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This article criticizes the Chinese government for its failure to make good of its promise to ease regulations on visiting journalists who cover the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. It cites that Wang Wei, secretary general of the Beijing Olympic bid committee, as saying in 2001 that they will give the media complete freedom to report when they come to China. It was in December 2006 when the Chinese government issues a decree loosening restrictions for foreign media. However, foreign journalists are raising doubts about just how much freedom the government will actually allow them less than 100 days before the Opening Ceremonies for the Olympic Games. INSET: Pro-Chinese protests target foreign media.

This article examines the role of the foreign media while covering events in China. The Chinese government is suspicious and occasionally hostile towards the media, even as the 2008 Beijing Olympics near. At least 10 foreign journalists working in China have been the target of death threats since March, according to Melinda Liu, a Newsweek journalist and president of the Foreign Correspondents Club of China. The author speculates on how China will react in the face of an estimated 20,000 foreign journalists coming to cover the Olympics, which begin on August 8, 2008.

The article discusses on the drafted law submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress that would fine press personnel for reporting on emergencies without the approval of the government in China. According to Wang Yongqing, vice minister of the State Council's Legislative Affairs Office, explained that the government aimed to release information on sudden events in a uniform, accurate, and timely manner.

Focuses on the controlled press and radio of the People's Republic of China. Repetition of the words "Stability!...Unity!"; Condition of the Marxist-Leninist autocracy; Millenia-old Chinese terror of chaos; Evils after the collapse of authority.

The article reports on the loosening of restrictions for foreign press in China. It notes that the government is going to extend new rights of the press after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, particularly the reporters' freedom to travel. However, these privileges are exclusively for foreign journalists only and the Chinese government is going to continue its control on the spread of information in newspapers and on television.

The article reports on the government control of the mass media in China. The degree of press freedom that was permitted during the 2008 summer Olympic games held in Beijing has been rescinded for the domestic media. Foreign reporters will continue to enjoy an increased level of mobility but overall government controls remain in force. The inability of the domestic press to report on food safety issues in China is discussed

Reports on the detention of the reporters of the Chinese magazine "Beijing's People" by the Chinese local police on September 13, 2005. Reason behind the detention of the reporters; Scandal involving officials of the Hebei Provincial government.

Reports on the suspension of the operations of "Henan Shangbao" by the Chinese government in September 2005. Reason behind the suspension of the publication; Scandal exposed by the newspaper which have had an impact on the Chinese society; Warning issued by the Chinese Communist Party on the reporting of journalist bribery scandals.

The article reports an environmental dispute in China that improved relations between government officials and mass media. In recent weeks, the normally docile media have been getting into a fury over plastic sheeting, and whether officials were right to lay it on the bed of an imperial lake. A small matter, maybe; but one that has had big ramifications, pitting bureaucracies against one another and resulting in rare concessions to advocates of open government. The plastic-sheeting project might well have gone unnoticed had it not been for a passing academic, who spotted it being laid on the often-dry lake bed at Yuanmingyuan, also known as the Old Summer Palace. In China, where public debate on government policy is normally suppressed, any opportunity to speak freely is seized upon: Beijing's newspapers, mainly the more competitive tabloids, leapt on the issue. The State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) sensed its chance. At the end of March it ordered a halt to the plastic project pending an environmental review. Last month SEPA went further, organising an unusually high-profile public hearing on a government-backed project, to which critics of the scheme were invited.

Hu Shuli is the editor of the twice-monthly (soon weekly) Caijing magazine--the name means finance and business. As the news flow has increased, so has the freedom of Chinese journalists to report it. Gradual deregulation of the media has allowed several feisty, relatively independent publications to spring up. Caijing is the best-known. Caijing combines investigative reporting with the sort of critical commentary that a decade ago would have landed its journalists in jail. The magazine has a circulation of 80,000 and 40 journalists crowded into a dingy office in Beijing, China. But Hu has the country's biggest editorial budget per journalist. In 1991, Hu wrote the first book in Chinese on the principles of American journalism. This, and powerful friends (she counts Wu Jinglian, China's top economist, among her mentors), have honed Hu's instincts when it comes to assessing whether Caijing's latest scoop will push the authorities too far.

Reports on the plans of the Hong Kong government to curb media invasion of privacy. Plans to organize a press council to check media abuses; Implications of such regulations; Fears of public-interest groups of media manipulation by the government.

This article presents a narrative of the author's experience as a journalism professor in China. In September 2004, I started teaching practical American journalism to enthusiastic Chinese college students at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. Come October, Dean Sun Youzhong encouraged me to put online the first English language, university-sanctioned, student written news blog in China. It is called, WOW: We Observe the World, and has enjoyed a modest but warm reception from all areas of the globe. WOW is a quick and easy online newspaper by and for student journalists. During the semester, the students reported on movies, music, books, sports, travel, culture and hard news. Come early December, in lieu of a final exam, I assigned an opinion-editorial on the arrest in fall 2004 of Zhao Yan, a noted Chinese journalist working as a researcher for the Beijing bureau of The New York Times. The State Security Bureau charged Zhao with revealing state secrets. It was a big story in the U.S. press. My students, though, knew nothing about it. Not a word on it was published in China. Frankly, there was a lot of stone disbelief in the lecture hall the day I delivered the facts of the case and opened it up for discussion. The 60 students got all of the links and resources they needed to dig into the case. I told them the best-written and best-argued essays would go up on WOW. Many people were flabbergasted that the series was not only allowed up, but also left undisturbed by the Great Firewall of China and its Internet blocking inside the country. The students are campus heroes, and the series remains up for all to read, officially, with the blessings of the deans and Party cadres I work for. I will not pretend to know why. I know a truly free press is coming to China, as well as they do, but it is a process as slow as it is unstoppable.