Top Websites Blocked by Chinese Government

Among the top 10 websites (according to traffic volume recorded by Alexa), 5 are blocked by the Chinese government. Among the top 1000 sites, 169 are blocked, a number raised from 62 (an increase of 172.58%) of last year 2013.

Top websites:
1. Google.com (100% in the last 90 days)
2. Facebook.com (100% in the last 90 days)
3. Youtube.com (100% in the last 90 days)
4. Yahoo.com (28% in last 90 days)
5. Bidu.com
6. Amazon.com
7. Wikipedia.com
8. Taobao.com
9. Twitter.com (100% in the last 90 days)
10. QQ.com

Other blocked sites include: blogspot.com, netflix.com, dropbox.com, nytimes.com, vimeo.com, flickr.com, slideshare.net, macys.com, archive.org, wsj.com, bloomberg.com, android.com, pastebin.com, instagram.com, wordpress.com, scribd.com, speedtest.net, tumblr.com, reddit.com, among others.

A complete list of websites blocked by the Chinese government can be found at GreatFire.Org.

Judge Dismissed Baidu Censorship Case

A federal judge of the District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed a case against Chinese search engine Baidu.

Activities alleged Baidu's government sponsored censorship prevented them from reaching to Baidu's users in the US.

Judge Jesse M. Furman reasoned in his ruling that Baidu as a business was entitled to its own right to free speech, in this case in form of censorship, from (US) government interference.

The Seagull disagrees with this analysis.

The court failed to recognize three facts: 1) Baidu is a government sponsored company, which is the only reason for its dominance in China, despite well recognized technical and service advantages of Google. 2) For people living in China, there is no alternative as the case of newspaper or radio stations. 3) Same can be said to Baidu's users in the US, who are stuck with the only search engine that they are familiar with.

The First Amendment was never designed are meant to protect a government speech. Other search engines who are considered of higher quality product and service standard including Google were literally driven out of Chinese market by the government.

In other words, Baidu is more of a propaganda arm of the Chinese government than anything else. Regrettably, Judge Furman built his rationale on a false assumption.

The case is Zhang et al v. Baidu.com Inc, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-03388.

Cartoonist Taken Away by Police

Girlfriend warmheard1984 of famous cartoonist Spicy Pepper aka Wang Liming posted on Weibo that the visual artist had been taken away from home by police 11 o'clock pm. The charge on the warrant was 'inciting public disturbance'.

The cartoon on the left was created by BWRLG32.

Although Spicy Pepper's drawings are often inspired by social events, he is considered a moderate, restraint, reluctant and hesitate criticizer of government and policies. Readers often find more helplessness than criticism and more cynicism than anger in his otherwise humorous cartoons. Those who enjoy his drawings are mostly wealthy middle class who prefer a smooth and progressive evolution rather than any violent revolution which may trigger social instabilities. It would be real troublesome for the society if government push people who had sitting in the middle to the other side.

Spicy Pepper is arguably one of best known cartoonists in China today. Many western media's outlets in China have been closely observing the developing of this saga. Yuan Li, chief editor of Wall Street Journal's Chinese edition, also retweeted, and asked for legal input from her readers.

Having witnessed the unprecedented nationwide mass crackdown of online speech in the past few weeks, Spicy Pepper published this drawing on Oct 13. Two days later, he became the newest victim himself.

A few hour later, a Chinese e-business pioneer Laorong went missing after a last post of hearing someone knocking his door at 1:57am. Laorong, aka Wang Juntao, is a busy businessman, but sometimes makes comments on quasi-sensitive issues online.

Rumors had it that both arrests were linked to public mocking of the propaganda article 'Lee's Ten Crimes'.

Update: Laorong resurfaced, but would not elaborate his whereabout in the hours when he was missing.

Update: the next morning, Wuyuesanren aka Yao Bo, Spicy Pepper's friend, went to the police station to turn himself in because he believed he must have committed the same crime. Wuyuesanren was briefly detained then released. People who care about their reputation are feeling ashamed when they were not arrested by police for something, especially after their close friends had been rounded in. Wuyuesanren forecasted and broadcasted his self-submission in high profile style on social networking sites.

