Shanghai's dishonest internet users may be punished with restrictions on certain business activities in real life, a senior official announced on Wednesday. more ›

Everyone knows how utterly useless those security checks at subway stations are, but did you ever think you'd live to see it scrapped? Good news from Shanghai Daily today:

Shanghai is considering ending the security checks at Metro stations and replacing the X-ray scanners with manual random checks and police dogs, the top official of the city's politics and law committee said yesterday. more ›

Far over a year into Shanghai metro security operation, somebody decided to check whether those much-hated scanners are operating in accordance with the proper safety measures. Turns out metro security are about as concerned with radiation safety as they are with actually scanning bags. more ›

What would summer be without an ol' fashioned Uighur repression campaign? "China announced a two-month 'strike hard' security campaign on Tuesday in the troubled western region of Xinjiang, with 24-hour police patrols of crowded areas, identity checks, street searches, increased criminal investigations and accelerated trials. The latest mobilization of the region’s security apparatus follows a five-week spate of violence that has resulted in at least three dozen deaths. A statement on Xinjiang’s Web site said that the latest campaign was aimed at 'destroying a number of violent terrorist groups and ensuring the region’s stability.'" [New York Times] more ›

Well, it looks like the unthinkable has happened. Last Saturday night at the Century Avenue metro station, a security inspector roughed up a passenger for refusing to go through the security check. Witnesses recorded the mayhem and shared it online. As a result, the guard and his superiors were removed from their posts. more ›

Apparently, the current ID system for China's citizens is broke, and thus it must be fixed. The Global Times' tells us of a new ID information system that would strengthen and streamline the system currently in place. Writing in the political theory magazine Qiushi (求实), the 9th highest-ranked Politburo member Zhou Yongkang argues for the necessity of an improved ID database: more ›

★ John Pasden checks out the Shanghai Sculpture Park in Sheshan and, despite the cost, finds it to be pretty awesome. more ›

[So after going to my local PSB, they hadn't heard of this regulation either. We are looking for the original Chinese email to get a confirmation of what THEIR local PSB told them, whether it was mistranslated and why. Hold your horses everyone, I'll write a bigger update when it comes.] First I heard about the subway passport checks, with random foreign looking people being stopped by subway security to make sure all their papers were in order. Then this morning, I walked outside and saw that police officers were now in my compound waving down laowai to ask for their documents, and I thought "this is about as ridiculous as it gets." No. No it wasn't. Because now you guys aren't allowed out past 11pm. more ›

Considering that other notable cities spend decades planning and executing the expansion of just a few measly lines, the fact that we get a first row view of Shanghai's beautiful and massive new metro system expanding before our eyes really excites us. Though we haven't pitched any tents on the subway, we do enjoy hearing about the new lines that are set to open before the expo starts in may. more ›

• Oooh, according to this photo, the Bund face-lift is finally nearing completion. Thank goodness - we're sick of all the construction dust around what once was the prettiest riverside scenic spot ever. [Shanghai Daily]
• Six months after the previous fashion week, Shanghai's now hosting another for Spring and Summer collections. It'll go on from October 29th to November 7th October 21st to October 27th. [SIFC]
• Shanghai Media Group, the conglomerate responsible for all those taxi and subway television ads, will be split into two parts - Shanghai Radio & TV (news, tech, public broadcast) and Shanghai Oriental Media Group (ads, production, distribution and market investment). You know, for all of you who care about this kind of stuff. [China Knowledge]

If you've never seen Far West China, it's a pretty fantastic blog written by an American expat living in Xinjiang. Since the unrest in Xinjiang this summer, the blog has become a platform for airing the Kafkaesque circumstances that have been imposed on the region. From posts on the psychological effects of the complete internet blackout to the numerous new security checks at mosques and on buses, as well as the increases in tourism to Dunhuang for web access, the blog chronicles the very human issues involved. Personally, we can't even imagine what months without internet would be like, and we're sure that's the least of their concerns. Photo byRemko Tanis @ flickr more ›

With only a week and a half left before the 60th anniversary of the PRC, it seems the whole country has caught National Day fever. Capturing the excitement, Boston.com has a wonderful collection of photos from various sources depicting many different preparations around China. We particularly like the fashion military parade pictures: those outfits are fabulous! But amidst all the hoopla, it's a difficult time to be in Beijing. more ›

In one of the more bizarre incidents to come out of Beijing lately, especially with security gearing up for the National Day celebrations, a man armed with a knife went on a stabbing spree in the major commercial center of Dashilan. He killed two people and injured about a dozen more before being captured by police on patrol. The 46-year-old from Jilin allegedly came out of nowhere. Police said they would strengthen security management in key areas to ensure the safety of local residents and tourists - but considering that safety measures already include items like "tell people not to leave their houses unless absolutely necessary," how much safer can you get without, we dunno, emptying the whole of Beijing? more ›

