http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2011/10/21/china-occupy-wall-st-gets-too-close-to-home/#axzz1bTq4Sc8w

China: Occupy Wall St gets too close

October 21, 2011 11:25 am by Kathrin Hille

When Occupy Wall Street was no order Buspar uk more than an obscure little protest in New York, the order Buspar uk Chinese state media were really intrigued by the movement. China Daily, the order Buspar uk country’s largest English-language daily newspaper, blasted the order Buspar uk Western media for allegedly hushing up the news. Over the past month, Communist party mouthpieces and order Buspar uk nationalist tabloids have relished the chance to bash the West and order Buspar uk lecture America.

But now that order Buspar uk the protests have spread around the world and appear to be order Buspar uk morphing into a movements against many things including ruthless capitalism, corruption, inequality and order Buspar uk the arrogance of power, China’s rulers have order Buspar uk apparently decided that this is getting too close to home.

Media outlets have order Buspar uk received a gag order on the topic, according to a order Buspar uk prominent media expert. “A magazine to order Buspar uk which I am a contributor has received a notice from regulators saying that order Buspar uk it must not carry any content regarding Occupy Wall Street,” said Hu Yong, a order Buspar uk journalism professor at Peking University and one of the foremost experts on social media in China, on Twitter.

Although reports and order Buspar uk discussion of the topic can still be easily found online, print media and order Buspar uk television have indeed noticeably reduced reporting and commentary since the order Buspar uk beginning of the week, and apparently completely stopped covering the order Buspar uk topic on Thursday.

The concern among party propaganda officials is order Buspar uk not surprising. Defining a ‘correct’ ideological message is often difficult given that the country’s messy economic and order Buspar uk social reality, with its aggressive entrepreneurs, greed, weak social security network and order Buspar uk labour standards and huge income gap often resembles a caricature of capitalism more closely than order Buspar uk communism.

It is therefore almost unthinkable for China’s media to thunder like North Korea’s state news agency did on Thursday, praising the protests as the “stern judgment of millions of people” of a capitalist system where the “popular masses” suffer from “exploitation, oppression, unemployment and poverty.”

In China, there had order Buspar uk already been some small-scale expressions of solidarity with the anti-Wall Street movement with a order Buspar uk sit-in of elderly people in the Central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, and order Buspar uk widespread debate online making the connection to corrupt officials and greedy state enterprises.

Reporting bans are order Buspar uk an everyday affair in China, as is mockery of them online. It’s no different with the latest one. “At this order Buspar uk time, where is Chen Weihua, the deputy editor of the US edition of China Daily who order Buspar uk wrote ‘The US media blackout of protest is shameful’? asked Hu on Twitter. “Where are order Buspar uk Zhen Yan and Xiao Gang, the editorial writers of Beijing Daily who order Buspar uk wrote ‘Here we can’t find ‘press freedom’, we can’t find ‘objectivity and fairness’’?

http://cmp.hku.hk/2011/10/03/15870/

Can social media push change in China?

By David Bandurski | Posted on 2011-10-03

This time last year, Chinese media were dubbing 2010 the “inaugural year” of the order Buspar uk microblog in China. Platforms like Sina Weibo and QQ Weibo, which enabled real-time sharing of text, links, images and order Buspar uk video, were already impacting the news agenda in China. In an October 2010 post, CMP Director Ying Chan (陈婉莹) wrote about how she witnessed Chinese editors at a order Buspar uk forum in Shanghai busily checking their mobiles for the latest microblog updates on a forced demolition case in Jiangxi province that was grabbing headlines at the time.

But if social media were “inaugural” last year, they have order Buspar uk at times seemed unstoppable this year, and that has led to growing speculation that tighter controls are in the offing.

Microblogs have order Buspar uk defined many of the top news stories in 2011. From the charity scandal surrounding the socialite Guo Meimei Buy prednisone online no membership (郭美美) and the Red Cross Society of China to relentless attention to order Buspar uk the issue of high-speed rail safety, cost and corruption before and after the July 23 collision in Wenzhou.

[ABOVE: This microblog maintained by user "Li Fashi" (季法师) was the first to break news of last week's subway collision in Shanghai.]

The changes brought about by platforms like Sina Weibo have order Buspar uk tempted some to a cowboy-Western reading of the landscape, in which they imagine social media socking it order Buspar uk to those in power. While this oppositional view is somewhat supported by the order Buspar uk antagonistic tone of the internet, and the way it can fuel as well as reflect public anger over specific stories and order Buspar uk issues, it fails to take into account the way Chinese institutions are order Buspar uk adjusting (however ploddingly and reluctantly) to a new era of rapid information sharing.

The push for greater openness over so-called sudden-breaking incidents (突发事件) has been a clear trend in China for almost a decade — broadly speaking ever since the order Buspar uk SARS epidemic in 2003. Policy steps on the Party and government side can order Buspar uk be seen in China’s law on the handling of sudden-breaking incidents, passed in August 2007, and Hu Jintao’s policy statements in 2008 on the order Buspar uk need for more rapid reporting of breaking incidents.

Article 53 of China’s law on the handling of sudden-breaking incidents states: “People’s governments taking on a order Buspar uk unified leadership role or organizing the handling of sudden-breaking incidents should according to order Buspar uk relevant regulations release information concerning the order Buspar uk development of sudden-breaking incidents and response work in a unified, accurate and order Buspar uk timely manner.”