Professor He Weifang, researcher Yu Jianrong, writer Li Chengpeng, commentator Zhao Chu, real estate mogul Pan Shiyi all called for release of Spicy Pepper.

Searching of 'Spicy Pepper' is blocked by Sina, "because of law and policies".

Update: evening the same day, about 21 hours after Spicy Pepper was taken away, he was released.

1:2,000,000

After a magazine under the CCP's Central Propaganda Ministry (CPM) published an editorial in which Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, a renowned scientist, entrepreneur and angel investor was accused of committing ten horrendous crimes (Lee's Ten Crimes), the CPM had given a green light for mass attack.

A screen shot, via Ranxiangmm, circulated in Chinese blogsphere read: All websites and networks should aggressively forward or post the Lee's Ten Crimes article in the form of user-generated-contents (forums, comments). In the mean time, strictly moderate posts attacking the author of the article.

At RMB 769 billion ($130 billion), China's expenses on interior oppression, aka maintaining stability or Weiwen in Chinese, surpasses national defense according to national budget published in March. This ratio made China the first major power to spend more to defend against its people than to defend against outside threats. An Oct 3 article published by official media New Capital revealed that there were over 2 million Chinese working as online speech monitors and inspectors. The figure also shadows the 2 million strong active duty military personnels in the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

Armed with his PhD in Computer Science from CMU, and senior executive experiences at Apple, Microsoft and Google, Lee had been fighting smartly, utilizing Big Data tools such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and data mining to amass a fans (avid followers) base of over 51 million on Sina Weibo.

It will be difficult to foretell the outcome of a battle in which one free soul leads a community of 51 million to fend off aggression of an army of 2 million. It may be even more difficult to assess the long lasting impact regardless who is the winner on the battlefield.

Just to Make Sure

Radios with tuning knobs soldered to a fix position may sound last century North Korean. However, it has been confirmed that Nokia's brand new flagship Lumia 920/920T Windows Phones offered to mainland China market are 'hard-coded' to an app store run by the Chinese government.

When owners of these Windows phones attempted to connect to the Microsoft app store, it would be re-directed to the state run app store hosted inside mainland China. Even if the owner set 'region' to other places, or travel outside mainland China, the phone would still refuse to connect to the official Microsoft store but rather redirect to the Chinese government store.

The government-run store in China is heavily customized. For example, you will not find Skype or Facebook apps.

This could prove to be a big blunder to Nokia's Chinese market. As Apple has dominated the 'fashion' population, and Android commands the 'feature' buyers, only a small number of 'geeky' users are left for Nokia's renewed high-end marketing approach. Unfortunately, this group is most sensitive to hint of information control.

A few months ago, Microsoft announced that it would retire the aged MSN Messenger worldwide except in mainland China. The aged instant messaging service was replace by Skype.

So they knew....

Global Reach of Chinese Censorship

Tech in Asia reported that 'sensitive phrases' such as the name of the newspaper having an issue with the Guangdong Provincial Propaganda Department Southern Weekend were being filtered on global scale by WeChat, aka. Weixin, the No. 1 popular messaging app in the world. Weixin is a cross-platform product by Chinese company Tensent (HKG: 0700).

According to Tech in Asia's tests, messages containing the phrase were blocked not only inside China, but also when both ends of communications were outside China.

A couple of days back in the height of the New Capital Daily incident, it was reported that Internet cops work in the operation room of Sina Weibo (Twitter like micro-blog). Major Internet service providers have permanent offices for Internet cops. However, it's rare for them to directly work at terminals in the operation rooms.

Taiwan's Ma Ying-Jeou administration suffered collateral damage when the opposition Party questioned his policy to boost ties to the regime on mainland.

