Beijing

According to the implementation of the “Beijing shi wei bo fazhan guanli you guan gui ding (Regulation on mirco-blogging in Beijing)” , the real-name authentication will be executed by the four popular microblogs in China from March 16. Theese include Sina (weibo.com), Sohu (t.sohu.com), Netease (t.163.com) and Tencent weibo (t.qq.com). Although this regulation claims to be “voluntary”, old users without real-name authentication are unable to post and forward messages anymore. They can only browse contents on the blog.

Translated by: Kenny Choi

Editor note: This article, originally published in inmediahk.net tells significant issues on free speech at Hong Kong, China, Taiwan and Macao.

Caption: Hong Kong Netizens against the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2011，which forbid the exemption of derivative works as not being infringing.

At the beginning of the year, the Office for Personal Data Protection of Macau government issued the Guidelines on Publication of Personal Data on the Internet. In addition to include individual identification information, private life, medical records and other information as “personal data”, the guidelines also consists of “data revealing philosophical or political beliefs, political society or trade union membership, religion and racial or ethnic origin.” The Guideline states that except the consent of the litigants has been acquired or their information been published, any sensitive information cannot be publicized. Daily practice on the internet today could infringe Personal Data Protection Act. Therefore people who concern with freedom of speech requested amendment of the Guidelines.

Editor note: This article about the use of microblogs by Chinese police is originally published in Xinhuanet

Recent years, the People of the Republic of China police has created MicroBlog and has caused great concern in the Internet.

Is it a “show” or “internet politics”? How do law enforcers adapt the liberal and free internet atmosphere? How does MicroBlog reflect the governance mentality? Reporters visited the police MicroBlog to take a look.

Google's official announcement regarding its new approach to China has been escalated to the diplomatic exchange between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chinese officials, who denied any role in the attacks.

Although the decision may be business in nature, Google's market share in China is not big while there are more and more political risks in keeping their business in China. The 10 years sentence of mainland Chinese journalist Shi Tao is the most well known case in which Yahoo! (Hong Kong) provided the Chinese government with Shi's email information as evidence for the prosecution.

The campaign against the proliferation of pornography on mobile devices as outlined by the MIIT official document has entered the second stage in early 2010. According toXinhuanet's report in mid Jan, Mobile China Shanghai branch will start suspending a mobile phone's SMS function if they find the number distribute “vulgar”, “pornographic” and other illegal content. Mobile China Beijing also claimed that they would suspend a mobile phone's SMS function if they find a mobile number distributing "vulgar" and illegal content in a massive scale. Apart from Mobile China, the second largest telecom China Unicom also set up similar filter system.

The monitoring of mobile SMS has not only invaded citizen' private life but also set up an infrastructure to crack down social mobilization via mobile phone. In the past few years, mobile phone SMS has played a significant role in a number of mass incidents, such as the Xiamen anti-PX demonstration in 2007, the anti-maglev train strolls in Shanghai in 2009 and the recent protest against the Trash-to-energy incineration plant in Panyu.

A legal aid group in Beijing was recently shut down by the government and was subject to a penalty of 1.2 million yuan (US$175,000) for alleged tax evasion. Xu Zhidong, a member of the group, was detained by the authority on July 30. By coincidence, in Hong Kong, a supposedly free city of China, two cultural preservationists were suddenly charged with HK$270,000 (US$34,000) as a compensation for the cost of a judicial review two years ago. Money seems to be a new weapon for the Beijing and Hong Kong governments to suppress the civil society.

(Full article in Chinese) Excerpt:

You think that the building of "Bird's Nest" (Beijing National Stadium) is a process of merging Chinese design with internationalization. In this process, what insights do we get and what is the impact on the future?

Watching the Olympic new on T.V, I laughed until tears came out.

The news about the Olympic torch is never ending. Details like whether our chief executive Donald Tsang’s arm is strong enough to hold the torch and run for 200km are reported in length. As for Hu Jia, who has been sentenced to 3.5 years imprisonment because of “sedition of the state power”, has been sidelined by piles of Olympic public relation news. The International Olympic Committee and T.V station want us to see a colourful Beijing, with grand spectacles. I looked at the smiling face of the news anchor, it looked like the Olympic symbols – Fu Wa.

The Peking University is building a five-star hotel. But the teachers and students accuse this project of occupying the university’s land for research and teaching and violating the land-use designation in the campus planning.

This hotel, named after “Weiming Lake”, the famous spot in the Peking University and located at the northern side of Baiyi Road and by the wall of campus, is still under construction. This is a project of the Peking University Science Park Limited (PUSP). It is scheduled to open in October.