As some readers may be aware, new measures restricting foreign content online in China (or “Administrative Regulations for Online Publishing Services”) are dropping March 10 – today. Over at China Law Blog, Steve Dickinson has answers to most of the major players and questions, but we felt obliged to follow up with Steve on a couple of local matters – for, you know, local people.

BJC: How will the rules affect the “expat rags” – English-language listings magazines — usually published in legally grayish partnership with a Chinese firm that has a proper “kanhao” (publishing license)?

SD: Foreign ownership of a print publication (e.g., That’s Shanghai, That’s Beijing, Redstar, City Weekend, Time Out, etc.) is illegal. All these magazines are owned and published by Chinese nationals and are subject to the standard PRC censorship rules. That is why they are so boring.

I am not aware of any foreign-oriented magazines that are published by foreign nationals. If such magazines exist, they are illegal and the publisher is subject to serious criminal sanction. However, I don’t know a printer in China who would take the risk, so I doubt that any such magazines exist that have any serious circulation. [Ed’s note: I know a few do exist but with tiny circulations and usually in Tier-3 type cities]

BJC: What about foreign-hosted websites that mainly focus on China-based content… like Beijing Cream? 

SD: All such websites are illegal in China. However, China does not exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction. Instead, China has created the Great Firewall by which it selectively blocks the sites that it decides are objectionable, based on criteria no one really understands. All activities of such websites within China are illegal and participants in such activities (reporters) are subject to either being sanctioned, jailed, or deported. This happens for the foreign political websites that are written in the Chinese language. I have not heard of anyone getting sanctioned for writing for a general interest English-language foreign website. It does, however, remain a possibility. This vague threat of a visit from the government serves to chill the expression of opinion. It is cheap and effective and widely used in single-party Leninist dictatorships.

So there you have it. You’ll still be able to flick through City Weekend and Shanghaiist while waiting for feckless friends to arrive late… for the immediate future. But you never know. Thanks to Steve Dickinson of Harris Moure for the help. (Image via)

– ISIS captive, as told to an interviewer on the Chinese show On the Road.
The entire show has since been censored by Chinese authorities

Zhang (center left, wearing sunglasses) poses with Kurdish forces and members of his film crew

A reality show about a pair of millionaire tourists has been nixed from China’s Internet, after an episode depicting encounters with Kurdish forces fighting ISIS in Syria was broadcast on the mainland.

Married couple Zhang Xinyu, 38, and Liang Hong, 36, made their name crisscrossing the globe for travel show On the Road, getting about as far as possible from the stereotype of the bovine boor abroad: the pair have filmed themselves in unfashionable spots like Somalia and Chernobyl, enjoying their nuptials in Antarctica and recreating an iconic Buddha previously destroyed by the Taliban.

Zhang is a self-made entrepreneur who joined the PLA Air Force when he was 19. After leaving, he invested his savings in a tofu shop in south Beijing. Bean curd was still a relatively rare delicacy in those days and the business flourished. With a line of tofu-making machines and investments in trade, jewelry and construction, Zhang has been able to fund a passion for travel that has established him and his wife as minor celebrities.

Though the affable pair has probably done more for Chinese soft power than any effort by Xinhua, that hasn’t won them credit with the censors. After Syria, all episodes of On the Road were removed from streaming sites such as Youku and Tudou, their Baidu fan forum was shut down, and the show’s official Weibo account – as well as the couple’s personal microblog accounts – was frozen.

Kurdish forces near the Syrian battlefront

Journey to the Middle East

The most recent episode of On the Road depicted the well-tooled couple running with underpowered Kurdish troops in Syria, launching a drone into ISIS-held territory, and interviewing captured Islamic State troops shortly before their (off-camera) execution. It’s surprisingly bold TV – the sort you can’t possibly get away with in China.

While Beijing has condemned the Paris attacks, it’s not interested in having a conversation on terrorism back home. Beijing is as clueless about fighting Islamist terrorism as Western leaders, as bungling attempts to quell the insurgency among ethnical Muslims in Xinjiang well demonstrate. Short of any solution, Beijing is relying on brute censorship to quell all debate in the meantime. (When ISIS executed a Chinese hostage recently, censors played down news of the killing and suppressed any calls for a reprisal.)

Therefore it’s not a surprise that the show got yanked – the Syria incident crosses every red line on what Beijing considers acceptable for public consumption. What’s curious is it even got broadcast in the first place, given China’s much-ballyhooed Internet restrictions, or that some wishful thinker clearly didn’t think it would cause problems in the first place.

Below is an edited translation of crew member “Liu Feng’s” account of what happened during filming of the controversial episode (which was broadcast last week – the episode was still viewable on YouTube until this weekend; it is now only accessible to members*).

“What happened in Paris yesterday has been going in Iraq and Syria every day for the past five years. On the Road’s Season 3 crew drove to Iraq this May, after breaking through Taliban blockades in Afghanistan. A month later, with the help of Iraqi Kurds, the team entered Syria ‘with no permission,’ heading straight to Kobani, the frontline of Kurds against ISIS,” Liu writes.

“The battlefront is very long and not heavily guarded, though everyone was very hospitable to we Chinese, with many saluting us. [The Kurds] lived in very modest sheds and called each other ‘comrade.’ They even prepared tea for us.

“A 14.5mm machine gun was the only ‘heavy weapon’ in the Kurds’ camp, which jammed very frequently. Their weapons were very old and outdated: most of their ammunition was almost 40 years old. Put it this way – the Kurds are fighting a 2015 war with 1960s weapons, whereas their rivals ISIS, after capturing Mosul, took over local Iraqi and Syrian government arsenals, which included many arms left behind by the US army, including chemical weapons.

