Kristin Jones/CPJ Asia consultant

Bob Dietz called attention to the Chinese propaganda department’s recent 21-point press directive, first reported by the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. The whole thing in English and Chinese is posted today at Berkeley’s China Digital Times. Among the orders given to the domestic media during the Olympic Games is that they are not to report on…

Chen Ruolin’s win in the women’s 10-meter platform dive today brought China’s gold medal count to 46, and dominated the online headlines. With the closing ceremony just three days away, news outlets are trumpeting the unprecedented victories of the Chinese athletes, now leading their closest competitor, the United States, by 18 gold medals. They are…

Buried in the celebration of China’s now inevitable dominance of the Olympic Games, Xinhua News Agency today reported the death of a former national leader and Mao Zedong’s brief successor with these few words: The Chinese Communist Party’s outstanding party member, a warrior for Communism long tested in his loyalty, a revolutionary for the proletariat, who…

Even with the world enthralled in the drama of the Olympic Games, the more basic struggles in the rest of China continue to quietly unfold. Nanfang Dushi Bao (Southern Metropolis Daily) today published a long article with little apparent connection to the Olympics, a rarity these days. It is actually re-posted from Zhejiang Daily, and tells the story of a farming…

Just as American audiences have been fixated on the performances of Michael Phelps during the Olympic Games, Chinese viewers have been anticipating the heroics of hurdler Liu Xiang. So his dropping out of the 110-meter race today with an injury was the headliner at major news outlets. Photographs of his anguished coach and shocked commentaries…

Global Voices Online noticed yesterday when guerrilla blogger Zola (Zhou Shuguang) began tweeting his own detention. His BlackBerry let the world know that local officials had intercepted him in the town of Fengmuqiao in Hunan province, and he posted updates as they forced him into a car to drive him home. If he leaves his…

NBC coverage of the women’s gymnastics team competition made incessant mention of the controversy over the Chinese athletes’ ages. Are they really 16, or are they underage? And what does that say about the awful and efficient “machine” that pumps out China’s Olympians? NBC announcers made sure that American viewers pondered the matter as the gold medal went to…

Bloggers in China know that certain words are easily picked out by censors’ keyword searches. So they don’t use them, and their posts stay up longer. But images are harder to detect, particularly if they aren’t labeled.Today, somebody calling himself Qian Tiexian started a thread at the blog aggregator Bullog with the title “Two children.”…

Despite reports of censorship, several Chinese newspapers have reported on the stabbing death in Beijing on Saturday of a relative of the U.S. men’s volleyball coach. But most of the reporting has been limited to official statements. Emphasizing that the attacker acted alone, Beijing Youth Daily yesterday quoted Beijing Olympic Committee official Wang Wei in identifying the victim…

Major news coverage in China and elsewhere is naturally devoted to the Games themselves. Two Chinese weightlifters and the Chinese men’s synchronized divers won gold medals today. Yesterday’s news of 17 synchronized attacks with homemade explosives in the western region of Xinjiang received little coverage in or out of China. The exception once again was Caijing, a financial news…