MetaFilter posts tagged with censorship and China

One giant leap for Chinese Internet Censorship

allkindsoftime — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:18:05 -0800

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

Caijing (财经)

KokuRyu — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:39:38 -0800

Caijing (财经) is an independent, Beijing-based magazine devoted to reporting on business in China. The publication's title means "Finance and Economics." Periodical China has suggested 3 key factors that have made Caijing successful. The first is investigative reports, the second is the unique perspective of commentaries, the third is Caijing's three guiding principles-independence, uniqueness and exclusiveness... (However) how much freedom exists in the current Chinese press market for a magazine with such liberal reporting remains questionable. Hu Shuli, the founding editor of the biweekly magazine, was once suspended from a reporting job in 1989 because of her sympathy for the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, yet she has cultivated first-name familiarity with some of China’s most powerful Party leaders. Since 1998, when she established Caijing, she has guided the magazine with near-perfect pitch for how much candor and provocation the regime will tolerate. From a recent article in Caijing about increasing social unrest in China: Mass incidents are breaking out all over China, but the causes are specific, the threat to government is limited and the solutions are within reach

Whack-a-mole

infini — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:03:27 -0800

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 The blocked sites include Twitter, Flickr and Microsoft’s Hotmail, according to the Telegraph. FoxNews added The Huffington Post, Life Journal and the MSN Spaces blogging tool to the list. BBC viewers in China also saw their screens black out when the news service broadcast stories about the anniversary, and foreign news crews have been barred from filming in the square. Readers of the Financial Times and Economist magazine found stories about Tiananmen ripped from their pages. Authorities also plan to begin cracking down on unapproved internet cafes, according to reports from state media. via

Inscrutable, these grass-mud horses, what?

Joe in Australia — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:07:36 -0800

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.

Experience the censored Chinese internet at home!

chunking express — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 08:48:18 -0800

China Channel Firefox Add-on: Experience the censored Chinese internet at home! The Firefox add-on China Channel offers internet users outside of China the ability to surf the web as if they were inside mainland China. Take an unforgetable virtual trip to China and experience the technical expertise of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (supported by western companies). It's open source, free and easy.

Will China find its voice?

Tlogmer — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:31:07 -0800

The messy 3-way interaction between grassroots Chinese nationalism, foreign opposition, and the quiet hand of China's media censors continues.

Woeser

homunculus — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:05:29 -0800

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.

Raise your flag!

finite — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:16:26 -0800

Björk, in Shanghai, on Tibet: Declare Independence! [YouTube] Bjork's Shanghai surprise: a cry of 'Tibet!' - Bjork's protest a sign of things to come for China - Björk Exposes China's Greatest Weakness - Bjork Shouts Out To Tibet During Shanghai Show - Chinese furious at 'Tibet-independence' Bjork Shanghai Daily says "Let's hope that Bjork's controversial parting comments do not lessen the likelihood of local music fans enjoying more of these acts in the future" without offering readers any hint as to what the comments were about. Declare Independence on mefi previously: 1, 2

Stuck in a child’s playground

Abiezer — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 23:12:00 -0800

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.'"

Past freezing point, a thaw?

Abiezer — Sat, 19 May 2007 12:22:06 -0800

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.

To remember history

Abiezer — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 04:26:05 -0800

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)

We should dig up Nixon and send him over again to fix this

mathowie — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 12:00:41 -0800

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.

Google Images Censored in China

FeldBum — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 17:11:06 -0800

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.

Don't be evil?

Steve_at_Linnwood — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 19:19:46 -0800

~~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.

bow down to your global censorship overlords.

delmoi — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 10:59:08 -0800

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?

Inside a media crackdown in China

afu — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 22:31:59 -0800

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.

China Gets Sexy

JPowers — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 22:09:52 -0800

"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."

Coming soon to a country near you

digaman — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 19:17:07 -0800

Micros[censored] Helps China [censored] Bl[censored]s. "This topic contains forbidden words. Please delete them."

Online justice in China

homunculus — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 00:04:55 -0800

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.

Online dissent in China

homunculus — Fri, 07 Nov 2003 00:58:22 -0800

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.

Clinton 'History' Doesn't Repeat Itself in China

RevGreg — Wed, 24 Sep 2003 00:57:19 -0800

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?

Internet Filtering in China

liam — Wed, 04 Dec 2002 10:40:42 -0800

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".

artlung — Tue, 03 Sep 2002 11:09:35 -0800

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.

mathis23 — Mon, 17 Jun 2002 12:36:37 -0800

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.

pixelgeek — Mon, 18 Feb 2002 21:07:25 -0800

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.