Photo: Pan Shiyi

Quotes from around China this week

"We have noted the decision by the International Olympic Committee."
- China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tokyo being awarded the 2020 Olympics. Reuters

"The police and many legal experts have realized the drawbacks of laojiao [Re-education through labor camps] and called to abolish the system, which has become outdated."
- Yu Mingyong, deputy president of Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court, on the announcement that all Guangzhou laojiao inmates will be released by the end of the year. China Daily

“Everyone is passionately discussing whether the Internet should be controlled, cleaned up, guided, to indoctrinate the public…I personally believe that everyone should participate in society online, and the public shouldn’t be passively indoctrinated. Rumors should be sanctioned under the law. Forcing the Big V’s and Internet celebrities to indoctrinate the public and raise the public’s level of morality will not fly.”
- Property developer Pan Shiyi. New York Times

"People are often torn when they start, but later they go numb and just do the job."
- A former censor at Sina Weibo. Reuters

"Xi Jinping will receive tremendous praise [for this]. You cannot say they only want to deal with flies. They deal with tigers too."
- Cheng Li, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, on the corruption investigation of party official Jiang Jiemin. BBC

“I feel it is a little bit unfair that the foreign companies who are the most serious about [best practices] have been the most investigated and the most discriminated [against]. To my knowledge today no Chinese [pharmaceuticals] company has been investigated. We all want to work in a very clean environment. The question we ask today is if this campaign is just to frighten some companies.”
- Bruno Gensburger, head of the pharmaceuticals working group at the American Chamber of Commerce in China. Financial Times