- Bamman – With Twitter and Facebook blocked in China, the stream of information from Chinese domestic social media provides a case study of social media behavior under the influence of active censorship. While much work has looked at efforts to prevent access to information in China (including IP blocking of foreign Web sites or search engine filtering), we present here the first large–scale analysis of political content censorship in social media, i.e., the active deletion of messages published by individuals.
In a statistical analysis of 56 million messages (212,583 of which have been deleted out of 1.3 million checked, more than 16 percent) from the domestic Chinese microblog site Sina Weibo, and 11 million Chinese–language messages from Twitter, we uncover a set a politically sensitive terms whose presence in a message leads to anomalously higher rates of deletion. We also note that the rate of message deletion is not uniform throughout the country, with messages originating in the outlying provinces of Tibet and Qinghai exhibiting much higher deletion rates than those from eastern areas like Beijing.
- 河南汝州报废汽车翻新后流入农村成校车(图)_新闻_腾讯网 –
- 人民日报评刑诉法第73条 公众担心执法部门滥用_新闻_腾讯网 –
- China faces ‘timebomb’ of ageing population | World news | guardian.co.uk – Life expectancy in China is increasing but the number of young adults is plummeting due to strict birth control policies
- Karzai’s team clash over relations with US – Features – Al Jazeera English – probably both spies//
In presence of western officials, Afghan president's chief of staff and senior diplomat accused each other of spying.
- China Developers Set Up Funds as Cash Is Squeezed Amid Curbs – Bloomberg – Chinese developers are setting up property funds to diversify their sources of revenue as government real-estate curbs have led to a cash shortage.
- A Paean to Immortality – Caixin Online – Tang Xianzu's most famous work, The Peony Pavilion, is garnering a popular reception among contemporary audiences
- 重庆大学教授陈忠林因李庄案被西政法学教授群殴 – 原帖地址：http://www.tianya.cn/publicforum/content/law/1/199248.shtml，原作者：0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o 。
本帖内容对广大网友来说，具有很高的学习和欣赏价值，尤其是对法律感兴趣者。其中关于证人证言和当事人诉讼权利部分，非常完整且有深度。 (博讯 boxun.com) - Pics from a Chinese gangsters phone – Imgur –
- Beijing Calm as Cost of Insuring Chinese Government Debt Rises – Bloomberg – Beijing was calm today, with no evidence of increased police presence or interruption to government business, after a report of unrest published in a U.S.-based paper linked with a banned Chinese spiritual group.
Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan greeted U.S. guests at the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in central Beijing today, including former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, according to a report on the government’s website.
Zhongnanhai was supposedly the site of a coup attempt earlier today, according to the Epoch Times, a New York-based newspaper distributed in the U.S. by members Falun Gong spiritual group, which has been banned in China since 1999 and whose supporters print messages on Chinese currency calling for heaven to “destroy the Communist Party.” - 广东灵修培训调查：鼓吹换妻 教室传出呻吟声(图)_新浪上海_新浪网 – a china sex cult scandal
- 灵修班涉嫌淫秽被叫停 | 新浪微博-随时随地分享身边的新鲜事儿 –
- 明報新聞網-論壇-論壇–吳康民﹕要命的是沾上「國際背景」-20120321 – 如果有一位高級幹部，他有一至兩位外國情人，或者甚至有混血的私生子。這件事，外國傳媒可能有人知道，難免美國中央情報局或英國的MI-6人員也會知道，茲體事大，難道不影響國家安全嗎？
- Hong Kong Democratic Leader Fears Leung Victory – China Real Time Report – WSJ – One of the founding members of Hong Kong’s democracy movement has expressed fears for the city’s future if former cabinet member Leung Chun-ying is chosen as the city’s top leader this Sunday, as analysts increasingly expect.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Martin Lee, the founding chairman of the Democratic Party, called Mr. Leung an underground “Communist Party cadre” member, an allegation that recent statements by his opponent, former financial secretary Henry Tang, have helped fan.
Mr. Leung has repeatedly denied that he is a member of the Communist Party.
- Officials banned from NGO jobs-Global Times – Civil servants will not be allowed to take posts in charity organizations in a bid to ensure the non-governmental and voluntary nature of social groupings, according to the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau Monday.
Civil servants working at non-governmental charitable organizations will be removed from their posts in the organizations so that charities can retrieve their voluntary and social characteristics, according to the bureau, the Beijing Times reported yesterday.
"There are some civil servants who also work at charitable organizations, which is like being an athlete and the referee at the same time. How can the government cooperate with NGOs like this?" an official with the bureau's charity work section told the paper.
