I'm not surprised by this article in the New York Times today - the Chinese government loves to censor. The Chinese government originally promised all foreign journalists that they would be able to "report freely" while they're in China reporting on the Olympic games.
Here's a quote from the article:
"Since the Olympic Village press center opened Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages — among them those that discuss Tibetan issues, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown on the protests in Tiananmen Square and the Web sites of Amnesty International, the BBC’s Chinese-language news, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse."
Now, to someone living in Shanghai - this is not shocking. The government does not want anyone to see anything that might be harmful to the countries "social stability". I hope the government changes their position on censorship for journalists, but I will be very surprised if that actually happens.
This screw up with internet censorship, the pollution in Beijing and all of the visa problems people are having are unfortunately putting a negative light on the Olympic games. Let's see if the government can pull something out of their you know what and turn things around.
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Dear Emily,
My name is Connor Meiselman and I’m emailing you on behalf of Transparent Language, a language-learning software company. I was doing some research on Chinese language sites in anticipation of the upcoming Olympic Games and came across your site. I figured you might be interested to know that we’ve just added Chinese to our Word of the Day widgets for blogs and websites! Every day the widget provides a new word and example sentence along with native speaker sound. Much of the content is focused on the games this summer, with words and phrases for events and more.
To get the widget for your site, grab the embed code at http://www.transparent.com/wotd/today/chinese.htm.
You may also enjoy the other free resources (including games, quizzes, and our Chinese blog) on our Chinese Language Learning Portal:
http://www.transparent.com/languagepages/chinese/chinese.htm
If you have any questions about using the widget or would like to discuss additional partnership opportunities, let me know!
Regards,
Connor Meiselman
Transparent Language
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