Most people know little about me other than the fact that I’m Hu Jia’s wife. This is how it is in China: a place where a totalitarian hierarchical system and a culture of gender inequality prevail. Even though the social status of women has greatly improved, men still dominate. People with a public profile are greatly valued. Those who do domestic work are considered too ordinary to warrant attention. My story is similar to the stories of many daughters, wives and mothers, especially those of wives and mothers.

[…] I must say that in China’s human rights movement, there is definitely a huge gender imbalance. We urgently need to strengthen gender awareness in the community of lawyers and legal workers. To be gender aware requires far more than just publicising a woman’s plight. First, in terms of social relations, you have to ask yourself, how do you deal with domination and encourage partnership in work and everyday life? We are in a hierarchical political system where the presumed superiority of men has deep roots. The female suicide rate is twenty-five percent higher than that of men. Violence against women and children is considered normal: many people do not consider slapping a woman or child to be a violent act. Over decades, the effects of prenatal sex selection and female infanticide have produced a gender imbalance in China that is higher than the world’s average. [Source]

At Global Times, alluding to cases like that of Chongqing official Lei Zhengfu, James Palmer describes how unequal treatment of women extends online into arenas such as anti-corruption crusades:

Women’s role in the dynamics of Chinese corruption tends to be as accomplices, not perpetrators. While there have been scandals involving powerful middle-aged women and handsome gigolos, they are vanishingly rare compared to the number of pudgy officials caught with 19-year-old mistresses.

Yet the bulk of online anger in such cases often seems to be devoted toward the women, not the men. “All these xiaosan (mistresses) should die!” and “She should be beaten until she has no face left!” are typical comments.

[… T]he vitriol poured on women may also have something to do with modern Chinese frustrations. With a growing gender imbalance, there are an increasing number of young men unable to find girlfriends their own age. Instead of blaming the patriarchal values that created the imbalance to begin with, they target the women instead. [Source]

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Post tags: activists, blogging, corruption, documentaries, gender equality, gender imbalance, Hu Jia, lei zhengfu, women, Zeng Jinyan
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While Tibetan’s survival seems relatively likely, a report at ChinaNews.com [zh] shows that other minority languages in China are in critical danger. From Bruce Humes’ translated highlights at Ethnic ChinaLit:

• Non-han languages: 55 officially designated “peoples” (民族) speak an estimated 130 languages

• Populations: one-half of non-Han languages are spoken by groups that number under 10,000 members, of which 20+ have 1,000 speakers or less

• Endangered languages: Manchu, Tatar, She, Hezhen can no longer be used for conversation; another 20 percent, such as Nu, Yilao, Pumi and Jinuo are approaching that state; and a total of 40 percent are in danger of extinction in the mid-term.

• Manchu: 11 million ethnic Manchus, but only 100 or so can speak fluently and less than a dozen read and write well.

Language decline and extinction is by no means limited to China: up to half of the 7,000 languages currently spoken may disappear by the end of the 21st Century, equivalent on average to three dying out each month. Technology has helped reverse the decline of some North American aboriginal languages, however, and Tibetan has also been bolstered by blogging and online organisation and resources. Monk, font designer and software developer Lobsang Monlam discussed these developments in an interview at Trace Foundation:

Compared with developed countries, the impact of digital technology on Tibetans is relatively small and not extensive. However, in comparison to smaller communities, the impact in only a few years has been great and the progress is remarkable. To preserve the Tibetan language, there must be an appropriate forum for its use, and we must use it accordingly. There also must be proper conditions for its use. I see this as particularly important inside Tibet.

[…] From a dharma practitioner’s point of view, I serve the Tibetan people by preserving the Tibetan language. Our cultural heritage is dependent on this language. As I work hard on these projects, my motivation is pure, which is very important here.

[…] The Tibetan language still lags behind in the digital technology sphere. We are still only utilizing 5% of Tibetan’s capacity with regards to digital technologies. The language can still only be used for word processing, on the Internet and a few other applications. We have need a comprehensive character, grammar and spell check software. We also need to develop software that reads Tibetan words properly; a computer operating system that can be used in Tibetan, and software to convert old Tibetan fonts to the Unicode system. I feel these projects are very important for the digitization of the Tibetan language. We also need Optical Character Recognition software for Tibetan, various databases in the Tibetan language, speech-to-text software for Tibetan, translation software between Tibetan and other languages, and translations of important websites to Tibetan; all this is also very vital for Tibetan language.

