Tea Leaf Nation

Let the hand-wringing begin. Sina has thrown up the trial version of a new user contract on Weibo, its Twitter-like microblog service, on May 8. The announcement was made via the official account of Weibo’s minder, the coyly named Little Secretary of Weibo (@微博小秘书), and attracted more than 30,000 comments in about 36 hours and attention from [...]

When the going gets tough, the tough speak in code, at least on China’s Internet. It’s quitting time in China, and thousands of netizens are announcing they are leaving work “of their own volition.” But this happens every day. Why choose today to say so?  Faced with overzealous censors, netizens on Weibo, China’s Twitter, are [...]

Following blind rights lawyer Cheng Guangcheng’s daring recent escape from years of house arrest, observers waited with baited breath to see how China’s media would break its silence on the news. This morning, the relatively pro-party Global Times took the first step with articles in Chinese and English which, the Wall Street Journal reported, tried [...]

Shhhh…don’t type that name! “Chongqing” (重庆, which literally means “double celebration”), is currently not searchable on either the Sina or Tencent versions of China’s Twitter-like Weibo platforms. It is searchable on Sohu Weibo, which perhaps merely proves China’s government no longer much cares about Sohu Weibo. For the uninitiated, Chongqing is the city whose Party [...]

The Chinese Internet (or is it Intranet?) drama continues. Just two days ago Weibo, China’s premiere social network, proved it’s still alive and breathing. Now, if netizen chatter there is to be believed, the Chinese Internet has started acting downright Orwellian.  Many netizens from within China’s mainland are reporting that they can’t access any foreign [...]

Talk about pent-up demand. On the morning of Tuesday, April 3, Sina and Tencent Weibo, China’s most popular microblogs, were allowed to re-open the threaded “comment” function– the microblogs’ heart and soul — after three days of government-ordered blackout. And netizens have responded by the millions to express their thoughts and breathe a collective sigh [...]

It’s spring outside, but a chill wind is blowing through the Chinese blogosphere. After the government shocked observers with a Friday night crackdown that saw 16 sites shuttered for “spreading malicious rumors” with “negative social effects” and over 1,000 people detained for “Internet crimes,” frost is beginning to creep across China’s cyberspace.  News of the [...]

Tea Leaf Nation previously reported that Chinese netizens love Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblog platform, with a capital L. So what do they want to say to their beloved Weibo on the day that the government ordered Sina and Tencent, operators of the two largest microblog platforms, to shut off their commenting feature–a feature that many [...]

Has the music just stopped? Mere days ago, Tea Leaf Nation remarked upon the relatively unrestrained speech taking place on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platforms, even after the beginning of real-name registration. This speech included rumors of a high-level coup in Beijing. China’s government has just responded, and the results aren’t pretty. As party mouthpiece The People’s [...]

Netizens have been furiously tweeting and retweeting on Chinese microblogs about rumours that some have been able to access Youtube and possibly Twitter from inside China without having to scale the Great Firewall. Some netizens commented that they were able to access Youtube from inside the GFW simply by using “https” instead of “http” in their [...]