Manual on How to Spot a Spy Circulates in an Increasingly Wary China

Didi Kirsten Tatlow
New York Times
“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Or an American spy. Or a “hostile foreign force.” So says the “China Folk Counterespionage Manual,” a “how to spot a spy” guide circulating on the Internet.

Busan: China’s Online Movie Revenues Forecast to Match Box Office in 5 Years

Clifford Coonan
Hollywood Reporter
China's online giants, who are launching a big push into the film business, have been a significant presence at the South Korean festival this year, popping up as buyers, sponsors and producers.

Media

10.03.14

Under Different Umbrellas

Zhang Xiaoran
“Dozens of mainlanders were taken away by the police because they openly supported Occupy Central and at least ten of them have been detained…They are in Jiangxi, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Chongqing, Guangzhou, etc,” Hong Kong-based blogger and...

Media

09.25.14

An Internet Where Nobody Says Anything

David Wertime
Here is what a court in Urumqi, the capital of China’s western Xinjiang region, concludes Ilham Tohti, a balding, thick-set, 44-year-old professor, did: “Using ‘Uighur Online’ as a platform, and taking advantage of his role as a university professor...

Beijing’s Rising Smear Power

Murong Xuecun
New York Times
Chinese dissidents are constantly subject to all sorts of harassment, including a vicious online smear campaign.

The Jack Ma Way

David Barboza
New York Times
At Alibaba, the founder Is squarely in charge ahead of the e-commerce giant's U.S. initial public offering.

China to Limit Foreign TV Shows on Video-Streaming Sites

Lillian Lin
Wall Street Journal
Regulators expected to cap amount of imported television content at 30 percent.

Media

08.06.14

The Bizarre Fixation on a 23-Year-Old Woman

On August 4, a 6.5-magnitude earthquake viciously struck Ludian County, a township in the southwest province of Yunnan, with a death toll surpassing 400. The news swiftly hit Chinese headlines, and images of the devastation circulated widely on...

Media

07.22.14

All Hail ‘Fatty Kim the Third’

David Wertime
It’s North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un as the world has never seen him. In a three-minute clip that has accumulated over 200,000 views after its early July posting on Chinese video site Tudou, a crudely photoshopped Kim dances on the street,...

Undermining China, One Knockout at a Time

Amy Qin
New York Times
While blustering essays stoking Chinese nationalism are nothing new, Zhou Xiaoping’s piece on the “real-life war” being waged on the Internet seems to have enjoyed unusually broad circulation. 

Zhang Lei has Lunch with the FT

Henny Sender
Financial Times
The billionaire Chinese financier was among the first to see the potential in homegrown internet companies. He talks about a career that began when he rented out comics at the age of seven.

Alibaba Acquires UCWeb, Maker Of China’s Most Popular Mobile Browser

Catherine Shu
TechCrunch
Alibaba, already an investor in UCWeb, will buy all remaining shares of the web browser and search company. The two firms announced the merger, one of the most significant among Chinese Internet companies to date, earlier today.

Sinica Podcast

05.27.14

History of the Internet in China

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
The Internet has always been near and dear to our hearts here at Sinica. Four years ago, our very first show covered Google China and the fracas that followed their decision to pull out of China. And in the years since, we've frequently talked...

China Calls Out Cisco For Cyber Snooping

Greg Morcroft
International Business Times
China Youth Daily claimed that Cisco, “carries on intimately with the U.S. government and military, exploiting its market advantage in the Chinese information networks." 

Media

05.20.14

Netizens Complain Chinese Government Was Slow to Respond to Violence in Vietnam

On May 18, Hong Lei, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said China “will suspend some of its plans for bilateral exchanges with Vietnam in response to the deadly violence against Chinese nationals in the country,” according to...

Why China is Censoring ‘The Big Bang Theory’ but not ‘Game of Thrones’

Lily Kuo
Quartz
While authorities speak of “cleaning the web” of offensive content, they may be more worried about reminding the country’s flourishing private internet firms that the government is still in charge.