“The Kurds were fascinated by our crew’s filming drone. They sent the drone above ISIS territory and filmed for a while […].” Three days after the crew left, though, disaster struck the Kurdish team. ISIS “used mustard gas on the Kurds. Seven soldiers who were just drinking tea with Zhang days ago died.”

The team also visited a camp of female Kurdish soldiers, aged 17 to 27, described as “highly limited” in their physical ability to attack ISIS but psychologically effective because “ISIS would most hate to die at their hands… in the world of ISIS, a man killed by a woman will never go to heaven.” When the crew gifted the women their bulletproof vests, “the Kurds had obviously never seen one and had to test them by shooting at it.”

The team decided to help their Kurdish allies seek out some “real action” by sending a drone deep into ISIS-held territory; when the enemy fired on the aerial camera, light tracers betrayed their position (miraculously, the drone escaped completely intact). Soon after, the crew got to meet the enemy face to face.

“[The Kurds] agreed to let us interview a couple of ISIS captives. Yes, real, bona fide ISIS members. We wanted to see what they look like, what they think, how they act, how they face death. Three men were brought into our room, all blindfolded.

Zhang (left) waits to interview one of the seated captives

“We knew they were all going to be executed”

“The first came from Turkmenistan, was extremely handsome and looking not the slightest bit brutal. He had been in ISIS for a long, long time but we couldn’t communicate with him, as he did not speak Russian, Arabic or Turkish.

“The second was from Tunisia, and was strong. He said he had been a house painter before… after the Arab Spring a year ago, he went to Syria and joined the [Free Syrian Army] to fight against Assas. There he was recruited by ISIS and had an ISIS-arranged marriage. During battle in January, he was injured and captured.

“‘Have you killed anyone?’ [On the Road host] Zhang asked. He answered that, because they just randomly opened fire in battle, someone could have been unknowingly hit but he didn’t directly know if he’d killed someone – though perhaps he was trying to play down his own guilt. ‘So do you think ISIS is Muslim?’ He kept shaking his head. ‘Some extremist things that ISIS does is against Islam. This is not Islam.’ He then lowered his head and murmured that ISIS had tricked him: he missed home and he missed his mother.” (Reports from defectors suggest that disillusionment is quite common among overseas recruits)

“The third one pissed us off. He was 24 and a Kurd from Turkey himself. He was studying engineering in Turkey and didn’t even know Koran well. He just watched some ISIS promotional videos at school, contacted some extremists… then just left school and joined ISIS in Syria. On the first day, an ISIS officer asked if he was willing to be a human bomb and go to heaven, and he said no. He was then sent to rookies’ camp for two month. The first time he was sent into battle, he was captured. He considered ISIS simply a rather extremist form of Islam but not wrong. He also thought ‘beheading’ was simply the Islamic form of execution… Zhang asked if he knew what would happen to him. He bit his lip. ‘Do you miss your mother?’ ‘Yes.’ Then he began crying. Because ISIS doesn’t exchange POWs, we knew they were all going to be executed. We heard three gunshots in the camp when we left.”

One of the three ISIS hostages later believed to have been executed by the Kurds

While Weibo searches for the show produce no results, Zhang and Liang’s many fans are using the social media platform to make plain their disappointment at the show’s suspension and express concerns about their personal safety. During the third season of On the Road, Zhang and Liang made global headlines by “recreating” the destroyed Buddas of Bamiyan for their Kurdish friends, and were said to have been captured by ISIS, a rumor they dispelled by attending a book launch in the capital in late October. Instead, they have now vanished from their own country’s cyberspace.

Valentina is a journalist in Beijing. Follow her @valentinaluo

* UPDATE: Reader @Pennyfeathr kindly points out that episodes of the ISIS trip are back on YouTube, albeit at a different account. Watch the two parts here:

Sina Weibo’s watershed came in 2011 after two high-speed trains crashed in Wenzhou: as officials bungled the response, and then censored news stories, netizens stormed onto Sina’s microblogging platform to voice their outrage and fill gaps of knowledge with educated speculation. Four years later, just as Weibo has seemingly run its course, a different program is stepping into its place as the prime facilitator of unfettered discussion in this country of shackled exchange.

As far as watershed moments go, WeChat’s was notably less newsworthy in the classic sense: it was a sex scandal. Yet it was significant because the sex only became a scandal after — or the exact moment when — a message was transferred from one man’s phone onto another’s via this Tencent chatting platform. By the time the now-infamous Uniqlo sex video reached traditional media — traditional, these days, referring to the Internet — practically everyone who cared had seen it, or knew it existed.

This brings us to the horrific stabbing yesterday morning — outside, of all places, the Sanlitun Uniqlo that nestled into our collective consciousness only a month prior — details of which revealed itself almost exclusively on WeChat. Perhaps this seems unextraordinary, considering how fully WeChat has uplinked with most of our lives. But let’s pretend, for a moment, it were not possible to dart in and out of six separate chat rooms, to easily compare discrepancies in different tellings of the same story, to pose questions to dozens of people at the same time. How many instant messaging windows would you have opened? How many text messages sent? Phone numbers dialed? There was a time not long ago when we’d have to go to the scene to sniff for answers, if that’s what we wanted. Upon being stonewalled by official sources, you’d have to inquire of strangers, and then you would still only have a small piece of the puzzle.

Consider how many of us learned about the victim, the Chinese woman who was stabbed in the back (and how did we know it was the back?). It was likely from the following message, currently going around WeChat, sent from a person who knows both the woman and the foreigner who knelt over her:

Guys, it is very bad news. Our captain roro s wife has been killed by a crazy guy using a 1 meter long knife (“sabre” in french) a few hours ago in sanlitun. They were coming out of the embassy to officialize their wedding when they came accross this crazy chinese guy who told roro he did not like american people. He replied he was french. They left and he inserted his long knife inside isabelle s back.. Trying to defend her, the knife went inside roro s belly twice…. Isabelle died right after she made it to the hospital. Romain is going through an operation now because it was bleeding inside his body..This happened exactly 2 years after the murder of an american citizen in joyce city..
I can t find the words… Huge shock

Hours earlier, “My friend knows someone who knows the girl,” someone may have said in a group you’re in.

