Malcolm Moore

Since the start of the year, the Chinese government has set itself one of those incredibly ambitious and probably fruitless goals: wiping pornography off the internet.

A screen grab shows a warning for a blocked Web site in Beijing, China Photo: Bloomberg

The first stage was shutting down as many pornographic websites as possible.

In any other country, even this would be a big ask, but China has tens of thousands of web police trawling through cyberspace everyday who closed down a long list of offenders.

Then the authorities came up with the idea of asking computer manufacturers to install (not very good) censorship software called Green Dam on home computers.

The idea was that if they tackled the problem at the point of the end user, it… Read More

Last night, at 9pm local time, Google was blocked again in China, at least in Beijing and Shanghai. Service was apparently restored by midnight, but this morning my computer is still down.

There’s plenty of speculation about who might be on the attack against Google, with the prime suspects being its rival Baidu and the state broadcaster CCTV, which gets plenty of ad revenue from…Baidu.

In the last few weeks, several websites have been running slowly or not at all, and there appears to be more tinkering with the internet than usual. Fanfou, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, is one notable site that has been patchy.

Chinese netizens are spitting mad, and this notice sped around the internet yesterday. Here is a helpful translation of the declaration by the excellent Shanghaiist website:

2009 Declaration of the Anonymous Netizens

To the Internet censors of China,

We are the Anonymous Netizens. We have seen… Read More

Evan Osnos has a typically thoughtful blog today about China’s reaction to the events in Iran.

He notes that while the official newspapers are quick to portray the riots as “Western interference”, something that is calculated to get Chinese backs up, there is a more nuanced conversation among intellectuals.

“Wu Jiaxiang, an intellectual and former researcher in the General Office of the Communist Party Central Committee wrote the other day:

For over ten years, Iran’s presidential elections have had turnout exceeding seventy percent, so much so that the closing hours had to be delayed until midnight. What does that show? It means that indifference towards democracy comes from the lack of democracy. There is no excuse for non-democracy.

Mao Anlin, another blogger, goes one step further:

Even Iran, such a religious country, has had so many years of elections. Candidates can squabble, the results can be questioned, the legislature can talk, and Khamenei… Read More

Kashgar, in Far West China, is the oasis town where the northern and southern branches of the Silk Route converge.

A thousand years ago, this is where traders from Samarkand, Almaty and Delhi would meet. Its mud buildings were sacked by Tamerlane and Genghis Khan.

It is also home to China’s largest mosque, the Id Kah.

When I was there last August, I wandered around the tiny homes in the Old City, where the locals fretted about the presence of secret police and informants. It wasn’t long before we were tailed around the warren of tiny streets.

Now those same streets are being knocked down. Since February, the government has been demolishing the Old City and relocating families to new apartment blocks outside town.

The official reason is that the Old City is a safety hazard. Its rickety houses would collapse in an earthquake, and the region is quake prone. Opponents say the… Read More

As you can see, the Telegraph blog format has changed.

As part of the changes, our daily round-up of China news will stop. It was just not popular enough.

For the loyal fans out there, I am regularly posting links to China stories on Twitter.com

It may sound geeky and intimidating, but it is very easy to set up and use.

You can follow me @MalcolmMoore and in fact there are a whole host of interesting China-based tweeters available. If anyone wants me to post a list, leave a comment.

If anyone is looking for another blog-based round-up, I can recommend the Wall Street Journal’s China blog, which has a daily wrap:

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinajournal/

Shanghaiist also has one, which is slightly more Shanghai-slanted:

http://shanghaiist.com/

Please click on the links for the full story

Tuesday June 23

- Last week, the Environment ministry ordered a halt on the construction of two dams in Yunnan province because they had not received authorisation. At the time, the two energy companies involved appeared repentant, but actually construction continued as normal. In fact, the project has been sped up. (WSJ, China Environmental Law)- Google China has promised to clean up its act after being accused of spreading pornography on the web. (People’s Daily)

- People’s Daily explores China’s forgotten libraries. - An official in Henan has been suspended for asking a reporter: “Will you speak for the Party? Or will you speak for the people?” The idea that the two could be mutually exclusive has made his comment a nominee for catchphrase of the year on the Chinese… Read More

It was a dramatic weekend in the relatively small city of Shishou in Hubei province. Tens of thousands of rioters torched a hotel and overturned police cars, accusing the authorities of trying to cover up the murder of a 24-year-old man as a suicide.

(Photos: QQ)

The deceased, Tu Yuangao, was the chef of the Yong Long hotel. According to the cops, he committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the building and left a note.

However, witnesses said there was no blood on the scene and Tu’s body was already cold just after it hit the ground. His parents were surprised that he left a suicide note, since he was allegedly illiterate.

There are plenty of rumours flying around - that two other employees at the hotel had died in the same way, that the boss of the hotel is related… Read More

Please click on the links for the full story

Monday June 22* Riots broke out in Shishou, Hubei, over the weekend, after a man died in a government-linked hotel. There were violent clashes between the police and at least 10,000 residents amid suspicions over the cause of the man’s death. Order has now been restored, and a crufew imposed, but here is one version of the story. Here are some links to follow, and here are some photographs. (AFP, Global Voices, EastWestNorthSouth)* More bad news for China’s attempts to bundle censorship software with all computers. The US has now complained officially over the new rules, since US computer companies believe this is a back-door tactic of keeping them out of the Chinese market. (FT)* Don’t believe all the hype about China’s environmental push. The National Audit Office… Read More

Chollima! Never mind the nuclear bomb, North Korea has qualified for the World Cup!

Chollima, of course, was the breathless all-out attacking style of football that North Korea deployed the last time they competed in a World Cup, all the way back in 1966. 

(Chollima is a mythical winged horse that can leap 1000 ri, or 150 miles, a feat that made it a symbol of North Korea’s “revolutionary spirit”).

This time around, apparently, the North Koreans are a dour defensive side. During qualifying, they went for six games in a row without conceding a goal, and they eventually pipped Saudi Arabia for a World Cup berth on goal difference. 

It’s all a far cry from 1966, when the North Korean players won the hearts of Middlesbrough (where they were based) after beating Italy on the way to the quarter-finals and eventually losing… Read More

Please click on the links for the full story

Friday June 19

* Two more bits of good news from the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India & China) summit in Moscow:

Russia and China have signed energy deals valued at a record $100 billion so far this year, and China has overtaken Germany and the Netherlands as Russia’s largest trading partner. (WSJ)And reports in China suggest that Beijing is backing a hotline between the prime ministers of China and India, possibly to avert dangerous miscommunications between the nuclear-armed, and often competitive and fractious, neighbours. In the past, critics have pointed out that there is far less communication between India, China and Japan than there was between the US and Russia during the Cold War. (Dawn.com)* Are Beijing’s anti-corruption efforts intensifying or is there a power struggle at the top of the Communist Party?… Read More