Bingfeng has a very good roundup, of both blogging and blog commentary, on the beating of activist Lu Banglie outside of Taishi village and the controversy surrounding the reporting of accompanying Guardian correspondent Benjamin Joffe-Watt.

The Guardian, in the article linked to here from Howard French’s site, notes that Joffe-Watt was not the only one to have thought Lu was dead. While the paper’s credibility is being questioned, this is still worth noting.

A second witness to the attack, whom the Guardian cannot name to protect his safety, last night said that he believed Mr Lu had been left for dead. “A group of men attacked Lu with fists and legs. We thought he was dead,” the witness said. “An ambulance came [and] left without him. We were fearful for our lives; we thought they might kill us.”

Mr Lu told the Guardian there was nothing anyone could have done to help him.

To AsiaPundit, it seems the Anglo side of the Sino-blogosphere is more divided than usual on this matter - possibly driven by a split in knee-jerk CPC bashers and knee-jerk MSM bashers.

Optimistically, despite the divide and the distraction from the core issues in the Taishi dispute, I’m hopeful that this incident may produce results. I believe the Chinese public, and the central government, are taking notice more serious of the Taishi situation.

Why? For starters, this site, which also has a good roundup, stops loading in Shanghai if attempts to access it without a proxy are made. The stalling is more indicative of filtering than a block. A trace-route test showed access is allowed and proxies will allow full access. Without proxy, the site stops loading when the Taishi incident is mentioned. This is indicative of keyword filtering.

I haven’t yet confirmed filtering through sufficient testing - although attempts to load Simon World also briefly caused similar problems in the same manner - if filtering is (or was) in place that would mean that the central government was trying to prevent discussion of the issue. In turn, that would mean that it finally has Beijing’s attention.

I’m not a fan of the central government. However, the central CPC is better by far than the fiefdoms that litter the country, and an intervention in Taishi would be beneficial.

If other Sinobloggers can provide notice of possible filtering of Taishi/Lu Banglie it would be welcome.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia