Several days ago, the state-run People’s Daily ran a piece entitled “The Post-80′s Generation is Dispirited: Early Decline Cause for Alarm,” arguing that while China’s youth born after 1980 have far and away better material conditions than their forbearers, they face “spiritual confusion and a loss of identity.” The piece concludes by noting that a [...]
Chinese authorities may be busy cracking down on a “doomsday cult,” but end-of-days chatter is still dominating Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter. A recent search early in the morning on December 21, 2012, Beijing time shows that five of the ten “hottest” posts on the micro-blogging platform all relate to the forthcoming end of the world. [...]
This is what a famous fairy tale writer named Zheng Yuanjie had to say: “November 15 is a date that Chinese should remember forever. Five children from Guizhou, ranging from seven to thirteen years old, choked to death in a dumpster, caused by the fire they lit to keep themselves warm.” He posted these words [...]
As China has held its all-important 18th Party Congress over the past week to choose its new leadership, dissidents have been removed from Beijing and in some cases ordered to keep their mouths shut. For the duration, there have been no posts on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, from prominent (and usually loquacious) blogger Li Chengpeng, [...]
This article also appeared in The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. Sina Weibo, China’s most active and influential micro-blogging platform, has long been heralded as a revolution in the way Chinese interact with the state and with each other. But on the eve of a power transition taking place behind closed doors, many [...]
On August 23, judges in South Korea ruled the country’s controversial real name-registration system unconstitutional, a move hailed as a victory by free speech advocates. In practice since June 28, 2009 under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Information and Communication of Korea, real-name registration had required netizens to register with identification credentials in order [...]
After he posted a picture of the Tiananmen candlelight vigil at Hong Kong’s Victoria Park on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, the account of an anonymous microblogger calling himself “zuoyeben” (literally, “homework book”) was deleted from the microblogging site. This effectively censored a witty, often sharply critical Weibo celebrity who sports over 3 million followers. [...]
Another one bites the dust. Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, has lost major voices due to censorship before, including lawyer He Weifang, historian Zhang Ming, activist Yu Jianrong, and economist Han Zhiguo. Yesterday, followers of @作业本 (or Zuoye Ben), a famous microblogger with a handle that literally means “homework book,” awoke to find that their beloved [...]
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