Identity Verification on Weibo: The Beginning of the End of (Relative Yet Still Lovely) Free Speech?

Finally, it happened. Let me first backtrack a little bit. Despite the occasional blocking of sensitive terms and topics (read examples here and here), the Chinese government had been quite lenient with microblogging, or weibo, according to the “Chinese standards”… Continue Reading

“Guangdong Wukan” and “Xue Jinbo,” Welcome to the Blocked List

“According to relevant laws and regulations, the search result of ‘Guangdong Wukan’ (广东乌坎) is not shown.” This is what you get if you type in “Guangdong Wukan” in Weibo’s search engine. The same alert will pop up if you type in… Continue Reading