China in the headlines – 22 July 2008

In the latest wrap-up from news outlets and bloggers across the globe:

• The Age – Exodus on main street: China's clean-up begins
  The clean-up of Beijing's streets has begun in earnest. Not just rubbish, but unwanted people who could be a source of embarrassment for the Chinese Government as the world arrives for the Olympics …

• Radio Free Asia – Dissident jailed ahead of Olympics
  Authorities in the central Chinese province of Hubei have sent a prominent cyber-dissident back to jail ahead of the Beijing Olympics, as a Hunan-based labor activist vowed to continue his fight for human rights …

• AP – Two explosions kill two people on buses in China
  Explosions on two public buses in southwest China have killed two people, heightening fears of terrorism just weeks before the opening of the Olympic Games …

• Index on Censorship – Countdown to Beijing
  In the run up to the Olympics, Indexoncensorship.org is publishing a selection of pieces from the current issue of the magazine: Made in China. Yan Lianke, China's leading, satirical novelist, writes exclusively for Index about the impact of censorship …

• China Media Project – Better governance requires more "nitpicking" by China's media
  The word "muckraker," coined in 1906 by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, has come to typify the hardest of hard-nosed journalism in the West. Words over the weekend from Guangzhou Mayor Zhang Guangning …

• China Digital Times – Beijing's Special Corrections Operation
  Residents of Beijing have noticed their city growing smaller, rather than larger, as the Olympics approach. This strange shrinkage is a result of the pre-Olympics eviction of migrant workers and other "undesirables" …

• Shanghaiist Blog – More on the Beijing bar ban confusion
  Tom Miller of the SCMP has been the center of many heated online discussions of late as a result of his article last Friday on bar owners in Sanlitun being asked to deny service to black patrons …

china AND human rights AND Olympics