The brother of Chinese dissident human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng has told two news agencies that his brother is now in a Xinjiang prison, being the first confirmation of his whereabouts in 20 months. Gao Zhiyi added that he received a notice last...
Is China’s foreign policy shaped by national public opinion or is the government shaping public opinion to justify its foreign policy? An interesting new analysis by the Brookings Institute has it that the government is manipulating nationalist...
An urgent appeal from Chinese writer Yan Lianke to the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Prime Minister Esteemed General Secretary and Prime Minister: I am a writer and a university professor. Before deciding to write...
The new boss of CCTV, China’s state TV network, Hu Zhanfan, says it like it is. He believes Chinese journalists should first and foremost be the Chinese government’s mouthpiece and those that don’t play ball won’t go far. “The first social...
China has blocked the website of an iPad magazine called Sun Affairs edited by media rebels Chang Ping and Wen Yunchao. The site has lost its mainland audience. To the government, Chang has form. Earlier this year his controversial commentary got...
Outspoken Chinese writer, Murong Xuecun delivered an astonishing speech in Oslo this week. Delivered during Chinese literature week, an extract of the translated speech by Jane Weizhen Pan and Martin Merz is posted below. Xuecun begins: I am a...
The long arm of Chinese soft power has reached Bollywood. Indian censors have ordered the makers of Rockstar to cut or blur scenes showing images of the Tibetan national flag, which features in one of the film’s song and dance numbers. The movie...
This has been cross-posted from the New York Times with permission. Word Crimes from Jonah Kessel on Vimeo. “The worst effect of the censorship is the psychological impact on writers,” Murong said. “When I was working on my first book, I didn’t...
One of the most curious newspapers to come out of China in recent years is the English-language edition of the Global Times. Owned by the People’s Daily group, it is one of only two national papers published in English in mainland China, alongside...
O-pen Magazine was set up in March 2011 by Annie Baby, a popular novelist who got her start on the internet. On 1 November she announced on her Sina microblog that O-pen had been forced to stop publishing. In China, magazines need a national...