Tibetan Dechen Pemba of High Peaks Pure Earth contributed to this post.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, cultural preservation, education, languages, Manchu, online organizing, Tibetan language
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Today is the eighteenth time I have accompanied my girlfriend to go shopping. Whenever my girlfriend goes shopping, she tends to get overly serious and way more than just fidgety about the whole thing. It always interferes with my usual pace of life. Anyway, she calls the shots at home, so can’t complain. As my girlfriend stipulates, when it approaches her shopping date, I can only make working plans for up to three days, and if I go on a business trip, I need to get her approval first. These past few days I’ve been sitting on pins and needles, praying to God that I don’t do anything wrong to ruin her good shopping mood.

The main focus of her shopping is cosmetics. She usually purchases seven or nine varieties. This time, she crossed the name of a very famous brand off her shopping list, because there have been some problems with this brand, which causes it to have lost its original reputation [referring to “Mao Zedong thought,” not mentioned in official 18th Congress propaganda]. But she’s not willing to admit [those problems] and grins at me: “Am I not getting more and more thrifty?” Fine. Whatever her reason.

Sometimes she also buys me things, though I have no say in what she buys me. She often says to me, “You see, officials always wear this brand, company bosses, too. Singers and sport stars love this brand. I even consulted the views of a few workers! All these different opinions are sufficient to represent you, aren’t’ they? I always solicit opinions in a advanced and reasonable manner.” Why can officials, bosses, singers, sport stars, and workers represent me? I don’t understand. But I guess as long as she buys things for me, I shouldn’t complain too much.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, blogging, netizens, online public opinion, renren, satire
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Han Han’s early replies were entertaining in their earnestness and snarky vulgarity. He provided a straightforward account of his blog-writing habits to explain how he could post in between race events, and then flipped Mai Tian’s reasoning around to cast aspersions on his sexual prowess. He offered a 20 million yuan purse and the copyrights to his entire oeuvre as a reward anyone giving conclusive proof of having ghostwritten for him. And, perhaps unwisely, he took a few potshots at Fang Zhouzi (方舟子), who up until that point had needled Han Han for a few minor writing mistakes but had otherwise shown no great interest in the argument.

Going up against Fang Zhouzi is a risky thing. A science writer better known for his work exposing academic fraud and intellectual dishonesty, Fang Zhouzi is a tenacious opponent who has an arsenal of online debating tactics at his fingertips. He brings up questions one by one, beginning with minor points that might seem trivial to explain or brush aside, and then when his target takes the bait, he charges in with more evidence showing a pattern of deceit. This technique, which he employed successfully in 2010 to reveal Tang Jun’s worthless diploma as well as in a more recent campaign to completely discredit Luo Yonghao (罗永浩), a popular internet personality who had insulted his wife, is how he went to work on Han Han ….

As in the best flame wars, Han Han PK Fang Zhouzi has been a comedy goldmine. Quick wit, outrageous accusations, dodgy amateur textual analysis, passionate debaters falling prey to the simplest of conversational gambits – if I was a conspiracy theorist I’d wonder whether Sina had engineered the whole thing to keep people refreshing their microblog feeds over the long holiday.

Read more about Han Han and Fang Zhouzi via CDT.

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Post tags: blogging, danwei, Fang Zhouzi, Han Han
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Under the Hawthorn Tree, a tragic love story set during the Cultural Revolution, is written under the pen name of Ai Mi. All that is known about the author is that she leads a reclusive life in Florida, having gone there to study. She is thought to be in her fifties or sixties, if only because her insight into the Cultural Revolution suggests someone who experienced first hand the political and social persecution of Mao Zedong’s last decade. She tells her readers that it was inspired by a true story. Her central character – a young woman from a “politically questionable family” who falls in love with the son of a general – is based on a real person with names and places disguised.

In a publishing world where an author’s identity is often more important than their talent, it is striking that publishers as far afield as Italy, Norway, Brazil and Israel have responded to the writing alone. Lennie Goodings of Virago bought it without knowing a word of Chinese – and was relieved to discover that it lived up to her expectations when she commissioned an English translation. She said: “It’s a beautiful love story, almost like a Romeo and Juliet. It has that real simplicity about people trying to love each other across class. [Set] against the Cultural Revolution, it shows the startlingly intimate reach of politics in that period [which] even affects – and infects – their love.”

