Chinese Authorities Imprison Three for Publishing Without a License

Reports have recently come to light regarding two incidents in which Chinese government officials imprisoned three Chinese citizens for publishing without a license. The first case was reported on May 12 on the Web site of the National Sweep Away Pornography and Strike Down Illegal Publications Task Force (in Chinese), and stated that in 2005 Gansu provincial justice agencies made "ample" use of the law as a weapon to punish illegal publishing activities. The report said that in Gansu's first case of illegal newspaper publishing, in May 2005 the Chengguan District People's Court in Lanzhou sentenced Liu Xiaopeng and Shi Xiaojun to five years in prison and 10,000 yuan in fines for illegal operation of a business for publishing and selling magazines without government authorization.

The second case was reported in the April 21 edition of the Dui Hua Foundation's Occasional Publications series, which translated an article (in Chinese) on the Henan Court Net Web site saying that in September 2004 the court sentenced Wang Lelan, a woman living in a rural area, to five years imprisonment and an 8,000 yuan fine for illegal operation of a business for printing books without government authorization. According to the report, Wang printed illegal books, including "China's Highest Levels," "Confidential Exclusive News," "High-Level Privilege Exclusive News," and "China Special Inside Stories" for Zhao Anjun and Ma Haijun. The court determined that in doing so Wang had "severely harmed social order and disrupted market order." The report said that Zhao and Ma had also been sentenced, but did not specify the crimes with which the two were charged or the nature of their punishment.

The right to publish is guaranteed in the Chinese Constitution. Under the Regulation on the Administration of Publishing, however, the Chinese government restricts the exercise of this right to government-sponsored, domestic publishing houses that have enough money to meet the government's burdensome registered capital requirements. Approved publishers must also be willing to obey the directives of the Communist Party Central Propaganda Department and the General Administration of Press and Publication.

Chinese authorities can prosecute unlicensed publishers under Article 225 of the Criminal Law, which makes it a crime for anyone to commit "illegal acts in business operation and thus disrupt market order," and Article 15 of the Supreme People's Court's 1998 Explanation Regarding Certain Questions About the Specific Laws to be Used in Adjudicating Criminal Cases of Illegal Publications, which specifies that authorities can use Article 225 to punish instances of "illegal publication, printing, copying, or distribution." Punishments may include fines, confiscation, closure, and imprisonment. Beijing municipal authorities used these provisions in August 2005 to imprison the head of the Beijing representative office of Hong Kong's Credit China International Media Group Limited for publishing the magazine "Credit China," and in November 2005 to imprison Protestant house church leader Cai Zhuohua and two of his family members for giving away Bibles and other Christian literature.

Licensing schemes, such as the one imposed by the Chinese government, are forms of prior restraint that contravene rights established in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. As Jiao Hongchang and Yao Guojian, professors at the China University of Politics and Law, noted in "A Study of the Issues of Ratifying and Implementing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights":

This principle [that Article 19 of the ICCPR prohibits prior restraints] requires that government power may not be employed to suppress expressive activities before they are carried out, and no licensing measures or ideological content restrictions may be imposed on speech, books, periodicals, or radio or television programs prior to their dissemination, publication, distribution, or broadcast.