After the Chinese blogging community hotly debated over the ban of Youtube last week (most possibly due to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party) and the hijacking of Google/Yahoo!/MSN search (most likely due to China's retaliation on the award given out to the Dalai Lama), something else weird happened: Blogger went back online, if just for a little while.
Why? Chinese blogger Danwei suggests that the censors felt that maybe, just maybe, foreign journalists will get annoyed if they can't blog in China during their coverage of the National Congress. I couldn't agree more.
Funny enough, another article in Chinese media came out yesterday claiming that foreign press will be accessible during the Beijing Olympics, as China's censors lift a ban on the printing of foreign newspapers and magazines for one year. Even more interestingly, Liu Binjie, minister of the General Administration of Press and Publication, said that "some foreign publications in special economic zones were going through procedures permitting them to be published."
Just on the front page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday: Hong Kong's Apple Daily CEO Jimmy Lai, an outspoken democrat, baits Beijing by comparing recent political scandals with sexual conducts. Apple Daily has also been provocative in other issues, arguing against the Beijing-backed Article 23, which placed Hong Kong's free press at stake, and putting pressure on Beijing to stop the violence in Burma last month.
Therefore, the actual extent of foreign publication freedom in China ahead and during the Olympics will definitely be of interest, to see whether China's grown up since 1989.
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