Blogging in China - Xiao Qiang

Hans Henrik H. Heming, in his blog, Public Mind, points to a comprehensive story of the evolution of Chinese blogging, The 'blog' revolution sweeps across China, by Xiao Qiang in the New Scientist. Xiao Qiang is the director of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley and he runs China Digital News blog.

There are now about 500,000 bloggers in China. The article documents how the Chinese people used on-line communities to circumvent the official suppression of news. When the government blocked the on-line communities, the use of blogs helped to keep counter-regime news in play. When the government shut down access to external blog hosting services, hosting services started inside the Great Firewall that the government has put up to restrict access to web sites outside China. The article provides a very interesting account of repressive government policy and attempts to control web access.

Here is a related article on blogging and journalism from Foriegn Policy magazine that Rebecca McKinnon pointed me to. It covers blogging in a number of countries outside the US, including China. Rebecca writes a well known blog on North Korea and recently started one, RC Conversation, that covers the future of blogging for nonprofits and activists among other topics.