You’ll notice I’ve added a new category to my blog: China News. I’ve decided to highlight some of the week’s best news stories related to China. So here goes with the first week of news –
Media, Advertising, & Entertainment
Foreigner Newspapers to be available in BJ during games
For subscribers, overseas newspapers usually arrive late in the day wrapped in a blue plastic envelope. Chinese censors often remove or paste shut pages of newspapers and magazines that contain stories or other content considered sensitive or unflattering to the communist authorities, including several pages of a recent National Geographic special edition devoted to China.
China’s 50-cent Internet Commenters
Recently featured on Danwei, Thomas Crampton’s video interview with Oiwan Lam about the ‘fifty cent army’ of online commenters who allegedly do Party propaganda 2.0 caused some controversy in Danwei’s comments section.
In addition to the proliferation of tall buildings, subway lines, highways and overall incredible improvements in infrastructure, there has come a proliferation of media, especially in places where, to be frank, I would rather not see media.
No more private rooms for ‘entertainment’
[M]ost nightclubs, discos and karaoke venues have private rooms for rent which play host to business soirees and social gatherings and sometimes involve all those things your parents told you not to do which, despite what the man on the street chanting “pretty girls” into your ear would have you believe, are illegal.
Olympics
Plenty of security fun at the Olympics 
While athletes from around the globe make use of years of intense training at August’s Olympics, Beijing’s law enforcement will be hoping their own preparations will pay off too. According to a report by the U.S. trade group Security Industry Association, China spent approximately USD 6.2 billion on security between 2004 and 2007. With all its new toys and rigorously trained personnel, Beijing’s security teams should be well prepared to beat records at their own set of Olympic events.
When traveling to China for the Olympics this summer, leave any expectation of privacy at the border. Instead, prepare for possible eavesdropping and surveillance–from listening devices in hotel rooms to bugged laptops and personal digital assistants to informers posing as friendly strangers.
Banning of Blacks from Beijing bars for Olympics?
Beijing authorities are secretly planning to ban black people and others it considers social undesirables from entering the city’s bars during the Olympic Games, a move that would contradict the official slogan, “One World, One Dream”.
Miscellaneous
Shanghai playing second fiddle to Beijing
Shanghai is home to the country’s most spectacular skyline, its most exquisite cuisine and, Beijing chauvinists would say, a lot of snobs.
They are fond of George W. Bush in China. There are not many capitals around the world where foreign policy practitioners say hand on heart that they will miss the US president. Beijing is an important exception. Sino-American relations, I heard several times during my trip, have been consistently steadier than at any time since the door to dialogue was opened by the ping-pong diplomacy of the early 1970s.
An after-shock of the Nuclear type?
A high-level Chinese military source secretly disclosed last week that the recent earthquake in Sichuan Province caused a chain-reaction of explosions in the Sichuan mountain areas. The explosions destroyed Chinese army’s largest armory, new weapon test bases and part of nuclear facilities including several nuclear warheads. This information is considered China’s top military secret.
Special thanks to all my Twitter friends who share interesting news stories about China.
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