Although the idea of a unified China roots deeply in culture, tradition and people's hearts, the former Chairwoman of the pro-independent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Ms. Tsai Ing-wen enjoys great popularity among Chinese online communities. Chinese people on mainland were amazed when they watched Ms. Tsai gave a graceful conceding speech after she lost to incumbent pro-mainland President Mr. Ma. This time, Chinese were pleased to hear Ms. Tsai stated unwavering support to the demand of a free press. Many said the mainland should not destroy the great political system that Taiwanese people were lucky to live in.

Hong Kong's leadership, Mr. CY Leung who is hand-picked by the central government, is also facing a set back as pro-democracy groups in the legislature launched a symbolic impeach process.

China built mega data warehouses, aimed to win global cloud service contracts. It's unclear how western companies and individuals feel if they know their documents were stored and processed inside China boundary.

Frisbee Picture Censored

The Seagull has seen many text and music banned for good reasons. For example, the national anthem was banned at the Tian'anmen Square following the massacre in 1989. The Communist Party's own L'Internationale was also banned, because after all it was a fighting song. Numbers such as 64 or square of 8 can be seen as suggestive, understandably so.

However, the official Xinhua News Agency banned a picture which they themselves rated as a best picture of the year, a picture showing a dog catching a (explicit!) Frisbee disc: http://news.china.com/zh_cn/hd/11127798/20121228/17606576_12.html (click). To be specific, the picture was snapped on June 16, in Budapest in Hungarian. The thumbnail still exist, but the original picture had gone. All other pictures in this series, including those immediately next to it still are viable. In place of the large size photo, a 'China.com' logo was displayed indicating a broken link.

It can be more bizarre than banning a dog catching a Frisbee....

..but it happened after the chief editor of official Global Times Mr. Hu Xijin was mocked as a good dog who could always make up a rational for the Party no matter how unreasonable the Party might appear. They say, no matter how far or low the Party throw a Frisbee, Mr. Hu can always catch it. PS: in Chinese culture, a dog is not a positive reference for a person.

Power to the Online Chinese citizens, who made the dog catching Frisbee a taboo.

Top 10 Chinese Internet Events in 2011

• Detail account information of more than 600 million users of CSDN was released for download in December. Other sites Tianya, Renren, Kaixin and Weibo were followed. It is notable that all password are in plain characters without any form of encryption. It is suggested websites store plain password information because of censorship regulations.
• Sina Weibo started 'real-ID' in major cities.
• A young woman Guo Meimei showed off her luxury belongings on the Internet. She also claimed to be a manager with the Chinese Red Cross. The online community were outraged and many vowed never to donate a penny to the Red Cross.
• Jobs' death was censored in China, after people raised the question, why China did not have such figures.
• Chinese knock-off of Paypal, a division of Yahoo, was transferred to a domestic holders group, without go-ahead from Yahoo, citing national security concerns (VIE).
• Pro-democratic netizens made numerous high profile attempts to visit blind lawyer, who was jailed in his own house in Dongshigu Village in Shandong.
• The Chinese knock-off of Twitter, Sina Weibo, has become the de facto news media of the time. With over 300 million registered users, celebrates such as actress Yao Chen have as many as 15 million followers.
• The bullet-train accident on July 28 ignited anger among Netizens.
• School bus accidents in many places further saddened the online community, especially when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a donation of school buses as foreign aids.
• Many Chinese Internet companies went IPO in overseas stock markets.

China's Internet Population Reaches 485 millions

According to data released by CNNIC, as of end of June 2011, the online population in China has reached 485 millions. 36.2% of Chinese are online, comparing to 77.3% of Americans. 318 millions use their mobile phones to surf the Internet. Their average time online is 18.7 hours per week. The number of individual domains dropped to 7.86 millions from last year's 11.21 millions due to government censorship.

China to Acquire Chunk of Facebook

Business Insider reported China was in process of acquiring huge chuck of Facebook. One source indicated a fund was hired to buy stocks of Facebook from former employees, and another source traced to Citibank, whom was in talk to acquiring as much as $1.2 billion representing a sovereign wealth fund of China.

