Tea Leaf Nation

What did China search for in 2012? It wasn’t the hotly disputed Diaoyu Islands or the widely-watched London Olympics. On Baidu.com, China’s homegrown search engine commanding about 83 percent of the Chinese search market, the most popular searches focus on stories discovered and spread by Internet denizens themselves. Chinese web users were not only passive [...]

Recently, Jian Guangzhou (@简光洲), one of the most reputed investigative journalists in China, quit the Oriental Daily (@东方早报) and announced he was ending his reporting career. Even though the specific reasons for Jian leaving his job remain unclear, one of his tweets on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, revealed frustration and desperation behind the decision. “My [...]