9 Reporting on mainland


March 2, 2016 (The Standard) — The United States, Canada, Germany, Japan and the European Union have written to China to express concern over three new or planned laws, including one on counterterrorism, in a rare joint attempt to pressure Beijing into taking their objections seriously. The US, Canadian, German and Japanese ambassadors signed a letter addressed to State Councillor and Minister of Public Security Guo Shengkun,...

Read More

Feb 18, 2016 (Quartz): In the latest sign that China’s long-touted “opening up” is reversing into a “closing down,” a Chinese ministry has issued new rules that ban any foreign-invested company from publishing anything online in China, effective next month. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s new rules (link in Chinese and link in English) could, if they were enforced as written, essentially shut down China as a...

Read More

December 28, 2015 (Reuters) — China has passed a controversial new anti-terrorism law that requires technology firms to help decrypt information, but not install security “backdoors” as initially planned, and allows the military to venture overseas on counter-terror operations. Chinese officials say their country faces a growing threat from militants and separatists, especially in its unruly Western region of...

Read More

Dec. 26, 2015 (Washington Post) — The Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a written statement that Ursula Gauthier, the Beijing correspondent for French news magazine L’Obs, would not be issued press credentials for 2016, effectively expelling her. Gauthier drew Beijing’s ire by writing an essay that questioned the Chinese government’s rhetoric on terrorism. In the statement, Lu Kang, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry,...

Read More

November 26, 2015 (BBC) — Chinese journalist Gao Yu jailed for leaking state secrets has been allowed to serve her sentence outside prison on medical grounds, Chinese. Yu, 71, was found guilty last April and challenged her conviction at a closed hearing in Beijing on Thursday. The guilty verdict was upheld, but the jail term was cut from seven years to five and the medical grounds permitted. The well-known investigative...

Read More

October 29, 2015 (Hong Kong Free Press)  — New amendments to the criminal law in China, which abolished the death penalty for nine crimes and criminalised behaviour such as spreading false rumours on the Internet, will take effect from November 1. China’s Ninth Amendment to the PRC Criminal Law adopted on August 29. Under Section 291, offenders could be imprisoned up to seven years for disrupting social stability by...

Read More