CHINA'S BLOG MOVEMENT

A Reuters story recently posted on cnn.com reports that the number of blogs in China has increased 30-fold in the last four years.

The story reports that the number of blog sties in China reached 34 million last month, which boast 17 million authors and an astounding 75 million readers.

The Xinhua news agency, which first reported the story, explains how the blogging surge is impacting the Communist country:

The rapid growth of blog sites in China also brought potential business opportunities to the advertising industry. Some blogs written by famous people attract millions of daily readers.

In a country known for its strict media oversight (among many other strict oversights), it's somewhat refreshing to know that blogs have some positive effects in other parts of the world. In the good old US of A, it seems the Internet, especially blogs, get a bad rap (mostly among journalism purists) for the current demise of newspapers.

The story did say, however, that more than two-thirds of the blogs had not been updated in more than a month.

It should be interesting to watch what China's government will do next, if anything at all, especially if the surge continues.

Stay tuned.