And those videos from the aftermath of the attack? Found on WeChat, of course.

As human beings we are inclined to gossip, and WeChat is currently the best tool for our time and place. It has tapped into our instinct to share and learn. Once upon a time, in a bygone age, we would gather around TVs for the 6 o’clock news, thus was our instinct to know and to know collectively. Well, China doesn’t air real news — nothing we can trust, I mean – and who has time for the television anymore? With WeChat, we get all the angles, sometimes simultaneously. We gather sources that we deem credible, and ignore those a bit too eager to forward rumors. We build a story, confirm or deny that story against the observations of others, and pass it into other groups. The transference of knowledge, from one bubble to the next, is seamless and swift. If we thought print media was slow before, print journalists are practically tablet engravers in this age of the intranet. No story published tomorrow will contain information that a smart and plugged-in smartphone user won’t have already obtained from multiple sources tonight.

The service won’t render the Internet obsolete, but it makes certain parts of it less vital: Sina Weibo, with all its ghosts and overseers? Who needs it. Twitter, that echo chamber with character limits? It’s fast becoming a place where the oldest of old-media hang out, those who haven’t ingratiated themselves into enough group chats. Facebook? LOL.

But WeChat, of course, did not rise out of pure innovation. Sure, it’s faster than microblogs (which are faster than blogs, etc.), and more tailored – you can choose who to follow, what groups to join or leave — but it would be much less useful if it were restrictive. That is, if messages were routinely censored, and certain topics disallowed. In other words, if it were a mobile version of Sina Weibo, which has been punished often enough that it will gladly stifle user participation to avoid offending sensibilities.

Finally, WeChat has the ability to create action, similar to 2009-11 Twitter (before Twitter became suddenly dead). A person — any person — can propose an action, and if it makes enough sense, creates enough momentum and gains enough support – all organically, of course, like a snowball — it will translate into movement. Ultimately, for as comfortable as virtual spaces have become, users still seek to translate their virtual conversations into real-world activity. For an example, check out this message currently making the WeChat rounds:

Here is what we all should do: Tomorrow, take a little time out of your day and go leave flowers and/or positive messages on the ground where it happened. We have to change the mentality here, enough with this “If I help, I’ll get in trouble” or “China doesn’t value people’s life” excuses. You can be black, white, yellow red or blue it doesn’t matter, bottom line is this, if you are in China YOU are CHINESE, you want to make China a better place then make it happen. So tomorrow let’s all show that we care, that life matters and that we are concerned by deposing flowers. People might look at you, judge you, ask you to leave but keep in mind that it is because you are doing the right thing. Let’s all make sure that tomorrow by the end of the day, all wechat moments are filled with pictures of flowers, and trust me, by night, people will light candles all over the place. This is how you change mentality, this is how you show you care about something, by doing something as simple as deposing a flower. So what’s your excuse?

I’m not saying there will be “candles all over the place” by nightfall tomorrow, but I’m willing to believe a few people will lay flowers. We’re just talking flowers, by the way, but authorities will notice. They’ll think, Next time, what if it’s not just flowers commemorating the innocent victim of a random attack? What if it’s, say, to commemorate a self-immolation at Tianamen? (Guess where I learned about the man who purportedly set himself on fire at Tiananmen last night?) What if it’s… something bigger?

It seems almost impossible that WeChat escapes official censure. It’s too easy to use, and thereby too dangerous. And this is how an innovative piece of technology that’s born in the People’s Republic of China dies there. Eventually, the only thing left to destroy will be censorship itself.

UPDATE, 4:16 pm: Flowers.

It doesn’t have to be Uniqlo. (Actually, better if it isn’t – spread the wealth.) It doesn’t even have to be a dressing room. But here’s an honest chance for us, the little people, to make a real difference in the fight against censorship: we can — by a simple bit of sex in a public place, a camera phone, and an Internet connection — show the world just how fucking dumb this fucking government can sometimes fucking be.

Apologies for the split infinitives.

We’ve been trying to do it with our page of porn sites not blocked in China (“We hate Internet censorship, of course, but so should the censors: it doesn’t work”), but this is much more effective. If you choose the video route and can sneak in a “we will be together,” that’s cool, but it’s unnecessary. Pictures will do. Post them. We’ll do it for you if you’d like.

Go do this. If you need a reason why, be reassured that you’re ruining the day for benighted bureaucrats who believe in “socialist core values,” and if they want their socialist values so bad, they can leave the sex to us and all just go fuck themselves.

“The vulgar video had spread like a virus online and clashed with socialist core values,” Xu Feng, a director at the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), was quoted as saying by the Global Times newspaper.

The government would “continue to crack down on vulgar materials online and safeguard the cyber environment,” Feng vowed. Beijing police are reportedly investigating who made the film and how it appeared on the internet.

(Above quote from the Guardian.)

Also, if you see a shirt available on Tmall or Taobao, BUY IT. It won’t be available for long.

In honor of Cyber Security Week in China — that’s this week, whereupon “China’s Internet police are stepping into the light,” according to WSJ — I thought we’d take a glimpse at the state of Chinese Internet smut through the lens of a recent happening, photographer Wang Dong’s now-infamous Forbidden City photo shoot featuring nude models.

Let’s compare how Chinese Internet censored the above picture — via SCMP — vs. how others did it, shall we?

