Of all the contentious cultural material China's censors could crack down on, an inoffensive 1990s boy band ballad seems like an odd option. China's Ministry of Culture this week issued a new blacklist of 100 songs including the innocuous I Want it...
A week ago China’s middle class flexed their civic action muscles by taking to the streets in their thousands (reports say up to 12,000) in the northeastern port city of Dalian to demand the relocation of a chemical plant that was in danger of...
Ai: A bird needs to flutter its wings to see if it can fly After nearly two months of silence, artist Ai Weiwei, one of China’s most prominent human rights activists, is back in the spotlight. Over the past few days he’s been tweeting, and today...
State media in China and Iran have both offered their two cents in response to the riots that have swept the UK over the past three days. A commentator at Communist Party mouthpiece, People's Daily, opined that this sort of chaos is precisely the...
Beijing district police last month enforced regulations requiring café owners and other businesses to install web monitoring software. The software costs businesses around 20,000RMB (2,000 GBP), and provides public security officials the identities...
The aftermath of the collision of two high-speed trains near the Chinese city of Wenzhou on 23 July has demonstrated that the limits of free expression in China are being tested more than ever before. Government officials keen to stifle public...
In recent weeks there’s been a big buzz about a new anti-web censorship system called Telex developed mainly by a team of scientists from the University of Michigan. Unlike proxies and VPNs which are easily blocked by censors, Telex buries the...
Two bullet trains collided on 23 July in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, killing at least 38 people and injuring 192. In a country where people don't trust the official news media --- favouring internet posts and microblog reports instead ---...
A few days ago the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) reported that China had sentenced Tibetan writer Tashi Rabten to four years in prison for separatist activities. He had been one of several writers who penned pieces on the 2008 Tibetan...
Today, 1 July, is the Communist Party's 90th birthday. In celebration, Chinese web censors have been working feverishly to tighten their control of the internet. Those of us who try to sidestep the Great Firewall with a VPN, a service that allows...