On the lighter side….

I love you, however…
A man in China has persuaded his wife to have plastic surgery in order to make her look like his first wife.
Yum, stamps…
To celebrate the Year of the Pig, China has issued stamps that smell and taste like sweet and sour pork.
Mirror, mirror, on the… 
An ancient Chinese mirror worth nearly $1 million [...]

Google (soul) search: China censorship was bad for business

Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, conceded last week that the decision to modify the Google search engine in China, in compliance with Chinese government demands, has been bad for business. (Online newspaper Guardian has the full story).  Not quite the mea culpa many had hoped for, but perhaps a move in the right direction.  In the [...]

Newsdesk: Guo Feixiong sent to Shenyang

Zhang Qing, the wife of Guandong-based civil rights lawyer Guo Feixiong, who is under detention and charged with ‘illegal business activities’, was told on Jan. 19 that her husband’s case was being sent back to the police for ‘further investigations’. This is quite a rare occurrence in China, where attitudes with the judiciary tend to [...]

Newsdesk: More clashes in Dongzhou

Further clashes have taken place in the southern Chinese village of Dongzhou, where armed police opened fire on protesters in December 2005, killing at least three people, reports RFA’s Cantonese service.
Dozens of villagers were camped out in a power station under construction there were removed by a gang of heavies hired by the local government, [...]

Newsdesk: Clashes in Guangxi and Hubei

From RFA’s Cantonese service: More than a hundred villagers in the southwestern Chinese province of Guangxi clashed with police during a protest at pollution caused by a local paper factory, local residents said Monday.
Police in Xinlian village near the city of Cenxi used tear gas to disperse the protesters, and 12 people were detained. [...]

Internet companies work to protect civil liberties online

According to the Commitee to Protect Journalists several leading technology companies — including Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft — are helping to craft rules of engagement that they will use when confronted with laws and regulations that impede internationally accepted standards for human rights. These companies and many others are working with the the Center [...]

Another Guangdong land dispute, this time near Foshan

This report came in from RFA’s Mandarin service(ZH) last night. The Cantonese service had it too, but I was busy writing up their coverage of the Sichuan hotel riot(ZH) (see post below). A lot of good stuff comes in from our language services all the time, and if we pick a story to translate and [...]

Death of a Hostess: Riot in Sichuan

UPDATE: Roland Soong has translated much more coverage of this story since we posted ours, including a typically graphic graphic by Hong Kong’s Apple Daily showing how Yang’s body was found.
Thousands Riot, Burn Sichuan Hotel After Girl’s Death
Thousands of local residents have converged on a four-star hotel in the southwestern [...]

Science reporting needed, says China’s propaganda department

China’s powerful Central Propaganda Department, usually seen as a force which limits the media, has also been campaigning for more science reporting in the country’s media. But recent research has shown that, in fact, a lot less of it is happening than before. Even the country’s flagship Communist Party-backed papers have given in to the [...]

Whistleblower site to protect leakers of sensitive documents

Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the west who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their own governments and [...]