Fei Chang Dao

These screenshots show that the New York Times Sina Weibo was launched on June 27, 2012 at http://www.weibo.com/nytchinese. It was deleted the following day. It was re-launched on June 28, and was once again deleted the following day.

On June 27, 2012, the state-sponsored Global Times reported: Hundreds of residents in Shaxi, in South China's Guangdong Province, yesterday confronted a barrage of police officers during demonstrations outside local government offices. Police from Shaxi township, in the city of Zhongshan, confirmed the clash in a statement posted on their official Weibo account last night, saying the gathering began on Monday afternoon and lasted until early yesterday morning when the crowd was dispersed by police. According to the statement, the protest was sparked on Monday afternoon, by the beating of a local elementary school student by a teenager from Chongqing in front of the school, before local security officers from Longshan village tied the teenager up and injured his face while trying to settle the fight. The screenshots were taken on June 27, and show that between noon and 2:45, Sina Weibo began censoring searches for "Shaxi." (沙溪) On June 28, 2012, the state-spo

On June 26, 2012, the state-sponsored Global Times published an editorial by Wu Chuke (吴楚克), a professor at the Minzu University of China (中央民族大学), entitled "Let There Be Fewer 'Sensitive Points' for Academic Research" ( 让学术研究少些“敏感点 ). Some excerpts: These days the amount of freedom within the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has significantly progressed, and speech and publishing has relaxed a great deal. But we still often run into articles or content that is "too sensitive" and cannot be published, or situations where an article can only be published after the "sensitive content" has been deleted. To a certain degree, this makes it difficult to publicize true public opinion, and makes it impossible to bring the common wisdom to bear on major social issues, to the point where it creates opportunities for foreign media to make ad hoc judgments about the popular will in China. . . . . In fact, the particular government agency employees and p