The Internet was expected to help democratize China, but has instead enabled the authoritarian state to get a firmer grip. So begins The Economist's special fourteen page report on the state of the Internet in China, a survey that paints the country's online communities as canaries in gilded cages of sorts, and touches on everything from what censorship tells us about who really wields power in China, to more broader patterns of innovation and investment in China's high-tech industry.

Given our longstanding predilection for tech gossip, we are delighted to be joined on Sinica this week by none other than Gady Epstein, author of the Economist's fourteen page survey and our resident expert on general techniques for nailing jello to the wall. And if you're interested on the Internet in China be sure to listen up: we promise is a wide-ranging and fun discussion touching on many of the pieces in The Economist, along with some insider gossip about what points the Economist decided were simply too much to print.

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