CHINA’S BUREAUCRATS HATE BLOGS:

It’s estimated that about a million Chinese are now running blogs (web logs.) This, for Chinese security officials, is worse than chat rooms and bulletin boards. The bloggers have quickly become quite good at saying what the government doesn’t want said, but doing it in a way to deceive the software tools the government uses to watch for such misbehavior. Most of the blogs do not cover political issues, but the ones that do are saying things the government doesn’t want Chinese people to see. The most worrisome blogging covers government corruption, which officials would rather keep in the shadows while they try to deal with it.

Somebody needs to catalog the tricks the Chinese bloggers are using — if the F.E.C. gets its way, we may need some of them over here . . . .