The General Administration of Press and Publication, or GAPP, and State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, or SARFT, are China’s two principal ministries of propaganda, tasked with tweaking, managing, and bowlderizing creative, edgy, realistic, and otherwise inspiring work into a mushy, digestible pap for mainstream consumption. It’s an unpleasant job, but someone has to... Read more »
China ostensibly hates porn — hates it with a passion and hates it despite reason – but its state news organization links to it and — as the running joke with us goes — one particular porn site, the 39th most popular in the US, remains unblocked. To clarify: that’s 39th most popular website, not just porn site, and 65th... Read more »
What do former Taiwan premier Frank Hsieh Chang-Ting, former Google president Kai-Fu Lee, and human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang have in common? Within the last three weeks, each of them has seen his Sina Weibo account suspended. In Lee’s case, he was slapped with a three-day ban. In Hsieh’s case, his account was completely trashed.... Read more »
Ah, live TV. Did magician Lu Chen give the CCTV Spring Festival Gala -- the most-watched show on Chinese television every year -- its Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" moment?
First, a little background. Top Chinese pianist Li Yundi and Chinese American singer Leehom Wang are best buds who spend so much time together that people openly question the nature of their relationship. (The two have repeatedly said they're not gay lovers.) It's kind of a running joke, the sort that feeds gossip mills and keeps tabloids in business.
State Administration of Work Safety Vice Director Wang Dexue, possibly seeking a promotion, appeared to cry while inspecting a bridge collapse in Henan earlier this week, and let’s just say no one bought it. Netizens took to calling him “New Watch Brother,” a term that has since been censored on Sina Weibo. All this leads... Read more »
Nearly everyone hates the Great Firewall (GFW), which blocks websites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and many others from being viewed inside mainland China. To “jump over” said firewall, a small cottage industry of VPN services have sprung up, such as Witopia, Astrill and 12vpn, to name a few, to help the frustrated Internet user... Read more »
The social coding website GitHub, which fell on the wrong side of the Great Firewall on Monday, has apparently been restored on the mainland, though as you can see from the above via GreatFire.org, tests have yielded contradictory results. According to Global Times: Lee Kai-fu, a prominent Internet figure and former vice president of Google,... Read more »
The Golden Shield Project (aka Great Firewall of China) has decided GitHub no longer conforms with Chinese notions of harmony, as first noticed Monday by GreatFire.org and reported on The Next Web. The block comes on the heels of the Ministry of Railways's unsuccessful attempt to convince Chinese browser-makers to stop providing a plugin that helps users purchase train tickets off MOR's website.
Two amazing facts come out of John Kennedy’s post this morning on SCMP, and I’m not sure which should be presented first. We’ll just excerpt from the top: According to the Beijing News, a meeting of propaganda department heads was held yesterday to unveil the city’s latest plans to control online content, plans which place microblogs firmly at... Read more »
The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television is a yawning cunt of beigest ninnies and bacillus. It’s written right there in its mission statement: Our function is to research and promote the insipid, hackneyed humdrum of popular media while bowdlerizing, inside the deep recess of our cave of assery, all that is good, interesting, real, or... Read more »
