Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

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.

China's President Hu Jintao announced in January plans to "purify" the Internet. Today, one of China's most prominent government censors said that the ruling Communist Party will introduce new laws to crack down on blogs, podcasts, and internet video.

Chinese government evolving skills in managing scandal in light of mobile phones spreading public opinion, especially to recent slave labor story.

Police have rescued 31 people forced to work for a year as slaves - given only bread and water and no pay - at a brickworks run by the son of a local Communist Party official, China's state media reported today.

Eight of the workers were so traumatised that all they could remember was their names, the Beijing News said, citing a report in the Shanxi Evening Post.

One labourer was beaten to death with a hammer for not working hard enough, before police raided the factory to set the others free, the newspaper said.

Two Chinese reporters who investigated working conditions at Apple's iPod factories are being sued for $3.8 million, but rather than silencing the press, the case is generating more ink than ever.

Happy New Year, we're back online!

Mid-December HHR's domain came up for renewal, and with hosting expiring next month, I figured I'd just do a quick transfer rather than dealing with everything twice.

"Quick" turned out to be quite the subjective term, and delay after delay caused the site to remain down for most of the last half of the month.

Apple's iPods are made by mainly female workers who earn as little as ?27 per month, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday yesterday.

The report, 'iPod City', isn't available online. It offers photographs taken from inside the factories that make Apple music players, situated in China and owned by Foxconn.

The Mail visited some of these factories and spoke with staff there. It reports that Foxconn's Longhua plant houses 200,000 workers, remarking: "This iPod City has a population bigger than Newcastle's."

A new report out of Beijing is loosening the government's choke-hold on public outcry. "China's State Council on Friday approved a new regulation designed to make it easier for the public to lodge complaints against what they deem unjust government decisions.

According to the Regulation on Implementing Administrative Review Law, the public has the right to ask the government to review its actions and decisions that they believe have infringed upon their rights."

Howard French: China's chief censor has launched another round of crackdowns to eliminate what he labeled the "four fakes."

. . . In this case, it was definitely a matter of denouncing the wicked, to wit: sham publications, sham news bureaus, fake journalists and bogus news reports.