This Thursday Hong Kong will host the world premiere of Dr. Sun Yat-sen after China abruptly cancelled the opera’s original world premiere at Beijing’s National Center for the Performing Arts. The opera, commissioned by Opera Hong Kong and the Hong...
CATEGORY: China
“Detained” reporter refutes New York Times article
We've been alerted to a debate that has arisen regarding our post on Monday 26 September, in which we noted that the New York Times had reported that a journalist investigating a sex slavery scandal in China's Henan province had been "detained" and...
Reporter detained for article on sex slavery
It was revealed last week that a Chinese man who imprisoned six women as sex slaves in a self-dug cellar was arrested in Luoyang city, Henan province. 34-year-old Li Hao, a civil servant who has since been sacked and stripped of his party...
Twitter clamps down on “rumours”
It’s been in the pipeline for weeks. Ever since China’s version of Twitter, Weibo, was used by account holders to pressure a polluting factory to close down in Dalian and to expose dodgy goings on after a fatal train crash this summer in Wenzhou,...

Window on the South: Suspended magazine editor talks to Index
The suspension of one of China’s top editors, Zhao Lingmin, who edited the high-profile magazine, Window on the South, has gripped the Chinese press. Locals are concerned that case indicates media freedoms will be further curbed. Zhao spoke...
Chinese censors cut Super Girl
China's version of Pop Idol, Super Girl, was on Friday suspended for one year by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT). Li Hao, deputy editor and spokesman of the show's broadcaster, Hunan Satellite TV, was quoted as saying...

Google’s ICP licence renewed in China
Last week, a Google spokesperson announced that Google.cn’s Chinese Internet Content Provider (ICP) licence had been renewed to 2012. When Google stopped censoring search result in 2010 and left mainland China to set up in Hong Kong, Google’s ICP...
Propaganda bureau takes over two Beijing papers
The news earlier this week that two popular Beijing newspapers will now come under the capital’s propaganda department has raised concerns that the two hard-hitting dailies will face tighter control. The Beijing News and Beijing Times were...
China calls for crackdown on Internet rumours
After two recent incidents where a fury of online public criticism has shown the robust power of microblogging in spreading information, the Chinese government has begun laying the groundwork for tightening control of the internet. This week,...
Ai Weiwei calls Beijing “a city of violence”
Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has attacked injustices in China in a candid and scathing article posted on Newsweek magazine's website. He writes of Beijing, Beijing is two cities. One is of power and of money. People don’t care who their...