Annual Chinese Blogger Conference canceled

Chinese officials forced the annual Chinese Blogger Conference to cancel its planned meeting in Shanghai over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported. The conference, which has been held yearly since 2005, features prominent bloggers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and artists. The location was announced four days before the planned date, but the proposed venue, an office building in Shanghai’s Xuhui district, declined to host the event after government pressure. The organizer’s website said that the cancellation was due to "well-known reasons," and the site was later blocked. While blogging has been a high-growth industry in China, a crackdown on internet dissent in recent months has raised questions about how far the government is willing to let the phenomenon grow.