New Scientist magazine has an article about The 'blog' revolution in China.. The article quickly reviews the political implications blogs have, and their recent growth.

By the end of October 2004, China had more than 45 large blog-hosting services.

Before blogs the only outlet for online commentary was forums, or chat rooms, but...

A list recently obtained by the China Internet Project in Berkeley found that over 1000 words, including “dictatorship”, “truth”, and “riot police” are automatically banned in China’s online forums.

As the Chinese government shut down large centralized forums, blogs took over. Blogs became the P2P news network.