What They Said
"Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example, and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles."
—From the Olympic Charter, Fundamental Principles.
Tunneling Through Stone
“Chinese media are evolving. They are in the process, as we say in Chinese, of ‘tunneling through stone drip by drip.’?”
Li Datong has been a critic of media controls in China since January 2006, when he was removed from his position as chief editor of Freezing Point, a supplement to the national China Youth Daily. His demotion was triggered by publication of an essay that alleged ideological bias in textbook accounts of Chinese history, but it followed a career of struggle against official censorship. In May 2007 in Hong Kong, he addressed the Society of Publishers in Asia on the future of Chinese news media.
Waiting For a Verdict
In a July 11, 2005, letter to the chief judge of the Fuyang City Intermediate People's Court, attorney Pu Zhiqiang rejected a proposed settlement in the civil libel case against Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao, authors of Will the Boat Sink the Water? The Life of China's Peasants. The attorney urged Judge Qian Huiguang to render a verdict that would set a precedent in the interpretation of defamation law in China. Translated excerpts are below. To this day, no verdict has been issued in the case.
The Spy Trap
Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong-based correspondent for Singapore’s Straits Times, was arrested in Guangzhou in April 2005 while trying to obtain transcripts of interviews with the late Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang, who was ousted in 1989 for expressing sympathy with Tiananmen demonstrators. Ching was later sentenced to five years in prison for espionage, a charge he and his supporters deny. His family says he suffers from heart problems and abdominal pain. CPJ interviewed his wife, Mary Lau, about the case.
Search Engines Sift and Censor
Type something as benign-sounding as “open letter” into a Chinese Internet search engine, and it’s likely you won’t get a complete list of the Web’s offerings on that topic. For China’s Internet police, a critical first step in controlling the flow of online information is to filter search results. Search engines in China do not yield blank responses; that would attract too much resentment. But with search engines limiting the scope of response, sensitive information can be kept behind a firewall.
The Media Managers
An array of committees and agencies collaborate to promote the official line. For party officials, ‘propaganda’ is no dirty word.
Among party officials responsible for media content, the word xuanchuan, or “propaganda,” does not have a negative connotation. In recognition of the discomfort it evokes among foreigners, however, the department overseeing China’s media was renamed in 1998—in English only—from Central Propaganda Department to Central Publicity Department. (CPJ uses the Chinese translation elsewhere in this report.)
Politics and the Press: A Timeline
The flow from censors was daily, unrelenting, and covered every conceivable topic, from the serious to the banal.
December 4, 1982 China adopts constitution. Article 35 states: “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession, and of demonstration.”
Politics and the Press: A Timeline
December 4, 1982 China adopts new constitution. Article 35 states: “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession, and of demonstration.”
