The WSJ today carries an item on Google’s moves into China revealing that the company has decided to make further concessions to the government, including - the WSJ alleges - the blocking of some aspects of Google Earth in parts of China. From the Opposite End of China:

The article’s basic point is that after a lot of initial hemming and hawing, Google execs have dismissed any worries about the censorship efforts required to co-exist peacefully with the CCP. In fact, along with Yahoo! and other search engines, Google is already tailoring Chinese search results to comply with government restrictions.

For instance:

Until recently, Google’s map and satellite-photo service offered Chinese Internet users something they rarely could see: a bird’s-eye view of the secret compound of Zhongnanhai, where the country’s top leaders live and work. But in recent weeks, close-up views from Google’s satellite images of the leadership compound in Beijing have been blocked in at least parts of China.

Google also restricts access to Google Video in China, which means Chinese readers of this blog will not be able to see ‘Hard Gay - part time ramen‘ without a proxy.:

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, google, northeast asia

Via BoingBoing something AsiaPundit didn’t really need to know.:

From Tokyo Times: “As the pie chart above graphically demonstrates, Japanese ladies appear to simply fart for fun; with nearly half of them practically pumping their way through the first year of marriage.”

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, japan, northeast asia

Woah. This is pretty explosive stuff.:

You heard it here first (maybe?) in English.

HWANG WOO SUK’S ARTICLE IN SCIENCE MAGAZINE, it turns out, WAS ALL BASED ON FALSIFIED DATA.

That’s been rumored, even suspected a little, but now it’s pretty much official and surely will be by morning.

South Korea has long had a need to have a national win a another Nobel Prize (note correction below), and Hwang was seen as a strong contender. Plus, as this photo from Oranckay’s second post on the latest in the Hwang scandal demonstrates, his stem cell research was a massive source of national pride. Having the country’s most lauded scientist and scientific program exposed as a fraudster is not something that will be taken lightly.:

Marmot is keeping close watch, now on the ninth update to the roundup.

(CORRECTION: As Kushibo notes in the comments, Korea’s president Kim Dae-Jung did indeed win a Nobel in 2000 (and it only cost around half a billion dollars). AP did remember this shortly after sending this post but was prevented from posting an earlier correction due to the extended outage of TypePad.)

Technorati Tags: asia, hwang woo suk, korea, northeast asia, stem cells

AsiaPundit doesn’t expect to see much - if anything - in the Chinese press about this.:

It has been belatedly learned (thanks to KBS) that five North Koreans armed with rifles crossed the Tumen River into China’s Yonbyon region in the early morning hours of Oct. 16 and attempted to burglarize a mountainside resort villa.   The manager of the resort quietly notified the authorities, who responded by sending six of the PLA’s finest to the scene.  As the Chinese soldiers approached the resort, the North Koreans opened fire, killing a 19-year-old soldier by the name of Li Ryang.

According to witnesses, the North Koreans were wearing KPA uniforms, and are believed to have been soldiers.

After taking return fire from the Chinese, the North Koreans fled, and the resort manager and three tourists were rescued.

The last time someone in the Chinese military was killed in an incident involving foreigners there was quite a backlash. 

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, korea, north korea