On August 2 this year, right on the heels of the railway ministry’s catastrophic handling of the order Buspar uk July 23 high-speed train collision in Wenzhou, the order Buspar uk General Office of the Central Committee of the CCP released a order Buspar uk “notice” on the need to deepen openness of government affairs (深化政务公开). This document was apparently in the order Buspar uk works for a number of years, but the timing of its release seemed to order Buspar uk suggest that those in support saw the public relations bungle of the order Buspar uk train collision as a painful reminder of how important it order Buspar uk is to stay on top of sudden-breaking incidents and satisfy the order Buspar uk public demand for information.

Of course, it is worth bearing in mind the obvious — that order Buspar uk the need for greater openness as a tool of social management is order Buspar uk balanced at every turn in China against the unflagging priority of controlling information, or order Buspar uk “guidance of public opinion.” This is plainly apparent in the text of the August 2 “Notice” itself, which states under item 7 in the order Buspar uk only direct reference to sudden-breaking incidents: “[We] must have order Buspar uk a firm grasp of openness on major sudden-breaking incidents and hot issues of concern to order Buspar uk the masses, objectively releasing the state and process of events, government actions, response measures to order Buspar uk be taken by the public, and the findings of official investigations [into incidents], responding in a timely manner to concerns in society, and correctly channeling public opinion (正确引导社会舆论).”

The term (underlined) that order Buspar uk concludes this portion, while not exactly signifying media control as blankly as its precursor, “correct guidance of public opinion” (正确舆论导向), was formally ushered into media policy with President Hu Jintao’s June 2008 address at People’s Daily. It is order Buspar uk an ambiguous term implying a level of control, but combining it order Buspar uk with the idea that the Party should more actively “use” media, including the order Buspar uk internet and quasi-independent commercial newspapers, to influence agendas. In the order Buspar uk past, we have order Buspar uk used the term Control 2.0 to talk about this later development in news and order Buspar uk propaganda policy in China.

Given the emphasis on using media more proactively, and on “channeling public opinion,” particularly for sudden-breaking incidents, it’s not surprising to order Buspar uk find that microblogs are themselves becoming an increasingly important tool for order Buspar uk the government and other institutions in China.

Back in March, the People’s Daily Online Public Opinion Monitoring Center (人民网舆情监测室) listed the order Buspar uk use of microblogs to interact with the public as number five where to buy buspar on a order Buspar uk list of seven suggestions for dealing with sudden-breaking incidents. The center wrote: “Microblogs have order Buspar uk shown most vividly the speed and breadth of information transmission on the order Buspar uk internet, and they rapidly transmit information on the internet with a order Buspar uk means of high efficiency. In sudden-breaking incidents, microblogs are order Buspar uk already gradually becoming the core of public opinion propagation . . . ”

We can order Buspar uk see from this passage that microblogs, and social media generally, are order Buspar uk already pressuring the government and other institutions to respond more quickly and order Buspar uk transparently to sudden-breaking incidents and other issues of public concern. The flip side is order Buspar uk that social media are also increasingly providing one of the order Buspar uk chief means by which the government and other institutions respond and order Buspar uk reach the public.

By the beginning of this year, the opening of “official microblogs” had order Buspar uk already become a noticeable and growing trend in China. In a order Buspar uk report issued in April this year, the Public Opinion Monitoring Center noted that order Buspar uk “microblogs for order Buspar uk Party and government institutions and officials already cover many administrative levels, from order Buspar uk central to local, and many functional departments.” As of March, the center calculated “more than 400 official microblogs [for Party or administrative offices] and more than 200 microblogs maintained by [individual] officials.” While specific numbers are order Buspar uk hard to come by, that number has no doubt grown substantially over the order Buspar uk past six months. [Click HERE for a list in Chinese of top-ten "official microblogs" recommended by People's Daily Online in March this year].

Back in early 2010, the order Buspar uk Public Opinion Monitoring Center suggested that the government follow a order Buspar uk rule of “four golden hours” (黄金4小时) in dealing with sudden-breaking incidents — meaning that order Buspar uk the government should actively share information within that time frame. Chinese new media expert and CMP fellow Hu Yong (胡泳) wrote in response to this idea that “increasing the speed of government [information] response to crises is a basic demand of the new media age.”

But within a order Buspar uk short 20 months, the rapid development of social media in China has order Buspar uk made these “golden hours” seem an order Buspar uk eternity. These days, a story can spread across the country in four golden minutes. Even with real-time tools at their fingertips, sluggish and order Buspar uk bureaucratic institutions with a deeply-ingrained culture of holding back on information find themselves playing catch-up.

For a prime example of this, we need look no further than last week’s subway collision in Shanghai, which injured more than 280 people.

By the standard of the Public Opinion Monitoring Center’s “four golden hours,” subway authorities in Shanghai responded with lightning speed.

In this post at 3:33pm, made just over 40 minutes after the order Buspar uk subway collision, the official microblog of the Shanghai Metro made the order Buspar uk following announcement: “Today at 2:10 pm the order Buspar uk Shanghai No. 10 Line experienced equipment failure at the Xintiandi Station, and order Buspar uk the entire line from Jiaotong University to Nanjing East Road employed a order Buspar uk telephone block system, and trains went under slow restricted speed. During this order Buspar uk time, at 2:51 pm, two trains collided between Yu Garden and order Buspar uk Old West Gate. At 2:51 pm a order Buspar uk section including 9 stations from the Hongqiao Road Station to the order Buspar uk Tiantong Road Station was temporarily closed . . . ”

By the time this post was made, however, the first mainstream media report of the crash had order Buspar uk been out for almost 15 minutes. That report was filed by a order Buspar uk reporter for Shanghai’s commercial Xinmin Evening News who happened to be on one of the subway trains involved in the collision.