Here’s The Independent:

Here is The Mirror, not exactly known for its modesty, using thick black lines to cover the woman’s sensitive parts:

Now let’s look at China Daily – technically state media, but it employs so many foreign editors that we can’t call it completely Chinese. Let’s consider this image a bridge into the hinterlands…

…of real Chinese Internet.

Here’s China.org.cn, using a considerably thin black line to cover the woman’s nipples. Cleavage, side boob, underboob, and pelvis are all fine…

…not like the Chinese Internet cops care, right?

WSJ:

Effective immediately, these agencies “cannot send images of [models] in swimwear or black lace,” Weibo Chief Executive Officer Wang Gaofei wrote on one of his verified blogs on Weibo. Mr. Wang also said these agencies won’t be allowed to use Weibo to publicize their online presence on other platforms.

The tone of Mr. Wang’s post took on a hint of exasperation. “If you really can’t” abide by such rules, Mr. Wang wrote, “then just act cutesy or sell bags.”

So with all its controls, smut patrols, campaigns against indecency, surely Chinese editors have received the message loud and clear, yes?

SZHK.com:

That’s basically nude!

Good luck, Net nannies. You have a tough job indeed, but at least it pays well.

Residents gather next to burnt-out tanks in the aftermath of the crackdown (via CNN)

Last year was the 25th anniversary of the “June 4 Incident,” as it is officially known. State security went full bore over the ultra-sensitive date, harassing journalists and activists, detaining anyone who sneezed on the subject.

They succeeded in maintaining the collective amnesia in-house, earned their bonuses and overtime, but in doing so, trolled foreign media so hard that the blowback was intense. I don’t know how much coverage was originally intended, but several journalist friends indicated they’d been so royally pissed off with the constant intimidation, their editors were all but sounding the bugle on the topic. Coverage was wall to wall, with stories everywhere.

This year, of course, will be much quieter: 26 isn’t as catchy as 25. But Global Times hasn’t forgotten, and duly produces a bungled editorial on the subject, attacking – and casually libeling – a group of overseas students for writing an open letter, requesting transparency over the crackdown. Here’s the closing paragraph:

Chinese society has reached a consensus on not debating the 1989 incident. Students born in the 1980s and 1990s have become the new targets of overseas hostile forces. When China is moving forward, some are trying to drag up history in an attempt to tear apart society. It’s a meaningless attempt and is unlikely to be realized.

Frankly, the rest of the rant isn’t worth the click. Moreover, there is really little point to GT’s article (even less so than usual, that is). No mainstream outlet had even reported on the letter prior to the editorial. The first was the Guardian, which published its article shortly before midnight a day later, referencing GT in the third graf.

If Streisand Effect was the intention of the trolling, so be it. There aren’t any other logical reasons for flagging the date by turning the full glare of the Batshit Signal on this group of 11 Chinese students while accusing them, ad hominem, of being “brainwashed” by a “paranoid minority” in an “attempt to tear society apart.” (Just because they’re “paranoid,” GT, doesn’t mean the government isn’t out to get them.)

It’s telling how an authoritarian apparatus that has engineered a culture of amnesia and self-censorship is, itself, quite incapable of either. Like a sinner with a guilty conscience, GT can’t help running its own mouth. An annual hit-piece on Tiananmen has become almost as symbolic and ritualistic as the candlelit gathering in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park. Rather than memorializing the victims, though, it simply serves to shame the perpetrators.

UPDATE: The shambles continues with an order from the goon squad to “urgently delete the Global Times commentary.” So dignified.

This Month in Bans (belatedly): March.

Another edition of This Month in Bans: February.

US Tech Giants From Government Procurement (nationwide)

One of the most important bans that took place this month was Beijing’s decision to discontinue allowing government procurement from a large number of foreign firms including Cisco, Apple, McAfee, and Citrix. Just like blocking Facebook is partly to boost domestic companies offering similar services, this move is intended to further curtail putting money into the pockets of foreigners in lieu of its countrymen. To say the strategy has worked in cases of companies like Tencent and Alibaba would be an understatement.

Online Pseudonyms, Parody Accounts & Anonymous Web Comments (national)

In a bid to force online users to link their social media accounts and blogs to their real names, China has increased an already-in-place rule requiring some Internet companies to disclose the real names of some of its users. Now, users of social media and blogs will all be required to link their online identities to their real ones. The rule also requires companies to have users pledge to avoid engaging in “illegal and unhealthy” activity, according to The Independent.

Smoking Meat in the Open Air (Chongqing)

In a hilarious bid to cut down on pollution, Chongqing’s government placed a ban on smoking meat in the open air, despite a long tradition of doing so, especially in the winter months. Later, authorities admitted that smoking meat probably wasn’t a significant factor in causing pollution, after they had scientists evaluate the program.

“Vulgar” Street Names, Like Ones Named After Foreigners (Beijing)

As the Telegraph reports, “Streets named after Chinese politicians, foreigners and dung beetles are to be outlawed under new directives from authorities in Beijing.” That means Dung Beetle Alley will become Always Shining Alley. Apparently a lot of streets had been named after prostitutes and different types of animal feces? That’s taken care of now, thankfully. Mao actually did something like this shortly after 1949, outlawing streets being named after Chinese political leaders to prevent cults of personality, according to Xinhua.

Fireworks (~140 cities)

Yeah, that didn’t go so well. I’m hearing them even now as I write. Anyway, fireworks are restricted in about 700 cities this year and banned in around 140. The Chinese, ever hungry for smoke and noise, have continued their traditional blasting of gunpowder. I say have at it Hoss, just not in the morning or in my backyard.

Trying Defendants in Prison Uniforms (nationwide)

Xinhua reports that the move comes to cut back on judicial prejudice. It’s a common site to see prisoners appear on trial in China being held on each elbow by a cop and donning an orange jumpsuit, but apparently that era is coming to an end. This is one of the fews bans that seems totally for the better.

