Paul Mooney, Edward Wong, Bob Dietz, and Sarah Cook are in Washington DC to participate in a panel discussion organized by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. "China's Treatment of Foreign Journalists" begins at 3:30 pm ET today (Wednesday) and can be streamed live here. It's a bit early for you China people -- 4:30 am -- but may be worth it if you have nothing better to do.
"Is Beijing about to Boot the New York Times?" asks the headline to this Foreign Policy article (not paywalled!) by Isaac Stone Fish. It's a fair bit of speculation: 12 Times journalists are apparently anxiously waiting for their annual visa renewals, as revealed by two sources speaking to FP on background. (Emphasis on either "anxious" or "still waiting," depending on your level of cynicism about media / China.) About a dozen Bloomberg journalists are reportedly in the same boat.
A group of Chinese dissidents and exiles ran naked on a chilly night outside the Stockholm Concert Hall on Tuesday, December 10, and published a declaration undersigned by Liao Yiwu (pictured above), Bei Ling, Wang Yiliang, Meng Huang, and Wang Juntao. As translated by China Change, the declaration begins:
The New York Times reports that the foreign ministries of the Czech Republic, Portugal, Bulgaria, Latvia and Hungary have been hacked by the Chinese ("traced to Chinese hackers"). As we've said before, however, "hacked," as used in popular media, is an incredibly broad term meant to encompass a wide variety of malicious online activity, when in fact its actual connotation is much narrower, signifying a sort organized, targeted attack against an individual or institution. In our digital age, we'd do well to employ more specific words when the occasion calls for it -- "phishing," for instance, which is what appears to have happened with the above European countries.
Just as the monthly nationwide freakout over Chinese air was winding down, Chinese Central Television had to go ahead and publish an article, since deleted, that lauded the "Five Surprising Benefits From China’s Haze." I really have nothing to add to a topic already covered by Tea Leaf Nation ("Although it may be satirical, the article reads more as a tin-eared attempt to wring an Upworthy.com-style listicle from a genuine environmental menace"), Time, etc., but I do want to share the below video, from The Onion, posted three years ago.
Authorities in Beijing's have reportedly used concrete to seal off wells that had served as makeshift homes for migrant workers in a particularly impoverished area in Chaoyang district. Hug China reports:
The latest column from New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan is about China: an article that first summarizes why it's becoming increasingly difficult for foreign correspondents to work here, then reminds its readers that the Times remains -- unlike Bloomberg, I think is clearly one implication -- a news company first and foremost.