Goodings asked someone from Shanghai who works in Virago’s accounts department to read it: “Her face fell and she said, ‘I’m not interested in the Cultural Revolution. It’s my parents’ generation.’ The next day she was at my shoulder, eyes brimming, saying ‘it’s so wonderful and I cried’. On the basis of that, I bought it blind.” Although the original blog was serialised on a website that was blocked by the Chinese authorities, an admirer had passed it to one of China’s state-affiliated publishers, which has been overwhelmed by its sales.

The article notes that Zhang Yimou, whose work on the just-released Flowers of War generated criticism for sticking too close to the party line, has directed a film version of Under the Hawthorn Tree which was released last year.

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Post tags: blogging, Cultural Revolution, literature, Mao Zedong, Zhang Yimou
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“Last week I was racing, and I didn’t have time to go online. On Monday, after the race was over, I opened up Weibo on the car ride home. I saw a friend of mine was writing about a tragedy that had happened a week ago. He said he’d been thinking carefully about it for seven or eight days, had read through relevant materials, and that he felt perhaps it was this way [i.e., he expressed his opinion on the tragedy]. His analysis made a lot of sense, and I really approved of it. Usually this friend has many people retweeting his posts, but this one only had a few dozen retweets, and one of the first comments was: “How are there people still talking about this, this event [the tragedy] is already old [outdated].”

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Post tags: blogging, Han Han, microblogs, sina weibo, weibo
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A handful of homegrown micro-blogging sites emerged about the same time Twitter started to gain a small, yet steadily growing, share of Chinese Internet users, beginning about 2007, around a year after Twitter was launched in the U.S. in 2006.

While almost all of the early Chinese micro-blogging pioneers faced the same fate as Twitter, most of the sites are now back online and are fiercely competing to gain a share of what many predict will soon be an exploding population of Chinese micro-bloggers.

Alex Mou is the founder of one of them. He started a Twitter-like site called Zuosa, which was shut down for “self maintenance” on July 21, around two months after Twitter was first blocked in early June.

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Session One of the roundtable discussion was entitled “The Internet, Media and the Public Sphere in China.” The three panelists were Isaac Mao, Hu Yong, and Liu Xiaobiao. Panelist descriptions can be found at the bottom of the page. All three panelists presented in English. CDT has made minor edits for purposes of clarity. Notes from Session Two of the discussion, which included presentations by Liu Jianqiang, Zhang Ping, and Wang Lixiong, can be found here.

Hu Yong, Liu Xiaobiao, and moderator Xiao Qiang (left to right)

I am going to present a timeline of China’s social media development from 2002-2008. I am choosing the starting date of 2002 as I believe it was the first year of China’s social media era. In these seven years, we have not only seen a quantitative change in the numbers of people involved in social media, but also a paradigmatic change. Furthermore, we are seeing more separated mentalities in China, as in 2008 with the Beijing Olympics.

2002: In 2002, people began to see the emergence of bloggers in China, with Cnblog.org being one of the first major sites. At this time, there were about 1000 bloggers in China.

2003: 2003 saw an increase in the popularity of blogs, which increased ten-fold to number 100,000. This was also the year of the Sun Zhigang case. As people began to use blogs in social cases, the government took notice and enhanced its censorship system. Wikipedia was blocked in China for the first time.

Blog businesses, such as Blogbus, were also launched in 2003.

Mu Zimei, a blogger most known for detailing her sex life, came onto the blogging scene.

2004: Blogger Laohu Miao reported on a murder case on Wangfujing street, and would later continue using his blog as a platform for citizen journalism.

2005: To some degree, blogs began to supplant some of the roles of traditional media. Official promotion of blogs began, and the first CN Blogger conference was held in Shanghai. Michael Anti‘s blog was blocked by MSN spaces, which gave rise to an anti-MSN Spaces movement (“我可以不用MSN Spaces”).

2006: Creative blog production.

2007: Notable stories included the South China tiger story and the Chongqing nailhouse. Blogger Zuola went to the city to meet the owner of the house and report on the proceedings.

Other important figures were the river crab and the 50 cent party.

2008: The March Tibet conflict and the August Olympic games were two top stories of the year. Anti-CNN appeared, and represented a face of young Chinese nationalism.

