Jan, 21, 2010: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gives a speech on Internet freedom at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

(If you cannot see YouTube videos in China, try use VPN software : Freedur,  and use coupon code CHINAHUSH to get 10% off. )

How did Chinese government respond to this speech?

From Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China:

Q: In her speech on internet freedom on January 21, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented on China’s internet policy, accusing China of restricting internet freedom. How do you comment?

» » » » Continue reading ‘A Chinese Netizen’s open letter to U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’

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I picked these two articles because they showed two completely different views on the Google China situation in China. First one is a blog post written by KESO (洪波) a well-known IT blogger in China.  (I have translated one of is blog posts back when Kai-fu Lee resigned from Google China.) The latter one is an article from one of the Chinese media site: People’s daily, written by a netizen named Jiang Bojing (姜伯静).  Compare them for yourself…

Google to withdraw from China

By well-known IT blogger: KESO

Google officially announced that they will no longer review and censor search results on google.cn and they will have discussions with the Chinese government in the next few weeks. How can Google.cn operate legally under the premise of not providing filtered searches? If they cannot achieve these, Google will consider closing Google.cn, even all of its China offices.

To Google, this is a difficult decision. To me, this is a painful choice. Most of my life online depend on Google. I use Google to search, Gmail to send emails, Google Reader to read many of my subscribed contents, Google Docs for managing all my office documents and Picasa for processing photos and even marking their geo-locations… All of these, there is no third party application can replace Google. Not to mention that there are large numbers of Chinese enterprises, such as Alibaba, need to rely on Google’s search and advertising for their global business.

» » » » Continue reading ‘More Chinese opinions on Google leaving China (Keso vs. People’s Daily)’

Just 2 days ago CC sent me a link to a Chinese blog post about how he noticed his personal emails from Gmail account was accessed and screened by GFW. I was skeptical and thought it could just be a hoax or hype or just a theory. And today, the news broke out. Google officially announced that they will no longer provide censored searches for Google.cn because they faced cyber attacks originated from China which targeted Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists! This could mean end of the road for Google in China.

As part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

My jaw dropped as I read the statement from Google. This is exactly what the blog I read 2 days ago tries to prove.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Gmail security breach, want some proof?’

The largest BitTorrent website BTChina was shut down by the Chinese authority couple days ago and yesterday another popular media sharing site VeryCD.com was also offline. This created a buzz among the Chinese netizens. If you search for the term BTChina in twitter the most twitted phrase is BTChina+VeryCD连起来读就是变态中国很操蛋! (BTChina + VeryCD is Retarded China very fucking stupid. BT is the acronym of Bian Tai – retarded, perverted or abnormal in Chinese and CD is the acronym of Cao Dan – fucking stupid in Chinese)

» » » » Continue reading ‘China shuts down BitTorrent websites’

How would you like to live in a world without facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr etc. What would you do if I tell you starting from tomorrow you are not allowed to access these sites anymore? As many of you probably already know, this is actually a reality in China – a country which has the highest number of internet users. Due to censorship policy in China, especially Internet Censorship, as for now, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr etc. are all blocked by the GFW – Great Firewall of China.

One of the easiest methods allowing you to get over the “wall” and access these blocked sites, browsing the internet freely and anonymously is to use a VPN software like Freedur. Freedur 2.0 the latest version is available for download. Freedur cost $59.99 for one year of subscribtion. But here is something for ChinaHush readers, for limited time, if you enter the coupon code CHINAHUSH, you will receive an additional 10% discount!

» » » » Continue reading ‘Freedom On the Internet’

[nddaily] Famous online game World of Warcraft China server was suspended for 54 days. It is finally re-opened its service on July 30. Millions of Chinese gamers cheered with “tears of joy”, but they were also surprised to find that many models in the game have been modified. Especially a lot of icons of character’s head have been replaced with “boxes”. “Harmonized” (Hexie: ‘和谐’ now is ‘盒谐’，it just happens the word ‘box’ in Chinese has the same pronunciation as the first character of Harmony) World of Warcraft is now called “World of Boxes” by gamers.

» » » » Continue reading ‘World of Warcraft Turned into World of Boxes’

Most people already know the issues on Censorship in China. Especially Internet Censorship, as for now, Twitter, YouTube, facebook and flickr etc. are all blocked in China. Netizens spend numerous times on techniques on how to get over the “Great Firewall of China”. This is an ongoing topic being discussed to death. Many blogs are dedicated for this issue, dedicated to show people how to “climb over the wall”.  So you can probably find plenty information on this if you want to know more about it.  Today, I came across these 2 blog posts talked about censorship vs. innovation.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Censorship vs. Innovation in China’

The 7^th ChinaJoy (China Digital Entertainment Expo & Conference)  held its opening ceremony at the Shanghai New International Expo Center. This exhibition will be held from July 23 to July 26, 85% of the exhibitors are expected to be local vendors. This year’s ChinaJoy display area reached 35,000 square meters. Exhibitors include network, standalone, console, arcade games and other fields. However what was most disappointing to the fans was Starcraft 2 was banned by authorities from being exhibited on this year’s ChinaJoy.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Starcraft 2 is Banned from ChinaJoy 2009′

 DW-World: Well-known Chinese dissident, writer in Beijing Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波) after being house arrested by the police at a secret location for over six month, is formally arrested for “suspicion of inciting subversion of state power”. This also means that the case against Liu Xiaobo officially launched judicial proceedings.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Chinese Dissident, Liu Xiaobao Formally Arrested’

From Financial Network, Beijing, Intern reporter: 王奇华
China internet department on June 18 announced to impose penalty to “Google China” website (google.cn) to suspend foreign internet searches, also the feature that automatically suggests different search keywords once start typing in search textbox. Google is being punished for linking to pornographic content. Chinese government ordered its rectification to immediately cleaning up pornographic and vulgar content.

» » » » Continue reading ‘China Orders Google to Suspend Foreign Internet Searches’

From HRIC:

A Chinese government directive requiring domestic computer manufacturers and manufacturers that export computers to China to pre-install filtering software – “Green Dam Youth Escort” software – was made public on June 8, 2009. Human Rights in China (HRIC) has translated the directive and compiled the following background information on the development and use of the software.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Chinese Government Orders Computer Manufacturers to Pre-install Filtering Software’

This is a children’s song about the grass-mud horses faced a problem with the river crabs invading their habitat, devouring their grassland which they are depended on for surviving.

» » » » Continue reading ‘The grass-mud horse: Resistance to Censorship’