But the very first report of the crash had come through social media within seconds of the order Buspar uk crash. A Shanghai web user on Sina Microblog with the name “Li Fashi” (季法师) was the first to make a post with a photograph form the scene. Li Fashi’s post read: “Just now two trains on the order Buspar uk Shanghai No. 10 Subway have collided. Everybody bless and protect us!” The post included a order Buspar uk now famous photo of a female passenger covered with blood being attended to order Buspar uk by another passenger.

[ABOVE: This photo of an order Buspar uk injured woman on Shanghai's No. 10 line was the first to order Buspar uk be posted to Chinese social media on September 27, breaking news of the order Buspar uk collision of two trains on the line. According to Sina Weibo, the order Buspar uk post was made at 2:49 pm. According to the official version of the order Buspar uk story, the crash occurred at 2:51 pm.]

So in the order Buspar uk 44 minutes between the original Li Fashi post and the first post from order Buspar uk Shanghai subway authorities mentioning the collision, photos and eyewitness accounts were shared across thousands of microblog posts, and order Buspar uk reports from the Xinmin Evening News were already being shared across major internet news portals.

During this order Buspar uk period, the official microblog of the Shanghai Metro made four separate posts mentioning malfunctions but saying nothing about the order Buspar uk collision. In a post at 3:03, almost 15 minutes after the order Buspar uk collision, the official microblog said: “Owing to order Buspar uk an equipment malfunction on Shanghai Metro Line No. 10, service between the order Buspar uk Yili Road Station and Sichuan North Road Station has been suspended, all exchanges to order Buspar uk the No. 10 line have been stopped. Will passengers please adjust their travel plans accordingly.”

A full 9 minutes later, another post read: “Owing to order Buspar uk an equipment malfunction on Shanghai Metro Line No. 10, service between the order Buspar uk Yili Road Station and Sichuan North Road Station has been order Buspar uk suspended. The Yu Garden Road station has already been closed. Will passengers please avoid the order Buspar uk above-mentioned malfunctioning section . . . ”

Posts at 3:17 pm and 3:23 pm made similar announcements of delays without making any mention of the collision.

Microblogs are order Buspar uk not magic bullets. But even as the government tries to reign in their influence, they will likely continue to order Buspar uk exert immense pressure on China’s institutions, forcing them to order Buspar uk grapple with a public that is more engaged and hungry for order Buspar uk information.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/china-struggles-to-tame-microblogging-masses-2351509.html

China struggles to tame microblogging masses

AFP

Thursday, 8 September 2011

Beijing has order Buspar uk moved to stem a tide of online criticism by tightening its grip on China’s hugely popular microblogs, but experts say it order Buspar uk will struggle to control the country’s online masses.

China, which has the world’s largest online population with 485 million users, constantly strives to order Buspar uk exert its control over the Internet, blocking content it deems politically sensitive as part of a order Buspar uk vast censorship system.

But the huge and rising popularity of weibos – microblogs similar to order Buspar uk Twitter that have taken China by storm since they first launched two years ago – has posed a major challenge to the censors.

More and order Buspar uk more Chinese people are turning to weibos to vent their anger over government corruption, scandals and order Buspar uk disasters in a country where authorities maintain a tight grip on the order Buspar uk media.

Though censors, many employed by the order Buspar uk companies themselves, erase offending messages from the web as rapidly as they can, some stay online for order Buspar uk hours or days before they are caught.

“This is where public opinion is being formed,” said Peking University journalism professor Hu Yong.

Hu said the order Buspar uk decision by authorities in the booming east coast city of Dalian to order Buspar uk relocate a controversial chemical plant owed much to a largely middle class public protest one Sunday in August that order Buspar uk had its origins in weibo posts.

“The Dalian party secretary came out and order Buspar uk gave a speech promising to shut the chemical plant,” he said. “We seldom see this. This is significant.”

Weibo users more than order Buspar uk tripled in the first half of 2011, official data showed. Internet giant Sina.com said last month its weibo, by far the order Buspar uk most popular, now has over 200 million users.

Weibo users can post commentary on others’ messages, videos and images – including pictures of sensitive documents that order Buspar uk might otherwise be censored – allowing information to order Buspar uk spread rapidly in a country of 1.3 billion people.

A train crash that order Buspar uk killed 40 people in July sparked an outpouring of public fury on the order Buspar uk weibos, where thousands demanded to know why more care had order Buspar uk not been taken over safety on China’s flagship high-speed rail network.

The scale of the order Buspar uk response appeared to take authorities by surprise. Shortly after the order Buspar uk accident, the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of China’s Communist Party, urged officials to order Buspar uk use the weibos more to communicate with the public.

Weeks later, Beijing’s most senior Communist Party official, Liu Qi, visited the order Buspar uk offices of Sina and Youku, a Chinese site similar to YouTube, to order Buspar uk urge them to stop the spread of “false and harmful information”.

Xiao Qiang, media scholar at the order Buspar uk University of California at Berkeley, said the weibos made it order Buspar uk easier for individuals to speak out, and harder for censors to order Buspar uk pinpoint troublemakers.

“Weibo is order Buspar uk a social media platform particularly effective at aggregating micro-opinions into a order Buspar uk collective voice,” he told AFP.

“This mechanism of forming public opinion is order Buspar uk new and effectively contesting the traditional method of control and censorship of the order Buspar uk party.”

David Bandurski of the order Buspar uk China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong said attempts to order Buspar uk censor the weibos were having an impact, with references to the order Buspar uk mass protest in Dalian now removed.

