China’s phantom Jasmine pro-democracy protests have turned into a news story about news journalists. The heavy-handed treatment of foreign reporters --- detained in an underground bunker, shadowed, beaten, harassed and threatened --- has now become...
Censorship and its fear-fed sibling, self-censorship, frequently take on farcical qualities in China. One of the most eloquent speeches on this subject for a long time was given by a young Chinese writer, Murong Xuecun, last week. The 30-something...
An appeal to replicate Tunisia's "Jasmine Revolution" in 13 cities across China over the weekend has flopped spectacularly. There was little sign of any demonstration, just huge crowds of police, journalists and onlookers at the proposed sites in...
China’s Global Times Chinese edition is well known for being a nationalist paper owned by the Communist Party. The Chinese edition is often peppered with official jargon and an attitude to Western countries that can be summarized as a pugnacious...
Tibetan singer Tashi Dhondup, who was sentenced to 15 months hard labour in January 2010 for recording political songs, has been released a few months early, according to Radio Free Asia. RFA's source, who was not named but who is cited as a close...
Last month top columnist Chang Ping lost his job as senior researcher for the edgy Southern Daily Group. He says his dismissal was part of a crackdown on domestic media. Chang, 42, is well known for his outspokenness. In 2008, he wrote a famous...
In the Chinese Horoscope, 2011 is the year of the rabbit. In the lead up to New Year's Day on Thursday (3 February), a subversive "Happy Chinese New Year” video is making the rounds. Kuang Kuang is a cartoon character famous for blowing up houses....
Terms like Falun Gong, the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the names of high profile Chinese dissidents have long been censored in China, but now it’s the turn of country names. A search on Weibo --- a twitter-like service owned by Sina --- for the...
There has been a lot of bans in China recently, including what's alleged to be a list of banned SMS words. The register first circulated by Shanghaiist can be grouped into six major categories including: 1. National security and political terms,...
The sad death of jailed writer Zhang Jianhong went by with hardly a blip from the foreign media. Zhang, 52, died 31 December in hospital while on medical parole from a rare neurological disease. He leaves behind a wife and daughter. A few months...