- New U.S. Doctine Said To Worry Beijing | AVIATION WEEK – “[Air-Sea Battle] is reviving the worry about China’s encirclement by Washington and its allies,” says Cynthia Watson, professor of strategy at the National War College. “They see the U.S. involvement with Vietnam, which they thought would never happen. They see their military modernization as how to make China a great power. China wants to be the major player in East Asia. They think military modernization is appropriate. We see military modernization as something you do in the face of a threat. There is a fundamental disconnect.”
- Climbing K2 – Pictures, More From National Geographic Magazine – Just getting to K2 is an arduous journey in its own right, though far easier than it was when the first expeditions traveled for months to reach the peak. I had arranged to accompany the 2011 team to Advanced Base Camp. We all met in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashi, or Kashgar, in the far west of China, and then headed south on June 19 in three Toyota Land Cruisers followed by a truck overloaded with more than two tons of equipment in blue plastic barrels:
- Facebook, Google Plus, Uncensored Search etc without a VPN | GreatFire.org –
- Major banks loosen first-house mortgage rates | Industries | chinadaily.com.cn – Major Chinese banks have started to tune down mortgage rates for first houses from the benchmark lending rate after a year of hovering above it, China Business Network reported Tuesday.
Apart from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, big banks including Bank of China, Bank of Communications and China Construction Bank all agreed to offer a benefit of 5 to 10 percent discount on first-house loans under certain condit
- Qingdao gang boss sentenced to death|Society|chinadaily.com.cn – 30 others punished in trial involving bribery of senior public officials
A gang boss was sentenced to death on Tuesday in Qingdao, East China's Shandong province, for 10 charges including intentional injury, gun trade and organized crimes.
Another 30 gang members received penalties ranging from two years in prison to death with reprieve, according to the Intermediate People's Court of Qingdao. Only one was exempted from criminal punishment for minor offences.
They are key members among the 144 suspects involved in this massive gang-related case. Others will receive sentences by the end of this month, according to a court statement.
The verdict for Nie Lei, the gang leader, is more than 130 pages long, and it took about six hours for judges to read the verdicts for all 32 suspects on Tuesday. - Civil service exams called too personal|Society|chinadaily.com.cn – An NGO aimed at fighting sexual inequality has called on authorities to scrap the "embarrassing procedures" women must go through during the civil service selection process.
In an open letter to three government departments on Monday, the Beijing Yirenping Center says female candidates currently must endure an intrusive gynecological examination and are questioned about their menstrual cycles. - Writers: App Store has pirated e-books|Society|chinadaily.com.cn – Chinese writers are targeting Apple's App Store, saying it is infringing on their copyrights by offering pirated e-book versions of their work.
A senior official of the China Written Works Copyright Society said on Monday that the organization "will do all it can" to support 22 writers' lawsuits accusing Apple of copyright infringement and demanding more than 23 million yuan ($3.6 million) in compensation. - China’s Botox backlash is about to hit a wrinkle|Media Digests|chinadaily.com.cn – A boom in recent years in cosmetic injections like Botox and dermal fillers in China is about to suffer a backlash as beauty experts claim the side effects from the mass use of fake products will start to appear, Yangtze Evening News reports.
- “贞操女神”征婚：公务员、处男优先 三年不过性生活_资讯频道_凤凰网 –
- “一卡通”巨额押金利息哪去了？ – 新京报网 – 市民申请公开“一卡通”押金和利息去向，向西城地税局实名举报北京一卡通公司拒开发票
- Martin Wolf-How to blow away China’s gathering storm clouds – FT.com – Yet getting from an investment rate of 50 per cent of gross domestic product to one of 35 per cent, without a deep recession on the way, requires an offsetting surge in consumption. China has no easy way to engineer such a surge, which is why its response to the crisis has been still higher investment. In addition, China has come to rely heavily on investment in property construction: over the past 13 years investment in housing has grown at an average annual rate of 26 per cent. Such growth will not continue.
China may indeed manage the transition to a very different kind of economic growth. The country still has vast potential to catch up. But the challenges of adjusting to the new pattern will be huge. Plenty of middle-income countries have failed. It is difficult to argue against China, given past successes. The best reason for confidence is that top policy makers lack such complacency. - Inside-Out China: On Bo Xilai’s "Chongqing Model" – I have seen Bo Xilai characterized as a Western-style politician, which I find amusing. Bo is a product of China's political system, pure and simple. His education was Mao worship and he has not transcended it; his ideas are all out of old playbooks; his suffering in his youth – years of unjust imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution – seems to have only made him more cynical and cruel.
