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Rumours about the arrest of Chinese model and actress Fan Bingbing on charges of tax evasion have spread on Chinese media. As Apple Daily reports, celebrity Fan Bingbing and her younger brother Fan Chengcheng have allegedly been detained for taking part in a tax evasion scheme alongside her manager, Mu Xiaoguang. Mu has also allegedly been charged with destroying incriminating evidence. On May 28 TV anchor Cui Yongyuan posted on Weibo a contract that showed Fan Bingbing being paid $1.56 million (RMB10 million) for four days’ work on director Feng Xiaogang's film “Cell Phone 2.”  Later Cui released another contract worth $7.8 million (RMB50 million) for the same work. He alleged that Fan had declared to tax authorities only the first contract, thus avoiding to pay taxes on the second, larger amount.  Double-contracts for the purpose of tax evasion are known in China as "yin-yang contracts".  Although the Chinese government censored Cui's p

Sanya, Hainan (by Alex Kwok via Wikimedia Commons) South China's Hainan Province  will set up  special tourist zones where travellers will be able to access popular foreign websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube that are currently blocked in mainland China.  According to state-run news outlet Global Times, this month   the government of Hainan Province has issued a three-year plan to improve the internationalization of the tourist industry. The plan includes the creation of special tourist zones with unrestricted internet access for overseas visitors. This move has been compared to the establishment of special economic zones during Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up era in the late 1970s and 1980s.  China's internet is heavily censored by the Communist government. Last year Beijing launched a crackdown on the use of VPNs, which for decades have allowed users to bypass restrictions imposed by the authorities.  The island-province

On March 19 Mark Zuckerberg , Founder and CEO of Facebook, was received in Beijing by Liu Yunshan (刘云山), member of the Politburo Standing Committee and of the Secretariat of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) . According to Chinese media reports , Liu Yunshan said that the internet is a new common home for mankind and that shaping the future of the cyberspace community is a common responsibility of the international community (互联网是人类共同的新家园，构建网络空间命运共同体是国际社会的共同责任). "Chairman Xi Jinping 's 'Four Principles' and 'Five Propositions' regarding the administration of the World Wide Web have received widespread approval", Liu was quoted as saying.  He added that over the past twenty years China's internet has grown following "the path of development and governance with Chinese characteristics" (中国特色的发展治理之路).  Liu praised Facebook's advanced technology and management model and expressed his hope that the US company "might stre