China
John Ray detained in China
[video:youtube:bdG0tpmKgbw] John Ray, ITV’s China correspondent, was covering a Free Tibet protest in Beijing’s main Olympic zone when he was detained by police earlier today. He managed to use his telephone from the back of the police van before the line went dead, “I have been roughed up. They dragged me, pulled me and knocked […]
Beijing Press pack detained
The Huffington Post reports that a plane carrying the White House press pack to Beijing was detained for three hours due to “logistical problems” Delays on landing have happened before, but no one on the plane was able to recall one this long. The plane landed at 2:10 a.m. local time. Passengers finally were able […]
The China Guide for snappers
Photo District News Online talked to ten photographers who have photographed in mainland China and asks their advice on how best to work in this heavily censored country, “Sometimes the political situation is dominant (anti-NATO riots 1999, the annual party congress), and sometimes it fades. But during the Olympics you can be sure it will […]
Human rights and the Olympics
Reporters Without Borders urges the leaders of the Olympic Movement to consider the respect for human rights and freedom of expression in awarding future Olympic Games to avoid the controversy around the Beijing Olympics and torch procession, “Discussion of the criteria for assigning future Olympics must begin now if a new Beijing Games situation is […]
Open Tibet to journalists
Reporters without borders calls on China to extend the apparent openness following the recent earthquake in Sichuan province to reporters working in Tibet, “The government is allowing the foreign media a remarkable and unprecedented level of freedom in Sichuan,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It should be extended to the Tibetan regions which the international press […]
Twitter’s quicker debate over
The BBCs Rory Cellan-Jones wonders whether Twitter has come of age with the earthquake that struck Sichuan province in China this morning, Let’s see, as this story unfolds, whether this is the moment when Twitter comes of age as a platform which can bring faster coverage of a major news event than traditional media, while […]
China’s dust bowl
China’s Dust Bowl – a photo essay of desertification in the provinces of northwestern China. Photographs by Benoit Aquin / Polaris for TIME. The above picture is described thus, “To accommodate refugees displaced by desertification, the authorities have constructed Hongsibao, a town in Ningxia Province that can house 200,000 people.” As you do…
Journalist death threats in China
The Foreign Correspondents Club of China released a statement today condemning online death threats received by at least ten foreign correspondents in China following a campaign on the web and in the state-run media following media coverage of protests in Tibet. Melinda Lui, President of the FCCC, talks about the threats in Newsweek Magazine today. […]
Does the West love to hate China?’
[video:brightcove:1509865726] With recent events in Tibet raising questions about international support for the Olympics, a recent panel debate at the Frontline club discusses the possibility of boycott. The panellists are Shirong Chen from the BBC World Service, Tom Porteous of Human Rights Watch, The Guardian’s Simon Tisdall and Liu Weimin from the Chinese Embassy. Isabel […]
The world’s worst road
… is between Chengdu to the city of Mianyang in China. At least according to Reuters men David Gray and Chris Buckley. The duo were following up on reports “that buildings had been damaged, thousands of riot police and soliders had been deployed, hundreds of local Tibetans had been arrested and Buddhist temples were surrounded”, […]
Beijing bashes foreign media
After expelling the few remaining foreign journalists from Tibet last week, the Chinese government has attacked foreign media for what it sees as biased reporting. The International Herald Tribune has more, “At a time when China is promising to become more open with the world, this is a big disappointment,” said Jocelyn Ford, a freelance […]
Getting into Lhasa
On the MSNBC World blog Bo Gu, an Assistant News Producer at NBC, describes how she managed to get into Lhasa last Sunday, “The House of Shambala? No way, I’m not going there,” said the Tibetan taxi driver, his wrinkled, tanned face looking nervous. “It’s really chaotic in Lhasa now,” another taxi driver said as […]
Going black in China
Marek Pruszewicz, editor of BBC World, describes how BBC reports on the unrest in Tibet were blacked out in China. The BBC’s Beijing-based James Reynolds illustrated the problem with the aid of two televisions, James Reynolds, who is based in Beijing, came up with a very simple but effective means of showing what was happening. […]
Reporting Iraq like reporting on the Chinese government
Is reporting in Iraq really like reporting on the Chinese government? Well, according to some longtime journalists it is. Talking in the The Norman Transcript Oliver Schell, director of the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations, describes it as it is, He described a trip to Baghdad to visit the Times’ bureau, complete with its […]
Liu Heung Shing’s China
Liu Heung Shing is the only ethnic Chinese to have won a Pulitzer prize for photography. He shared the 1992 spot news prize with AP Moscow colleagues. Liu spent much of his journalistic life as a foreign correspondent in places like Los Angeles, New Delhi, Seoul and Moscow. Liu is profiled in China Daily today. […]
Citizen journalist beaten to death
Disturbing news for Chinese citizen journalists, bloggers and mobile phone camera people in The Guardian, A man who used his mobile phone to film a violent clash between villagers and officials in rural China was beaten to death by public order “enforcers”, Chinese state media reported yesterday, bringing more unwanted attention to the country’s unruly […]
China crisis
The Foreign Correspondents Club of China sends a letter to members today detailing the treatment dished out to three Swiss journalists and their Chinese assistants in two separate incidents while reporting from the Chinese sticks earlier this week. Swiss TV reporter Barbara Luethi relates the story of her interrogation at the hands of plain clothes […]
Rewriting history
You won’t be finding any of the above mentioned in the latest Harper Collins travel guide to the beautiful and smogstuffed city of Beijing, One might find it a little surprising that HarperCollins is to publish a guide entitled Travel Around China to coincide with 2008’s Beijing Olympics that will make no mention of the […]
Breaking China
A few weeks before moving to Beijing I bumped into Frontline colleague Fergal Keane.”China will be fascinating” he said, “but your problem will be to turn history into the news.” His words have echoed around my head throughout my first five months here. The explosion of capitalism in China is like nothing any of us […]