China Blocks Wall Street Journal’s Chinese Edition

Another major international website has hit the Great Chinese Firewall—this time it’s the Wall Street Journal’s Chinese language edition, and it’s a mystery as to why the site has been blocked.

Significant jump of China’s censorship capabilities before the Anniversary of Tiananmen Square Massacre

Beginning early Friday morning, users of Sina Corp.’s massively popular Weibo microblog were able to search for information about one of the most sensitive incidents in recent Chinese history: the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

In a serious shift of censorship tactics just days ahead of the anniversary of the government’s bloody June 4, 1989 crackdown on protestors in Tiananmen, Sina appears to have begun to allow searches for terms associated with the highly sensitive event. But instead of turning up content related to the incident, searches yield results that have nothing to do with the protests or the government’s heavy-handed response.

China Wants To Block “Human Flesh Search Engine”

On May 21st the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) internal magazine “Hong Qi Wen Gao” published an article which stated that “Constitutionalism is a characteristic of Capitalism, not Socialism”. This opinion triggered a public outcry in China, and has become a sitting duck for critics. Someone noticed that another article in the same volume reacted against the “human flesh search engine”, stating that “Human flesh search engine is a type of tyranny by the majority and is an invasion of privacy”. However, some argued that as Chinese civilians are not protected by Constitutionalism, “human flesh search engine” turns out to be their only weapon to supervise the CCP so it should not be taken away.

Chinese Intellectuals Avoid Key Issues Amid Censorship Fears, Says Award-winning Author

Chinese writers have shirked their responsibilities in the face of tougher censorship over the past 10 years, one of the country’s authors has said.

Yan Lianke, whose bleakly humorous novel Lenin’s Kisses is published in Britain on Thursday, had two books banned in the past decade. He said it had been easier to publish in the five years before that.

China blocks magazine over Taiwan democracy report

A Chinese magazine dedicated to history has been forced to halt the release of a February issue that was to chronicle Taiwan’s democratic transformation, a Shanghai-based newspaper reported yesterday.

“National History” magazine, published by the state-run Chengdu Xianfeng Culture Media Co. based in Sichuan province, had compiled a series of articles authored by Taiwanese writers for a special February edition titled “Taiwan’s Foot,” the Oriental Daily News reported.

Chinese Authorities extend censorship, step up reprisals against dissidents

Reporters Without Borders calls for an international reaction to the all-out censorship of information in China that includes website blocking, prior censorship of social networks and the dismissal of journalists who cover sensitive stories. The government is stepping up efforts to silence criticism and independent reporting, taking advantage of widespread indifference in the international community, especially UN bodies.

“It is clear from the latest events that the authorities are keeping their overall control of information with continuing consequences for those who try to use free speech to any degree,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Instead of relaxing controls, the government seems bent on reinforcing censorship of all kinds of media, including print, online, national and foreign. At the same time, the disturbing silence from the international community is not helping.

China Ends Microblog Weibo’s Anonymity

Authorities implement a new measure to monitor the country’s blogosphere

Beijing-based microbloggers on Friday will be prevented from registering an account on one of the country’s hugely popular Twitter-like services in anything but their real name, verified by their national ID card.

The move has been slammed by netizens and rights groups alike as a huge blow to freedom of expression in China, where many rely on services like Sina Weibo to find news and views that have been censored out of the tightly controlled state media.

“The microblog revolution, sharing of opinions, and increased circulation of news resulting from microblogs have led the regime to take certain measures,” the Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in an annual report this week.

China Clamps Down on Microblogs, Requires Account Holders to Use Real Names

Netizens see a new rule requiring users to register with their real names as a bid to muzzle criticism.

New microblog rules requiring account holders to use their real names are being rolled out in two other major Chinese cities following the first clampdown on Twitter-like services in Beijing earlier this month.

Seven major websites in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, in the southern province of Guangdong, began on Thursday to ask new users to register with real names, the provincial publicity department said in a statement.

Chinese medias quiet on Ai Weiwei

While the twists and turns in the case of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and his tax demand are being closely followed by Western media, they are making no headlines in China.

Some 30,000 supporters have made small donations to Ai to help him pay a huge fine imposed by the authorities, which is seen by activists as part of a government effort to silence the outspoken artist.

But the official media have made almost no mention of the case in recent days.

A notable exception is the Global Times, a nationalist tabloid owned by the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, which has published commentaries in both Chinese and English questioning the level of domestic support for him.

Beijing Tiananmen Square self-immolation: where truth is swept away into a dustman’s cart

Even after nearly three years reporting in China, there is still something amazing about the fact that a man can set himself on fire in Tiananmen Square, in broad daylight, and then no one hears or says a word about it.

