Chinese news site dispense with user anonymity. Includes an updated list of sites China actively blocks, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International (?!? - both links work only outside of China). prev
posted by allkindsoftime on Sep 9, 2009 - 40 comments

Caijing (财经) is an independent, Beijing-based magazine devoted to reporting on business in China. The publication's title means "Finance and Economics." [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu on Jul 26, 2009 - 6 comments

With the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on Thursday, China's ever-vigilant censors have stepped up the reach of the "Great Firewall," blocking Western sites like Twitter, Flickr, and (just one day after its launch) Microsoft's Bing. via [more inside]
posted by infini on Jun 3, 2009 - 54 comments

Stories about caonima, grass-mud horses have become a popular meme with their own theme song [Flash] in China. If you don't speak Chinese it's surprisingly hard to find out why: the name sounds rude. Sometimes juvenile humor can be the best way to poke fun at the ever-present government censorship.
posted by Joe in Australia on Mar 12, 2009 - 27 comments

China Channel Firefox Add-on: Experience the censored Chinese internet at home! [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Oct 27, 2008 - 15 comments

The messy 3-way interaction between grassroots Chinese nationalism, foreign opposition, and the quiet hand of China's media censors continues.
posted by Tlogmer on May 6, 2008 - 21 comments

A Lone Tibetan Voice, Intent on Speaking Out. Woeser (previously mentioned here) is a Tibetan writer and poet living under house arrest in Beijing, from where she blogs about the recent unrest in Tibet (there are English translations of her posts at China Digital Times). Last year she was awarded the Norwegian Authors Union Freedom of Expression Prize, but she was not allowed to travel to Oslo to collect the prize.
posted by homunculus on May 6, 2008 - 15 comments

Björk, in Shanghai, on Tibet: Declare Independence! [YouTube] [more inside]
posted by finite on Mar 6, 2008 - 80 comments

Is Web2.0 a wash for free speech in China? "Lately I've given a few talks around town titled 'Will the Chinese Communist Party Survive the Internet?' My answer - for the short and medium term at least - is 'yes.'"
posted by Abiezer on Dec 1, 2007 - 13 comments

China’s veteran voices of reform by Li Datong (李大同). Li is the former editor of Freezing Point, an influential Chinese weekly supplement to the China Youth Daily. His frequent clashes with his superiors and bold publishing stance there led to his sacking and the temporary closure of the magazine, but he now has a regular column in English at openDemocracy. Here, Li looks at how Party elders are using the pages of the journal 炎黄春秋 (Yanhuang Chunqiu "Chinese Chronicles") to promote a reform agenda quite daring in the Chinese context, making reformists hopeful about the upcoming Seventeenth National Congress of the CCP.
posted by Abiezer on May 19, 2007 - 3 comments

Although I Am Dead (YouTube) (Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10) Compelling documentary by Hu Jie (胡杰) on the death during the Cultural Revolution of Bian Zhongyun (卞仲耘), recalled by her now octogenarian husband. He photographed her corpse after she was beaten to death by Red Guards, students at the middle school of which she was deputy principal. The film's inclusion in the documentary section of YunFest has apparently led to the authorities shutting down the event. (Via)
posted by Abiezer on Apr 5, 2007 - 19 comments

The Great Firewall of China connects to a server within China, and lets you know if your site is blocked or not, per the government's internet censorship.
posted by mathowie on Feb 28, 2007 - 66 comments

Google Images Censored in China A picture says 1000 words, and Google.cn is censoring them all. Check out the side-by-side screens of a search for "tiananmen+square" in Google.com and Google.cn images. Looks like a nice place, with little historical significance. You can try the search yourself. The text on the bottom left is the censorship disclaimer. Very different than our results. A far cry from Google's claim that they do not censor results. Nice to know that they stand up to the government here but not abroad.

A good spoof of the whole thing.
posted by FeldBum on Jan 30, 2006 - 57 comments

Don't be evil. Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China, adhering to the country's free-speech restrictions in return for better access in the Internet's fastest growing market. Google will roll out a new version of its search engine bearing China's Web suffix ".cn," on Wednesday.
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood on Jan 24, 2006 - 93 comments

Microsoft takes down chinese language blog critical of Beijing This was on the global (.com) site not a .cn site. Meaning this policy affects all Chinese speakers all over the world, including in the US. Interestingly, the pressure seems to have been commercial, as a commercial Chinese blogging company took Microsoft to task for allowing the commentary. Is globalization exporting censorship?
posted by delmoi on Jan 3, 2006 - 70 comments

Every weekly meeting causes me to feel ashamed. I listen to people lie. I listen to people lie shamelessly and authoritatively. And you cannot refute them. You cannot stand up and say, "You are lying. What are you lying?" Tolerating lies is regarded as wisdom. Those who are anxious to speak the truth are regarded as being victims of too much hormone. People make fun of themselves this way, and then wisely say: "Those naive actions will only bring even worse consequences. Be mature, be rational, be practical. Research more issues and talk less about theories."

