Fei Chang Dao

On April 21, 2014, the state sponsored Global Times published an article entitled “ Chinese Websites Vow No Porn .” Some excerpts: Major Chinese websites have vowed not to attempt to exploit pornographic content to boost their click rates, amid a national crackdown on online pornography. The websites, including 15 affiliated to state news organizations, and six commercial websites such as sina.com, qq.com and baidu.com pledged support for the crackdown at a conference held by the State Internet Information Office (SIIO) on Monday. On April 24, Xinhua published an article entitled “ China's Sina.com Hit by Ban After Porn Offense .” Some excerpt: China's Internet giant Sina.com will be stripped of its online publication license, a penalty that might partially ban its operations, after articles and videos on the site fell prey to the country's high-profile anti-porn movement. According to a statement released on Thursday by the National Office Against Pornographic and Il

On March 31, 2014, the state sponsored Xiaoxiang Morning Post published an article entitled "Anti-Corruption Storm Blowing Toward Retired 'Old Tigers.'" ( 反腐风暴刮向退休“老老虎” ). Some excerpts: Retirement is no longer a "shield" for corrupt officials, as the anti-corruption storm taking the offensive against "old tigers." On the evening of March 28, the Guangdong Party Discipline Inspection Commission announced that Ping Limei, former chairman of the Maoming Political Consultative Conference, was being investigated on suspicion of severely violating discipline. At the time he had already been retired for two years. Recently, another retired "old tiger" who was investigated was Gu Qihai, a former department head at the Ministry of Land and Resources. After his retirement he took a position with a "not well known" association with close ties to enterprises. 退休不再是贪腐官员的“护身符”，反腐风暴正向“老老虎”发起攻势。3月28日晚间，广东省纪委官网公布，茂名市原政协主席冯立梅涉嫌严重违纪问题被调查。此时距

As noted previously in this blog, during the last year China’s state run media has exposed at least two cases involving police officers in Beijing and Hainan who were entrusted with censoring online content, and who abused their authority by taking bribes to order web masters to delete information that did not violate any of China’s laws, regulations, or policies. See: State Media: Baidu Staff and Internet Police Profited by Deleting Negative Information Jailing of (Yet Another) Corrupt Internet Police Officer Shows How Censors Interact with Webmasters) On April 17, 2014, the state sponsored Southern Weekend published an article entitled “Internet Police Bribe Internet Police: Deleting Posts for Their Bosses” (网警贿赂网警：替领导删帖). That article provided additional details on the Hainan case mentioned above. Specifically: The full name of the Hainan police officer at the center of the scandal: Wei Yining (魏一宁). The total number of Internet police who paid Officer Wei bribes to delete

On April 10, 2014, the state sponsored Global Times published an article entitled “ Official Suicide Wave Creates Need for Greater Transparency .” Some excerpts: Xu Ye'an, deputy director of the State Bureau for Letters and Calls, an agency to which citizens utter grievances over injustices or disputes such as illegal land grabs or official misconduct, reportedly killed himself Tuesday in his office. The cause remains unknown, but sources close to Xu told media that Xu was not in good health lately. The case came amid several similar stories that involved Chinese officials recently. Zhou Yu, a senior police official in Chongqing and a key figure in former Communist Party chief Bo Xilai's crackdown on organized crime, was found hanging in a hotel room. Police announced that He Gaobo, deputy director of a construction management office in Fenghua, Zhejiang Province, had committed suicide and it remains unknown if his death relates to the fatal collapse of a residential build

On April 15, 2014, the state sponsored Global Times reported : Thousands of workers in South China's largest shoe company marched in protest in the city of Dongguan, Guangdong Province over contract and social security benefit issues. . . . . The workers were unhappy the company did not pay social security or housing fund contributions based on their real salaries but the minimum amount instead, explained Zhang Zhirui, a legal consultant at a non-governmental labor dispute service in Shenzhen. The company said it planned to raise the social security contribution in May as requested by workers, but many workers felt dissatisfied when their salaries dropped after deductions. On April 16, the state sponsored Shanghai Daily reported : Factory authorities have promised workers they will make the welfare payments some time before the end of 2015, a female employee told AFP, declining to be named due to fear of arrest. But workers were not satisfied with the offer, she added. "

On April 16, 2014, the state-sponsored Global Times published an English language article entitled “ Reform Follows Hu Yaobang’s Vision: Experts .” Some excerpts: The direction of China's current reform is consistent with the notion of late Party chief Hu Yaobang, said political analysts on the 25th anniversary of the death of the reformist leader, which fell Tuesday. Hu was elected as general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee in February 1980, and he resigned in 1987. He died on April 15, 1989 at the age of 74. . . . . There was no memorial held at central government-level this year. But officials in Liuyang, Hunan Province, Hu's hometown, visited the late leader's former residence last week in a bid to learn from Hu's "man of the people" work style, the Liuyang Daily reported. In a low profile visit, Hu Jintao, former general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, went to the residence on Friday, reported the Hong Kong-bas