As it happens, the incident we report today that occurred on October 21st was witnessed by a Telegraph reader who photographed the aftermath and – after hearing nothing more about it – decided it was right to alert the wider world.

The picture shows several hundred people who must have also witnessed what happened after Mr Wang, a 42-year-old man from Huanggang in Hubei, set himself on fire in protest at a court judgment that, we must presume, he felt was so unfair his only recourse was to self-immolate.

Such incidents, which are not completely uncommon in China, reflect the frustration faced by ordinary people as they seek justice from a system of courts and government that offers little recourse to the weak.

Group Says It Has New Evidence of Cisco’s Human Rights Abuse in China

SAN FRANCISCO — An advocacy group that accuses Cisco Systems of aiding the Chinese government in monitoring and apprehending members of the banned Falun Gong organization said Friday that it had new evidence to suggest that Cisco specifically tailored its technology for that purpose.

The Human Rights Law Foundation, based in Washington, sued Cisco, a California-based manufacturer of networking equipment, last May in the Federal District Court in San Jose, under a statute that allows American companies to be sued for violations of human rights abroad. The suit accused Cisco of having helped China build a firewall, known widely as the Golden Shield, to censor the Internet and keep tabs on dissidents. Cisco at the time said it had made nothing special for China.

On Friday afternoon, the group amended its original complaint, saying it had evidence showing that Cisco customized its products specifically to help Beijing go after members of the religious group Falun Gong.

China censors Ai Weiwei’s Newsweek essay

BEIJING(AFP) — Chinese censors have removed an essay by Ai Weiwei in which the dissident artist strongly criticises the country’s government and justice system from the latest issue of Newsweek magazine.

The article, Ai’s first for a foreign publication since he was released from detention earlier this year, had been ripped from copies of the September 5 issue seen by AFP on a newsstand in Beijing.

In the essay Ai, 54, whose artworks have been displayed around the world, said his ordeal in police custody made him realise he was only a number in an anonymous system where “they deny us basic rights”.

Chinese Site Bans Censorship Evading Software- VPN

(BEIJING) — A major Chinese online commerce site has banned sales of software used to bypass Internet censorship amid Beijing’s efforts to block the development of a Middle East-style protest movement.

But Taobao.com, part of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, said it took the action on its own and received no official order.

A notice on Taobao.com said virtual private networks and Internet protocol proxies were being used to illegally visit foreign websites. It told merchants that use the site to stop selling them and said the accounts of violaters might be canceled. (See China’s ‘first blogger’ on censorship, creativity and dissent.)

13 American scholars barred from traveling to China for their book on Xinjiang

(washingtonpost)- Thirteen American scholars say they have been barred from traveling to China because of a book they wrote, an incident that raises awkward questions about academic freedom at a time of unprecedented collaboration between U.S. and Chinese universities.

The academics have taken to calling themselves the Xin­jiang 13 to emphasize their shared misfortune. Seven years ago, they assembled a book about Xinjiang, a vast region of western China that has a large Muslim population and an occasionally violent separatist movement.

They say their book triggered a backlash from the Chinese government because of its sensitive topic. Contributors have repeatedly been refused visas, thwarted from returning to the region that is the focus of their careers.

Chinese magazine president and editor punished for citing historian

New York, August 19, 2011 (CPJ)–The demotion of a magazine president and suspension of an editor for an interview deemed critical of a Communist Party legend are the latest punitive steps taken by authorities against mainstream journalists in China, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Chen Zhong, president of the Guangzhou-based biweekly Nanfeng Chuang (Window on the South), was removed from his post, though not dismissed, and editor Zhao Lingmin was suspended during an internal meeting on Monday, international news reports said. These measures were related to Zhao’s July 25 interview with Taiwanese historian Tang Chi-hua, according to a letter the editor wrote to his colleagues that was published online by the Hong Kong University-based China Media Project.

Revelations of accidents show China’s State censors lose their grip

BEIJING (The Ottawa Citizen)— Reports of a radiation leak on a nuclear submarine have led China to impose tight censorship on more than 1,000 Chinese-language websites, in a further sign that hardliners hold the upper hand in Beijing.

The defence ministry issued a curt denial that any accident had occurred but the Chinese public has lost faith in official pronouncements, after attempts to stop “negative” reporting of a recent rail disaster. Many citizens, hiding behind online anonymity, have accused the authorities of another coverup.

“Why not deny it earlier and why delete all the reports online?” one wrote.