The leads coincident with Facebook showing attention of entering Chinese market. Mark Zuckerberg visited China at the end of last year to meet senior officials there. It is rumored Facebook might work with its knock-off brand as a form acceptable to Chinese censorship requirement. While it looks if China feel comfortable on its influence with sizable Facebook stocks, the company might be granted the entrance as an exception. As of today, Facebook is blocked in mainland China. Google's attempt on social network Google+ was blocked within hours after it was launched.

Internet Censorship Tsar Hit by Shoe

Fang Binxing, professor and president of the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, was hit by a flying shoe when giving a lecture in Wuhan University in Wuhan, Hubei Province.

Mr. Han Junyi (twitter alias @hanunyi) threw an egg, which missed the target, then a shoe, right on. The second shoe was blocked by Fang's servants. The eggs was prepared by Wuhan University Computer Science students @zfangzhou and @lonelydream2, who backed down when they found their graduation reading committee members were on the scene with Fang. Han Junyi took the ammunition and executed the task. Fellow students helped Han got away from pursuing security forces.

Fang, is proud of being the 'Father' of Communists Government's Great FireWall (GFW). Fang is rated a top 3 shameless intellectual in China.

Fang is also credited for the spreading of democratic ideas and thinking in China. Without Fang's GFW, the Internet would be a chat board and game pad for boring Chinese youth. Thanks to Fang's blocking of information, the Chinese online community has become a training camp for anti-government movements. Fang's ever-growing block list includes everything a youth could have kill their time otherwise on, from Facebook, Google, Wikipedia, Flickr to Python (a programming language), Android (a cell phone operating system), the SourceForge (open source platform), to the most recent addition, FlipBoard (block confirmed yesterday).

Technically and economically, the down side of Fang's achievement is that he build a wall between mainland China and the outside world. While people from the rest of the world are trying to easy the 'digital gap', Fang created a 'digital wall' out of nowhere. Unlike some IT workers who work on the Great FireWall project or the Gold-Shield Project for a living, Fang is very proud of his vision and leading role in retraining information exchange and suppressing different voices. In several interviews on the subject, Fang showed great enthusiastic and enjoyment on the project.

Trivial:
1. Fang was obviously furious after having dodged the egg but being hit by the shoe. Fang scolded the host of Wuhan University why they hadn't prepared better for such an event since there had been public discussions on the Internet, particularly on Twitter. Some online community posted varies rewards (including hugs from hot girls, new shoes and iPad2, etc.) for anyone to hit shoe at Fang. Professors of Wuhan University replied the campus was blocked from accessing the Twitter, so they could not have known.

2. Students and online Chinese Netizens argued the shoe did not hit Fang, because Fang as a human being does not exist in mainland China at all. For example, if you search the name no result will be returned by any search engine. After today's event, even 'President Fang' and 'Professor Fang' became 'sensitive words', and became unsearchable.

3. Fang's seminar today was arranged in Room B404 in the School of Computer Building, a page users often see when the website is blocked by Fang's GFW. It is not known whether the room assignment was intentional by some defiant staffs.

