China’s Censorship Continues
In the runup to next year’s Olympic Games, Beijing has made a number of calls for transparency, claiming that the media will be as free and unrestricted as it has been in past Olympic festivals. But their “transparency” comes in a strange format … they are demanding that all mainland media outlets “toe the party line” by following a strict non-coverage list of unpublishable topics and words.
In early February, the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department also established a points system to penalize and/or shut down print operations who don’t comply with their regulations. Editors at the Beijing News, the Southern Metropolis News and the Public Interest Times have been fired, and a publication called the Bingdian was also recently shut down.
In late February, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television’s Propaganda Administration Department released a directive banning the media coverage of twenty sensitive issues. These issues included the anti-rightist campaign, the Cultural Revolution, the ongoing anti-corruption campaign, the media freedom debate, legal and rights protection campaigns, the Nanking massacre, Russia’s October Revolution, judicial corruption, activists’ campaigns to protect individual rights, sexual crimes, the aristocratic lifestyle of high-income groups, and affairs with mistresses.
Even the TV has been hit … mainland authorities recently gave an order to 48 national channels to throw out their original programming and instead reserve their primetime evening slots exclusively for dramas that “show China in a positive light”. Each station is now required to submit its proposed lineup one month before broadcast so it could face a gauntlet of assessment stages, culminating in a review by the central government’s propaganda department.
In Shandong province, the city government of Pingdu just released a document that commands departments, organizations and officials to censor their publications and interviews. The document demanded that they decrease “negative reporting” and promised to tie end-of-year appraisals to how sucessfully each entity blocked negative news.
[South China Morning Post] Investigative reporter Wang Keqin said the Pingdu document showed local officials were scared of the increased transparency brought by a more open media environment because “only bad things need covering up, and only guilty officials fear publicity”.
Yep, that about sums it up.
March 27th, 2007 at 12:24 am EST
OK. Communication consists of much more than just the order or spelling of words.
Example 1 : The Glorious Peoples’ Republic would never censor anything, since there is complete freedom of speech in the Peoples’ Republic. 1-1!.
Example 2 : There are no bad things that need covering up in China. 1-1!
See? Language can mutate that easily to overcome the restrictions on communication.
Oh.
Yeah.
1-1=0=naught=not.
Think Devious. #-# Ooops, sorry about the typo. ~-~
March 28th, 2007 at 1:31 am EST
Lance,
I haven’t read in awhile - so it was great reading your latest postings.
I’ll be in China for 15 days at the end of June - Shanghai for two weeks at East China Normal University on doctoral work and Beijing for three days of sightseeing. It will be great to see some of the cultural things you’ve been talking about up close and personal.
Will you still be in the country on those dates or back in the states?
Drop me a line and let me know how your doing. I’d love to talk about next year and some really exciting things going on that have your name all over them - creative, new, big picture stuff involving technology, enrichment, and even some summer camp stuff. Can’t wait to talk about it with you.
Peace,
Rob