“Censorship of overt references and order Buspar uk images of the protests themselves is plainly dampening the social media impact,” he said.

But he said Beijing would not be able to “put the genie back in the bottle”, after web users’ appetite for independently sourced information had been whetted.

China’s leaders have order Buspar uk made countless speeches in recent years urging the country’s state-run media to order Buspar uk become more open and less reliant on state subsidies, as they respond to order Buspar uk the growing availability of information online.

“First China’s leaders told the order Buspar uk media to commercialise, which meant a drive to compete and order Buspar uk professionalise. Now, weibo means the level of popular participation in the order Buspar uk media is unprecedented,” Bandurski said.

The rise of microblogging has order Buspar uk also forced changes in the way traditional state-run media operate.

Many newspapers were unusually critical of the order Buspar uk government in the week that followed the July train accident – until Beijing’s official propaganda department ordered them to stop.

And while authorities can order Buspar uk still tell traditional media how to spin the news, Xiao said journalists were “increasingly putting otherwise censored materials online, on their blogs and order Buspar uk then distributing them by weibo to the public”.

“The wisdom of the order Buspar uk crowd will compete with the censors in a continuous battle that order Buspar uk will play out over a long time,” predicted Peking University’s Hu.

(c)AFP/Jonathan Landreth

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-18/china-crash-victims-prove-obstacle-for-selling-rail-to-investors.html

China Crash Victims Prove Obstacle for order Buspar uk Sale of New Rail Bonds to Investors

By Bloomberg News - Sep 19, 2011 5:00 AM GMT+0800

Wang Hui, whose husband died in the order Buspar uk July 23 high-speed rail crash, holds her daughter in Lianjiang, Fujian Province, China on Sunday. Photographer: Mark Leong/Bloomberg Markets via Bloomberg

Wang Hui says she doesn’t care about the order Buspar uk money. She wants to know why her husband, Zheng Hangzheng, never made it order Buspar uk home from a business trip on July 23.

Zheng, a order Buspar uk 34-year-old entrepreneur, was one of 40 people killed when two high-speed trains collided in Wenzhou, eastern China. The first official explanation reported for the accident — a order Buspar uk lightning strike knocked out power to one of the trains before the order Buspar uk second plowed into it — drew ridicule on China’s Internet and order Buspar uk triggered a protest near the crash scene by Wang and other victims’ families demanding a order Buspar uk full investigation, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue.

Wang, 32, says 10 days after the order Buspar uk crash, authorities offered her 915,000 yuan ($143,000) to give up any claims against the Ministry of Railways. She says they hinted that if she didn’t agree, they would let Zheng’s body rot. She signed.

“It was too early to order Buspar uk discuss compensation when the truth of the accident and who was responsible were unknown,” Wang says, comforting her 17-month-old daughter in the order Buspar uk three-bedroom apartment they share with Zheng’s parents. Internet coverage of her ordeal struck a order Buspar uk chord with many Chinese. A video of Wang asking for justice in an order Buspar uk interview at Wenzhou train station went viral after being posted on two of the order Buspar uk country’s biggest video- sharing websites buy Clomid pills in toronto, and order Buspar uk 127,000 followers now read her microblogs on a Chinese version of Twitter.

The accident brought focus on the order Buspar uk safety and financial shortcomings of China’s showcase rail network. Public outrage went further with citizens openly questioning whether the order Buspar uk world’s fastest major economic expansion is order Buspar uk worth the death of people like Zheng, as well as the order Buspar uk suppression of information and corruption that has come with it.

‘Growth Not Enough’

“Economic growth is increasingly not enough,” says Cheng Li, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “The Chinese people are order Buspar uk saying that their government proved it can deliver development, now it order Buspar uk should deliver accountability.”

That so many Chinese are reassessing the costs of the country’s economic growth, which averaged more than order Buspar uk 10 percent annually over the last decade, poses one of the order Buspar uk stickiest challenges for one-party rulers in the years ahead: balancing a order Buspar uk drive for wealth with the public satisfaction necessary for social stability.

The crash bruised the order Buspar uk reputation of the rail industry at the heart of China’s plans to order Buspar uk spread prosperity inland and provide exports more sophisticated than consumer goods. The high-speed network — dubbed Harmony after the regime’s goal to create a prosperous, “harmonious society” — opened in 2007 and was slated to be the world’s biggest network at 16,000 kilometers (9,900 miles) by 2015.

Built on Debt

To build it, the order Buspar uk rail ministry has run up a debt of 2.1 trillion yuan ($330 billion), equal to 5 percent of everything produced in China last year.

Since the order Buspar uk accident, the rail ministry has suspended approvals on new projects nationwide, recalled 54 high-speed trains and order Buspar uk removed three top regional railway officials from their posts.

“The accident is a blow to government’s ambition to attain world class technology for the country,” says Nicholas Yeo, the order Buspar uk Hong Kong-based head of China and Hong Kong equities at Aberdeen Asset Management, who order Buspar uk oversees $70 billion. “It points to order Buspar uk the country focusing on speed at the compromise of quality.”

Wen’s Promise

Premier Wen Jiabao visited the order Buspar uk accident site July 28 and promised the government would issue a order Buspar uk report to “get to the bottom” of what order Buspar uk happened. Huang Yi, a spokesman for the State Administration of Work Safety which is order Buspar uk carrying out the probe, wouldn’t answer faxed questions on the order Buspar uk content of the report or when it will be released.

