Much has been said here (and elsewhere) about the rioting in Xinjiang, where the situation remains unresolved and violent rioters/protesters/whatever have been threatened with the death penalty. Hu Jintao has ditched the G-8 summit and come back to China. It is undoubtedly the topic of choice, and you’ve probably already read a lot of...
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A brief update: some of our contacts are reporting the Western social networking site Facebook is down in China. Herdict confirms this, listing 40 inaccessible reports and one accessible one. If you currently live in China, give facebook a test and let us know the results. If Facebook is blocked, it would be the...
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For those who aren’t already aware, the unrest in Xinjiang continues as Han mobs have been reported attempting to reach Uighur enclaves in Urumqi and elsewhere. Lifted straight from the New York Times: Paramilitary forces fired tear gas Tuesday at Han Chinese protesters armed with clubs, lead pipes, shovels and meat cleavers. The mob...
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Violent events in China tend to spark controversy. When details are vague — and they almost always are, at least at first — it’s up to individual news teams to make decisions about how their coverage is going to portray the events. The recent riots in Urumqi are no exception; thus far a couple...
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One of our frequent commenters, Wahaha, pointed us to this very recent news story. Details are still a bit sketchy. According to the report, “On July 5th at around 8:00 P.M., incidents of rioting and beating occurred in Urumqi. People in People’s Square, Jiefang St., the bus station, Xinhua South Street, Outer Ring Road,...
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In recent days, it seems like any discussion of China and the internet centers around censorship and the possible destabilizing influence presented by the free information exchange afforded by the web. Of course, the internet is used for other things too, but those just lead to more censorship, which leads back to the aforementioned...
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In sixty years, have never seen a ballot. There isn't education for everyone, there isn't medical insurance, there's no freedom of the press, there's no freedom of speech, there's no freedom of information, there's no freedom to live and move where you choose, there's no independent judiciary, there's no one supervising public opinion,...
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If you read any other China Blogs, you’re probably already aware of the Green Dam and Youth Escrot software the Chinese government is now requiring be provided with all new PC purchases in the country. Everyone reads ChinaSMACK, so you know that Chinese people are generally less than thrilled. You might also be aware...
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UPDATE: These photos have been removed. Apologies. -ed. Recently, there have been a fair number of photos on Ai Weiwei’s blog. And they aren’t of candles! Indeed, they’ve all been fairly interesting, so we’re going to post them here in case you missed them. We’ve ordered them from most recent to least recent, the...
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As many of you know, this past weekend was the gaokao (高考), China’s brutally long standardized college entrance exam. The test differs from region to region and student to student (depending on whether they have focused on sciences or the humanities), but all students are tested in Chinese, Math, and a foreign language (usually...
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