Tea Leaf Nation

The White House surely has a full plate already. But it can add one more item to its long to-do list: Respond to Chinese petitioners. Starting on May 3, the White House’s petition website has become a favored landing spot for Chinese Web users, and the hashtag #occupytheWhiteHouse, and a variety of related memes, has [...]

“It’s a shame it wasn’t you.” This comment, reposted thousands of times, came in response to an obituary posted by Fang Binxing on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter. It may seem odd that the president of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications should arouse such hatred in total strangers. But Fang is not just a university [...]

“It’s a shame it wasn’t you.” This comment, reposted thousands of times, came in response to an obituary posted by Fang Binxing on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter. It may seem odd that the president of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications should arouse such hatred in total strangers. But Fang is not just a university [...]

Netizens have been furiously tweeting and retweeting on Chinese microblogs about rumours that some have been able to access Youtube and possibly Twitter from inside China without having to scale the Great Firewall. Some netizens commented that they were able to access Youtube from inside the GFW simply by using “https” instead of “http” in their [...]

Is it another sign of a great censorship thaw? A technical glitch in China’s Great Firewall? A brilliant hacker? Or as @R小寧 of Shanghai speculates on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, “another hook” to catch would-be Firewall-crossers in the act?  For a few hours on February 27, many netizens across China reported that Facebook, Twitter and Youtube were [...]

Has a great thaw begun? On February 21, netizens reported that Google+ has become accessible in China without a user’s having to scale the Great Firewall. Accounts seem to differ on whether Youtube is now accessible in China as well. Writing on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, a magazine called The Founder (@创业家杂志 ) tweeted a [...]

It is no secret that thousands of netizens scale the Great Firewall of China, one of the Eight Wonders of the cyber-world, to obtain information from the outside. But are there others trying to get in? Reporter Li Hai (@北京李海) tweets on January 25, 2012: A netizen from the mainland China is “scaling the wall.” While on top [...]