Chinese Internet authorities have ordered websites—including a Chinese language environmental NGO site operated by China Development Brief (www.greengo.cn)—to remove an open letter from twelve organisations calling for a fair trial for jailed environmental activist, Wu Lihong (吴立红).

Anomalously, the move came after China’s official media had already reported on the contents of the letter, which argued that “in order to support public confidence in the rule of law and build a harmonious society” Wu’s trial should be open to the public and based on lawfully obtained evidence.

Senior Chinese officials vowed to act on an international NGO and trade union report alleging abusive practices in four Pearl Delta factories contracted to produce goods for the 2008 Olympics, even as the report was overshadowed by shocking revelations of forced child labour in brick kilns in the provinces of Henan and Shanxi.

Rural migrants to Chinese cities are having a very tough time, according to a report issued in March by Amnesty International. True enough. But hardly news to anyone at all familiar with the subject. Any well-informed broadsheet newspaper reader in the West knows this already, and so of course do all Chinese people who have been out of their village. So what was the point?

Musapir, a native of Kelamayi (克拉马依) in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, is a police cadet in the Peoples’ Public Security University of China. In July 2006 he posted the following story on a website devoted to Uighur affairs.

During this summer vacation the school arranged for us to go to Shenzhen on a two month internship. The people and events in this story are all real, but for their security and for other reasons some names have been changed.

The danwei where I did my internship was a local police station (派出所) in Shenzhen city’s Bao’an (宝安) district. Around midday the day before yesterday we received a call saying some of our people on the beat (巡防人员) had arrested a thief in front of a commercial plaza. After taking the call, a police officer and I went together to the scene and found that the thief was a boy from Xinjiang, the same place I come from. He had been stealing a cellphone from someone’s bag, but the victim noticed.

Relaxation of controls on foreign journalists in China—intended, it seems, to promote “harmonious” reporting during the Olympics—is a welcome sign that the government is alert to the power of global public opinion and recognises the need for a more sophisticated approach to news management. This may be good news for Chinese journalists too if it proves to be the harbinger of greater domestic freedoms—which are necessary for the profession to develop and become the foundation for a globally competitive, Chinese media industry.

A steep rise in soybean and cotton imports, mainly from the United States, has led to falling prices for Chinese farmers, with the result that “many . . . get almost nothing from the plant[s]” and twenty million have given up farming altogether, according to the November 30 issue of Beijing Review.

Yang Shaobin (杨少斌), born to a coalmining family in Hebei Province, has put together an exhibition of oil paintings and installations that, according to the catalogue, “dialectically thinks about the linkages between Chinese history, culture and social development.” Nick Young looks at these and other pictures, wondering what “dialectically” might mean nowadays.

Yang Qingfeng (杨青风), a 25-year-old blind man who is studying massage and acupuncture at a special college for people with disabilities, has been making school radio programmes since he was 16. But until recently becoming a professional broadcaster seemed an impossible dream.

At a signing ceremony in Beijing today, the government of Norway—which, against the international trend, is continuing to expand its cooperation with China—pledged USD 1 million to support two environment sector projects jointly developed by the UN Development Programme and China’s State Environment Protection Agency (SEPA).

Thirty two young Chinese reporters spent a week in September at an environmental journalism training workshop that was opened by Vice Director of the State Environment Protection Agency, Pan Yue (潘岳), and that features former Chief Environment Correspondent for CNN International, Gary Strieker, as a lead trainer.