10 million hits for Chinese World Cup blog

Free speech a hit, as censorship laws do not extend to sport and entertainment

A blogger in China has received over 10 million hits on his World Cup site. 

Dong Lu's Chinese language site features blogs and podcasts covering all the football action in Germany. 

Dong believes that the popularity of his blog is due to the free speech allowed for sport and entertainment commentary compared to other areas of Chinese media that are heavily censored.

"In sports journalism there is relative freedom of expression and we can give our opinions about a match and other sporting issues," Dong told Reuters. 

"In other fields, such as the social and political arenas, there are regulations. I've spent 10 years working in the media and I understand the line that can never be crossed."

Censorship in China is a big issue. Google has been heavily criticised for giving in to Chinese government pressure to block politically sensitive terms on its Google China site.

The search giant plans to maintain a presence in the country, despite " standing by the principle against censorship".

The popularity of Dong Lu's site shows the growing internet audience in China. Technorati, which tracks blogs, recently noted that group blog Boing Boing, which had long been number one in its top 100, was replaced by a Chinese blog by Xu Jing Lei at the beginning of last month.