Ivory Imports for One Year (national)

It’s no secret that the demand from some affluent Chinese is largely driving the African elephant poaching industry. In 2012, the New York Times cited experts as saying that as much as 70 percent of the world’s ivory trade was for China. Questionable as the industry may be on its face, there are those who think it should be legalized and heavily regulated. The problem with that in China is that regulators have failed massively. In 2008, 121 tons of ivory (equivalent to 11,000 elephants’ tusks) from the state’s official stockpile went missing, with the guy in charge admitting that it suggests a “large amount of illegal sale” of the ivory had taken place. So China has decided to ban ivory sales for a year to hopefully curb the growing practice of eliminating one of Earth’s most fascinating creatures.

Kevin is a freelance journalist and an editor for Shenzhen Daily. He lives in Shenzhen. Follow him @kevinpinner.

There’s verve here. Brio. These singers are rouged with holy spirit and plainly happier than you and I, poor nonbelievers at Christmas Mass. Why do we continue to pay the price for our pride? Who are we to let the piddling inconvenience of no Gmail make us glum, corruptible, not-rippling as befits our 5,000 years, unfaithful and obfuscated and dark and meekly dying on sand? March to this goddamn battuta, guys. INTERNET POWER. Hotdamn.

Says Sinosphere:

A throwback to revolutionary songs glorifying the state, the piece uses rich, if mixed, metaphors to boast of China’s influence over the Internet and its innovative prowess. To a bombastic battuta that sounds a bit like a military march, employees at the Cyberspace Administration, who reportedly worked overtime to practice the song, belted out memorable lines like, “Unified with the strength of all living things, Devoted to turning the global village into the most beautiful scene” and “An Internet power: Tell the world that the Chinese Dream is uplifting China.”

The song was performed during the Beijing Internet Association’s well-attended (and apparently televised) Lunar New Year celebration on Tuesday, if that were at all important, which it isn’t. This is the best thing Chinese censorship has ever given us.

WSJ’s Real Time China Report has translated a competing set of lyrics in which INTERNET POWER is given the primacy it richly deserves.

在这片天空日月忠诚的守望
Keeping faithful watch under this sky, the Sun and the Moon

为日出东方使命担当
Undertaking this mission for the break of dawn [in the East]

创新每个日子拥抱着清朗
Creating, embracing everyday clarity and brightness

像一束廉洁阳光感动在心上
Like a beam of incorruptible sunlight, touching our hearts

团结万物生长的力量
Uniting the powers of life from all creation

奉献地球村成为最美的风光
Offerings to the global village become the most beautiful of scenery

网络强国　网在哪光荣梦想在哪
Internet Power! The Web is where glorious dreams are

网络强国　从遥远的宇宙到思念的家
Internet Power! From the distant cosmos to the home we long for

网络强国　告诉世界中国梦在崛起大中华
Internet Power! Tell the world that the China Dream is lifting Greater China to prominence

网络强国　一个我在世界代表着国家
Internet Power! One self represents the nation to the world

在这个世界百川忠诚寻归海洋
In this world, all rivers loyally seek to return to the sea

担当中华文明的丈量
Bearing the measure of Chinese civilization

五千年沉淀点亮创新思想
5,000 years settle and give light to creative new thinking

廉洁就是一个民族清澈荡漾
Incorruptibility is the clear rippling of a nation

我们团结在天地中央
We unite at the center of Heaven and Earth

信仰奉献流淌万里黄河长江
Belief and giving flow for thousands of miles down the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers

网络强国　网在哪光荣梦想在哪
Internet Power! The Web is where glorious dreams are

网络强国　从遥远的宇宙到思念的家
Internet Power! From the distant cosmos to the home we long for

网络强国　告诉世界中国梦在崛起大中华
Internet Power! Tell the world that the China Dream is lifting Greater China to prominence

网络强国　一个我在世界代表着国家
Internet Power! One self represents the nation to the world

The Web is where glorious dreams are. It’s a dream that hangs in the interstice of stars. It lies within your self, you just have to know how to grasp it.

One of the nicer perks of being a mover and shaker in a one-party system is that you can pretty much declare anything is illegal and people just have to deal with it. This is a new monthly column that looks back at all that was banned in China in the past month.

Cleavage (in The Empress of China)

All of the sudden on New Year’s Day, the females on the nation’s most popular TV show, The Empress of China, had their cleavage eliminated. Lots of criticism followed, with popular outspoken businessman Ren Zhiqiang writing on weibo: “People aren’t concerned about cleavage, they’re concerned about a bunch of cultural troublemakers being in charge of making approvals.” Others on social media posted pictures of celebrities and drawings with the cleavage missing.

Car Sales Above 100,000 (Shenzhen)

After the mayor, vice mayor and head of the transportation department all said separately that Shenzhen, a city with 3 million cars and 1 million parking places, would not place a cap on car sales, they placed a cap on car sales, announcing it on Sina Weibo the day it was to take effect and prompting a massive rush to the city’s 2,200-some dealerships. More than 150,000 cars were sold between 5 pm and 6 pm. (For scale, last year 550,000 vehicles were registered throughout the entire year.) Now the city has capped car sales at 100,000 per year (20,000 of which must be electric vehicles). There is a convoluted system for how to earn the chance to attend a lottery or auction to get a license plate.

Auto-Show Girls (Shanghai Automotive Exhibition)

Although this one has yet to be confirmed because its purveyors are “seeking public opinion,” the Shanghai Automotive Exhibition could possibly ban auto-show girls. “We haven’t ruled out the possibility,” the organizing committee said in a Xinhua report. The ban possibly arose out of “moral concern” and in response to Shanghai’s deadly New Year’s Eve stampede.

