Who needs articles when pretty charts like this will do? A helpful infographic from G+ gives you the lowdown on the social media situation in China, and how it operates under the yoke of government control. more ›

The notice from the tax bureau has come out. Acting as the "actual controller" I'll explain a bit. 15 million. Heh. One year's profits at Chinese Rail. more ›

Tired of unsuspectingly walking out the door on those days where China's atmosphere makes Jupiter's gaseous cloud layer look like a biosphere in Costa Rica? Now with new real-time air quality tracking twitters, sites, and apps (all city-specific), you can monitor the skies without holding your licked finger to the wind, and know exactly which days it might be better to stay in instead of going on that 10 km bike ride. more ›

While we are not usually the types to let the cat out of the bag regarding which VPNs we use, which awesome sites remain unblocked, and other GFW related goodies (for the obvious reason that the more it's advertised the more quickly it'll get shut down), this cat has already been hauled out by another site and is screaming so loudly it'll probably get noticed anyway. Update: Short lived indeed! We are sorry to disappoint you latecomers, but it appears the site has already been harmonized. more ›

The new US ambassador to China Gary Locke made his first public appearance this weekend in Beijing, using the opportunity to assure China that its investment in the US dollar is safe. With headlines in Chinese state media like "Locke to rebuild US reputation" and "New US ambassador faces a tough job", the tone in Beijing seems at the very least welcoming, if not optimistic over the arrival of the former US Secretary of Commerce. After burning up the Chinese internets last weekend because he buys his own coffee and carries his own backpack, Locke was asked whether he plans to use social media to speak directly with Chinese citizens, and responded "We look forward to using all forms of communications, including blogging and the electronic media." In the mean time, you can follow him on Twitter at @AmbLocke. Surprisingly, we still can't find a verified account for him on Weibo! But you can follow the U.S. Embassy in Beijing here. more ›

Just a few days after Ai Weiwei returned to Twitter, he also gave his first post-release interview with the Global Times. Published in English only, Ai sounds rather uncharacteristically subdued. Read more on the intervew from Evan Osnos and the Peking Duck. As it was a state media interview, unsurprisingly they failed to address his experiences in detainment, but according to sources, he was subjected to "immense psychological pressure" and threatened with 10-year prison sentences. more ›

@aiww: If you don't speak for Wang Lihong, nor for Ran Yunfei, not only you're the sort that doesn't speak up for fairness and justice, you have no love for yourself. more ›

How appropriate that Ai Weiwei should choose to end his social media silence by joining the hottest new thing to be blocked on the Chinese internet: Google Plus. He posted his first message yesterday, saying "来了，问候" ("Greetings, I'm here") and has since been added/friended/fanned/whatever-ed by over 7000 people. more ›

This one's for all you tweetaholics out there. There's finally an app that helps you sync your Twitter and Sina Weibo accounts! The app's called Twitter2Weibo, and using it is real easy too. All you need to do is to log in with your Twitter account, and then your Weibo account, and you're good to go! Various options are available to customise your experience -- you can choose whether or not you want to sync retweets, mentions, geo locations and upload images. Try the app out here and don't forget to follow Shanghaiist on Sina Weibo.
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You have to be living under a particularly obscure rock if you've never heard of the mega giant Twitter rip-off that is “Sina Weibo.” Heck, even Radiohead and Tom Cruise know about it. more ›

The best swimmers in the world are in Shanghai for the FINA (Fédération International de Natation) championships. Some of them, like Michael Phelps, were in Beijing for the Olympics. Back then, Facebook and Twitter were allowed. more ›

Chinese-Australian blogger Yang Hengjun (杨恒均) has resurfaced after disappearing in mysterious circumstances for over two days in Guangzhou. In a brief interview with the AP, Yang said he was "recovering" from his "illness“ (likely a euphemism for detention) and said cryptically, "I'm OK right now. Everything is OK. I'm just recovering... This trouble is caused by me." Yang is understood to be leaving for Hong Kong tomorrow and then returning to Australia from there. more ›

@ReutersFlash: "China urges Japan to quickly and accurately report on crisis developments" more ›

Next Media Animation covers Sunday's Jasmine non-Revolution and their take on China's perfect recipe for successful authoritarian dictatorship (2 parts information control, 1 part intimidation and a dash of economic growth!) Hu's belligerent panda body guards are in attendance, attempting to shoot down a very dove-esque Twitter bird carrying a very olive-branch-esque jasmine flower. The chains wrapped around Chinese shoppers' legs were a bit less subtle. more ›

