Chinese authorities are fighting a losing battle against the dissemination of unwanted news and views in blogs, it is argued in Newsweek’s report about blogging in China. That must be one of the most optimistic assessments so far:
Indeed, whereas in the West bloggers tout themselves as an alternative to the mainstream media, in China they in many ways are the new mainstream: rather than, say, watching bland programs on state-owned CCTV, many urban Chinese turn to Web sites such as Sohu.com, Sina.com and Baidu.com for breaking news-and then disseminate that information via e-mail and mobile-phone text messages. “A Chinese blogger is just like an American columnist,” says Zhao Jing, a journalist whose popular blog on Microsoft’s blog service, MSN Spaces, was recently shuttered on orders from Beijing. “We journalists can’t tell the truth, so we tell it with blogs.”
UPDATE: The Washington Post is running a series this week on The Great Firewall of China (via Center for Citizen Media).
