Death by a Thousand Blogs
Exciting, world-changing stuff - From today’s NYT - Kristof’s column. The Chinese Communist Party survived a brutal civil war with the Nationalists, battles with American forces in Korea and massive pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square. But now it may finally have met its match - the Internet. The collision between the Internet and Chinese authorities is one of the grand wrestling matches of history, visible in part at www.yuluncn.com. That’s the Web site of a self-appointed journalist named Li Xinde. He made a modest fortune selling Chinese medicine around the country, and now he’s started the Chinese Public Opinion Surveillance Net - one of four million blogs in China.
Mr. Li travels around China with an I.B.M. laptop and a digital camera, investigating cases of official wrongdoing. Then he writes about them on his Web site and skips town before the local authorities can arrest him. …
4 Million blogs in China…Some 100 million Chinese now surf the Web, and e-mail and Web chat rooms are ubiquitous. Go read the article, fascinating - and great to read good news for a change.
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