China’s rising middle class, democracy, and property rights.

Before going to university, before attending courses on China, I sometimes talked with my father about the consequences of China’s growing middle class on the prospect of democracy—a subject that neither of us were knowledgeable about, but found interesting. What came out of those talks, at least, for me, was the belief that as Chinese [...]

China’s Great Firewall in action.

Here’s an interesting article I found on IT-networks.org. The article covers how the GFW works, how it’s used to arrest netizens, issues with China’s underground/undersea fiber-optic cables, and why the Chinese network tends to operate so slowly:
“A US businessman negotiating in Beijing with a large state-owned Chinese company was startled to discover that the morning [...]

The Nature of China’s Business Press

My journalism course on China’s Mass Media had a guest speaker today—-Arthur Kroeber, the managing director and head of research for Dragonomics and editor-in-chief of the China Economic Quarterly. Mr. Kroeber talked to us about the evolution of the business press in China since the reform and opening began in 1978, how economic reportage has [...]

China’s heavy handed approach to censorship

The Great Firewall censors content at three levels. Nine Internet Access Providers supply Internet to China–and each IAP is connected to a foreign Internet source. Each IAP is connected to thousands of Internet Service Providers, which sell internet to Chinese users. The first level of The Great Firewall’s censorship occurs at the IAP level. [...]

Smelly cab, smelly cab, why won’t they ride in you?

I have to compare the way China Daily and the NYT report on big events for one of my classes. While I was looking around ChinaDaily.com.cn for some foreign news stories not covered by the AP, I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, this great headline:
“Smelly taxis warned to tarnish Beijing’s image in [...]

Real-time censorship at work.

I was checking out Roland Soong’s ESWN and came across a link to “Positive Solutions,” a blog by someone working at China Daily. The post of interest is the blogger’s experience with real-time censorship during Sohu.com’s Q&A with Wen Jiabao. I recommend checking the post out.