U.S. Poultry (nationwide) 

China wasn’t alone on this one. Lots of countries banned US poultry after the USDA confirmed a bird flu case at a farm in Oregon. But for China, it’s a big blow to the economy. According to the WSJ, between January and November 2014, US poultry exports to China reached $272 million. The same report says China was the world’s sixth-largest importer of US chicken.

Individual Investors From Buying Private Bonds (nationwide)

With awareness of corporate default risks rising after Shenzhen-based property development company Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd. missed a loan payment on December 31, the nation has banned individual investors from purchasing bonds issued by small- and medium-sized enterprises through private placement. The move is expected make it more difficult for such companies to issue private bonds.

Getting Fetal Sex Tests Abroad (nationwide)

Fetal sex tests have long been banned, but of course that didn’t stop people from finding a loophole. In recent years, sending pregnant women’s blood samples abroad has become the go-to method. But not anymore.

Private Drivers From Using Ride-Hailing Apps (nationwide)

As of earlier this month, only licensed taxi drivers are allowed to use the best thing to hit cheap car rides since Craigslist’s rideshare, which never made it to China. Uber is facing legal difficulties in a number of countries, and there was just no way something this cool and useful would stand the test of time here, where bans are dealt out like cigarettes.

Burqas (Urumqi)

In case you hadn’t already heard, Xinhua is here to explain: “Burqas are not traditional dress for Uygur women.” Well, that settles that. France is the most well-known place to ban burqas, so it’s not unheard of in the West, but the land of wine and cheese hardly has a majority Muslim population, unlike Urumqi, where, the Washington Times reports, 50 percent of residents practice Islam.

UPDATE, 5 pm: Textbooks With “Western Values” (nationwide)

In a strident blow to its education system’s already strained integrity, China has banned university textbooks that promote “western values,” according to Xinhua. “Never let textbooks promoting western values appear in our classes,” said the current Minster of Education, Yuan Guiren. That also goes for “remarks that slander the leadership of the Communist Party of China” and ones that “smear socialism.” It’s no wonder “getting a good university education” is synonymous with studying abroad. But Party officials know this. Xi’s own daughter is at Harvard and thousands of others have sent their children to learn in pluralistic environments.

Kevin is a freelance journalist and an editor for Shenzhen Daily. He lives in Shenzhen. Follow him @kevinpinner.

John Ross (right), pictured in London

Last week, coverage of the embattled but peaceful pro-democracy rallies in Hong Kong earned the unsolicited though controversial criticism of one John Ross.

Ross, a British academic who describes himself as a “Senior Fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University,” took to Weibo (a Chinese Twitter) to accuse foreign media of being “too hypocritical.”

“In 150 years of British colonial rule in Hong Kong, they never permitted its people to elect their own governor, and the United States didn’t criticize the UK about it,” Ross wrote. In erecting this particularly withered straw man, of course, Ross utterly ignores the actual catalyst for these protests: the promises, originally brokered by the British, then later arguably broken by Beijing, for universal suffrage, as per the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ template agreed in 1984 between the UK and China.

Ross is obviously far too concerned with the hypocrisy of foreign governments to have any time for his own.

He proposes, for example, that the suffrage system now on the table in HK – three candidates, hand-picked by Beijing: Any color you like, so long as it’s red – is “much more democratic than the United Kingdom.” That’s presumably the same UK where calls for a referendum on Scottish independence were ruthlessly censored, its leaders crushed, journalists and activists imprisoned, and where the streets of Dundee and Glasgow are now lined with friendly, tear-gas wielding soldiers to preserve Scotland’s freedoms. To put things in perspective, in 2013 the Economic Intelligence Unit used actual data to rank countries by democracy, placing Hong Kong at 65 out of 165, with a score of 6.42, making it a “flawed democracy” (the UK is 16. China? 143).

Ross doesn’t – yet – enjoy the profitable pro-Party punditry platforms of his fellow foreign cheerleaders, such as Martin Jacques or meritocratist Daniel Bell, but nevertheless is intent on filling the mould of “foreign stooge of a Chinese dictator… manipulated by those who found him useful,” like US constitutional scholar Frank Goodnow before him.  Clearly he believes there’s still gold up in those hills.

So when the “former director of London’s Economic and Business Policy to ex-Mayor Ken Livingstone,” was approached this summer by Chinese tabloid the Global Times (GT) for a profile about foreign China Watchers, he was, no doubt, expecting a nice soap-job.

After all, GT is a state-owned affiliate of People’s Daily, and its Chinese edition (whose bug-eyed editorials the English edition faithfully reproduces) is particularly known for its “nationalist” bent.

Ross, meanwhile, is a loyal toady of the new world order. The Marxist economist is so committed to serving the people that, back in 2004, he gracefully accepted a massive salary of £110,000 – more than the then-Mayor of New York – as one of “Red” Ken Livingstone’s closest crony-advisors. (The post was not advertised, which might have struck even Tony Blair as rather non-egalitarian.)*

Ross and GT would seem natural bedfellows.

Unfortunately, the paper’s reporter went off (Ross’s) script to deliver an actual piece of journalism: a long article about various overseas admirers of the Communist Party – often known as “Panda Huggers” – such as Ross and Martin Jacques, and entitled “Our Friends in the West.”

The cached article as it originally appeared

Within hours of this going online – and being enthusiastically shared among Twitter’s China hands – Ross was on the line to complain. Demonstrating his commitment to Party values by attempting to get the young journalist in trouble, Ross demanded immediate expunging of negative comments about himself. “I am well used to expect such articles by people such as the Southern Media Group,” Ross fumed, “but it was a great surprise to see it in Global Times.”

