Foreign hacks have it alright

Really quick post, on something that I will write about in more detail later, but I have been wondering what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) would end up doing on or around October 17 for quite a long time. Now I've found out.

Just to explain, October 17 was the day that these regulations came to a glorious end.

The, slightly long-winded, "Regulations on Reporting Activties[sic] in China by Foreign Journalists During the beijing[sic] Olympic Games and the Preparatory Period" were first issued at the end of 2006, way before the start of the Olympics, to try and make China a more habitable environment for foreign journalists.

Of course, regulations like these for Chinese journalists were never released, and the whole issue of whether or not they would be renewed has been pondered over for some time.

But on Friday the MFA showed its hand: they're staying the same (roughly), but also allowing Ministry officials to be interviewed without prior written consent, only verbal agreement.

Of course, there may be some differences, I'm only going off of this Xinhua story at the moment, as I can't seem to find a copy of the regulations on the MFA's site, I will have a trawl later though and see if we can't dig up something interesting in them.