China Forces Four U.S. TV Shows Off Web

Paul Mozur
Wall Street Journal
'Big Bang Theory' and 'Good Wife' are among programs taken down from popular video streaming sites Sohu, Youku Tudou, and Tencent, as government control of the Internet and over foreign entertainment content intensifies.

Media

04.23.14

Welcome to Uighur Web—Now Watch What You Say

China’s Internet is vast, with millions of sites and more than 618 million users. But nested within that universe is a tiny virtual community comprising just a few thousand websites where China’s Uighur, the country’s fifth-largest ethnic minority...

Media

04.11.14

Is Jesus Really Hotter Than Mao on China’s Social Media?

It’s easier to talk about Jesus than Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping on Weibo, China’s massive Twitter-like social media platform.The atheist Chinese Communist Party, known for its sometimes heavy-handed policies...

Conversation

04.06.14

Spy Vs. Spy: When is Cyberhacking Crossing the Line?

Vincent Ni, Chen Weihua & more
Vincent Ni: For a long time, Huawei has been accused by some American politicians of “spying on Americans for the Chinese government,” but their evidence has always been sketchy. They played on fear and possibility. I don’t agree or disagree with...

China’s Mobile Commerce Spending to Surpass $50 Billion in 2014, Nearly Double Last Year’s Total

Steven Millward
Tech in Asia
Now that smartphones account for over 80 percent of China’s new phone sales, it’s inevitable that the m-commerce sector is growing faster than the ecommerce industry itself.

Alibaba’s IPO Architect Lays Out Blueprint for E-commerce Empire

Paul Carsten and Matthew Miller
Reuters
Joe Tsai, executive vice chairman of the world's largest e-commerce company, sees an Alibaba future that stretches from banking to education, travel to entertainment.

China’s Alibaba Launches Crowdfunding-Like Service for Film Investment

Clifford Coonan
Hollywood Reporter
China's largest e-commerce company, Alibaba, launched a micro-finance service for movies.

Media

03.26.14

A Wrinkle to Those Hot Chinese Tech IPOs

Investors, ready your wallets. In the past week, Sina Weibo, China’s massive microblogging platform with 280 million users, and Alibaba, the operator of China’s largest online marketplace which generated $1.84 billion in revenue in the fourth...

Features

03.21.14

Punching a Hole in the Great Firewall

Jeff South
In January, when the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published its exposé of the use of offshore tax havens by Chinese politicians and business moguls, the Chinese government blocked access to the consortium’s website and to...

Viewpoint

03.13.14

How Chinese Internet Censorship Works, Sometimes

Jason Q. Ng
Earlier this week, Chinese Internet services blocked searches for the phrase mìshū bāng (秘书帮). Roughly translated as “secretaries gang,” the term relates to the speculation surrounding government probes into public officials linked to former...

Media

03.07.14

A Map of China, By Stereotype

Why is the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang “so chaotic”? Why are many from the southern metropolis of Shanghai “unfit to lead”? And do people from central Henan Province really steal manhole covers? These are just some of the questions—...

Media

02.26.14

China, LinkedIn Would Like to Add You to Its Network

LinkedIn is now aiming its bow for the rocky shoals that have claimed Facebook, Twitter, Google, and even eBay: the Chinese market. On February 24, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner announced the launch of LinkedIn’s Chinese-language site, still in beta,...

Media

02.21.14

How the Internet and Social Media Are Transforming China

Shazeda Ahmed
“The Internet has radically transformed China,” said Emily Parker, author of the book Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices from the Internet Underground, in a public discussion at Asia Society in New York on February 19.Talking about the Internet’...

Media

02.13.14

Did President Xi’s Dumpling Outing Create a Pilgrimage Site?

Isaac Stone Fish & Helen Gao
Beijing, China—It’s well after lunch and Liu Fengju still hasn’t gotten her food. The sixty-seven-year-old wife of a retired railway worker came to Beijing to spend Spring Festival, the annual seven-day Chinese New Year celebration, with her niece...

