Inter-Agency Task Force Cracks Down on Political Publications

Liu Binjie, Deputy Director of the General Administration of Press and Publication and Deputy Chief of the Sweep Away Pornography and Strike Down Illegal Publications Task Force, said that political publications are the highest priority target for the Task Force, according to a February 23 Guangming Daily report (in Chinese). Liu said it is necessary to "purify the market," and government officials elsewhere in China reiterated Liu's call to crack down on political publishing, according to state run news outlets such as those in Guangxi province (including the Liuzhou Government Information Office, the Guangxi Daily (via Xinhua), and the Beihai Daily (via Xinhua) and the Jinan provincial government (all in Chinese). The latter two reports said it is necessary to "strike hard at" and "tightly seal up and investigate" political illegal publications and Falun Gong materials that "spread political rumors and create ideological chaos." A February 20 report (in Chinese) in Xinhua's Outlook Weekly cited Liu as saying that the number of "political illegal publications" available in China is increasing for two reasons:

1. "Western hostile forces" are intensifying their push for "color revolutions," and in recent years have conducted "incessant cultural infiltration" of China (Chinese authorities have also expressed concern over the past year that religious and civil society groups are becoming a source of "infiltration").
2. More Chinese people are going abroad to travel and bringing back publications that others then illegally copy.

Liu characterized the Sweep Away Pornography and Strike Down Illegal Publications campaign as an "ideological and cultural" struggle, and suggested stepping up inspections of publication markets as means of suppressing illegal publications.

On February 23, several provinces, autonomous regions, and major cities in China participated in a joint "2006 Sweep Away Pornography and Strike Down Illegal Publications Spring Battle to Collectively Destroy Illegal Publications," during which they destroyed over 10 million "illegal" publications, the Guangming Daily reported (in Chinese) on March 3. The Guangming Daily said the action demonstrated China's resolve to enforce copyrights, but as the CECC has previously noted, Chinese authorities have admitted that hundreds of thousands of the publications that they confiscate each year are deemed "illegal" because of their political and religious content.