From the Beijing Review: “In China, as in every other country, blogging has taken off big time, so much so that a blogger with the hostname of Snake (Meng Xiaoshe) became the jury prizewinner in the Deutsche Welle International Weblog Awards 2004, the first international blog competition. His The Dog Newspaper (http://www. 18mo.com) was honored with the Best Weblog award.
It was at the end of the 1990s that some Chinese sat up and took notice of the appearance and development of blogging and started trying to introduce it to more Chinese. In August 2002, blogchina (http://www.blogchina.com), China’s first dedicated blogging website, was established. The website was founded by Fang Xingdong, doctor and IT expert at Tsinghua(2¬•≈í) University. Blogchina.com began life focusing on IT news and reviews. Originally about 60 bloggers, including such famous experts as Wang Dingding, Li Xiguang and Jiang Qiping, took part in discussions, which quickly made it the most popular blogging website.”