The reasons for Ross’s rage became abundantly clear: “This article attacks and attempts to discredit me by the typical methods of suppression of information and selective quotation,” he wrote (our emphases). Ross then demanded that several lines be removed – aka “suppression of information” – to make way for pre-approved remarks, supplied by him, inserted in their stead… a.k.a. “selective quotation” (!)

The article originally noted that – in Ross’s own words – he had been criticized by “British right wing [sic] writer Nick Cohen”:

Original text containing criticism of Ross as first written in the Guardian

This passage was excised at an unknown date, after publication, to be replaced with a glowing passage that displays a complete volte face in both facts and tone:

The new passage now features praise from former BBC chairman Gavyn Davies

Of Cohen, all reference had vanished like a dissident in the night (apparently, “Cohen has no knowledge of economics,” as Ross fumed in his e-mail). Also missing:

The original contained a scathing reference to Ross’ tireless work in the state-media sector, now deleted

Not content with neutering these small jabs, the overweening Ross then had an entire 90-word paragraph inserted, in which he demonstrates that he has, at least, apparently as much grasp of modern Chinese history as Cohen purportedly has of economics:

According to Ross, who simply ignores the entire periods of 1949-1976 and 1989-1992,  individual entrepreneurship is now the standard of measurement for a state’s human-rights record

Meanwhile, the fawning comments about Ross from his boss at the Chongyang Institute – a state-backed “think tank” run by a former hack from the Chinese edition of People’s Daily, Wang Wen – were unsurprisingly left untouched. The article, once a spiky piece of journalism, had effectively become a standard fluff piece larded with dripping encomia to Ross – all under the byline of a “senior reporter” who was powerless to prevent it.

Although he was indeed interviewed for the article, Ross concluded his email of complaint by remarking that he was “astonished that Global Times should publish such an attack on myself… without giving [me] any chance to reply to these attacks.”

Well, now we do have Ross’s reply:  In the form of the professional harassment of a female journalist at a state-owned paper, a shrill demand for heavy-handed censorship, and the wholesale manipulation of someone else’s work to further his own agenda. The difference is, we’re not the slightest bit astonished.

p.s.

@akaDashan Please learn colloquial Chinese idioms that even the State Grid understands as no such weibo exists

— John Ross (@JohnRoss43) October 8, 2014

*While in position under Livingstone, Ross enjoyed 12 foreign jamborees in just three years, according to WorkersLiberty.org. But his finest hour came after Livingstone was defeated by Tory candidate Boris Johnson in the bitterly contested 2012 London mayoral elections.

Ross lost his incumbency – a hazard of democracy to the humble public servant-crony – but threatened Johnson with the use of “m’learned friends.” The justification? Before rejoining the ranks of the common man, Mayor Livingstone had slipped a new “unfair dismissal” rule in, which allowed political appointees the same redundancy rights as, well, chimney sweeps and nurses. Well – almost the same. Ross got a thoroughly socialist settlement, in the region of £200,000. Bottles of Karl Marx champagne all round!

You can follow the author on Twitter @MrRFH

As a twentysomething American, I take my Facebook newsfeed for granted.

The fact that one friend can link to an article criticizing US drone use in the Middle East below another friend’s posting of cats in costume below another’s picture of Hong Kong blanketed by protesters seems completely unremarkable.

But living in China can give you a new perspective on the things you take for granted.

~

I work for a sub-branch of CCTV geared toward international video news, and we have several TV screens in the office that run 24-hour feeds of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Al Jazeera and others – ostensibly to keep up with the competition. But I returned from our canteen this past Sunday evening to find six or seven of my Chinese colleagues glued to a screen showing a live-feed from CNN.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Something is happening in Hong Kong,” said one of my colleagues, a 25-year-old Chinese woman who studied English at a university in Wuhan.

Normally, my office mates, to put it politely, less than enthusiastic about keeping up with international news. Few scour the Internet during work hours to cross-check stories against international outlets, and even fewer read the news in their free time. So to see my friends avidly watching CNN while on the clock was decidedly out of the ordinary.

“You mean about the protests?” I replied.

“What protests?” called another Chinese colleague who wasn’t watching.

“Yeah, come see,” said the first girl.

A CNN reporter stood live from Central Square in Hong Kong amid a sea of students wearing plastic coverings over their eyes and mouths. I had kept up with the story, having seen pictures like this on my Facebook newsfeed for the past several days, mostly from Hong Kong friends who were proud of the protesters and shocked at the sudden intensity of the police response. But I realized this must have been the first time many of my colleagues had seen these images.

The CNN reporter then said, “Now we’ll turn to an elderly resident of Hong Kong who says that the movement reminds him of the deadly 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing…”

Suddenly, the screen went blank.

My colleagues and I blinked at one another. We all instinctively looked over our shoulders, toward the doorway, into the corners of the newsroom. Was somebody from the inner government here – inside the offices of our state-run enterprise – cutting off the feed?

Moments later, the picture returned. It was that same CNN reporter in Central, but clearly waiting in the silence that comes after a live interview has finished.

One of my other colleagues, a 70-year-old veteran journalist who was among the first Chinese to be sent abroad to study, a man who cut his journo teeth on assignments across Africa in the ’60s, said, “Headquarters! CCTV headquarters must be watching the channel, and they cut the feed as soon as Tiananmen was mentioned…”

After that, everyone became noticeably less engaged in the story. We had all been reminded that, despite the routine and normalcy of our daily work, the unspoken but widely understood guidelines as to what to write and what not to, we were still newswriting in a society where information can be dangerous, and something as innocuous as a TV interview can carry far-reaching consequences.

I went home decidedly fazed. Pulling up my Facebook feed and looking at pictures of the latest round of umbrella-carrying students ducking through tear gas, I felt slightly sickened — not just by what was going on, but by the very fact that I could see it, follow it, and form opinions about it. Every day, I consume vast amounts of information and knowledge with little thought that, in some parts of the world, information is as rare and precious a commodity as water in the Sahara.

