Background The government’s strenuous commitment to achieving strict supervision of the Chinese Internet showed no signs of abating in 2006, a year beginning with the introduction of Internet police cartoon mascots (Shenzhen’s Jingjing and Chacha) and closing with regulations, cautiously welcomed, that allow...

According to New York Times and BBC news reports, the Chinese government has begun to reinvigorate its filtration of foreign websites, including bans on BBC’s Chinese language website and Voice of America in Chinese. This censorship comes in...

On Thursday this past week, Beijing-based lawyer-blogger Liu Xiaoyuan won Deutsche Welle's annual prize for the Best Chinese Blog. Then on Friday he discovered that the parallel blog he keeps at Sohu.com had been taken down. Fortunately, being a...

Anyone who has followed OpenNet Initiative's research or even the mainstream media knows it's no secret that China filters the Internet. China has made headlines time and again for its pervasive policies toward censorship. In 2006, Nart Villeneuve of ONI partner...

According to Beijing news reports, Chinese government has enacted further measures to enforce cyber-surveillance of Internet cafés. In this “Big Brother-style system,” these users will be required to have their mugshots taken and their ID card swiped in all of...

Groundbreaking research by an ONI affiliate made major news today. Nart Villeneuve, a fellow at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, revealed in a joint Information Warfare Monitor/ONI Asia report Wednesday TOM-Skype, a special software for using Skype in...

The Sydney Morning Herald is among the first to report that Apple's iTunes store is blocked in some parts of China. Although Apple's China website is accessible, an attempt to access the iTunes store from an Internet connection in Beijing...

The Washington Post points out that “in an age of cellphone cameras and YouTube,” Chinese police have exercised restraint in using physical force to stop foreign protesters. So far, foreign-led protests have even achieved a fair measure of media coverage,...

ONI compared data from the Olympics Main Press Center (MPC) to that from other locations in Beijing, compiling a snapshot of Internet filtering in China leading up to week 1 of the Olympics. Journalists’ access is home access For each test at the MPC,...

The press conference held shortly after injured Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang dropped out of the Olympics on August 18 was broadcast on all 5 CCTV channels dedicated to Games-related coverage. Since his surprise win in the 110-meter hurdles at...