4. Some of the reward offered by Chinese Twitter user for anyone who would shoe attack Fang:
- a movie in Shenzhen, plus a cup of milk-tea;
- a gourmet meal in Guangzhou (except a few insanely expensive restaurants);
- RMB Y200 ($35);
- a meal of Xinjiang delicacy;
- one BitCoin, and Tibetan Beef Noodle in Hong Kong;
- a dinner in Nanjing;
- a dinner at Suzhehui Restaurant in Shanghai;
- tour of Beijing, plus RMB Y300 book voucher;
- nine meals in Chengdu, guest house;
- one hug, accompanied tour of Chengdu (best on weekends);
- a Vancl T-shirt (value RMB Y29);
- a kiss and a hug and a free meal;
- a gourmet meal in Hangzhou;
- Xi'an BBQ;
- one night hotel in Suzhou, complementary tour and meals;
- $100 Apple gift card, can be converted to RMB;
- Guiyang tour, all covered;
- authentic photo book of Sola Aoi;
- a puff account;
- a bag of American pistachio bought at Giant Towson;
- a post card stamped in Krakow Poland the place of the Schindler's List, and a key chain bought at the Gaudí House Museum in Barcelona;
- a covered tour of red light district of Singapore (offer expires in three months);
- a tennis game in Beijing, or buffet in Golden Jaguar with local transportation;
- RMB Y2,000 allowance Taobao purchase;
- one SSH account;
- "China Mist" authored by He Qinglian;
- three months of local transportation in Wuhan, safety shelter and emergency financial support;
- a gourmet meal in Shanghai wine included;
- a movie in Shanghai or Wuhan;
- a covered tour in Dali, Yunan;
- 2 nights in Chiang Mai, Thailand plus a meal;
- a pair of shoes, please post size;
- a Disney stuffed animal;
- lifetime guided tour in Qinghai, all covered;
- RMB Y10 via Zhifubao;
- an IMAX ticket in Shanghai or equivalent cash;
- Suzhou Garden Collection stamps and a night at a Youth Hostel;
- an authentic porn DVD, by default featuring Sola Aoi if not specified otherwise;
- a pair of shoes under RMB Y300 on Taobao or equivalent cash;
- a round-way ticket to Hangzhou, or equivalent cash;
- a buffet at Conrad Hotel in Hong Kong;
- RMB Y50 via Zhifubao;
- a collection of Stanley Kubrick's movies;
- one day travel in Beijing, fully covered;
- two movie tickets in Shenzhen Pacific Theaters;
- a dedicated VPN account with user name and password preset;
- a gourmet meal in Hong Kong;
- "Path of Reform" authored by Zhao Ziyang;
- will split if win lottery tomorrow;
- a pair of shoes;
- a fully covered tour of Beijing;
- one iPod Touch;
- a pair of Nike from US for a shoe within 2 meters range of Fang;
- family meal with hot girls;
- one month shared use of Xunlei FTP service, extension possible;
- 10 VPN accounts;
- Shanghai BBQ with local transportation;
- a gourmet meal in Nanjing with wine;
- a meal in Shanghai, roasted duck and hot pot at Xiangyanglu Restaurant;
- one night top hotel in Suzhou plus escorted tour;
- Paid full membership of Gaming hosted in Taiwan plus two season tickets;
- one toilet;
- a one night stand in Shanghai;
- one QQ super group account and one Tornado download VIP account;
- one iPad 2;
- a round-way ticket to Hangzhou and a one night stand;
- 9 California crabs;
- EUR E100;
- fully covered escort service by a model in a four star hotel in Dongguan, Guangdong;
- one year VPN or SSH service;
- one week covered tour in California;
- RMB Y300 worth of books, can be selected at major online book stores;
- a round-trip ticket to Shanghai;
- lifetime free meals in Hangzhou;
- one Disney admission and one Ocean Park admission in Hong Kong;
- one Republic of China 100 anniversary scarf bought from the President's Mansion;
- ......
The list is really long. After the successful first attack, one person even posted a one year term job with full benefit offering for a second attack.

Phony Diploma Discussions Censored

The CCP's propaganda arm has banned news media to cover the fomenting gossip on Mr. Tang Jun's fake diploma, PhD in E.E. from Pacific Western University a recognized diploma mill.

Tang, former General Manager of Microsoft China, and the 'emperor employee' of China with $150 million annual salary, was revealed to have his degree received from the diploma mill. The incident triggered a discussion on the relationship between financially success and personal dignity. However, Chinese Netizens soon realized Tang's incident was not an isolated case. The Vice President of China, Xi Jinping, was also found to claim a J.D. from a diploma mill in China, the Qinghua University. Xi's dissertation, which was published as a mandate requirement for degree recipients in China, was found to be a lousy essay in rural marketing economy and bearing no apparent connection to the degree granted.

Because Qinghua University is specialized in customizing advanced degrees for CCP's leaders, the gossip is immediately labelled as 'unhealthy' and 'inharmonious'. News agents were ordered to stay away, and online forums were ordered to delete all traces of the discussion.

