"Chinese Web logs have existed since early in this decade, but the form has exploded in recent months, challenging China's ever vigilant online censors and giving flesh to the kind of free-spoken civil society whose emergence the government has long been determined to prevent or at least tightly control.
Web experts say the surge in blogging is a result of strong growth in broadband Internet use, coupled with a huge commercial push by the country's Internet providers aimed at wooing users. Common estimates of the numbers of blogs in China range from one million to two million and growing fast."