Change may be afoot for Chinese Internet users, as we can see by my theory of ‘sharism.’ Briefly: while a large number of different perspectives dominate the Internet, Internet-facilitated exchanges allow for netizen attitudes to be more open to different viewpoints. Blogging, as a corollary, becomes a forum for online conversations.

The sharism theory also suggests that the structure of media as we know it will eventually change. Currently, traditional media is structured by a hierarchical system directed by the government. However, journalists and some media controllers are linked in a social media system and must now increasingly interact with each other. This reflects a networked structure.

Hu Yong:

My presentation is on “Rumor as Social Protest.” Two pieces of recent news underscore this phenomenon. First, a user on the Internet forum Tianya posted a story in October 2008 on Hangzhou legislation to “protect Internet safety” against malicious rumors, with fines up to 50,000 yuan. The proposed legislation was sharply criticized by Internet users. In April of 2009, the legislation was passed, with the fine reduced to 5000 yuan.

More recently is the case of Wang Erbao, also known as Wang Shuai. Wang, a native of Henan, criticized the local government for illegal requisition of farming land. Police then jailed him for 8 days, though Wang made no libelous claims.

After his release, Wang posted to Tianya and warned that voicing one’s opinions on Tianya could be dangerous. Blogger Shi Nian Kan Chai (十年砍柴) commented on his own blog that anyone could be a potential Wang Shuai.

How, then should we look at the phenomenon of rumors? Libel?

First, let’s define what rumors are. Some define it simply as “false information.” But there are two dilemmas here: first, a lot of rumors contain truth, and then second, if you see rumors as false information, you naturally have the kind of view that a rumor is a sort of social malaise, a collective disease. Words to describe rumors include epidemics, bacteria, and so on.

Instead, we must look at another view raised by U.S. sociologist Shibutani Tamotsu who claimed rumors were a type of social cognition and collective action. While some may think of rumors as irrational, Shibutani thinks rumors can unite the actions of rational man and be used as a weapon of the weak. Rumors, then, are not necessarily false, but will be unofficial.

I also just want to point out that rumors are seriously demonized. The idea of rumors equated with false information grant reason for crackdowns. But I think rumors can be used as a type of social protest. These rumors betray the inner feelings and conflicts of netizens.

Liu Xiaobiao:

Hello, my presentation today is entitled “Three Kinds of Agendas on China’s Internet.”

China has 300 million internet users. This has different meanings for different stakeholders. The first stakeholder is the government: The movement of the internet has implications for the emergence of popular opinion. The principle of the administration is that the Internet should help the government to govern and not make governing more difficult. This is the “official agenda.”

The second is Internet companies. For them, the Internet is a factory and a market with commercial and economic profit. This is the “commercial agenda.”

The third group is made up of Internet users, for whom the Web is a new form of media as well as a platform for communication. This is the “civil agenda.”

The interaction between the three agendas creates a certain Internet ecology particular to China. One such example was Internet news coverage of the two conferences (两会).

Every March, the NPC and the CPPC hold annual meetings in Beijing. These two conferences are considered to be the most important political events of the year. The following is a screenshot of Sina.com’s news page on March 5th. You can see that the editors set Wen Jiabao’s speech in a prominent red and white section. What did Internet users think of this special section?

The most-clicked story from the day was on an interview with the Hong Kong singer Edison Chen, known for his embroilment in a sex scandal. Second was a story on Yao Ming’s latest NBA performance. Third, mainland celebrities. Fourth, a corrupt official fleeing to France. Five and six, more about Yao Ming. Seventh, NBA. The special report, supposedly the most important story of the day, was ranked number eight. This headline story was nowhere near the most important posts that users cared about.

Sina was given the order by the government and didn’t dare go against it. In other words, the government was able to supplant the commercial agenda with the official agenda, but it couldn’t supplant the civil agenda.

What is the civil agenda? It includes sports news, negative domestic news, foreign news involving China’s conflicts with other countries, and entertainment news. In an online survey conducted by people.com and sina.com, the most popular topic was government corruption.

Online, Internet users are usually not allowed to discuss this at all — much less criticize the government’s position. They can do this only in indirect ways, a roundabout style of criticism. For example, pro-government comments may receive an overwhelmingly negative vote. But even this has limits. A few hours later: the comments have been turned off.

