Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

A blind activist who exposed a campaign by Chinese officials to force women to have abortions was jailed for more than four years yesterday in one of the country's most controversial human rights cases since the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The rule of law increasing through mass public participation? And not triggered by the party or a few activist lawyers? Sounds like a dream. But apparently, it’s happening. What happens in China when you can’t get your own lawyer to fight your cause? Learn the law yourself.

A Chinese scholar argues his case for "confucianising" China. He says that only Confucians can rule the country. Is he right?

CHINA'S crackdown on critics is reaching a climax, with blind human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng being jailed for four years and three months for organising fellow villagers to disrupt traffic, and researcher for The New York Times Zhao Yan sentenced to three years on a bizarre fraud charge.

Beijing Newspeak comments on a recent Xinhua article in which a teacher in Gansu was convicted of raping 18 grade 3 and 4 students. The young journalist that did the reporting was not eager to find out more details to expose the case because "it would not be good for China’s image."

This case mimics closely another child rape case in the same area that happened a couple years ago. At the time, NYT report Jim Yardley summed up the situation well with this quote:

From ESWN:
"The following is a translation of a blog post by Southern Weekend reporter Fu Jianfeng (???). This is about the FoxConn-versus-China Business News case that Fu and his colleagues were working on, but never go to publish it after a ban was issued on further coverage. So this is yet another case in which an unpublishable case found itself on the Internet instead, with all sorts of delicious details that could not have been published either. This is a perfect illustration of how the Internet has transformed China ..."

Getting an accurate read on what people in China think about the prosecution of Chen Shui-bian is difficult because Taiwan's former president isn't too highly thought of here. To the extent people have an opinion they seem to be glad he's in trouble because, well, Chen's a troublemaker.

Danwei gives a rundown of the Net response to the 'slave labour' case that has been the storm in Chinese news this week. For anyone just tuning in, brick kilns in Shanxi province were found to be using slave labour (including abducted children) to make their stackable product.

This Danwei article also contains the original note from the father's of the children that was sent to the central government and sparked the investigation in the first place.

This case would serve to warn officials that they could not escape from legal repercussions overseas.