Interestingly enough, the other well known diploma mill in China, Beijing University, is also found involved in Tang's case. The Pacific Western University, which does not have a campus, or even an office in the US, has a huge representation in Beijing, China. The PWU maintained a satellite campus on main campus of the Beijing University.

Chinese officials should, actually, relax and follow their US counterparts's suit. Although using phony diploma is a crime in some states (for example, The Texas Penal Code, Section 32.52), it is considered acceptable by Federal government. When approached by CBS News regarding senior officials, including Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, who held degrees purchased from diploma mills, Pentagon spokesman replied, 'Get Lost'.

Google to Pull Out from China

Google's Chief Legal Officer David Drummond blogged yesterday afternoon that Google had been fed up with China's cyber-censorship and 'attacks' on Google's 'infrastructure' in order to access GMail users who advocate for human rights, and that Google was to pull out from China entirely.

When the words broke out, the first instinctive guess was that the Chinese government must have used their CALEA password in such careless ways that amounted to annoying. The blog didn't say so, rather denied any compromise of Google server contents.

The idea sounds wonderful as Google is the first big boy on the street bother to challenge the bullying communist China on its own citizens. The timing is troublesome, at least in a degree. All governments do cyber scouting and so does China. If the said 'attack' was originated from Chinese police, what makes it newsworthy to Google?

There must be incidents and deal-makings behind the curtain that Google decides not interesting enough to write about. For example, a State Department meeting hosted by Hillary Clinton, attended by Google's founders and top execs. Secretary Clinton herself will be giving an address next week on the centrality of Internet freedom.

Google was widely praised, and by and large has been practicing, their motto of 'Do not be Evil'. The moral highland was most recently damaged by Google's decision to provide the 2.1 version of its 'open-source' Andriod operating system to Taiwan's HTC exclusively.

Should China Suspend Spending on Great Firewall (GFW)?

With help from US companies (Cisco, for example), the security ministry of China developed the most sophisticated and technical successful Great Firewall (GFW) project to block Chinese Netizens from obtaining and spreading information from the Net. Sites such as Youtube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Picasa, Blogger are blocked, along with others.

In the past 10 years, a conservative estimate of the cost of the project is around $20B RMB ($6.5B). If considering the majority of Chinese people online didn't care about the outside world, then the cost on individual Netizen is an astonishing $30,769 RMB ($5,000) per capital.

If you are one of the Chinese who flipped the 'wall' to read this article, you should feel satisfied after knowing that the government had spent $5,000 on you.

The study was done by Li Huafang.

Green Dam May Not Result of Pure Political Intention

While the world cheering for the delay in mandatory deployment of the 'Green Dam', a government issued filter software, the positive development of the case might not be as significant as perceived by many.

A fast replay of the event: the Ministry of Information of China announced that all PC sold in China after July 1st 2009 must have a special filter software 'Green Dam' pre-installed to fight inappropriate contents online. The measure was booed by not only ordinary Chinese netizens, but virtually everyone with a voice, including traditional media. Today, the government announced that the installation would be delayed for technical and logistical reasons until further notice.

While the world is cheering for a victory of ordinary people, the incident should not be over-read into a symbol of any willingness of relaxing the regulation of the Internet in China.

Actually there is another angle to examine the tip of this iceberg, that the CCP is so corrupted that 1) a few low level officials dare to make a small fortune at the cost of the entire ruling class, and 2) the ruling class had to endorse the obvious greedy mistake made by a few crazy low level officials.

The Seagull never doubts the CCP's intention and determination to block the Internet or any media (radio, TV, newspaper, etc.). However, this 'Green Dam' thing looks apparently initiated by a few people associated with the firm who produced the 'green dam'. Likely, Google had been blocked for quite a few times, all thanks to its competitor 'Baidu'.

PAOWANG Shut Down

A 'long lasting' online gathering place for some privileged Chinese socialites was finally put to death yesterday at 2 pm.

PAOWANG.COM started as an exclusive, by invitation only forum ten years ago. Although it opened up membership gradually over years, but the two most influential boards were never open for public registrations. Most core members of PAOWANG were beneficiaries of government policies, and stay in bed with the government on most issues. Nevertheless, there might be a little complains or mocking here and there, but the mainstream tone had always been pro-government, and to an extend, pro-communism ruling.

