China

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has shut down a Chinese magazine's outspoken Web site, apparently because of the reported killing of a villager trying to stop demolition of his home, the editor said on Thursday. The online edition of the Baixing (People) Magazine, based in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu, was closed on Wednesday, editor Huang Liantian told Reuters. The Web site contained reports...

CHINA is planning to bring more honesty and transparency in reporting newspaper circulation data as it launches an inspection on the circulation figures in newspapers from 11 cities, Xinhua news agency reported. These cities include Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Chengdu, said a circular released ahead of the 2007 newspaper circulation season by the General Administration of...

An Apple Inc subcontractor has slashed a libel claim against two Shanghai journalists, who said workers at a plant making iPods were mistreated, from 30 million yuan ($3.77 million) to just 1 yuan (12 cents) to avoid a major PR disaster. BACKGROUND MUSIC: A woman rides a bicycle past advertisements of Apple Computer's iPod in this Friday, August 18, 2006 file photo in Shanghai, China. Apple...

A Chinese court jailed a reporter for a Singapore newspaper for five years on Thursday on a charge of spying, the latest in a series of high-profile cases underscoring China's curbs on the media and dissent. RELEASE HIM: Pro-democracy demonstrators and local legislators hold photos of jailed journalist Ching Cheong as they rally outside the Chinese Liaison office in Hong Kong. The recent jailing...

China's bloggers—33.4 million strong at last count, and growing fast—can be an unforgiving bunch when something displeases them. In recent weeks a Western English teacher in Shanghai whose blog, Chinabounder, described his sexual conquests of Chinese women drew the venom of netizens and prompted a frenzy of nationalist outrage, including castration threats and calls by a Shanghai Academy of Social...

Foreign newspapers will not be allowed to print on the mainland, a senior official has said, stressing the issue was "complicated". Yu Yongzhan, deputy director of the General Administration of Press and Publication (Gapp), told the South China Morning Post that the administration had studied the possibility of allowing foreign newspapers to print on the mainland, but had decided against it at...

A Beijing court on Friday morning unexpectedly dismissed a state secrets charge against a researcher for the New York Times but sentenced him to three years in prison on a lesser, unrelated charge of fraud, the newspaper has reported. The verdict against researcher Zhao Yan, 44, spared him a prison sentence of 10 years or longer and also served as a blunt rebuke to the investigation by state...

Press freedom organisations have called for the release of Straits Times reporter Ching Cheong, who has being tried in a closed-door proceeding in Beijing. His trial on espionage charges began on August 15 and ended late that afternoon without an immediate verdict. "We have seen no evidence that Ching Cheong has committed a crime, and we call for his immediate release," Committee to Protect...

Legislation and a strong industry code of conduct are necessary to end the complicity of Western Internet companies in political censorship in China, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. China’s system of Internet censorship and surveillance, popularly known as the “Great Firewall,” is the most advanced in the world. In the 149-page report, “Race to the Bottom: Corporate Complicity...

The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the detention today of Hangzhou journalist Zan Aizong. Authorities placed Zan under a seven-day administrative detention this evening after warning him to stop writing about arrests and injuries involving Christians protesting the July 29 demolition of a church, according to the Independent Chinese PEN Center. “The government has launched a...