Years of Poems and Spirits

A summary article by Reuters.

Yahoo was accused of providing electronic records to Chinese authorities that led to an eight-year prison term for Li Zhi for subversion in 2003 and of helping to identify Shi Tao, who was accused of leaking state secrets abroad and jailed last year for 10 years.

From Reuters on 5/6/2005 China sees 60 million bloggers by year’s end

The number of Chinese bloggers is expected to hit 60 million by the end of this year, Xinhua said, quoting a report on China’s media industry by the prestigious Tsinghua University.

The university report forecast the number of bloggers in China would hit 100 million by 2007.

A recent report by the Internet Society of China showed nine percent of bloggers write every day, 29 percent write once to three times a week, while 35 percent write four to six times a week, Xinhua said.

Another interesting article from NYT. Looks like Mr. French is ready to write a book about censorship in China.

Some quotes:
A classmate, Tang Guochao, agreed. “A bulletin board is like a family, and in a family, I want my room to be clean and well-lighted, without dirty or dangerous things in it.”

In the past, China’s efforts to control the Internet have often foundered in the face of the curiosity and inventiveness of Web surfers, who constantly find ingenious ways to find content that is banned and to discuss controversial topics.

(Here is the delima, even the free press in the West does not want to reveal publicly how to access this underground internet, how does it make any difference to a public that is closely monitored?)