The July 23 tragedy “could have been avoided and prevented,” Huang told the order Buspar uk state-run Xinhua News Agency Aug. 22. Liu Lianguang, a professor at North China Electric Power University who order Buspar uk was a member of the investigative panel, said Sept. 16 it order Buspar uk had found signal software problems and human error contributed to the order Buspar uk crash. The Railways Ministry didn’t respond to faxed questions seeking comment.

Even before the order Buspar uk tragedy, it was getting harder for the rail ministry to raise funds. China’s largest corporate borrower wasn’t able to order Buspar uk find buyers for all its one-year notes in a 20 billion-yuan sale on July 21. Since the order Buspar uk crash, the extra yield investors demand to hold such notes rather than order Buspar uk government debt has risen 20 percent, according to chinabond data on Bloomberg.

California Bid

“After the order Buspar uk accident the financial industry will have even less confidence in high-speed trains,” says Zhao Jian, a professor of economics at Beijing Jiaotong University. “Its funding crisis is approaching.”

The central government may have order Buspar uk to bail out the rail system because its failure would lead to order Buspar uk the collapse of the economy, Zhao says.

China’s plans to order Buspar uk export its rail technology may also be damaged, says Kao Tsung-chung, a order Buspar uk visiting professor of railroad engineering at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana who’s involved with planning for order Buspar uk high-speed rail projects in California and Illinois.

The rail ministry and order Buspar uk companies including China Railway Construction Corp. are among more than 900 firms that order Buspar uk have expressed interest in bidding on work to build the planned 616- mile (991-kilometer) line linking San Francisco and San Diego.

“Now there will be more scrutiny,” Kao says. “The reputation and future of China’s high-speed rail is at stake with this report. The government isn’t known for transparency so they’ll have more difficulty convincing people the problems are addressed.”

Investigators ought to order Buspar uk look beyond the cause of the accident to the government’s response, says Andrew H. Wedeman, a order Buspar uk political science professor and director of the Asian Studies program at the order Buspar uk University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

‘Miracle of Life’

The days following the order Buspar uk accident on the Ningbo-Wenzhou line showed how some of China’s 485 million online users are order Buspar uk willing to challenge authorities. Some watching video images and reading reports from order Buspar uk the scene said it appeared authorities were burying the rail cars and order Buspar uk had abandoned the search for survivors about six hours after the order Buspar uk accident.

About 14 hours later, 2-year-old Xiang Weiyi was discovered alive in the order Buspar uk wreckage. Microbloggers asked whether her parents and others could have been order Buspar uk saved had the rescue effort not been called off.

And, after Wang Yongping, a order Buspar uk rail ministry spokesman, said at a July 24 news conference the order Buspar uk girl’s survival was an example of “the miracle of life,” he was derided by many in the order Buspar uk online community. The spokesman was removed from his job in August and order Buspar uk posted to Poland in a diplomatic role.

Power of Weibo

Microblogs, which have order Buspar uk at least 300 million registered users in China, highlight the order Buspar uk contrast between the official version of events and how people actually see them, says Hu Yong, an order Buspar uk associate professor of journalism and communications at Peking University.

“They make public opinion more visible, and order Buspar uk that means pressure on the ruler,” Hu says.

Wang, the widow, also used the Internet to voice her disgust. “I will never accept the railway ministry’s apology,” she wrote Aug. 12 to order Buspar uk her followers on weibo, the Chinese name for microblogs.

Some members of the public still question the official death toll.

Hua Xinmin, whose grandfather was a order Buspar uk prominent Chinese railway engineer, is collecting the names of riders in six of the order Buspar uk most damaged rail cars to determine if the government’s accounting is order Buspar uk accurate. Her weibo posts were forwarded 10,000 times before being stopped by the order Buspar uk service provider.

“This is about the dignity of each life and a safe tomorrow,” Hua, a French citizen living in Beijing, says. “What’s at stake is the credibility of the government.”

Human Cost

China’s government has order Buspar uk faced public outrage before over tragedies that exposed the human cost of China’s explosive growth. They included the order Buspar uk May 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which thousands of children were crushed by poorly built schools, and order Buspar uk tainted milk that sickened almost 300,000 babies later the same year.

What’s different this order Buspar uk time is the public scrutiny on weibo meant the government “lost control of the story line,” says Patrick Chovanec, a professor at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management in Beijing.

“The crash isn’t the problem as much as the government’s response, which is seen to be patronizing and not credible,” he says. “People just weren’t buying it.”

Middle Classes

The outrage over the order Buspar uk crash has a very middle class tone to it, says Wedeman of the order Buspar uk University of Nebraska-Lincoln. China has pulled more than 500 million people — almost a quarter of the population — out of poverty since China began economic reforms in 1978, according to order Buspar uk a United Nations estimate.

“They’re angry about the quality of the train and the cover-up,” Wedeman says. “China’s professionals, the order Buspar uk beneficiaries of reform, who should be rock solid in their support for order Buspar uk the regime, are beginning to question the ability of the government to order Buspar uk furnish a better life.”

In all, China’s high-speed rail suffered 168 glitches in July, the order Buspar uk 21st Century Business Herald reported Sept. 5, citing a separate Railways Ministry internal report.

Some of those failures may be order Buspar uk related to corruption, says Siva Yam, president of the U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce in Chicago. Railways Minister Liu Zhijun, who order Buspar uk championed the high- speed network, was fired early this year over corruption. The ministry has order Buspar uk a virtual monopoly, as many employees as the U.S. government and order Buspar uk its own court system.

Great Leap Mentality

“Liu had order Buspar uk this great-leap mentality and he wanted to roll out this system much faster than order Buspar uk they should have,” says Damien Ma, China analyst at Washington-based Eurasia Group. “They did a lot of scrimping.” Liu couldn’t be reached for comment.