Most of the time when you read stories about the much reviled Chinese hacker it's in the context of some cyberattack perpetrated on some website that has stupidly dared to hurt the feelings of the Chinese people. But really, what are Chinese hackers doing most of the time: well, duh, same thing everybody else is: trying to make some moolah. more ›

The poor Shanghai nightlife institution has been hit by hackers! Specifically, Muslim Turkish hackers who would really love it if you stopped Israel from being involved in wars. What do the two have to do to with each other? Probably absolutely nothing (we've heard most hackers just troll the internet looking for unsecured sites), but wouldn't it be aMuseing if there was an actual connection there? more ›

More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here). more ›

Adam Minter has the answer: more ›

This time security guards were stabbed to death outside of Kashgar in Xinjiang. [Source] more ›

The latest from ESPN.com here and here. And the latest from Google News. more ›

Our favourite club The Shelter has been told to close its doors until September 6, apparently in a bid to improve security for the Olympics (660 miles away). more ›

Lately, the Olympics has started to remind us of the kind of conversation wherein someone is prepared to reveal a secret, but the key details are not forthcoming. Rather, the speaker dances around the facts, dropping a hint here and there at a carefully measured pace, meanwhile we sit silently, captivated and spellbound awaiting the payoff when the whole truth is finally revealed to us. So we will wait another 14 days for the start of Games of the XXIX Olympiad. more ›

In an article about official Olympic protest areas, the Wall Street Journal linked to some scanned pages from Olympic Security English, a training manual for Olympic police. We have reproduced those pages for your enjoyment. more ›

Important elements for any anti-terrorism drill — great staging, great scenery and a great location where lots of people can see you. Yesterday's "terrorist" act was effectively countered by the highly efficient security forces in under an hour. more ›

With the recent bus blasts in Kunming which claimed three lives and suspicious SMS messages to warn some residents from taking buses on the day of the explosion, the Shanghai government is taking no changes with the Olympic soccer matches being held in Shanghai Stadium. 1600 cameras will be installed into buses on 68 routes passing the stadium as well as an array of other fire extinguishing and safety devices. Click here for original Chinese article
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With the help of U.S. defense contractors, an estimated 2 million closed circuit tv-cameras or CCTVs for short (oh the irony) will be installed over the next three years in Shenzhen. The surveillance experiment is part of the heroically named Golden Shield Project (Patriot Act, anyone?) which also gave birth to another of our favorite censorship models the Great Firewall. more ›

This just in from a reader tip. Via the easternmiles.com newsletter: more ›

China has been pulling out all the stops to make next month's Olympics in Beijing – and several other cities – go according to script. Aside from the usual massive building projects associated with the Games, China has also seriously tightened its visa policy, saturated its citizenry with Olympic propaganda and denied foreign media direct access to most Chinese athletes. more ›

With less than six weeks before the Games, the Chinese visa situation Shanghaiist reported on earlier this month is not getting any better. Many foreign residents living here for years are now being forced to leave China, and some of them are reconsidering "how much of their operations they keep in China," Andrew Work, executive director of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, said. The Wall Street Journal follows a story similar to that of Canadian Daniel Yeung in the Globe and Mail. John T. McAlister, the American co-founder of a scientific-research company, leaves China today after making it his home for the past eight years. Through a series of complications, McAlister had been forced to live on a renewed F (temporary business) visa for the past six months. When it was time to switch to a Z visa, many of the registered companies he appealed to to sponsor him had trouble providing him with working papers. McAlister was told he was too old to qualify for proper work permits (he is 71), but wasn’t told what the official cutoff age was. "The problem about all of this is the suddenness and enforcement of rules that may have existed always but are hard to accommodate in a short period of time," McAllister told WSJ. more ›

Swimming just got a whole lot safer. State media reported on Friday that all Shanghai public swimming pools will now have "specially trained staff" smelling the shampoo and body wash of all swimmers before entry is allowed in an effort "guard against explosions or other "terrorist attacks". Recently "some 400 of the city's more than 450 pools had passed safety examinations", but what of the remaining 50 pools? Well they may be "oblivious of the new rule". Bomb sniffing dogs in the airport, security checks in the metro stations, people smelling your shampoo. We feel so much safer already. See the full Reuters story more ›

Share with us how you see Shanghai, or China! Post your photos on Flickr, tag them with "shanghaiist", and we'll select one favorite image per day. Or you can simply email your photos to photos at shanghaiist.com. more ›