New Regulations for Online Video Sharing

Anne Henochowicz
China Digital Times
China's State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television issued a notice including rules such as real name registration for all users uploading to video sharing sites. 

The State of Journalism in China

Paul Mooney, Evan Osnos, David Barboza...
Nieman Journalism Lab
How reporters are trying to work around China’s resurgent censorship, 25 years after Tiananmen.

Media

02.03.14

‘Chicken Fart Decade’: GDP Vs. Smog

Chinese media have debated why January saw pollution so extreme it closed schools and airports, chased away foreign tourists, and even prompted a ban on Lunar New Year’s fireworks. It’s likely that a substantial portion of this smog is caused by...

Media

01.31.14

Closing Time? China’s Social Media Crackdown Has Hit Weibo Hard

Findings by East China Normal University (ECNU), a research university in Shanghai, commissioned by respected U.K. outlet The Telegraph and released January 30, lodges concrete data behind what frequent users and analysts of Chinese social media...

Media

01.23.14

Carpe Coin: Crowdfunding Could Change Chinese Politics

Crowdfunding, which allows web users to contribute small sums of money to fund collective projects like concerts and films, is taking off in China—and just how far it will go is more than a business question. By allowing netizens to vote with their...

How the Chinese Internet Ended Up at a House in Cheyenne, Wyoming

Brian Fung
Washington Post
In trying to block Chinese traffic going to Sophidea, the Great Firewall's operators accidentally diverted more traffic there.

China Suffers Massive Internet Outage, Analysts Suspect Hackers

Paul Armstrong
CNN
The state-run China Internet Network Information Center blamed the blockage on a “malfunction in root servers.”

A Globe-Trotting Serial Entrepreneur Finds Roots in China’s Start-Up Scene

Ron Gluckman
New York Times
From information technology and gaming, to local comedy, Richard Robinson knows what is going on in China. 

A Globe-Trotting Serial Entrepreneur Finds Roots in China’s Start-Up Scene

Ron Gluckman
New York Times
 From information technology and gaming, to local comedy, Richard Robinson knows what is going on in China. 

Media

01.07.14

Grand Theft China: Tase Corrupt Officials in New Online Game

Official corruption in China is a serious matter: In January 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping openly vowed to tackle it, and a 2013 Pew study found that fifty-three percent of Chinese consider it a “very big problem.” But fighting bribery,...

Media

01.03.14

Coming to Chinese Headlines in 2014

Chinese people have spent another year breathing dirty air, fretting about food safety, poking fun at corrupt officials, and complaining about tightening censorship—but as a discerning consumer of international news, you probably knew that already...

Culture

12.19.13

Chinese Literature Online

Michel Hockx
In July of last year, Brixton, U.K.-based novelist Zelda Rhiando won the inaugural Kidwell-e Ebook Award. The award was billed as “the world’s first international e-book award.” It may have been the first time that e-writers in English from all over...

Media

12.11.13

Pollution Has ‘Five Surprising Benefits,’ says State TV, but Chinese Unamused

Polluted air is a fact of life for many Chinese citizens, and it’s currently smothering parts of the country—but that’s not all bad, according to one state media outlet’s widely-ridiculed attempt at positive spin. A recent bout of noxious smog has...

China Story Yearbook 2013: Civilising China

China Story
“China Story Yearbook 2013” contains a rich range of translated material from Chinese sources related to politics, social change, urban transformation, law and order, international relations, the economy, the Internet, major news...

Another Massive Photoshop Fail in China

David Wertime
Foreign Policy
Social media in China lit up with mockery another obviously doctored image, this time posted on the Ninguo, Anhui government website, purporting to show vice-mayor Wang Hun pay a friendly visit to an elderly woman. &...

Media

11.06.13

Sex Ed Videos Go Viral

Liz Carter
A collection of sex education videos have just gone, ahem, viral on the Chinese Internet. On October 29, a three-person team calling itself the “Nutcracker Studio” released three one-minute clips addressing tough topics in childhood sex education,...