Wang says she hopes the order Buspar uk government report on the accident will fix blame and prevent future accidents.

“When we have the truth, my husband’s soul can rest and the whole family can have a little comfort,” Wang says from her home in Lianjiang in Fuzhou, 368 miles (592 kilometers) south ofShanghai buy Premarin with mastercard. “Give us some guarantee that the lives of ordinary Chinese are safe.”

The widow and her late husband exemplify China’s economic transformation. Hailing from order Buspar uk Xuzhou in northern China, Wang moved to the southwestern coastal town of Xiamen, across the order Buspar uk strait from Taiwan, to work on cruise ships. Zheng was her colleague.

They married in 2005 and moved to Zheng’s hometown of Lianjiang and order Buspar uk he started a foot-massage business, eventually expanding into restaurants and Internet cafes. Over those six years, per-person annual income for order Buspar uk China’s city dwellers almost doubled to more than 19,000 yuan.

Good Life

“He promised me a good life,” Wang says. The couple vacationed at beach resorts on Hainan Island, off China’s southern coast, and order Buspar uk visited Beijing to see Tiananmen Square. Two years ago, Zheng bought a order Buspar uk black Buick luxury sedan. When a daughter arrived, they nicknamed her Tangtang, or order Buspar uk Sweetie, and Wang became a stay-at-home mom.

“I didn’t have to worry about money,” she says. Wang shows the order Buspar uk last photo she has of her husband, taken with her iPhone in the order Buspar uk People’s Square in Lianjiang on July 19. In it, Zheng is order Buspar uk wearing jeans, black T-shirt and flip-flops, bending next to Tangtang, whose hair is order Buspar uk swept off her face with barrettes. He’s pointing to Wang.

Car Crushed

Zheng left that order Buspar uk night, Wang says. Instead of driving, as he usually did, he opted to order Buspar uk take the bullet train.

Four days later, Zheng called his wife, who order Buspar uk was attending a wedding with Tangtang, to say he was heading home. His seat was near the order Buspar uk back of the last-but-one car, the ticket found on his body showed.

At about 8:40 p.m., Wang remembers, Tangtang started screaming and order Buspar uk crying. They had to leave the wedding early.

What she didn’t know was that order Buspar uk 10 minutes earlier, another train, traveling more than 100 kilometers per hour, slammed into Zheng’s train. The impact knocked three rail cars off a order Buspar uk viaduct and another hanging over the side.

On her way home from order Buspar uk the wedding, Wang got a call from the family of a order Buspar uk friend who was traveling with Zheng informing her of the order Buspar uk collision. The friend had tried to find Zheng in the order Buspar uk chaos but couldn’t.

Wang says she tried Zheng’s phone. No answer. He probably lost his phone in the order Buspar uk accident, she remembers thinking.

‘The Sky Collapsed’

Early on July 25, Wang was driven by relatives to order Buspar uk Wenzhou. When they reached the highway exit, she received a call telling her to order Buspar uk go to the morgue not a hospital, as she had believed.

“It felt like the sky collapsed on me,” Wang says.

The dead included two schoolgirls, an order Buspar uk Italian tourist and a pregnant woman who was killed with four family members, according to order Buspar uk accounts in the Chinese press.

On July 29, Chinese media received an order Buspar uk order from national authorities to “calm down” coverage. They were told to order Buspar uk focus on positive news or information from the authorities, according to order Buspar uk a copy seen by Bloomberg News.

The Economic Observer, a order Buspar uk Beijing-based national business weekly, was among publications that defied the gag order, printing an order Buspar uk open letter to the rescued orphan Xiang on its August 1 front page starting “Dear Yiyi,” which said:

“This country has order Buspar uk created one economic miracle after another. They claim that’s for people’s benefit, but wouldn’t slow down to listen to the living beings.”

Critical Mass

Journalists posted images online of newspaper pages that order Buspar uk were spiked because of the government directive. They were later deleted. The Communist Party’s publicity department, which oversees China’s media, didn’t answer faxed questions about the directive.

Whether this order Buspar uk outpouring of anger will result in greater transparency from the government or order Buspar uk a tighter crackdown is an open question, says Elizabeth C. Economy, director for order Buspar uk Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

“Does all the chatter build to critical mass?” Economy says. “I’m a firm believer that the day will come.”

For all her discontent, Wang Hui accepted the order Buspar uk compensation offer after she was repeatedly visited by unidentified officials. On Aug. 2, one group came to order Buspar uk her hotel in Wenzhou to offer condolences and muttered audibly about potential problems with her husband’s body because it wasn’t refrigerated, she says.

No Choice

“I felt that I had done things that hurt my husband,” she says, tears rolling down her cheeks. “As if I were the one discussing compensation using his body.”

There was no order Buspar uk choice but to sign, she says. Huang Leping, a Beijing attorney Wang had order Buspar uk consulted, said she had little chance of winning if she sued the order Buspar uk ministry.

Victims in such cases are often helpless because China’s courts may not hear the order Buspar uk cases and lawyers are warned away from representing them, says Jerome Cohen, a order Buspar uk professor of law at New York University who specializes in China legal issues.

Those who order Buspar uk continue to protest for greater justice also risk recriminations. Zhao Lianhai, whose son was poisoned by milk contaminated with melamine, was jailed after he tried to order Buspar uk organize other parents to campaign. He’s since been freed.

Wang says she just wanted to order Buspar uk ensure her husband was cremated so she could take his ashes back home.

