This is a 1976 Cultural Revolution poster from chineseposters.net. It celebrates Chairman Mao's 1966 call to arms: "bombard the headquarters." He egged on the Red Guards to go after corrupt and venal officials who: "...have stood facts on their head and juggled black and white, en...

Most readers of this blog have probably heard of the "fifty cent party" - people in China who are either paid or who volunteer to post pro-government opinions and information. If you are not familiar with the "fifty cent party" phenom, last year David Bandurski wrote an excellent...

This interview with lawyer-blogger Liu Xiaoyuan was shot by Danwei.org in November. Liu writes today that he is being forced by the Haidian District Justice Bureau to shut down his law firm for six months. This means, he says, that he and all of the lawyers who work at his firm are "unemployed ...

President Obama says he intends to listen to others as he formulates U.S. foreign policy. I've proposed that as part of his China policy,  the Obama administration should use the Internet to engage in conversation with the Chinese people, not just its leaders and elites.  What do you...

(Cross-posted from the Huffington Post) Dear President Obama, Welcome to U.S.-China relations! You didn't even mention China in your inaugural address, but the Chinese censors still took it personally. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's remarks in his confirmation hearing about currency manip...

  On Tuesday January 13th I visited Ai Weiwei at his home on the outskirts of Beijing. We talked for a bit over an hour while he ate breakfast. Despite having designed the Birds' Nest Olympic Stadium, Ai became a vocal critic of China's handling of the Olympics. He has written actively about the Ya...

When China's first Premier Zhou Enlai was asked in the mid-20th century for his opinion on the historical significance of the 1789 French Revolution, he is said to have replied: "It's too soon to tell." I've started to give the same answer when people ask me about Charter 08. I...

China's edgiest blogging platform, Bullog.cn, was shut down this afternoon. Authorities launched an anti-Internet smut crackdown on Monday. Bullog was not among the websites cited for failure to control "low and vulgar" content. A line about today's shutdown has already been posted on the Chinese Wi...

I just heard from a Chinese friend who works in the web industry. He says the anti-smut crackdown announced on Monday has already taken three victims at the Guangzhou-based web portal, Netease (Wangyi). He says that this morning， "high ranking officials" were highly angered by some content feature...

Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on Internet smut. Today, they annouced plans for "Netizen Day" on September 14th, which apparently marks 15 years since the first e-mail message was sent from China in 1987. The new celebratory day (I don't think it's an official holiday) was unveiled a...