Liu Shaokun, a school employee, has been sentenced to a year of ‘re-education under labour’ after posting pictures of schools that collapsed in May’s Sichuan earthquake on the web. Chinese people were forbidden from taking pictures of the devastation, as they raised questions about planning and building.
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Continuing our series of articles from Index on Censorship‘s ‘Made In China’ issue, Rebecca MacKinnon discusses how online pioneers are changing Chinese culture
Read article here (pdf)
In the lead up to the Olympic Games in China, Indexoncensorship.org will be publishing articles from our journal. This week, an interview with Ai Weiwei, the artistic genius behind Beijing’s ‘bird’s nest’ stadium.
Read Ai Weiwei interview here (pdf)
London Metropolitan University has expressed ‘regret’ at offence caused to China by its recent award of an honorary doctorate to Tibetan religious leader the Dalai Lama in May.
A report on state-run China Daily said that the university’s vice-chancellor, Brian Roper, had sent a letter to China’s embassy in London on 16 June to apologise for any upset felt by the Chinese people over the award.
A spokeswoman for London Metropolitan said the move came after the university’s media monitoring service had noticed negative comment about the decision on Chinese websites.
However, a representative of the Chinese embassy in London confirmed to Index on Censorship that the letter of apology had come after the embassy had demanded it from the university.
Britain’s universities now hosts over 49,000 Chinese students.