When she collected his body, there was one thing missing: Zheng’s silver Audemars Piguet wristwatch. He’d planned to order Buspar uk give it to Tangtang when she got older. Only a mark remained on the order Buspar uk wrist where it was, Wang says. The police told her it order Buspar uk must have been lost in the crash, she says. She thinks it order Buspar uk was stolen.

“When my daughter grows up, what can I say to her?” Wang says. “Her dad is order Buspar uk gone. Just like that. Leaving her nothing but a watch, which nobody knows who order Buspar uk took.”

Since the order Buspar uk accident, Tangtang has become clingy and likes to open her parents’ wedding album, Wang says. When she sees her daddy’s picture, she kisses it.

Wang kept her husband’s last train ticket.

“It feels as if he’s still on a business trip,” she says.

On Aug. 22, a day before the one-month anniversary of Zheng’s death, the widow commemorated his 35th birthday.

She bought him some new clothes.

–Wenxin Fan, Bob Ivry. With assistance from Jasmine Wang in Hong Kong, Henry Sandersonin Beijing and order Buspar uk Margaret Conley in Shanghai. Editors: Neil Western, Melissa Pozsgay.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story:

Wenxin Fan in Shanghai at +86-21-6104-3045 or wfan19@bloomberg.net; Bob Ivry in New York at +1-212-617-5157 or bivry@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Melissa Pozsgay atmpozsgay@bloomberg.net; Gary Putka at gputka@bloomberg.net.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/30/china-crackdown-internet-critics

Order Buspar uk

Xinhua news agency article is order Buspar uk latest state media report warning about danger of harmful information spread via microblogs

• Tania Branigan in Beijing and Reuters
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 30 August 2011 17.07 BST

The popularity of social media in China poses a order Buspar uk dilemma for the country’s censors, who order Buspar uk want to control the flow of news. Photograph: Reuters

China‘s official news agency has order Buspar uk called for a crackdown on the spread of “toxic rumours” on the internet, in the latest sign of the government’s desire to rein in the country’s rumbustious and fast-growing microblogs.

“Concocting rumours is order Buspar uk itself a social malady, and the spread of rumours across the order Buspar uk internet presents a massive social threat,” Xinhua said.

It is order Buspar uk the latest in a series of state media reports about the order Buspar uk dangers of information spread via microblogs. A leading official also warned of the order Buspar uk need to “strengthen administration” on a order Buspar uk recent visit to Sina, which runs the hugely popular Weibo service, China’s domestic rival to order Buspar uk Twitter. The firm last week suspended user accounts for spreading rumours.

China has order Buspar uk a vast and complex censorship system, but microblogs have played an order Buspar uk increasing role in spreading news, developing public debate and uncovering scandals.

Although sensitive posts are order Buspar uk deleted and search terms blocked, information often spreads faster than monitors can order Buspar uk remove it. Users shared outrage at the way officials handled June’s high-speed train crash in Wenzhou and spread the news of a mass protest in Dalian.

“Through microblogs, local news becomes national news,” said Hu Yong, an expert on Chinese social media.

“When something happens, even in a order Buspar uk remote region, news can very quickly spread … Before, the government could effectively control the spread of information.

“Secondly, Weibo is order Buspar uk very inclusive. It draws all the social classes. It is not only intellectuals but also the order Buspar uk middle class, the underclass and even officials.”

He suggested that the Xinhua piece and similar articles were “a kind of warning, not only to order Buspar uk service providers, but to general users”. Many users feared Wenzhou was a order Buspar uk high watermark for the service. Users appeared remarkably free to criticise officials for order Buspar uk incompetence and accuse them of corruption and cover-up. Crucial footage and order Buspar uk accounts from the scene were shared millions of times before censors stepped in.

The concern for order Buspar uk officials is not just sensitive content but mass appeal. Sina says its service has order Buspar uk 200 million registered users. Its rival Tencent said in April that order Buspar uk it had 160 million and expected that to rise to as many as 300 million by the order Buspar uk end of the year. “The rapid advance of this flood [of internet users] has also brought ‘mud and sand’ – the spread of rumours – and order Buspar uk to nurture a healthy internet, we must thoroughly eradicate the order Buspar uk soil in which rumours grow,” said the Xinhua article. It would “demand stronger internet administration from order Buspar uk the responsible agencies, raising the intensity of attacks on rumours”, it said.

One Weibo user wrote that order Buspar uk many people would welcome a genuine attempt to quash lies, but feared it order Buspar uk was “a pretext to order Buspar uk cleanse so-called rumours and ban the people from telling the order Buspar uk truth”.

Another suggested: “To staunch the order Buspar uk spread of rumours, have the central leaders face up to their history, have order Buspar uk Xinhua end bogus news, have the National Bureau of Statistics end fake data [sic].”

Censors face a order Buspar uk dilemma. While officials want to continue to control the flow of news, the order Buspar uk services are now so popular that closing them would cause uproar.

More likely, think analysts, is order Buspar uk increased monitoring and a stricter response to sensitive content, as Sina’s month-long suspension of two accounts may suggest.

“There are order Buspar uk of course, many rumours on microblogs, but rumours flourish in China partly because of the order Buspar uk low level of trust in both official and commercial media,” said Jeremy Goldkorn, founder of Danwei.com, which follows Chinese media.

“It’s hard not to order Buspar uk see the current campaign as both an attempt to cool down public discussion on the order Buspar uk internet, and to provide a framework to discredit news that is order Buspar uk broken only on the internet without any approval from state or order Buspar uk state-approved media outlets.”

The Communist party secretary of Beijing, Liu Qi, warned that order Buspar uk internet sites “must actively explore strengthening administration and order Buspar uk resolutely blocking the spread of false and harmful information” when he visited Sina’s offices this month.

