China steps up war on press freedom

The Washington Post did a great piece on how inspectors for the Chinese government said the Chinese propaganda office is not being aggressive enough.

“The effect of guiding culture and art to serve socialism and art is not obvious enough,” Wang Haichen, the leader of the inspection team, was quoted as saying. “Its news propaganda is not targeted enough, or effective enough.

“It needs to strengthen further its leadership of ideological work. It does not do enough in applying the principle of the party controlling the media in weak points like new media, or in coordinating thought and political work at universities.”

The complaint comes after President Xi Jinping told media outlets they need to “take Party” as their surname and to “serve as the party’s throat and tongue.”

The efforts to control the press have stepped up under Xi and have included efforts to shut down reporting on China’s violation of human rights by journalists not in China.

Part of the campaign is to not only make sure all Chinese media outlets kowtow to the whims of the party leadership, but also to make sure foreign media is made to be seen as the enemy by the Chinese people.

National Public Radio correspondent Frank Langfitt is about to leave China after five years of reporting from Shanghai. He did a great piece today (June 13) explaining how the Chinese government has stepped up its campaign against not only Western journalists but against the whole concept of free and independent media. (As of this posting — 6:30 a.m. June 13 — the whole piece is not yet available on the NPR website. It will be available later in the day.)

The growth of the Chinese middle class and the current economic slowdown clearly scares the country leaders in Beijing. For the past 30+ years, the Communist Party has told the Chinese people that only through the party will economic growth occur. Western notions of democracy, free press and market forces are not needed because “the Party will provide.”

The problem the party now has is that its claim to legitimacy is based on the one leg of economic growth. The current economic slowdown is threatening that sole pillar.

Chinese Foreign Minister Shows Contempt For Free Press

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi decided that any questions about China’s human rights record is not something he likes being asked. Likewise, he figures no one else should be asked about it either.

An old friend, Frank Ching in Hong Kong reported about a little dust up during a joint press conference Yi had with Canada’s foreign affairs minister, Stephane Dion.

Seems a reporter asked Dion aobut China’s human right’s record. Yi jumped in, preventing Dion from answering the question. Yi then proceeded to give the usual lies about how people in China enjoy all sorts of human rights, he then added no one but the Chinese people have a right to talk about the situation in the Middle Kingdom.

Yi then began berating the Canadian reporter for daring to ask a question about human rights in China.

• “Do you understand China?
• “Have you been to China?
• “Do you know that China is now the world’s second-biggest economy, with US$8,000 per capita?”

Frank hits the nail on the head: “If that is the way China behaves when it is the world’s second-biggest economy, what is one to expect when it becomes No. 1?”

He is also right when he wrote:

The media’s response should be to keep peppering him with questions everywhere he travels about China’s treatment of human rights advocates, the Hong Kong booksellers, the imprisonment of the Canadian missionary Kevin Garratt and the South China Sea.

Since these are the questions Wang doesn’t like to hear, these are the questions that should be asked.

Over and over again until they get a proper airing.

The problem is that only reporters who never hope to get to China are the ones who can ask those questions.

Journalists already in China who push as Frank urges will find out their visas are suddenly “out of order” or will not be renewed when they expire. Journalists outside China who ask these kinds of questions will find they will not be able to get a visa to visit China, even as a tourist. And forget about being on any agreed-to list of journalists to cover any event that involves the Chinese government any where in the world.

Frank looks into the big picture of the Chinese attitude that it has the right to impose its form of press repression around the world. (Think China’s application for the 2022 Olympics.)

What minister’s outburst over human rights in China tells us

 

Getting around Chinese censorship to honor Tiananmen demonstration

This piece was first posted at the blog site of the International Journalism Community of the Society of Professional Journalists.

June 4 is remembered as the day the Chinese government brutally shut down a peaceful demonstration in Tiananmen Square in Beijing that was calling for reforms in the ruling Communist Party and in the government.

One of the most famous scenes is the lone man with shopping bags standing up to a column of tanks.

While no official death toll has been released by the Chinese government, estimates are that hundreds died in the army attack on the demonstrators. An additional 10,000 or so were arrested.

Each year in Hong Kong there is a major commemoration ceremony — the only place in China that has such a thing, thanks to the protection of civil rights enshrined in the handover treaty of 1997.

Also each year the Chinese government tries to censor any reference to June 4 or the demonstration. And each year it fails, because the Netizens of China stay one step ahead of censors.

One of the earliest work arounds was a call to honor the dead of May 35. Or Remember the Square of 8. (For the math-phobic, 8×8=64 and 64=June 4)

The good people at China Digital Times have been keeping track of the code words and phrases the Chinese censors have banned on the Internet. One of the more humorous items is how the ban on “64” caused reporting on the Shanghai stock market fell 64.89 points. (Yes, that looks like 6/4/89) Rather than risk anyone thinking it was a Tiananmen remembrance, the government doctored the stock report for public consumption.

Here is the China Digital Times list. It is well worth the read.: Five Years of Sensitive Words on June Fourth

Be sure to pay close attention the ASCII cartoon of tanks rolling over a person.