing China's failure to make good on promises to improve human rights leading up to the Olympics. A more practical complaint from the press room — the internet is sloooooooooow. Welcome to our nightmare, guys. A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, while admitting that websites for certain "cults" will indeed be blocked, blamed other inaccessibility issues on foreign web hosts. “There are some problems with a lot of websites themselves that makes it not easy to view them in China,” Liu Jianchao said. Hmmmm. [Source] more ›

Hong Kong is known to produce some of the most gung-ho reporters and cameramen around. When these guys cross over to the mainland and come face-to-face with Chinese police, interesting things happen. more ›

"Yesterday, Beijing News published an interview with former Associated Press Beijing-based reporter Liu Xiangcheng. The story appeared in page C15, and belongs to the series about thirty years of reform. The title was I used photographs to record the path that China went through. Next to the story is a photograph that Liu took during the June 4th incident in 1989. The photo showed a couple of wounded civilians being spirited away in a tricycle cart. Reportedly, the authorities recalled all copies of Beijing News after they realized what had happened. The story has also been removed from the online edition of Beijing News. It is expected that many people at Beijing News including the reporter, the page editor and senior editors will be punished." [EastSouthWestNorth] more ›

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." more ›

To help foreign media confront the challenges posed by covering the Beijing Olympics, the International Federation of Journalists has teamed up with Play the Game, a non-profit democracy advocacy organization working in global athletic coverage, to produce a series of helpful tools for reporters on a new website — Play the Game for Open Journalism. The aids include an online discussion forum and a series of background and tips for reporting in China. Most impressive, Play the Game will staff a helpline with experienced Sino-journalists this summer, providing advice on everything from how to get access to events to legal rights and harassment support. Play the Game for Open Journalism states that Olympic coverage is a golden opportunity both for the world to get a comprehensive look at the PRC, and for the PRC to learn to open its own media channels:

For foreign journalists, the Beijing Olympics will be a chance to demonstrate the true standards and social value of the profession they pursue and play a part in the long term progression of Chinese news media. In support of their Chinese colleagues, who do not enjoy the same full media freedom rights, journalists from abroad must strive to maintain journalistic principles of fairness, independence, honesty and responsibility.

In our past life as a media whore public relations executive, we learnt that one of the defining elements of PR with Chinese characteristics is that cash is not only frequently extended in return for positive coverage, it is actually industry standard that you hand out the cash to journalists in nice little envelopes discreetly tucked into the media kit as "travel expenses" (车马费). That this is standard practice is hardly news, but tough luck anyways for the Gehua New Century Hotel which hosts the official non-accredited media center for the Beijing Olympics because it's just been busted by Nick Mulvenney of Reuters for offering journalists "500 yuan for a 'positive' article on the hotel of 100 to 500 words in length and 1,000 yuan for an article of between 500 and 1,000 words". PR manager of the hotel Zhao Xiaoda explained it away in a phone interview with Reuters by saying, "We want to extend our reputation through the opportunity of the Olympics, it is necessary to promote our brand. I understand it is different from international practice. It was a decision of the PR department not the hotel." Let's see how BOCOG deals with this one. more ›

UPDATE: More photos are available here (link in Chinese). We should warn you that they are pretty tasteless though. (h/t to Danwei) more ›

This picture you see on the right taken during President Hu Jintao's meeting with Emperor Akihito during his trip to Japan (just before the earthquake struck) appeared on the front page of the May 9 edition of Jiefang Daily 《解放日报》[screenshot here just in case]. As you can see, President Hu is talking to the Emperor and Mrs Hu is talking to the Empress. Take a careful look. Do you see what's there coming out from under the First Lady's chair? more ›

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 man Austin Ramzy is there right now). While we hope that this isn't the case, we can see why they would say that, because other sources put the amount of buried or missing at between 27,000 and a staggering 60,000, and time is running out to get these people out. more ›

Treehugger: China earthquake threatens nearby dams, environment more ›

We are not against the western people, but against the prejudice from the western society.Since its founding a few weeks ago, the website has received a huge number of hits and has been featured in China Daily (under the headline "CNN: What's wrong with you?"). The reasons for the hacking remain unclear but those behind the website (reportedly university students) have apparently enlisted the help of Sohu to help them track down those responsible. more ›