As a result of all this jockeying, the stakeholders have changed their behavior. The government has tried to reshape political rhetoric on the Internet in the name of social stability. Internet companies use news to try to attract readers but do so with ‘infotainment’ articles. Users look for new ways of expression, such as the grass mud horse. But for the most part, they have used it almost exclusively for entertainment.

Mao Xianghui (Isaac Mao), Harvard University
Isaac Mao is a venture capitalist, software architect, entrepreneur and blogging pioneer. He is co-founder of CNBlog.org, and co-organizer of the Chinese Blogger Conference (2005 in Shanghai, 2006 in Hangzhou). He is now Vice President of United Capital Investment Group and Director to Social Brain Foundation, and an advisor to Global Voices Online and several web 2.0 businesses. Mao is a regular keynote speaker for Wikimania, the Chinese Internet Conference and other global events on Internet culture. As a trained software engineer, he has a long history of developing both business and consumer software. He worked as a Chief Architect in the Intel HomeCD project and the Tangram BackSchool suite. From Fall 2008 until Summer 2009, Mao is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School.

Hu Yong, Peking University, China
Hu Yong is a well-known media critic and Chinese Internet pioneer. Yong has translated Nicholas Negroponte’s Being Digital into Mandarin. He is currently an associate professor at Peking University’s School Journalism and Communication in Beijing. He blogs on media at huyong.blog.sohu.com.

Liu Xiaobiao
Liu Xiaobiao is media analyst and editorial writer. He worked for the Shanghai-based Waitan Huabao newspaper, where he has written extensively about economics and politics. Liu has won awards for his work from the National Social Science Foundation of China and from the Chinese Association for Middle East Studies. His Master’s thesis in history was on Islam civilization and globalization. He also has experience in radio.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, Hu Yong, Isaac Mao, Liu Xiaobiao, online public opinion
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This study explores an under-studied layer of Chinese Internet censorship: how Chinese Internet companies censor user–generated content, usually by deleting it or preventing its publication. Systematic testing of Chinese blog service providers reveals that domestic censorship is very decentralized with wide variation from company to company. Test results also showed that a great deal of politically sensitive material survives in the Chinese blogosphere, and that chances for its survival can likely be improved with knowledge and strategy. The study concludes that choices and actions by private individuals and companies can have a significant impact on the overall balance of freedom and control in the Chinese blogosphere.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blog censorship, blog providers, blogging, Internet control
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56minus1: Who will win the SNS war in China? The C2C war? The microblogging war? The video sharing site war?

Gang Lu: There will be more than one winner in the SNS war. Think about it, QQ, 51, Xiaonei, Kaixin001, etc., none of these big players are going to go down easily. In the C2C war, Taobao will dominate the market for a long while to come, but it now has some competition with companies like Tencent’s Paipai. Microblogging? I don’t know if there is or ever will be a war among microblogging services in China. I would be surprised if microblogging ever became truly popular in China. I’m more interested to see how these companies will compete with each other in the mobile market in the future, because I believe Web 2.0 has to go mobile to be truly become part of people’s everyday lives.

56minus1: When do you see Internet censorship no longer being an issue in China? How can China get there?

Gang Lu: Internet censorship will be around for a long time to come in China. The question I ask is whether or not censorship is really even a big deal in China…is it? To be honest, I’m uninterested in the “China Internet censorship” topic…it’s so boring. It reminds me of the LeWeb3 conference in 2006…there was a panel called “The Dragon’s Web” which was supposed to discuss the tech trends from the Chinese Web, but the first question the moderator asked is “what do you think of Internet censorship in China.” It was very disappointing. Censorship is of course not a good thing, but in my opinion, if China got rid of the GFW (the Great Firewall”) tomorrow, “The Dragon’s Web” will be in a mess!

56minus1: As you’ve lived abroad and Mobinode.com occasionally covers other Asian markets, can you comment on how Chinese Internet culture differs from digital culture in the West and elsewhere in Asia (Japan / Korea, etc.), or other (developed) markets?

Gang Lu: Chinese netizens are very young and the Internet in this market is still not exactly mature yet. The Chinese Internet is very “entertainment-centric,” this is why is the hottest Web services right now in China are video, gaming, and social networking. A lot of people talk about “attention” mattering most for mature and modern “digital lifestyles / culture” to develop, but in China, A.D.D. and entertainment are king. Korea’s online games rule the world and Japan’s mobile industry is far ahead of us (China). Indian and Israeli entrepreneurs are playing very active roles in the global industry, and countries like Vietnam will be the next battle ground for Asian Internet giants as they expand their empires.