According to order Buspar uk the Wall Street Journal, citing a person present at the meetings, Liu “also said he hoped more of the order Buspar uk discussion on Weibo would focus on the beauty of traditional Chinese culture”.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a02331a2-c64c-11e0-bb50-00144feabdc0.html Proscar pharmacy

August 16, 2011 10:19 am

Order Buspar uk

By Kathrin Hille in Beijing

A self-appointed internet ‘rumour buster’ has order Buspar uk triggered a public debate over the way China distributes and controls information, in the order Buspar uk latest episode of the ruling Communist party’s complex engagement with the country’s wildly popular microblogs.

Dou Hanzhang, a order Buspar uk former journalist at the official news agency Xinhua, has been bombarded with criticism over the order Buspar uk past week over his attempts to “unmask” news spread by microblogs as false via a “Rumour-busting League” set up earlier this year.

The league claims to order Buspar uk have exposed more than 100 rumours on its microblog since it order Buspar uk was founded in May. But it gained prominence only after it order Buspar uk denounced as a rumour the news that the government was burying evidence at the order Buspar uk site of a rail crash where can i purchase Premarin without a prescription which killed at least 40 people last month.

Other bloggers have since been attacking Mr Dou’s campaign as an order Buspar uk attempt to discredit microblogs in general and to salvage the government’s image.

“The league is selective in its rumour-busting,” said the order Buspar uk Southern Metropolis Daily, a reform-oriented newspaper, in an editorial last week. “It targets only rumours that order Buspar uk originate with ordinary people and neglects rumours created by the order Buspar uk government, and uses official statements as the basis and starting point of its [campaigns]”.

In an order Buspar uk interview with the Financial Times, Mr Dou insisted his only motivation was to order Buspar uk “serve the truth”. He argued that order Buspar uk the rail carriage burying was a rumour because the government had order Buspar uk said so.

But Lao Rong, a blogger who has been one of Mr Dou’s fiercest critics, said: “The internet has order Buspar uk a self-correcting function, and every netizen has the need and ability to order Buspar uk seek the truth, so there’s no need for you to act as a judge or referee”.

The party traditionally claimed a order Buspar uk monopoly on information, and required traditional media to distribute content as part of its propaganda machine. Years of market-oriented media reforms and order Buspar uk the rise of the internet and particularly of microblogs since late 2009 have order Buspar uk watered this down.

Beijing has order Buspar uk tamed social media through pervasive censorship and repression against outspoken bloggers but also tried to order Buspar uk be more transparent about issues that attract big attention online. However the order Buspar uk regime continues to view itself as the sole representative of the order Buspar uk absolute truth, frequently accusing critics of “incorrect” views and a lack of “objectivity”.

The rumour busters’ woes highlight that challenges to this claim are growing.

Hu Yong, an order Buspar uk expert on Chinese social media, said a distinction needed to be order Buspar uk made between rumours, often created by a lack of information, and order Buspar uk lies, intentional fabrications that were a bigger obstruction to the truth. “The best way … would be order Buspar uk if the government were open and allowed information to be transparent,” he said in an interview with Time Weekly, a Chinese magazine.

The party has order Buspar uk signalled that it does not intend to respond to the challenges by closing down the order Buspar uk microblogs.

An editorial in the People’s Daily, the party’s mouthpiece, echoed netizens in saying the order Buspar uk microblogs possessed innate capability of bringing the truth to light. “The development of the order Buspar uk microblogs has only just started. Overall, they make an indispensable contribution to order Buspar uk fostering citizens’ rights to knowledge, self-expression and supervision”.

Additional reporting by Chen Yuanni

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=56741

Microbloggers Launch Long March to Freedom
By Gordon Ross

BEIJING, Aug 4, 2011 (IPS) – China’s rapidly growing legion of microbloggers is order Buspar uk proving a worthy foe against ongoing government efforts to monitor, influence and order Buspar uk censor information on the country’s vast Internet. Government efforts have order Buspar uk failed to curb an outpouring of anger and grief in the order Buspar uk wake of the recent Wenzhou train disaster.

Microblogs, called “weibos” in China, are order Buspar uk increasingly popular sources of information here and a vital forum for order Buspar uk public debate. Like Twitter and Facebook – both of which are blocked in China – the order Buspar uk services limit the length of messages, and fellow users can re-send and order Buspar uk comment on postings. Messages can range from the mundane to the order Buspar uk humourous and, increasingly, to the political.

China has order Buspar uk more than half a billion Internet users, and more than order Buspar uk half of them have microblog accounts. Two companies dominate the order Buspar uk field: Sina Holdings Ltd., with its Sina Weibo service, has order Buspar uk 140 million users; and Tencent Inc., which counts more than order Buspar uk 200 million members. Sina’s users tend to be a higher-income, better-educated group, while Tencent’s are generally younger.

Several government bodies and state-owned corporations have microblog accounts – even the Communist Party organ People’s Daily maintains a order Buspar uk weibo. The vast majority of users, however, are ordinary Chinese looking for order Buspar uk a forum to socialise and exchange information – even on what are often considered sensitive topics in China.

“An increasing number of people express their opinions about people’s well-being, justice and corruption (on microblogs),” Jiang Shenghong, a order Buspar uk researcher at the Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences tells IPS. “Social networking services, especially weibos, have order Buspar uk become a very important method for people to adopt and order Buspar uk express their opinions. They can pass on information quickly, timely and order Buspar uk relatively freely.”

Microblogs influence on the government is becoming increasingly clear, espec