· August, 2005

Stories about China from August, 2005

China: Homeland Security officer trial

28 August 2005

The ongoing trial of a U.S. Homeland Security officer charged with the beating of a Chinese tourist at Niagra Falls last year is not well-known to Americans, but it definitely is to people in China. ESWN is following developments on this page. Zhao Yan, the Chinese tourist, will testify tomorrow...

China: Furong Jiejie's false claim of Censorship?

28 August 2005

At my personal blog RConversation.com, I link to a Red Herring article in which journalist Kaiser Kuo concludes that claims of censorship by Chinese blogger “Sister Hibiscus” are actually false. I would love to know what Chinese bloggers think about this whole issue, and whether anybody has any concrete evidence...

China: “Super Girls” and SMS democracy

28 August 2005

ESWN has a long, reflective post about Hunan TV's “Super Girls” show, in which viewers voted via SMS for their favorite girl singers. He translates the Chinese-language posts by some bloggers who believe the “Super Girls” phenom could mark the beginning of a more democratic culture in China. But ESWN...

China: BloggerCon

26 August 2005

Organisers of the Chinese Blogger Conference scheduled for November are looking for voluntary English-Chinese interpreters, and those based in Shanghai are preferred. The beta version of bloggercon schdule and preliminary list of speakers has been announced. Topics lined up include podcasting, tags/folksonomy, and blogs and education.

China: Bokee.com

26 August 2005

Kevin Wen points to a Reuters story that reports on Bokee.com, which claims the biggest share of China’s blogging market with about 2 million registered users. The company set up in 2002, which provides free blogging services, says it is adding 6,000-10,000 daily. Main revenue: Advertising.

Freedom of Speech News

  26 August 2005

According to Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), and Human Rights Watch, here are the latest developments on threats to Freedom of Speech over the past week: Tunisia: Government bans new journalists’ union from holding founding congress. RSF reports that the Tunisian government has decided to ban the Union of Tunisian Journalists...

China: Newspaper circulation

  26 August 2005

While Malaysian newspapers conventionally base their advertising rates cards on readership figures, China's base it on both circulation and readership. As such, disputes often erupt with one newspaper publishes a set of quarterly figures and rival newspaper disputes them, like what happened in Malaysia. In China, the lack of reliable...

News from Chinese Blogosphere(Aug 21th-27th)

26 August 2005

1 Firewall Update: From Aug 20th, internet users in mainland China generally began to experience access failures when they tried to browse websites outside China. Even the searching engine Google and its mail service Gmail are both inaccessible while all the websites based in China are normal. Keso pointed out...

China: Real names required

25 August 2005

While Shenzhen-based chat service QQ has been ordered to register the real names of all its customers, it's business as usual for Blogcn, one of China's largest weblog hosting companies, said founder and chairman Hu Zhiguang in BusinessWeek.

Indonesia: Flash memory

  24 August 2005

“Don't ever trust things you buy IN China…” that seems ot be the conclusion of three Indonesian bloggers (Waryaman Wardana blogs in both English and Indonesian) and two online resource sites. They each paid 100 yuan, excluding taxes, for a 4GB SONY flash memory card which turned out to be...

China: Great Firewall strengthens

23 August 2005

The time for “using real names on the Internet” is about to come in China, blogs EastSouthWestNorth with a full translation of a Nanfang Weekend article that carries a severe warning: The Great Firewall is gathering force and fourteen government departments are teaming up to ‘purify’ the Internet.

China: War Game

23 August 2005

Is mainland China having so much money now that it could pay for the Sino-Russian war game? Bingfeng Teahouse says the People Liberation Army (PLA) should consider hiring Americans from the Seals to help reunify with Taiwan. Meanwhile, Beijing Youth Daily features a frontpage story of the Sino-Russian combat maneuver...

China: “Purifying” the Chinese Internet

22 August 2005

The Chinese newspaper Southern Weekend has a detailed article explaining how the Chinese government goes about censoring and controlling internet speech. EastSouthWestNorth has a full translation. (More background at Chinadigitaltimes.)

China: Wife-swapping

22 August 2005

China is changing. The increasingly popular phenomenon happening in Guangdong is wife-swapping among white collars made up of lawyers, businessmen and administrators, who are generally highly educated. The mantra: “Neo-polygamy” in order to “fill a void”.

News from Chinese Blogosphere(Aug 14th-20th)

19 August 2005

1. 60 Anniversary Sino-Japanese War: August 20 was the 60 anniversary marking the end of Sino-Japanese War in World War Ⅱ, lasting from 1937 to 1945. Postshow, the “Boing Boing in China”, summed up the special reports on Chinese internet. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologized for the misdeed done...

China: Mine Flood Coverup

19 August 2005

EastSouthWestNorth preserves a surprisingly frank account by a Chinese paper about how mine owners in Ruzhou smothered news about a mine disaster — by paying off both real and pretend reporters.

China: Anti-blog blocked

18 August 2005

Anti-blog and all blogs on blog-city.com has been blocked by the Great Firewall. Readers from China may access it via mirror site available at MSN: http://spaces.msn.com/members/mranti/. Meanwhile, anti2 is coming soon.

China: Wangjianshou among Feedster Top 500

18 August 2005

There was a scare that Wang Jianshuo's blog was blocked by the Great Firewall yesterday, but it reappears intact today. Kenlee reports that Wangjianshuo's blog is the only blog from China that is ranked on Feedster's TOP 500 Blogs, at the 356th placing this month. But Wang Jianshou couldn't see...

Blog-city Blocked in China?

  17 August 2005

From yesterday afternoon, blog-city, a famous BSP is beginning to be blocked in China. Now it was still under filter by GFW, the project to detect key words and block websites . By using proxy blog-city is still accessible in mainland China. Anti, a prominent blogger who was also a...

China: 21mm

17 August 2005

A picture speaks a thousand words. That's post-Mao China in 21mm.

About our China coverage

Oiwan Lam
Oi wan Lam is the North East Asia editor. Email her story ideas or volunteer to write.