On April 12, 2014, the state sponsored Global Times reported that “A Beijing court on Friday [April 11] rejected the appeal of Chinese activist Xu Zhiyong who was given a four-year sentence in prison for assembling a crowd to disrupt order in public places.” These screenshots show that, on the morning of April 11, 2014, the top search result for " http://xgmyd.com/ " was the website of the New Citizens Movement, of which Xu was one of the founders. Several hours later Baidu tells users performing  same search for that URL “That URL Was Not Found” (没有找到该URL). Before it disappeared from Baidu’s search results, the snippet of the top search result read: New Citizens Movement The New Citizens Movement website is now online. And our colleagues in Beijing: Xu Zhiyong, Ding Jiaxi, Zhao Changqing . . . 新公民运动 New Citizens Movement 新公民运动网站上线了。 而在线下,在北京,我们的新公民同仁:许志永、丁家喜、赵常 This is not the first time that information relating to Xu Zhiyong has disappeared from Baidu and other

Previous Posts on This Topic: Baidu Employees Arrested for Deleting Posts for Cash, Baidu Censors "Delete Posts" Caixin and Weibos Block Access to Report on Private/Public Cooperation in Internet Censorship Caixin Reposts Article on "Post Deletion Business" Minus Comments and References to Detained Internet Police Officers    State Media: Baidu Staff and Internet Police Profited by Deleting Negative Information On April 2, 2014, the state-sponsored China Daily published a report entitled "Hainan Internet Police Sentenced to 10 Year for Taking over 700k in 'Gratuities' for 'Paid Post Deletion'" ( 海南一网警"有偿删帖"收取"好处费"70余万 获刑十年 ). Some excerpts: During Officer XXX Ning WEI's tenure as Deputy Director, his job responsibilities included online public sentiment oversight, intelligence gathering, information disposal, etc. If an Internet Policeman from outside of Hainan needed to delete a post on "Tianya"

Previous Posts on This Topic: Baidu Employees Arrested for Deleting Posts for Cash, Baidu Censors "Delete Posts" Caixin and Weibos Block Access to Report on Private/Public Cooperation in Internet Censorship Caixin Reposts Article on "Post Deletion Business" Minus Comments and References to Detained Internet Police Officers   On March 26, 2014, the state sponsored Beijing News published an English language article on its web site entitled “ Baidu Staff, Web Censor Profited by Deleting Unfavorable Posts .” Some excerpts: Screenshot taken on March 2, 2014, showing Baidu censoring search results for "Delete Negative Information." Credit: Feichangdao Beijing police have detained at least 10 people, including employees at Baidu, the leading Chinese-language Internet search provider, over allegations of abusing their positions to delete online posts in return for money, the Beijing News reports. Xu Ning, an administrator at Baidu Tieba, an online

This screenshot shows that on March 24, 2014, Sina Weibo was censoring searches for “Hong Kong Will Be Destroyed After 33 Years” (香港将于33年后毁灭). “Hong Kong Will Be Destroyed After 33 Years” is the title of a short science fiction video, which can be viewed here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YzCXjm2yOU . This screenshot was taken on April 5, 2014, and shows that a search on Baidu Video for the title of the film returned no results.

In its April 2, 2014 edition, the Maoming Evening News published an article entitled “There Are Many Online Rumors, Citizens Viciously Attack Rumormongers” ( 网上谣言不少，市民痛斥造谣者 ). According to the article: In the last few days there have been many Internet users who have reposted a picture showing several tanks on the road to their Weixin, QQ, and Weixin and QQ groups. . . . But it has been confirmed that this picture was actually of a military exercise from several years ago. 前天，不少网民在自己的微信、QQ 以及微信圈、QQ 群等疯转一张照片，照片上显示的是几辆坦克车行驶在公路上（见图①）。. . . . 然而，经证实，这张图片只不过是前几年部队训练在公路上行进的照片。 These screenshots were taken a few hours after the Maoming Evening News posted its story, and show that Baidu was censoring searches for “Maoming Tanks,” (茂名 坦克) but not for “Maoming” or “Tanks.”

Image showing protests on Caixin (subsequently deleted) Shortly after midnight on April 2, 2014, the state sponsored Global Times published an article entitled “ Maoming PX Protests Spread to Guangzhou .” Some excerpts: Protests against paraxylene (PX) project in Maoming, Guangdong Province continued into a third day Tuesday despite local government pledges to conduct a public consultation before giving the project a green light.  . . . . Around 1,000 protesters took to the streets in Maoming around 5 pm on Tuesday although the crowd dispersed peacefully shortly after. Some protesters lingered in the area, several witnesses told the Global Times. There was no repeat of the scuffles that marred earlier protests when some threw eggs and water bottles at police. These screenshots show that, some time that same evening, Baidu and Tencent Weibo began censoring searches for “Maoming PX” (茂名 PX).

Previous post on this topic: US Court Rules Baidu Enjoys Freedom of Speech, Baidu Bans Forums on “Freedom of Speech” On March 27, 2014, Judge Jesse Furman of the US District Court in New York issued an opinion granting Baidu’s motion to dismiss the complaint against it by eight “New York residents who advocate for increased democracy in China.” The full opinion is available here - http://www.scribd.com/doc/214981183/Zhang-et-al-v-Baidu-Com-Inc-et-al . The plaintiffs complained that Baidu: censor[s] and block[s] from search engine results any article, publication, video, audio and any information in whatever format if its content deals with the Democracy movement in China or any of the following topics that are related to the Chinese Democracy Movement: The June 4th Movement, The Jasmine Revolution, The Jasmine Movement; The China Democracy Party National Committee and the Tiananmen Square Incident or movement. Screenshots showing Baidu censoring search results for "China