Yahoo China and the press

Not much I can add to the wave of comment across the Blogosphere on the accusation that Yahoo's Hong Kong subsidiary assisted Chinese police to arrest mainland business journalist, Shi Tao. There are two business media angles to this:

1. Yahoo China (but not Hong Kong, I think) is now controlled by Alibaba.com. They have previously been involved in relatively uncontroversial business areas such as providing an online showcase for Chinese exporters to the world. It will be interesting to see how they respond to the new challenges of involvement in the altogether trickier world of general media and online consumer services in which they now find themselves involved.
2. Shi Tao is a business writer for the magazine Contemporary Business News. The view that China is 'light' on business publications when it comes to censorship has frequently been proven wrong by the way in which journalists who are seen to have transgressed are treated.

For an interesting range of general comments on what is happening and the blogosphere's perspective on the story, see the following posts:

• Global Voices Online
• Business Week
• Mediapace
• John Battelle