chinaview.cn Surprise: Some Xinhua announcements are mere political posturing.

While I'm happy to discuss all kind of criteria to select news, I always thought there would be one non-negotiable assumption: that there should be something new in order to call it "news."

So when China's official mouthpiece, its news agency Xinhua, announced this weekend that its regulations would not allow foreign newswires to deliver their news directly to Chinese media, I tried to ignore it.

Each autumn, the annual meeting of the Communist Party takes place in Beijing. Ahead of that meeting, government departments issue rules. If they lack new rules, they just reiterate already existing rules -- like Xinhua did last weekend.

But now I count at Google News 439 articles about the subject, including this one from The Guardian. So it is time to reveal a bit of news: there is very little new in Xinhua's regulations for foreign media. Xinhua's announcement does not make China a better place, nor a worse one. It does not change anything about the position of the foreign media in China

It just kept 439 of my colleagues busy.