Human Rights Watch - Censorship - China

Related:

Chinese Laws on Censorship

The Case of Sun Zhigang

The Wikipedia File

Human Rights and the 2008 Olympics in Beijing

Media and Internet Censorship

The Chinese government censors public discussions widely, although Chinese news media and the Internet are more open today than they were in the past. Chinese journalists have more space for investigative reporting on some issues, such as police abuse and official corruption. In cases where popular sentiment is strong, the media acts as a pressure valve for social unrest, and sometimes successfully pressures courts and the police. At the same time, the Chinese government retains its ability to arbitrarily restrict certain speech or punish people for holding and sharing their opinions. China seems to allow free expression only until officials decide that it has become threatening to the government’s power. If government censors are worried by some speech or opinion, they crack down on editors, journalists and web users. Local propaganda departments monitor newspapers, television and radio, while police monitor the Internet; news media and the Internet are each governed by separate and overlapping laws and regulations.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China has signed but has not yet ratified, protects the right to hold opinions without interference, the right to information and the right to free expression. As 2008 approaches, it is likely that Chinese journalists and activists will attempt to use the Internet and news media to get the word out about human rights issues. Thousands of credentialed and uncredentialed international journalists who visit China for the Olympics will also attempt to uncover stories that authorities would prefer to keep hidden. In response, the government is likely to expand restrictions on free expression.

The press, television, radio and other news media are controlled through a combination of laws, the work of local propaganda departments, self-censorship by editors, and internalized rules about what is and is not an acceptable topic for reporting:

Laws and regulations restrict licensing and ban writing and reporting that might “undermine social stability” or challenge one-party rule;
Propaganda departments issue policy statements on permissible topics, and direct editors on how they should cover certain stories;
Informal rules internalized by journalists govern which issues may never be covered: for instance, abuses against persons detained in reeducation through labor camps, or protests by Tibetans. These informal rules frequently change, and journalists who test the limits may succeed in expanding them, or may face government retaliation.

The state also tightly restricts access to international media in China, for instance by blocking foreign news Web sites such as that of The New York Times, or even through searches by customs officials of the luggage of visitors from overseas to seize international newspapers and magazines. Recently, China has started to train police to deter international journalists from covering certain news stories, such as activities of the banned meditation group, Falun Gong.

The Internet is monitored by China’s Ministry of Public Security. Nonetheless, the web is emerging as a space where writers and activists can anonymously post their grievances, share censored news, debate the issues, and sometimes mobilize to protest. The use of the Internet to mobilize for social change was demonstrated in 2003, when thousands of Chinese citizens around the country took to the web to protest the death of migrant worker Sun Zhigang in police custody.

As of 2004, an official report said there were 79.5 million Internet users in China. Some analysts say that this may be an overestimate, but there is no question that with 1.2 billion citizens, China represents a huge potential community of users. By the time of the Beijing 2008 Olympics, the government aims to make it the largest Internet community in the world.

It is already one of the most censored and controlled networks in the world. Numerous regulations, laws and policy statements restrict the content that may be posted and circulated on the Internet. Perhaps more important than these, however, are the complex mechanisms that numerous branches of the government have developed to regulate, censor and monitor Internet activity. These include:

A special branch of the Ministry of Public Security (the police force) that monitors and regulates Internet activity;
Management of Internet content providers, including international providers such as Yahoo!, which are required to filter out politically sensitive material from their Web sites in China;
Monitoring of Web users: In Beijing, many are required to register at Internet cafes, showing their national identity cards; in Shanghai, Internet cafe patrons may be monitored by video cameras; and
Web users monitoring each other: In 2004, the government set up a website to encourage people to make “citizens’ arrests” of other web users who post “illegal or immoral” messages on the web. The Illegal and Immoral Information Reporting Center encourages Chinese citizens to report any web sites that violate Chinese laws and regulations.

Many Internet activists are serving long prison sentences because of their activism on the Web. Police usually use two laws to imprison Internet activists: the State Secrets law, and the state subversion provision of the criminal law.

On some sites, official censors play “cat and mouse” games with anonymous web users, erasing critical messages almost as quickly as they appear. On others, critical messages are allowed to remain online. The arbitrariness of government censorship creates greater fear among Web users: when or where the next crackdown will come is anyone’s guess.

In a recent example, during the days after the fifteenth anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, a description of the events of the massacre on the popular international Web encyclopedia Wikipedia was suddenly rewritten. On a related bulletin board, Chinese Web users debated whether state pressure had sparked self-censorship by Wikipedia.