BLOGS UNDER BEIJING'S THUMB

BusinessWeek has an article on the Chinese blogosphere:

Blogs Under Its Thumb
How Beijing keeps the blogosphere from spinning out of control

These are busy times for Li Li, a 27-year-old pioneer of the Internet in China. Using the pen name Muzi Mei, Li started writing a Web log about her romantic adventures back in 2003. Today, she is working to promote blogs -- Web sites where people post their musings and opinions -- at home and abroad: Last November she was a judge at a blog competition in Germany and she's helping organize one in China. But Li has given up trying to publish her own sexually charged blog in her home country, and last year shifted it to a Chinese-language site in the U.S. -- far from China's cybercops. "With a blog, it's very easy to get attention from everyone," she says. But having her blog hosted in China was "too much trouble," she adds. (full article)