Freedom of Expression

The absence of legal protections for the press has resulted in journalists meeting with "crude interference" when attempting to gather and report news, according to an article (in Chinese) published in the February edition of the Journalist Monthly, a joint publication of the Shanghai Communist Party Central Committee and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. The article asserts:

Xinhua reported (in Chinese) on December 27, 2005, that Long Xinmin had replaced Shi Zongyuan as Director of the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), the agency responsible for enforcing the legal barriers that the government uses to prohibit average citizens from exercising their constitutional right to freedom of the press. According to a biography (in Chinese) published in Xinhua, Long joined the Communist Party in 1973, and has served as Director of the Standing Committee for the Beijing Municipal Propaganda Department, Dean of the Beijing Municipal Party School, and Party Secretary of the Beijing Municipal Press and Publication Administration.

During the past three months Chinese authorities have taken the following actions to shut down and block Web sites in an attempt to silence critics and restrict citizens' access to information:

Reporters Without Borders reports that Lu Decheng, a fellow 1989 Tiananmen Square protestor, visited Yu Dongyue in prison and said that he was "barely recognizable." Lu described Yu Dongyue as disoriented, with a visible head injury. Another prisoner told Lu that prison officials tied Yu to an electricity pole and left him outside in the hot sun for several days. The fellow inmate also said authorities kept Yu in solitary confinement for two years, and offered the opinion that "that was what broke him."

Public security officials in Nanning city in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region issued an announcement (in Chinese) on January 20, 2006 saying that all work units and individuals in Nanning operating a Web site have 30 days to register with the Public Information Network Security Supervision Bureau of the Nanning Municipal Public Security Office. The notice said that public security officials will "sanction" Web site operators that fail to register.

The Communist Party’s Propaganda Department appears to have ordered the removal of several editors from publications of the Southern Daily Press Group during the last week of December 2005, according to reports in Hong Kong and Western news media citing sources in China. Based in Guangzhou city in Guangdong province, the Southern Daily Press Group is one of China's most progressive and reform-oriented newspaper publishers. The Hong Kong and foreign press accounts say that Communist Party propaganda officials removed several editors from the Southern Metropolitan Daily and the Beijing News, both part of the Group.

Southern Metropolitan Daily

Microsoft Corporation's MSN Web portal shut down the Web site of Zhao Jing, a research assistant at the Beijing bureau of the New York Times and one of China's best known independent Internet commentators (also known as "web loggers" or "bloggers"), on December 30, the New York Times (NYT) reported (subscription required) on January 6. The NYT cited Brooke Richardson, a group product manager for MSN in Seattle, as saying that Microsoft took down Zhao's site after Chinese authorities made a request through a Shanghai-based affiliate of the company. A January 6 Associated Press report (via Businessweek) cited Ms.

The Intermediate People's Court in Dalian city, Liaoning province, commuted the six-year prison sentence of journalist Jiang Weiping by one year, releasing him on January 3, the Washington Post reported the same day. On January 4, Reuters quoted Jiang's wife as saying that the court released Jiang one year early for good behavior.