Dagens gladnyhet: Nicholas Kristof har en utrolig historie fra Kina: blogging blir det aviser og andre medier aldri har greid; frie og uavhengige. Det er fire millioner blogger i Kina, og de vokser som sopp etter regn.

De er for mange til at politiet og sensuren greier å følge med på alle til enhver tid.

Mest utrolig er historien om mannen som bestemte seg for å være folkets talerør, og som drar rundt fra by til by og skriver ned historier om urettferdighet. Så poster han dem på nettet, med bilder.

www.yuluncn.com.

That’s the Web site of a self-appointed journalist named Li Xinde. He made a modest fortune selling Chinese medicine around the country, and now he’s started the Chinese Public Opinion Surveillance Net – one of four million blogs in China.
Mr. Li travels around China with an I.B.M. laptop and a digital camera, investigating cases of official wrongdoing. Then he writes about them on his Web site and skips town before the local authorities can arrest him.

His biggest case so far involved a deputy mayor of Jining who is accused of stealing more than $400,000 and operating like a warlord. One of the deputy mayor’s victims was a businesswoman whom he allegedly harassed and tried to kidnap.

Mr. Li’s Web site published an investigative report, including a series of photos showing the deputy mayor kneeling and crying, apparently begging not to be reported to the police. The photos caused a sensation, and the deputy mayor was soon arrested.

Another of Mr. Li’s campaigns involved a young peasant woman who was kidnapped by family planning officials, imprisoned and forcibly fitted with an IUD. Embarrassed by the reports, the authorities sent the officials responsible to jail for a year.

When I caught up with Mr. Li, he was investigating the mysterious death of a businessman who got in a financial dispute with a policeman and ended up arrested and then dead.

Kina kultiverer inntrykket av åpenhet overfor utlandet, men er streng hjemme. Bloggerne ødelegger denne fasaden.

The Internet is also eroding the leadership’s monopoly on information and is complicating the traditional policy of «nei jin wai song» – cracking down at home while pretending to foreigners to be wide open.

En annen artikkel om Kina kan fortelle at det bygges shopping-malls i Kina som er tre ganger så store som den største amerikanske, Mall of America. I 2015 vil det være 10 slike megasentre i verden, og sju vil ligge i Kina. Hvordan vil kineserne reagere på shoppingkulturens innmnarsj? Vi kan vente oss store forandringer i Kina, og forhåpentligvis til det bedre.

So where is China going? I think the Internet is hastening China along the same path that South Korea, Chile and especially Taiwan pioneered. In each place, a booming economy nurtured a middle class, rising education, increased international contact and a growing squeamishness about torturing dissidents.

Death by a Thousand Blogs