According to Ai Weiwei's Twitter feed, Sina's Art and Finance section recently put up a vote for Most Powerful Contemporary Artists of the Year. By far the most high-profile artist in the country, Ai Weiwei unsurprisingly sprung to the top of the list (as seen above, where Ai Weiwei is second from the left on the bottom row.) The voting option was quickly taken down by Sina and Ai Weiwei removed from the list, seen in its present form here. Voting was then allowed on a selection of art studios instead. Ai Weiwei's Three Shadows gallery, despite being listed almost last, again quickly rose to the top. Observers then watched as another studio suspiciously jumped a thousand votes up while Three Shadows dropped a few hundred right before voting ended (compare screen grabs here and here.) Scandalous, to say the least. Here's a summary from his English Twitter feed: more ›

Unsurprisingly, the Chinese government has censored much of the material available online about the uprising. more ›

Today, actress Yao Chen (who has 4,936,495 followers on her Weibo right now) has overtaken the number of subscribers Oprah has on Twitter, making her the tenth most followed microblogger in the world. The other top 9 microbloggers are still all North American celebrities but it's the first time that the ten most followed microbloggers are not also the ten most followed twitterers. As Asia Digital Map put it, it's "a cool demonstration of both the size of China’s online population and the impressive growth of the Chinese platform." Weibo has approximately 50 million users while Twitter is estimated at over 200 million users. Oprah didn't put up much of a fight to her top ten ranking: she posts only a few times a month while Yao Chen posts several times a day, frequently with photos too. more ›

The state dinner held in honor of Hu Jintao has just wrapped up in Washington and loyal Twitterers the world over didn't disappoint. #FakeXinhuaReporter made an appearance, as did Barbra Streisand (see a full guest list here). Here's a few of our favorite tweets from the last few hours: more ›

Are you sick and tired of having to log on to a VPN to get on Twitter? Didn't you wish there was a local alternative to keep in touch with your friends here? Introducing Sina Weibo, the biggest thing to hit the Chinese interwebs in the year 2010. Quite a number of China-based expatriates have already signed up, and we want you to join us there too. Sign up for an account and follow us at http://t.sina.com.cn/shanghaiist now! more ›

It has not been looking up these past few days for bloggers or twitterers. First there was the bad news on Cheng Jianping being sentenced to a labor camp earlier and then a blogger conference due to convene in Shanghai over the weekend has been forced to cancel. more ›

A 46-year old woman named Cheng Jianping has just been sentenced to a year of reeducation at a labor camp for retweeting a satirical message mocking anti-Japanese protesters who've been causing a ruckus over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands. more ›

Twitter may be blocked in China, but it's not like that ever stopped anyone who was genuinely determined to jump over the great firewall. Many of you follow us on our Twitter and while we always knew the Twitter community here is active and growing, we recently stumbled onto a website that gave us some hard proof of it. more ›

@AlexSTaggart "Cameron's sidestep of LXB in China shall forever be known as 'the Beijing duck'." more ›

Some were skeptical when they started calling it "Asia's Major" back in 2005, but scan the list of entries for this week's WGC-HSBC Champions tournament in Shanghai and it's increasingly difficult to argue the validity of that claim. PGATour.com columnist Rob Bolton points out that eight of the top 10 golfers in the world, and 33 of the top 50, will tee it up at Sheshan International Golf Club from Thursday to Sunday, fighting for the winner's share of the US$7 million in prize money. more ›

We all saw this one coming: an open letter written by CCP elders calling for more freedom of speech in China is being rapidly censored from the Chinese internet. Chinese Twitter users report that copies of the letter have been removed in the past 24 hours at a frightening pace. more ›

"Controlling content in Sina microblogs is a problem which is a very big headache... 内容监控是微博非常头疼的问题." more ›

@wxshenjun tweets: "The panda asked me why I am off to see Feng Zhenghu (@fzhenghu). I said, the person I'd like to see most is Hu Jintao but I can't find his contact details anywhere online. // I told the panda, if public officials all published their addresses and contact details online, those child knifing incidents wouldn't have happened." more ›

Leading Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is being profiled on The New Yorker's Evan Osnos' blog this week. more ›

CNN correspondent John Vause (@vausecnn) tweets: "Been followed by police all day, now being kicked out of our hotel, local officials making it tough to report this school attack story." more ›

@sinosplice tweets: "My ayi is telling me she hears that all the Expo pavilions suck except for China's. Hehe"
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