In China, new threats seen to free speech

[LadyGardenSnake]

BEIJING -- Citing concerns over the rising prevalence of pornography, the Chinese government recently launched a nationwide crackdown against Internet smut sites and pornography peddlers using new media outlets such as cellphone text messaging.
But the action, which authorities describe as a defense of social values, is essentially political and is being used to camouflage increasing strictures on the general media, critics of the government's actions say.

"Things have been steadily getting worse [for the media] over the last two years," said Chu Tian, a journalist once associated with Southern Weekend, a newsweekly in southern Guangzhou province. When the publication's critiques of the government got too punchy, its Web forum was closed and its two main editors fired.

Like many other publications that have been closed, Chu says he and his colleagues didn't think their work was so controversial. He said the government has become "completely arbitrary" in dealing with the press.

"Now there is not even a line to toe," he said. An article "might go unnoticed one day but a similar or even milder article may get into trouble the next day. This makes people stay as close to the official position as possible, a kind of self-censorship."

The precise number of newspapers and websites being forced to shut down or change their editorial stance is hard to estimate but is perhaps in the hundreds, said Hou Wenzhuo, a political activist in Beijing. While authorities here routinely report the closure of porn and gambling websites -- last month about 1,000 such sites were shut down according to official reports -- they are tightlipped about the increasing actions taken against the political media, Hou said.

Indirect pressure on foreign media outlets also appears to be rising. Last month, Zhao Yan, a research assistant for The New York Times, was arrested and charged with revealing state secrets, which carries a maximum sentence of death if he is convicted.

Such actions, along with increasing human rights abuses, indicate China is "moving backward" from the progress it made in previous years toward developing a more open system, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said during his visit to China last month.

Chu, who now runs a gay-rights website, says that like many other journalists and activists he has learned to couch his words and use allegory or metaphors on controversial issues.

"It's like getting the ping-pong ball to just nick the table," he said. "You get to make the point, but barely. Luckily, readers have learned how to decode what we say, to read our real feelings."

The trend of increasing media control flouts the traditional wisdom that China's continuing economic reforms would push it toward greater political openness. That's because China's reforms, particularly under the previous president, Jiang Zemin, favored the rich and created widespread resentment across the country, said Chen Xin, an associate professor of sociology at the China Academy of Social Sciences.

In areas far removed from the glass towers and shopping malls in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, people are increasingly rebelling against the government. Fears that such protests could cause internal instability is leading the government to clamp down hard on media and political reform, Hou said.

When riots by groups including retirees demanding withheld pensions and ethnic minorities inflamed by prejudice rocked different parts of China last month, authorities tried to squelch news of the unrest by sealing off the affected areas and detaining journalists.

The crackdown in the central province of Sichuan was the worst, with two major riots within a week. The first was a clash between local police and more than 30,000 people opposed to the building of a new dam.

The second was an ethnic riot between Han Chinese and members of the Hui Muslim minority.

But with 80 million Chinese online and 200 million using cellphones, news of the riots spread quickly across the country.

"We are reaching the point where Web-based information is acquiring a critical mass and totally bypassing traditional censorship," said Guo Liang, a professor of social development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. "The government feels it cannot just let this happen."

Already in China, Guo said, more than 250,000 websites -- including those of major Western media organizations and such non-governmental organizations as Greenpeace -- cannot be accessed. About 30,000 human monitors scan e-mail, Google searches, chat sites such as MSN and Yahoo, and troll online groups and blogs to find offending information.

There are also indications that the government is, or is about to begin, monitoring cellphone text messages. An article in the state-run People's Daily recently complained that many text messages contained "brutal and insidious superstitious information aimed at fouling our social ideology."

Although the article railed most against the increased pornographic content of some text messages and exhorted people to refrain from such misuse, it concluded by warning that "in addition to such soft measures, necessary legal provisions should also be implemented."

[Rich]

Originally posted by LadyGardenSnake
Such actions, along with increasing human rights abuses, indicate China is "moving backward" from the progress it made in previous years toward developing a more open system, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said during his visit to China last month.

lmfao, Powell is just trying to work on the hypocrite of the year award. First complaining about the Ukraine election, now this. He should take a look at his own country.