PandaPassport.com – China Blog

Or

How many Scooby Doo endings can the Chinese government endure?

Kudos to digg for keeping a story alive that the powers-that-be-in China would like to see dead. This one might have slipped by me otherwise:

All news must be good news, says Chinese government

I’d say that this is shocking news, but well… to be honest, it’s kinda par for the Sino-course.

Here are the highlights from the piece:

• “China has ordered its media to report only positive news.”
• “Media controls have been tightened, Aids activists detained and NGOs shut down.”
• “Chen Shuqing, who is a founder member of the banned China Democracy party, suffered the toughest punishment meted out so far when he was found guilty on Thursday of “inciting people to overthrow the government”. 4 years in the big house. Read more here and here.
• “The domestic media have been banned from conducting independent investigations of food and product safety stories.”
• During the four day Beijing car ban, journalists “can only report on the improvements to the environment and transportation. Interviews with inconvenienced commuters or images of overcrowded buses are forbidden.” More on the car ban here.
• Media is also forbidden to report “on the collapse of a bridge in southern China which killed at least 41 people. Reporters said local officials punched them and chased them from the scene of Monday’s disaster.”

Now if you think all that is somewhat unfair, you may want to consider voting it up further on digg.

I mean, really… The face that China is trying to put on for the world is becoming increasingly transparent, as new media keeps finding innovative ways to circumvent the Chinese censors.

But you gotta admit, these days China’s mask is being torn off a lot more frequently than it used to be.

I think hitting the front page of Digg, as this Guardian article did — well, that certainly counts as an public unmasking in my book.

Just like on Scooby do…