China News


Yesterday was the last year of the year of the dragon. Today is the first day of the year of the snake – according to the Chinese lunar calendar.

An impression about the new years celebrations on youtube (Shanghai 2013). Crazy fireworks and noise all day long.

And here 2 videos taken in Beijing in 2008

and part 2 on

Just a few useful words to explain todays match vs England to Chinese friends :

Wembley – 温布利

football – 足球

referee – 裁判员

England - 英国

big classic match – 十大经典决赛

We want revenge for 1966 – 我们要为1966复仇

Chinese New Year – Part II.

 

Beijing really gone crazy – unbelievable

 

Beijing welcomes the Year of the Rat! Enjoy this video taken in Beijng.

After a two week hiatus, Youtube, a Google-owned video sharing network, is back online.

There is no official answer as to why Youtube was blocked for a two week period by the Chinese internet regulators. Speculations have narrowed the filtration to either the 17th National Communist Party Congress, which is China’s most important meeting of political leaders that discuss the future of China held every five years, or the unveiling of the Taiwan version of Youtube. The YouTube Taiwan site is also accessible in China.

More on chinaorbit news

The Olympic development in Beijing may be about to face its toughest challenge yet. Sun Ruoyu, a 55 year old bakery owner in Qianmen District is refusing to move out of her home to make way for a ‘beautification’ project.

 

Her home and business is now the only building left on what used to be a busy row of shops. All the others have been demolished and replaced with new grass lawns and saplings. The bakery opened by Sun’s family in the 1840’s and has been on Beijing’s demolition list since Monday 6th August.

A bulldozer arrived at Sun’s house on Wednesday 8th August; however, Sun resisted the demolition by climbing onto the vehicle and shouting at the driver. The family has been offered about 1.6 million RMB (approx US$ 200,000). Sun claims that this is not enough and has refused the offer. With such a low offer Sun claims that she won’t be able to afford to buy an apartment in Qianmen District after it is redeveloped to what is sure to become one of Beijing’s priciest neighbourhoods.

Some good news for Wikipedia Fans in China. The popular online encyclopaedia seems to be available at least in Beijing, I don’t know about other parts in China.
Wikipedia has been censored in China since October 2005 (with a short interruption in October 2006).
At the moment, nearly all articles can be accessed from China, only a few China-related articles (the main article about China, of course some articles related to human rights) are still blocked. If you search for Falun Gong, event eh search function does not work.
The popular blog platform blogspot.com is still blocked from China.
I have read nothing about it in newspapers yet – maybe it is no longer worth mentioning it, because the Chinese censorship department somehow can not make up its mind – to keep it blocked or not.
Probably, this is also a sign, that the Chinese government has improved its technology to block websites again, especially the filter to block content (not IP-addresses or IP-ranges) seems to work better now.

Censorship in China

A lot of people still think, that China is just blocking the internet somehow and trying to prevent people from using the internet. Actually, just the opposite is the case:
The internet is a perfect tool for the Chinese government to control the news and spread its propaganda – not only offline, but now also online. And it is a perfect tool to inform people, especially in rural areas about their rights (e.g. to control corruption).

The most popular news websites are controlled and censored by the government. Most Chinese are not interested in non-Chinese websites anyway (chatting, online games, blogging seems to be the only thing, Chinese do in internet cafes), so the Chinese just seem to be content to block foreign websites about human rights, Tibet, Falun Gong and somewhat for fun a few big US-newspapers. For blogs, it still seems to be different.

If Chinese want to have a blog in China, they have two choices: They need to register with a Chinese blog hosting services, which means, their blog will be controlled by the company or they can host a blog on their own website – which means, they need a license for their website.
Therefore, something the Chinese government seem to be quite concerned about, are of course foreign blog- platforms like blogspot.com, because they want to prevent Chinese bloggers from using those platforms instead of Chinese ones

I am curious, how long Wikipedia will stay unblocked in China this time.

It seems, that at least in Beijing, it is not so easy anymore to extend your F-Visa. Until now, it was never a problem to extend it for another 6 month, now a few people I know had problems even getting a 3 month extension.

Probably, teh guidelines changed, because the Chinese government wants more control because of the Olympic Games next year or maybe more control over foreigner coming to China with an F-Visa and working here without a proper working permission.