Former Google China Chief Faces Online Attacks

Josh Chin
WSJ: China Real Time Report
Major Chinese Internet portals have republished an essay from an official media website that implies that Kai-fu Lee lied about being diagnosed with cancer, in what some of his supporters are calling a coordinated ad hominem effort...

The World’s Most Active Twitter Country?

Victor Lipman
Forbes
In terms of active Twitter users (defined as those “who used or contributed to the platform at least once a month”), the country with the most users was China, with 35.5 million, even though Chinese netizens are restricted from using Twitter.&...

Sina C.E.O. Charles Chao on How Weibo Is Changing China

Liz Gannes
All Things Digital
“Before, if anything happened, any accident or disaster, the information can be withheld or contaminated by government media control; but now it’s impossible, almost, to withhold information,” Chao said at the Stanford University China 2.0...

China Broadcasts COnfession of Chinese-American Blogger

William Wan
Washington Post
Chinese authorities have increasingly been broadcasting interviews after big-name arrests, forcing suspects to confess publicly to alleged crimes prior to trial or conviction.  

Media

08.27.13

China’s Original Social Media: Bathroom Graffiti

The men’s room in the passenger station in Qujing, Yunnan province will be familiar to anyone who has answered the call of nature in one of China’s provincial bus stations. Dim fluorescent lights give a clinical blue pallor to the bleary-eyed,...

Sinica Podcast

08.23.13

Turning the Tables on Sinica

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
This week sets a new record for introspective profanity as we reverse our usual format, in a show that features David Moser and Mary Kay Magistad turning the tables on Jeremy Goldkorn and Kaiser Kuo with an interview that explores how both view...

Media

08.22.13

You Can’t Handle the Truth: Bo Xilai’s Courtroom Performance Wins Fans

A show trial this is not. But is a twist ending in the major blockbuster “The Life of Bo Xilai” in the offing?The long-awaited trial of Bo Xilai, once a rising star in the Chinese Communist Party, took place Thursday morning, but instead of the...

Alibaba Duels With Tencent for Online Dominance in China

Lulu Yilun Chen
Bloomberg
Two of China’s richest men are intensifying their rivalry over the world’s biggest Internet market. Both have made purchases and encroached on each other’s established markets in the battle for dominance of the country’s online spending...

Media

08.08.13

Chinese State Media: Online Critics “Incite Political Unrest”

While the Internet has become the site of almost constant political arguments in China, few articles have generated as much debate as a recent piece by blogger Wang Xiaoshi. On August 1, Xinhua News Agency, a state-run media outlet, posted Wang’s...

Reports

07.24.13

Throttling Dissent: China’’s New Leaders Refine Internet Control

Madeline Earp
Freedom House
This special report is based on the 2013 China chapter of Freedom House’’s annual Freedom on the Net survey. As the home of one of the most systematically controlled and monitored online environments in the world, China will no doubt retain its...

Media

07.10.13

Australian PM’s Online Musings Have Chinese Wondering: Where Is Xi’s Microblog Account?

On July 9, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd posted on a social media site about a phone conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The twist? The message was written in Chinese on the immensely popular Chinese microblogging platform Sina...

Media

06.28.13

A Character Battle Between China’s Government and its Internet Users

The horse is out of the barn. Now that China’s social Web has given every citizen the ability to publish for a wide audience—a privilege once reserved for the government—state publications and Web users there continue to wrangle over who best grasps...

A Hero’s Welcome for Snowden on Chinese Internet

Wall Street Journal
Chinese Internet users – who for years have lived with well-founded paranoia over the possibility that someone the government could be monitoring their activities online — lauded the self-described whistleblower for the risks he has taken in...

Media

06.11.13

Chinese Web Users React to U.S. National Security Agency Surveillance Program

The online reactions to the PRISM incident, in which the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has been revealed to conduct a far-ranging surveillance program affecting many both in the U.S. and abroad, have been as fascinating as the event itself...