The order to have the website shut down came in a surprise. The River Crab (harmonic cops) must have a hangover somehow.

3月12日14点10年历史的泡网俱乐部网站“被”关闭
论坛：作者：洋洋大观发表时间：2009-03-12 20:51:45

3月12日14点10年历史的泡网俱乐部网站“被”关闭

12点15分的时候，管理员在最有影响的“江湖论剑”板块发布通知，称因技术原因将于下午2点关闭网站，后来在追问下告诉大家目前还未知再次开放的时间，同时留下了一个新的网站作为关闭期间的替代，种种迹象表明，绝不是网站方面主动的行为，而是迫于某种压力。

泡网俱乐部成立于1999年，是由国内最早一批BBS玩家自发组建的，非商业不盈利的一个论坛性质的网站。因为当年四通转变为新浪，四通论坛最早的一批网友重新建立起一个自己的家园，新浪成立后，原论坛元老纷纷出走，包括西祠胡同、凯迪网络、天涯社区、清韵书院、球迷一家等都是在同一时期成立的。十年来经过风风雨雨，是目前几乎唯一硕果仅存的纯BBS，传统的树状论坛形式保留至今。主要有“弹琴（文学）”、“论剑（时政体育）”、“兵器（器材）”、“绝色（摄影）”等一批各具特色的论坛组成。

2001年经过《南方周末》的整版大幅报道，这个网络上的“桃花源”走入公众视野，但特色始终未变，并且没有任何商业化的打算，算是为中文网络留下了最后一片净土。

先后活跃于此的著名ID有老榕、王小山、李寻欢、猛小蛇、和菜头、木子美、王佩、心有些乱、阿飞姑娘、钱列宪、北京厨子、令狐公子、方很少、没知识的穷孩子、ayawawa、五朝臣子、沈阳球迷等等。

本来，今年6月是泡网俱乐部成立10年的时刻，没想到刚刚入春，就传来如此不幸的消息，作为经常浏览各个BBS的人来说，泡网俱乐部虽然尺度宽松，但还没有凯迪、天涯、猫扑等等大胆，影响力也小的多，作为一群网络老人自娱自乐的小乡村，居然横遭此难，不知是和感慨。
不过看到牛博的倒下，泡网的今日也算是早该如此，不知道会不会在近日的“第N批”整顿低俗网站之风中，可以看到泡网的影子。

因为消息突然，并没有留存泡网的页面，甚是可惜。希望早日再见到那蓝灰色如江南烟雨的朦胧，好在前几日下载了泡网网友合作的“江湖之歌”在IPHONE中，是唯一留存于我身边的遗迹了。

再见，泡网！

再见泡网！

For the time being, Paowang stays in a rental place here.

Communisim Who?

Two parts of Obama's Inauguration Address were crossed out in the official Xinhua News Agency Chinese transcript:

1. Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tans, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. Then understood that our power alone cannot protest us, ......

2. ......, — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

The broadcasting of the ceremony by CCTV was abruptly cut when Obama mentioned the word 'communism'. The video clip could be viewed at Youtube.

Are You in Harmony Today?

The Propaganda Department of the CCP is shutting down all online discussions, communities, forums and BBS systems across China amid the upcoming 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CCP) scheduled on Oct 15, 2007. If one website found in violation of the rule, all servers hosted by the same Internet Service Provider (ISP) would be shut down. Hundreds of thousands of servers that didn't violate any rules were unplugged without warming. According to the Department of Propaganda of CCP, they will not be put back online until the conclusion of the Congress. CCP under Hu's leadership has been pressing on the harmony coexistence of people of all levels, which is seen as a positive step by underprivileged. However, the control on information and communication has also been under unprecedented tight.

The picture above was posted by a web manager in place of his vapored site. The color, font and portrait style of people are iconic in the culture revolution period. The people in the picture were celebrating the downtime from Internet connection while holding a sign shouting 'We are in Harmony!'