thank your lucky star you are not a blogger in china

thestar reported that authorities have ordered all china-based websites and blogs to register or be closed down. they have until 30 june to do that. and they meant private/non profit websites/blogs.

the penalty? a fine up to up to 1 million yuan (US$120,000; euro95,000).

gosh! and it stated clearly private blogs, just like the blogs of yours and mine. sounds ridiculous that being private, one has to register it with the government… er… but if you think of it being china, the country with the communist government, you won’t find it ridiculous i guess.

i only remember one chinese blog… one of the two international blog that link me, i.e. myrick. (the other international blog that links me is asiapundit). so i hop over there and have a look and i notice there was a plea to ‘adopt a chinese blog’.

it was from that post that i found out this thing about private websites/blogs requiring registration in china started in april this year… how come thestat only report it yesterday?

anyway, here is an excerpt from the post (which was not myrick’s but from ‘adopt a blog project’.:

Therefore, many bloggers in mainland China began to consider moving their blogs outside of China. But because of language barrier, financial, payment and other issues, the cost of moving is rather high and the situation is not optimistic.

It is based on the belief of free speech that we started the Adopt a Chinese blog project. We hope that we and others on the internet who shared the same belief, can share resources and help bloggers who want to freely express themselves and find a safer space for blogging, so that they can continue to blog without worries.

how does this adopt a blog works? well it looks something like one is request to host the adopted blog. i’m not technical so don’t know how to explain but you can go to the site itself to see for yourself.

btw, also from myrick, i came across this china blog ‘angry chinese blogger’, which on seeing the name, then only i remember it is familiar. i think this is one of the famous blog in china (well rajan would know about this).