This doesn’t sound good.

China is expanding its censorship controls to cover text messages sent using mobile phones.

New regulations have been issued to allow mobile phone service providers to police and filter messages for pornographic or fraudulent content.

But analysts fear the real targets are political dissidents.

China’s authorities are gradually tightening control over the spread of electronic information, particularly on the internet.

A Paris-based group, Reporters Without Borders, says the Chinese authorities are increasingly using new technology to control information.

It says one Chinese company marketing a system to monitor mobile phone text messages has announced it is watching for “false political rumours” and “reactionary remarks”.

Venus Info Tech Ltd said in a press release that its surveillance system worked by filtering algorithms based on key words and combinations of key words.

China’s plans to censor SMS messages was alluded to last year and now it seems ready to put into place. China Mobile, which controls 65 percent of the PRC’s mobile phone market, is the first to adopt the new filtering system, and you’d think it’s only a matter of time before China Unicom follows suit.

Of course, SMS text messages played a prominent role in spreading both truth and rumors during the SARS fiasco, and it probably drove the CCP ballistic that there was a medium over which they could exercise no control. Luckily for all, those days are over.

Whoever’s going to do the censoring is going to be very busy. Many in China spend a good part of the day SMSing their friends, so that’s a lot of messages to filter and police. This should open up new doors for citizens who want to join China’s army of Internet censors, already estimated to include about 30,000 foot soldiers. Your tax dollars at work.

Keep those reforms coming, Mr. Hu.

Finally, after reading and posting about the book Red-color News Soldier by Li Zhengsheng for nearly a year, I have my very own copy. And it’s exquisite.

The photojournalist Li was charged with taking pictures throughout the Cultural Revolution, and in his black and white images he somehow managed to capture the essence of Mao’s insanity in all of its brute horror.

Li’s photos, kept hidden for 40 years, seem to put you right there, whether it’s a struggle session, a public execution, a beaming crowd greeting the Great Helmsman, or an open-air denunciation. And while I’ve just started to read the text, it looks like he is a sharp observer and a good storyteller.

There are certain historical phenomena that I constantly wonder at, like the inanities of the first world war, the rise of Hitler and Stalin, Vietnam, the Holocaust, the death of JFK and what it meant, and the difference in American life since 9/11. But the Cultural Revoution may take the prize for sheer inexplicableness on all levels. Meaning, there’s no way to rationally comprehend what was in the minds of the leaders and the followers. You can study it and talk to people who lived through it, but there doesn’t seem to ever come that moment when you can say, “Oh yes, now I get it.”

I can tell from what I’ve seen already that Red-color News Soldier will help, at least in terms of making me a more intimate witness to the tragedy. But nothing, I suspect, will ever really give me an understanding of how and why it could have been allowed to happen.

I’ll report back on the book as I make my way through it. To the friend who sent it to me, Thank you. It’s wonderful.

Earlier posts on Red-color News Soldier can be found here and here.

You have to visit ZonaEuropa for its wonderful photos and descriptions of the march. Sadly, he fails to tie the huge turnout to my birthday, but he does a fine job explaining why you can’t always believe the crowd estimates broadcast by the media. Superb post.

Update: Also some nice photos over at Daai Tou Lam.