J. Stevens is a philosophically-minded journalist in Beijing searching for glimpses of Daoism in the cracks of modern Chinese society. He lives in Beijing.

It’s a decent day. Outdoors, I mean. We shouldn’t be doing this. We shouldn’t be checking our WeChat groups as friends report what portals are working and which are not — “Sweden 2 is okay” … “…and, not any more!” — we shouldn’t be obsessively clicking refresh on our gmail tab as if the government has decided just in the previous five seconds to unblock the service, and we shouldn’t be cooped up in cubicles or monstrosities of home-office complexes twiddling our thumbs like simian slaves of a machine that won’t even let us work. We should all go to the park and play Frisbee.

Sometimes living in Beijing can feel like a communal experience. I’ve said this before about air pollution — the reason many of us complain about it on social media is because it plugs us into a greater suffering that satisfies our primal, human need for social belonging — but it’s just as applicable to Internet outages. This happens every once in a while, we should know by now. We should have, you know, backup plans. Upon this reminder that we live in a cocoon of glorious shared experiences, all of which will make us better, let us spill into the streets outside with bread to feed the birds and a kindness in our hearts for stray cats who wonder why such frustration and needless pain, agony, anger is carved into the furrows of our souls.

Anyway. USA connections are working as of this moment. Godspeed, everyone.

WHAT was missed: The 11th Beijing Independent Film Festival (BIFF)

WHEN things went down: August 23rd (scheduled to run through August 31)

WHERE films were to be shown: Beijing’s Songzhuang artists’ district, at the Li Xianting Film Fund

HOW MANY films were denied an audience: 76. 76!!

BIFF, as the Beijing Independent Film Festival is onomatopoeically acronym-ed, has delivered on the drama — just not cinematically, as the eight-day festival was scheduled to do.

Although 76 films were denied an audience, BIFF still offered a corporal challenging of ideologies. On kick-off day, friendly local police escorted festival organizers back to theirs, where they all had a spirited chat about the indie film scene. For about five hours. Meanwhile, back at the theater, plainclothes enforcers adopted a “please turn off your cellphones and no flash photography” approach to the screenings. They wanted to ensure that the films were given the appropriate amount of respect – by not allowing anyone to watch them. As BIFF’s artistic director, Dong Bingfeng, said last year: “Film is the most dangerous thing by far.”

This street theater might be as good as the films themselves, but we’ll never know. So how about a gag review? Because: absurdity. Here is a taste of what never was, broken down by could-be categories and awards of subversion, dreamed by yours truly, selected at random for no reason (this is what you get when the professionals are silenced):

Best Ensemble/The Porn Cup

The VaChina Monologues by director Popo Fan

Though the pedestrian titling may encourage a troublesome pronunciation for non-native English speakers, kudos to the women involved who learned to love their 阴道.

Best Animation/The Compromise of Our Children’s Innocence Award

The Chaotic Space of Nihility and Dissolving, Melting and Shattering Phenomenon of Time by director Wu Xiang

A dark-toon depicting human nonexistence. Show it to your kids next time they seem a little too well-adjusted.

Best Musical/Political Satire, Weirdness Winner

DSA XXX: Nothing Ever Changes in the Ever-changing Republic of Ek-Ek-Ek by director KHAVN

The Mighty Boosh meets dissonance about ongoing political strife in the Philippines. True to Pinoy form, everybody sings and dances.

Best Romance/HIPSTERS.

Why Spend The Dark Night With You by director Antoine Mocquet

Everything we love about Gulou. Or hate. #Whatever.

Sounds awesome, no? Get your tickets… NEVER.

For readers with acute F.O.M.O. (fear of missing out), you’re probably close to tears. What a phenomenal selection of artists and films, such potential! To the embattled filmmakers and their crews brave enough to try and take part, jia you!  Hope to catch you in a theater near us, someday. BIFF!!

Danielle Sumita writes, directs, and produces the video series Sindicator. She lives in Shanghai.

China’s anti-porn crackdown — its latest, I mean, in a long line of many — isn’t going as well as planned, because apparently porn is hard to block and everyone watches it, so the propaganda spinners have gone into overdrive to frame the story in a new light. If you want to see Chinese state media at its best / worst, these are the moments you cherish, when it completely jumps the shark.

Here’s the headline on both China.org.cn and Sina English for a recent story about the botched “Cleaning the Web 2014″ campaign:

Pornography crackdown opens up Chinese views on sex

Hurray! We may have failed to block porn, but at least we provided free sex ed.

“I’m single now and I often download adult videos,” says Xiao, who broke up with his girlfriend a year ago. “After all, sex is a basic human need and it’s wonderful.”

With the campaign in full swing, Xiao and other young Chinese are becoming more open to talking about sex.

I can’t begin to go through the thought-process of the poor Xinhua reporter who had to fake that quote. My favorite part is the tag, which points out Xiao broke up with his girlfriend before he began watching porn. We can’t have a source be too morally tainted, can we?

But what to make of this?

Dai Jiaobu recalled her experience: “The first time I watched, I was driven by curiosity. Then I felt it was a little disgusting. But now I often enjoy it with my boyfriend.” She concluded that it was a necessity in her sex life.

She recalled once finding her father watching adult videos at home: “It was embarrassing, but it didn’t affect my love for my father. I’m just curious that a 60-year-old man still needs it.”

Won’t someone please think of the… old people? That’s going to be China’s next anti-porn campaign, isn’t it? God save the honor of this country’s dear geriatrics.

By the way, here’s how Shanghai Daily, a more liberal paper that employs foreign copyeditors who aren’t complete hacks, headlined the exact same story:

Online porn still popular despite crackdown