In China 1.3 million websites have been shut in 2010

Chinese web users are frequently blocked from accessing sites such as Youtube...

More than one million websites closed down in China last year, a state-run think tank has said. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said there were were 41% fewer websites at the end of 2010 than a year earlier.
Chinese officials have tightened regulations on the internet in recent years, and they launched a crackdown on pornography websites in 2009.
The academy's researcher said there was no link, insisting China had a "high level of freedom of online speech".
Liu Ruisheng said that despite the declining number of sites, the number of web pages had risen to 60 billion during 2010 - a 79% increase on the previous year.
"This means our content is getting stronger, while our supervision is getting more strict and more regulated," he said.
Civil rights campaigners have long railed against China's web censors, who impose controls known as the Great Firewall of China.
A number of websites are routinely blocked, such as the BBC's Chinese language service, and social media sites like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.

Consequences of 'Foot Binding' among Women in China

               Foot binding  was a custom practiced on young girls and women for approximately one thousand years in China, beginning in the 10th century and ending in the first half of 20th century.
Foot-binding resulted in lifelong disabilities for most of its practitioners. As the practice waned in the early 20th century, "some girls' feet were released after initial binding, leaving less severe deformities," according to a study conducted by the University of California, San Francisco. However, some effects of foot-binding were permanent, especially if a girl's arches or toes had been broken or other drastic measures taken in order to achieve the desired smallness. In the 1990s and early 2000s, some elderly (born until mid-1940s) Chinese women still suffered from disabilities related to bound feet.


Legend has it that the origins of footbinding go back as far as the Shang dynasty (1700-1027 B.C.). The Shang Empress had a clubfoot, so she demanded that footbinding be made compulsory in the court.
But historical records from the Song dynasty (960-1279 A.D.) date footbinding as beginning during the reign of Li Yu, who ruled over one region of China between 961-975. It is said his heart was captured by a concubine, Yao Niang, a talented dancer who bound her feet to suggest the shape of a new moon and performed a "lotus dance."