A big thank you to all our schoolfriends from the Tianya forum (one of the most popular in China and the site that started off the investigation of the Brick Kiln Slavery Scandal; it is also where the instructions on how to harass foreign media offices mentioned in a post below were posted) for their extensive, lively comments on this …

Two reports out today seem to point in opposite directions:

Dalai Lama lambasted for ‘abusing religion’
TIBET

Reuters in Beijing

4:15pm, Mar 31, 2008

Beijing stepped up its attacks on the Dalai Lama on Monday, blasting him for abusing religion, stirring protests in Tibet and preparing for independence as the Olympic flame arrived

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The Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders released a document today it says outlines the Chinese government’s strategy for the management of overseas media during this Olympic year. The group doesn’t detail where the memo came from, or who wrote it, though it is directed at a province and its local governments. Much …

Above is a mock/humorous edition of the overseas edition of the People’s Daily currently circulating on the net. Every country has its nationalist nutters of course. But there’s something particularly scary to non-Chinese about this sort of thing, which seems to reflect a combination of patriotic pride and lingering resentment over …

As I said in a story earlier, the Chinese web can be a wild and hairy place. Though it’s very tightly controlled (especially now: even from behind a VPN a lot of Tibet sites are blocked or semi-blocked, ie only parts will come up, and try sending an email from gmail or yahoo with the word Tibet in the body from inside the GFW: forget …

Here’s some video of the protest by monks during the government-run trip to Lhasa.

My colleague Lin Yang, who has traveled extensively in Tibet, offers her thoughts on the recent unrest:

I vaguely remember the last serious demonstrations in Tibet in 1989. I overheard bits and pieces from my parents’ hushed conversations. It was a time before the Internet and one could pretend the protests were not happening. But …

Here’s something I did on the media battle over the Tibet events. And here is an account of how the best laid plans for media management can go horribly wrong. (It’s from the Associated Press but I reproduce it whole as I got it from behind a paywall):

TIBET
Associated Press in Lhasa
12:30pm, Mar 27, 2008

A group of Buddhist monks

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The BBC’s website in China has been unblocked, and the broadcaster says that yesterday 16,000 Chinese Internet users looked at its stories, up from the usual 100. While many Western news outlets get blocked by China’s Internet censoring from time to time, the BBC has been on double secret probation for more than almost a decade. Unlike a …

The Olympic torch relay kicked off yesterday, and the lighting ceremony in Greece was interrupted by a short protest by members of the group Reporters Without Borders. More protests are sure to come during the five-month, 85,000 mile journey of the flame. This time.com interactive feature discusses some of the key stops. For a preview of …

In the “A Little History” post below I* quoted a comment by Champson Liu of the People’s Daily, noting in passing that he had used the word ‘mouthpiece’ to describe his newspaper, a term that is derogatory in English. Here’s what he had to say about that term and also about being a journalist in China today :

As to the “mouthpiece” term

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Hu Jia, the activist about whom we have written often, stood trial in Beijing’s Intermediate Court No. 1 last week on subversion charges. His conviction and sentence (a not guilty judgment is about as likely as Steven Spielberg getting an engraved invitation to the Olympics Opening Ceremony) is expected any time now. About a week …

Quick. what’s the one country in the world that just issued a completely unqualified statement of support for the Chinese government’s position on Tibet?

Is it Russia?

No.

North Korea?

Nope.

Myanmar?

Nope.

It’s scrappy little SINGAPORE!

MFA issues statement in support of China on Tibet situation
By Satish Cheney, Channel

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