Stories about China from August, 2007
Morocco: Cheap Chinese Plastic
Everything Morocco questions why there's so many cheap plastic products “made in China” being sold in the traditional artisan souks of Fez.
China: A social Reporter's Internal Notes
ESWN translated a BBS post on a Southern Metropolis Daily reporter's experience in dealing with the police, migrant workers, security guards and village officials in Shenzhen.
Singapore: Unlikely Allies
Little Bridge finds African students taking the side of Chinese students in a campus fight with Mongolian students.
China: Feedburner Blocked Again
William Long reported: Feedburner, the most popular and powerful worldwide RSS service provider, is blocked by Chinese authorities. Last year, Feedburner had also been blocked temporarily.
China: Exploitation in Summer Holiday
Tan Weishan reported the exploitation of student workers by a shoe factory in Dongguan. More than a hundred secondary school kids spent their summer holiday working 12 hours a day with RMB$3 (US$0.4) per hour (zh).
China: Actor Not Martyr
Ge da-xia from Yaoblog commented on Zoula's citizen reporting practice and argued that citizen reporter should be social actor, not martyr; and that report should be about the incident to a tool for defending citizen interest (zh).
China: Websites Forced To Close By Police
Vapano from a data company D2EX reported that many Internet Data Centers have received notices from Gong-an (Police department) which forced them to close down thousands of websites. To prevent other clients service being affected, his company has to close down all BBS data storage (zh). The police's policy is...
Chinese cartoon cops patrolling websites
From September, 1st, Beijing’s new virtual cops will be active on 13 of China’s portals, including China’s biggest blog-hosting services, Sohu.com and Sina.com. By the end of the year, the virtual police’s patrols are expected to cover all websites registered with Beijing servers.
China: The anxiety of China's Bureau of Broadcasting and Film
Chong from interlocals translated an article from 1510.com about the recent move of the Broadcasting and Film Bureau in banning the Phoenix TV (one of the cable TV services).
China: Barcamp 2007
Riku from China blogger network reminded the readers that Barcamp 2007 (zh) will be taking place in Shanghai (Sept 8) and Beijing soon (Sept 2). It is an opportunities for Internet users and developers to brainstorm the potential of Internet space.
China: Who To Blame For Dangerous Toys?
Angry Chinese Blogger summed up the debate about the recall of dangerous toys, whether we are to blame the Chinese manufacturers, multinational toy companies, or consumers?
China: Temporary Reporter System
Because of the Fake Baozhi news, many mainstream media in China have fired temporary staffs. CCTV has fired up to 1,800 temporary workers, many are reporters. Zhao shilong has once been a temporary reporter in Southern Weekly magazine, even though he has finally got an office reporter status (with a...
China: Citizen Not People
Lao Tuzaizi said he is a “citizen” not “people” because the meaning of “people” is very confusing in China. All government bodies claim to be People's institutes, however, no individual can represent “people”, in the end the definition of “people” is up to the authority (zh), while the concept of...
China: Interest Rate and Pork Price
Recently, the interest rate and pork price in China has been rising rapidly, the former is to cool down the stock investment. It is rather obviously the tactic of increase in interest rate is not working, as Youguc notices that people are more concerned with the increase of pork price...
China: Beijing Traffic Controls
Joel from DANWEI translated a few blog posts which analyzed the effectiveness of Beijing's traffic controls to improve the city's environment.
China: Myth Disintegrated
Hu ge used to believe that People's Liberation Army had destroyed 12,000 planes from the enemy during the Korea War. However, a recent CCTV programme disclosed that the PLA had shot down 330 enemy planes. The historical myth is then disintegrated (zh).
China: Self-disciplined bloggers
Keso commented on the recently passed “code of self-regulation of blog service”. More than a dozen of local blog service providers have signed the code which would demand real name registration of bloggers. The blogger doubted whether such “self-regulation” would really work… (zh)
China: Missing History
Mary Ann O'donnell wrote some reflections on the missing of master narratives, such as history, tradition in Shenzhen (also in China): without history. shenzhen is the perfect example of new china because it doesn't have any culture or history. but it's not even the best copy of the west.
China: Bringing blogging to the countryside
Three years ago this man shot to fame when he blogged a bloody murder that took place in broad daylight downtown Beijing and the botched police handling of the case. Now a veteran of the citizen reporter game, he's taking his blog on the road, to rural northern China.
China: Porn crackdown targets online fiction
Maya from DANWEI writes about the recent Internet crack down of erotic online fiction in China: this crackdown is part of China's general push to “clean up” before the Olympics.
China: Guidebook On Being A Mistress
Wang Xiaofeng is reading a book about “second wife” or mistress (zh). It discusses about the phenomena of “second wife” in China from an economic view point. The writer was once a Taiwanese reporter who collected stories from Taiwan business circle.
About our China coverage
Oi wan Lam is the North East Asia editor. Email her story ideas or volunteer to write.
