Jonathan Ansfield reports for Newsweek magazine from Beijing, where he has lived for over eight years. His freelance work has also appeared in The Asian Wall Street Journal, Wallpaper, and The News York Times. From 2001 to 2004, he served as a general news correspondent for Reuters. His main area of interest is the Chinese media and its political and market roles in democratic change.
On April 9, at 22:20:51 Beijing time, your correspondent received the following SMS in shorthand Chinese from an anonymous sender: “…Hotels and neighborhood homes can pick up Christian Bible stations, Phoenix, HBO, CNN, adult and other satellite programs. Anti-surveillance system and cable TV installation. Equipment sales. Text reply to 81607635.” At first glance, it seemed […]
Read MoreIn the March 25 issue of Phoenix Weekly, an “anonymous” ex-inmate recounts life in the Chinese prison system: Prisoners who’ve just gone in will get a hazing from long-time inmates. Normally, the block monitor himself – the group leader of the cell – will dress them down, and there are all sorts of ways of […]
Read MoreThe story of China’s “toughest nail house” – flattened overnight – will be remembered for spawning its own little media counterculture. Perhaps the most recognized example is Zola the citizen blogger. Far less-noticed is the April cover of Sports Illustrated (‰ΩìËÇ≤ÁîªÊä•), which, according to an editor there, consciously invokes the saga of Chongqing’s long-entrenched evictees, […]
Read MoreA week ago, domestic newspapers broke the news that the National Statistics Bureau is balking on plans to publicize China’s second Green GDP report. This was not altogether shocking, since the country’s first estimates of the costs of environmental degradation, based on 2004 data, only came out in September 2006 – after much delay, cutting, […]
Read MoreRecently, a poor county on the Yangtze used video to run reconnaissance on the work habits of its officials. In three days of clandestine shooting, a crew of disciplinary agents in Zigui County (Hubei) caught more than 200 colleagues screwing off on the job. Leaders screened the film internally at a county-wide meeting, eliciting the […]
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