Photo courtesy of Mobinode.com

Read more about blogging and the Chinese bloggers on CDT.

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Post tags: blogger conference 2008, blogging, chinese blogsphere, Gang Lu
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In class today, Yuanyuan said that Jiajia felt sick and has gone to the hospital.  At noon, Jiajia came back.  She was feeling good enough and she told us that the hospital is filled with Hainan Univresity students with diarrhea.  There were many people there waiting to see the doctors.  The doctors were so busy that they had to arrange for queues.

Everybody laughed but then we realized that this is serious.  I began to wonder whether I have cholera too.  I went on the Internet and looked up all sorts of materials about cholera.  Then I fell asleep.  By around 5pm, I was awaken by several phone calls to say that I had to go down to the school office and get some medicine.

Then a series of events made me dizzy: the school was put under a quarantine; the three entrances were manned by police.  Two persons from the School of Tourism were confirmed to have cholera.  Many others people were placed under isolation.  Jiajia was taken away!

Oh, … cholera is really here alas!

© Claire Kells for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, cholera, Hainan, quarantine
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On Dec. 26th, 2007, CNNIC published “the Survey Report on Blogs in China 2007″. According to the report, by the end of Nov. 2007, the number of blog spaces has reached 72.82 million in China, and with 47 million blog writers, it is reaching one fourth of the total netizens. This indicates the rapid growth of the blog market in China.

The survey statistics show that by the end of Nov. 2007, the number of blog spaces has reached 72.82 million in China, while that of blog writers has totaled 47 million, which means that one out of every 30 Chinese, or one out of four netizens writes blogs. Also, the active blog writers have taken up 36% of the total blog writers, approximately 17 million, and the number of valid blog spaces of the active blog users is 28.75 million. [Full text]

China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the state network information center of China, was founded as a non-profit organization on Jun. 3rd 1997.
CNNIC takes orders from the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) to conduct daily business, while it was administratively operated by Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). [Source: CNNIC.cn]

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Post tags: bloggers, blogging, CNNIC, netizens
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The government, through the Internet Society of China, recently drafted a pact that was signed by at least 20 major blog service providers in the country, including Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., the Paris-based watchdog group said Thursday.

“The pact stops short [of] the previous project of making it obligatory for bloggers to register, but it can be used to force service providers to censor content and identify bloggers,” the group said in a statement. The pact, unveiled Wednesday, signals an “imminent” new wave of censorship and repression, the group said. [Full Text]

The Internet Society of China (中国互联网协会) is controlled by the central government’s Ministry of Information Industry.

See also: “Yahoo, MSN sign ‘self-discipline’ pact” from AFP.

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Post tags: blogging, censorship, real name registration
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On August 16 Bullog editor Luo Yonghao published a post announcing that Gua Erjia’s newly-opened Bullog blog “The Beijing Olympics, I don’t support them” had been deleted. In his post Luo Yonghao writes: “no need to go around asking what the reason was; we’re all Chinese, not some foreign guests.” Gua Erjia had attempted to use this blog “to let the outside world know that China does not only just have one voice.”

Wen also reports the online anti-corruption game “Incorruptible Warrior,” mentioned earlier on CDT, has been taken offline, apparently because it wasn’t being taken seriously enough. [Full Text]

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Post tags: blogging, censorship, corruption
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According to an announcement made by LiveJournal, China has officially blocked the popular online blogging site from its citizens. SixApart, the company behind LiveJournal, said that China’s censor roughly locks out 1.8 million of its blogs — of which 8,692 are self-reported Chinese bloggers.

This isn’t the first time that China has blocked LiveJournal. SixApart director of worldwide strategy Ginger Tulley said that her company has been blocked before for no apparent reason. “We would just follow our standard procedures, which honor free speech,” said Tulley.

Interestingly, the block is just in time for China’s National People’s Congress meeting in Beijing. According to Xiao Qiang, founder of the China Digital Times, the move is historical to the meeting. “The security is tight and the control is upgraded because they don’t want [political voices],” said Xiao.[Full Text]

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Post tags: blogging, Internet censorship
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