Canadian embassy’s posting on fugitive Lai Changxing taken off Chinese Microblog site

        In the slow-evolving world of diplomacy, it may be the biggest innovation since the wax seal: social media that lets Canadian diplomats go around the censors to speak directly to, and hear from, the citizens of the world’s rising superpower.

Tired of having their message telegraphed (or not) through the muddying filter of China’s official media, the Canadian Embassy in Beijing opened an account on the popular Twitter-style social networking site Sina Weibo in June 2011. Rather than waiting for the next ministerial visit before issuing a bland statement, Embassy staff now post four or five items a day on Weibo – many of them inane or irreverent, all of them in Chinese.

RSF Condemns China on Media Coverage Restrictions of the High-speed Train Crash in Wenzhou

Reporters Without Borders condemns the severe restrictions that the Propaganda Department has imposed on media coverage of the high-speed train crash on 23 July in the southeastern city of Wenzhou, in which 39 people were killed.

Wang Qinglei, a producer with state-owned China Central Television (中國中央電視台), was fired on 27 July because of his investigative coverage of the crash. The previous day, his News 1+1 programme was suspended without advance warning and without explanation after it criticized a transport ministry spokesman.

Chinese journalists suspended for reporting train disaster

(Independent)– Two leading journalists have been suspended in China after their candid coverage of a train crash amid anger at the government for trying to muzzle critics of the country’s vaunted high-speed rail project.

One of the journalists was reportedly suspended for his reports on the crash on 23 July, when a high-speed train ploughed into the back of a stationary one, killing at least 40 and injuring more than 190. He had questioned whether China was putting too much emphasis on technological advance at the expense of safety.

The government has faced a wave of criticism over what caused the crash, and the delay by the country’s leaders in visiting the scene of the crash at the eastern city of Wenzhou.

Chinese TV producer Wang Qinglei suspended for crash reportage

New York, August 2, 2011 (CPJ)–The suspension of a state television producer for his coverage of last week’s fatal train crash sends a disturbing message to Chinese media outlets, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Information authorities intensified media restrictions at the end of last week in an effort to restrain the unusually probing media treatment of the July 23 disaster. But their initial propaganda directives were widely ignored and the railway ministry’s response to the crash launched a flood of online criticism.

Chinese journalists reported that China Central Television’s “24 Hours” news producer  was suspended for his July 26 coverage of the crash. The show questioned the cause of the collision, featured footage of the victims in hospitals, and asked whether the country was putting progress before the welfare of the people. It is not clear whether the journalist’s suspension amounted to a permanent dismissal.

China Steps Up Web Monitoring, Driving Many Wi-Fi Users Away- Costly Web monitoring software required installed

BEIJING — New regulations that require bars, restaurants, hotels and bookstores to install costly Web monitoring software are prompting many businesses to cut Internet access and sending a chill through the capital’s game-playing, Web-grazing literati who have come to expect free Wi-Fi with their lattes and green tea.

The software, which costs businesses about $3,100, provides public security officials the identities of those logging on to the wireless service of a restaurant, cafe or private school and monitors their Web activity. Those who ignore the regulation and provide unfettered access face a $2,300 fine and the possible revocation of their business license.

“From the point of view of the common people, this policy is unfair,” said Wang Bo, the owner of L’Infusion, a cafe that features crepes, waffles and the companionship of several dozing cats. “It’s just an effort to control the flow of information.”

Jiang Zemin death rumours spark online crackdown in China

Even for China’s rigorous internet censors, it has proved an unusually busy day. References to rivers and laundry are among the apparently innocuous items vanishing from postings and search results amid rumours that Jiang Zemin, who led the country before president Hu Jintao took over in 2002, is dead or seriously ill.

Similar tales have circulated several times in the past. This time they seem to have been prompted by the 84-year-old’s absence from celebrations for the 90th anniversary of the Communist party on Friday. He is normally a staple of such events and other former leaders were shown at the gathering.

Suit Claims Cisco Helped China Pursue Falun Gong

SAN FRANCISCO — Cisco, the maker of Internet routing gear, customized its technology to help China track members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week by members of the movement.

The lawsuit, which relies on internal sales materials, also said that Cisco had tried to market its equipment to the Chinese government by using inflammatory language that stemmed from the Maoist Cultural Revolution.

The suit was filed Thursday in Federal District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose by the Human Rights Law Foundation on behalf of members of Falun Gong. It contends that Cisco helped design the controversial “Golden Shield” firewall that is used to censor the Internet and track opponents of the Chinese government. The lawsuit names several Cisco executives, including the chairman and chief executive, John T. Chambers.