Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

Reporters Without Borders | Reporters Sans Frontières
March 30, 2007

The blocking of access to the Observatoire International des Crises website (www.communication-sensible.com) within China since late February after it posted an article, entitled “Shanghai, mon amour,” (Shanghai, my love) warning companies about the risks of trading with China shows that Chinese online censorship is by no means limited to “subversive” political content, Reporters Without Borders said today.

The Great Firewall censors content at three levels. Nine Internet Access Providers supply Internet to China–and each IAP is connected to a foreign Internet source. Each IAP is connected to thousands of Internet Service Providers, which sell internet to Chinese users. The first level of The Great Firewall’s censorship occurs at the IAP level. IAP administrators enter all URLs and keywords deemed to provide ‘unsuitable’ content. ISPs are required to have software to back up the IAP-level censorship.

"Tongxing Xinglian", China's first gay chat show, is an interactive online forum hosted by gay presenters and accessible to more than 130 million Internet users across the country. The show aims to open minds in a country where homosexuality was listed as a mental illness until 2001.

It is estimated that China has about 123 million Internet users. About 15.4 of them are youths. Of those, 2 million are considered Internet addicts...and the number is growing.

China's top legislature, the Standing Committee of National People's Congress is reviewing law amendments to ...

A short story on how a survey by Reporters Without Borders shows that 64 bloggers round the world are imprisoned for blogging negatively about their country/government. According to the Danish news 50 of these are located Chinese prisons.

A BBC article written about internet censorship in the People's Republic of China and how people try/succeed to get around it...

Ironically this article will be blocked for users in China... so maybe use a shield/cloaking site to view it?

China's President Hu Jintao had a brief online chat with members of the People's Daily's 'Strong Country' online forum this morning.

The whole chat lasted about four minutes. President Hu answered three questions asked by three netizens. The three questions were:

1. Do you use the Internet?
2. What do you do on the Internet?
3. Netizens have put up a lot of suggestions about the country; do you read them?

Tired of Internet censorship? Is your site being blocked for having "sensitive" words? Then Censortive is for you. Use this plugin to replace those pesky words with their graphic equivalent, making them invisible to censorship robots.

The link in this post goes to the main plugin page, but you can read more about it at my blog.

China’s propaganda mandarins are experimenting with a new policy to manage their message in the age of the internet: reporting the news as it happens. This marks an important shift for the ruling Communist Party, accustomed to deciding what will be reported and when.