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...
CATEGORY: China

Top blogger Han Han forced to shut down magazine
Party, a new edgy magazine with contributions from film directors, artists and novelists has been indefinitely shelved because no publisher was willing to run it, confirmed founder and chief editor Han Han on his blog. Han, best-selling novelist,...

China’s Ministry of Truth
The Ministry of Truth is an Orwellian notion. But in China directives dictating what newspapers can and cannot write about actually exist. China Digital Times (CDT), an excellent online publication co-ordinated by Xiao Qiang, director of the China...
How not to win friends on China’s internet
One of the main men behind China’s Great Firewall recently got a taste of his own medicine. Fang Binxing, credited with building a system which is used to block websites in China, shut down his microblog earlier this week after Chinese netizens,...
The curious case of Hada
His 15-year jail term for spying and separatist activities is finally over, but Chinese dissident Hada, (who is ethnically Mongolian) is missing, along with his wife and son. The 55-year-old writer was scheduled to be released last Friday, while...
China’s Pre-Nobel Preparations
With less than a day to go before the Nobel Committee awards Chinese imprisoned dissident (or convicted criminal if you are the Beijing government) Liu Xiaobo this year’s peace prize, China has been stumbling over itself to create diversions, block...
Dissident artist calls for openness over Shanghai fire victims
Outspoken dissident artist Ai Weiwei has launched an online campaign asking the Chinese government to publicly release the names of the victims of a fire that destroyed a Shanghai tower block on November 15. His Google Docs “Citizens...
Uncertainty surrounds release of jailed baby milk activist
On 24 November the South China Morning Post reported that the milk scandal activist, Zhao Lianhai, may be released just weeks after he began his two-and-a-half-year prison sentence. It appears a back-room deal has resulted in Zhao's application for...
China blogging conference cancelled
Organisers of an annual blogging conference, CNBloggercon, to be held last weekend in Shanghai were told to cancel the event because it was too “sensitive.” Convener and citizen journalist, Zhou Shuguang, told Agence France-Presse that the venue...
Chinese activist sentenced to year in labour camp for Twitter joke
Wangyi09’s twitter feed stops abruptly at 7:45AM on October 28. According to human rights groups, the Chinese rights activist, whose real name is Cheng Jianping, was detained later that day for a satirical tweet she had posted on October 17 which...