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China Enacting a High-Tech Plan to Track People

At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity.

Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.

The New York Times (online), August 12, 2007

College forces pregnancy tests on students

A Chinese technical college for boarders has defended compulsory pregnancy tests for students as a responsibility to them and their families, local media reported Friday.

Source: Reuters (online), May 20, 2007

Hotels with no condoms get fined

A Chinese province has taken the unusual step of fining hotels and bars more than $600 if they do not provide condoms, part of efforts to fight the spread of AIDS, a newspaper said on Friday.

Source: Reuters (online), March 2, 2007

Chinese army 'harvesting body parts'

CHINA'S military is harvesting organs from unwilling live prison inmates, mostly Falungong practitioners, for transplants on a large scale - including to foreign recipients- according to a study.

Source: news.com.au, February 1, 2007

Blind dissident sent to jail by China in 'mockery of a trial'

A court in the eastern province of Shandong re-sentenced Chen Guangcheng to four years and three months on charges of damaging public property and disrupting social order. The self-taught lawyer, who had documented cases of forced abortions and sterilisations, was appearing after an appeal court had ordered that his case be retried.

Source: TimesOnline, December 2, 2006

China sentences Web porn king to life in prison

China also has an army of cyber police who patrol the Internet for unfavorable content, but their targets are more often politically sensitive subjects than pornography.

Source: Reuters, November 22, 2006

Government crews demolish 'house church' structure

The China Aid Association said that recent demolition of the church building on the campus of Changchun Agricultural University in a suburb of Changchun city happened without prior notice to church members.

Source: WorldNetDaily, November 8, 2006

Volunteers take on, defeat Chinese Bible ban

A new program launched by Voice of the Martyrs is targeting restrictions imposed on Bibles by the Chinese government, allowing Christians to send packages directly to those who are seeking God's word.

Source: WorldNetDaily, October 5, 2006

Chinese Internet writer sentenced to 12 years

A Chinese Internet writer was sentenced on Tuesday to 12 years in prison for "subversion of state power" for backing a movement by exile dissidents to hold free elections, his lawyer said.

Source: Reuters (online), May 16, 2006

White House heckler says protest against Chinese president unplanned

A woman who heckled Chinese President Hu Jintao on the White House lawn, said her protest was a spontaneous reaction to China's suppression of the Falungong spiritual movement.

Source: Breitbart, April 24, 2006

U.S.-China summit ignores arrests of Christians

Unmentioned during Chinese President Hu Jintao's White House visit with President Bush were an abundance of cases of continued repression of Christian house churches and leaders by Chinese police.

Source: WorldNetDaily, April 22, 2006

US Christians detained briefly after China raid

Chinese police detained five US citizens in a raid last month on a Christian retreat in the country's southwest, an overseas church monitoring group said yesterday.

They were released after five hours of interrogation, along with two Taiwanese and 80 Chinese citizens representing congregations worshiping outside the tightly controlled official state Protestant church, the China Aid Association said.

Source: Taipei Times (online), April 21, 2006

Persecution report precedes Hu visit

Just days before the summit between President Bush and Chinese President Hu, a report of torture and abuse against Christians in China has been released by human rights groups.

Source: WorldNetDaily, April 19, 2006

China's new online police warn: 'Internet is not beyond the law'

China's government has initiated the first police force designed to monitor the Internet.

Authorities in Shenzhen said the police force began Jan. 1 and will monitor “everything that is said in online forums,” the Hong Kong Ming Pao reported.

Source: World Tribune (online), January 11, 2006

The great firewall of China

Being online here [China] is a distinctly hit and miss experience - fine if you want to access mundane content, but try to get into anything considered even remotely sensitive by the government and it soon starts grinding to a halt.

Source: BBC News (online), January 6, 2006

Chinese brush up on please, thank you

In advance of the 2008 Olympics, the government has embarked on a crash campaign to instill manners in the world's most populous country.

The effort has left government planners struggling to break some deeply entrenched habits, including public spitting and urinating, driving that evokes a ''Road Warrior" set, and an inordinate fondness for cutting in line.

Source: Boston.com News, September 18, 2005

Chinese City Bans Foreign-Sounding Names

Farewell, "Aladdin Gardens." "White House Mini District" — you're history.

The southwestern Chinese city of Kunming is forcing developers to change the names of those properties and others deemed too foreign sounding, saying they debase traditional culture, officials said Tuesday.

Source: Yahoo! News, September 13, 2005

Beijing to ban smoking ads, vending machines

The Chinese government will implement provisions of an international treaty calling for curbs on cigarette advertising and sales following passage of the agreement by the National People's Congress, the country's legislative body.

Provisions of the treaty are spelled out in the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. In general, the treaty requires signatories to enact certain bans on tobacco advertising and outlawing cigarette vending machines.

Source: WorldNetDaily, August 31, 2005

Students sue school for privacy

But these weren't actors, nor was this random archival footage. The video was taken from the school's own security cameras, and the students caught kissing on tape were easily recognized as 18-year-old Wei Gang and his girlfriend, both of whom felt humiliated. The school had taken a tool ostensibly meant for security, the video camera, and used it to invade their privacy, as a means of social control.

Source: Concord Monitor Online, December 4, 2004

Tiananmen Square, 1989

The Chinese army crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989 had an enormous effect on the course of U.S.-China relations. The deaths of democracy protesters resulted in U.S. sanctions, suspensions of high-level contacts, and a halt in the transfer of military technology. The controversy continues to this day, as demonstrated by the reaction of many concerning President Clinton's decision to appear in the square with Chinese leaders during his June 1998 trip to China.

Source: National Security Archive

1989: Massacre in Tiananmen Square

Several hundred civilians have been shot dead by the Chinese army during a bloody military operation to crush a democratic uprising in Peking's (Beijing) Tiananmen Square.

Source: BBC (online), June 4, year-not-given

Tiananmen Square protests of 1989

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, June 4th Incident, or the Political Turmoil between Spring and Summer of 1989 by the government of the People's Republic of China, were a series of demonstrations led by students, intellectuals and labour activists in the People's Republic of China between April 15, 1989 and June 4, 1989. The resulting crackdown on the protestors by the PRC government left many civilians dead, the figure ranging from 200–300 (PRC government figures), to 2,000–3,000 (Chinese student associations and Chinese Red Cross).

Source: Wikipedia

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