This was written by an employee at The Beijing News after three of it's head editors were fired from their positions last week. The paper, one of the most progressive newspapers in China, was taken over by editors from The Guangming Daily, a paper directly controlled by "The Ministry of Publicity". Via Eastwestnorthsouth who translated the original blog post as well as this one written by another member of the staff at The Beijing News.
posted by afu on Jan 2, 2006 - 22 comments

"The explosion of suggestive images [in Chinese media and art] is partly a reflection of changes in Chinese society -- many sociologists say China is in the midst of a sweeping sexual revolution -- and partly due to market reforms...The government has not given the press free rein to publish material with sexual themes, but the way censorship is carried out means that some media outlets can get away with quite a lot. Rather than issue top-down decrees, Beijing's censors primarily react to existing material, so websites, whose content is easily removable, and publications far from Beijing, which are less likely to attract censors' attention, can take more chances. Still, articles on topics such as 'China's Janet Jackson,' a TV star who has twice revealed a breast in public, and the incidence of erectile dysfunction among China's urban men are now common in the national media."
posted by JPowers on Jul 30, 2005 - 14 comments

Micros[censored] Helps China [censored] Bl[censored]s. "This topic contains forbidden words. Please delete them."
posted by digaman on Jun 14, 2005 - 8 comments

People in China are searching for justice on sites like Sina.com, as in this recent case of a poor woman who was run over by a BMW. At the same time, the authorities continue to try to tighten their grip on the web and on dissidents. Meanwhile, the official People's Daily temporarily admitted on its website the "violent crackdown" on pro-democracy students in Tiananmen Square 15 years ago, but this appears to have been a case of careless internet plagiarism.
posted by homunculus on Jan 16, 2004 - 3 comments

China's crackdown on online dissent continues. It's been a year since the arrest of Chinese internet dissident Liu Di. Many of her supporters have signed petitions calling for her release, but last week one of their organizers, essayist Du Daobin, was himself arrested.
posted by homunculus on Nov 7, 2003 - 13 comments

In her autobiography, "Living History," Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton recounts how China's imprisonment of a prominent human rights activist, Harry Wu, caused a sensation in the United States and nearly derailed her plans to attend a United Nations women's conference held in Beijing in 1995. In the officially licensed Chinese edition of Mrs. Clinton's book, though, Mr. Wu makes just a cameo appearance. While named, he is otherwise identified only as a person who was "prosecuted for espionage and detained awaiting trial." But nearly everything Mrs. Clinton had to say about China, including descriptions of her own visits here, former President Bill Clinton's meetings with Chinese leaders and her criticisms of Communist Party social controls and human rights policies, has been shortened or selectively excerpted to remove commentary deemed offensive by Beijing. My question: is anybody other than Hillary really suprised by this?
posted by RevGreg on Sep 24, 2003 - 14 comments

Internet Filtering in China, a report from the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School. There's been "a documentable leap in filtering sophistication since September 2002".
posted by liam on Dec 4, 2002 - 1 comment

China Blocks Google » In the highest praise yet for Google, China (as in "great firewall of China") blocks Google. Dissident search engines. It must be the future.
posted by artlung on Sep 3, 2002 - 35 comments

Fire at Internet Cafe 'forces' Chinese government to close all 2400 Beijing cafes. This one has to rank up there with the line from the Good Old Days in which missing Soviet leaders were often described as 'having a cold.' I can't wait for the 2008 Happy Fun Olympics.
posted by mathis23 on Jun 17, 2002 - 7 comments

Corporate censorship in China (via slashdot). I guess censorship and collusion in the repression of people is okay if you're making profits for your shareholders. An eye-opening look into the way that corporations are helping to facilitate censorship on the Internet in China. AOL and Yahoo's attitudes to what I thought were universal human rights is nothing short of sickening.
posted by pixelgeek on Feb 18, 2002 - 8 comments

SinoFilter.com Can I resume drinking from the made in China Metafilter coffee mug yet?
posted by ParisParamus on Apr 12, 2001 - 1 comment