Freedom of Expression

The Fujian provincial government has launched a province-wide system to monitor Web site browsing by minors in Internet cafes, according to a September 9 Xinhua report. The Xinhua report says that identification information will be stored whenever a customer registers at an Internet cafe. If the customer is a minor, the "culture administration agency" will be notified of any "unhealthy" content that the minor attempts to access. The article neither reported what type of content that authorities would deem "unhealthy," nor whether the system would be used to monitor the Internet activity of adults.

In October 2004, one Xinhua publication described Chinese government plans regarding Internet cafe monitoring as follows:

The Intermediate People's Court in Yingkou, Liaoning province, has sentenced Chinese author Zheng Yichun to seven years imprisonment and three years deprivation of political rights for inciting subversion of the state's political power, according to articles posted on the Web sites of Radio Free Asia, the Epoch Times, and Boxun on September 22. These articles reported that the primary charges listed in the court's judgment were:

Saying that "when humanity opened the window to the Internet civilization, it also opened Pandora's box," a September 1 article in the Ministry of Information Industry's (MII) People's Post and Telecommunication News states that "Controlling the dissemination of harmful information on the Internet has become one of the government's foremost pressing responsibilities." Although the only "harmful information" mentioned explicitly in the article is pornography, it cites the Interim Provisions on the Administration of Internet Web sites Engaged in News Posting Operations (Provisions) as one government measure enacted to "control harmful information" on the Internet.

The Communist Party's Central Propaganda Department (CPD) convened a meeting on September 8 in Heilongjiang province to review the Party's handling of "public sentiment information work" during the first half of 2005, according to a September 12 article (in Chinese) in a local newspaper in that province. The Qiqiha'er Daily reported that Zhen Zhanmin, deputy director of the CPD's Office of Public Sentiment, and officials from Public Sentiment Reporting Stations throughout China met in Qiqiha'er to discuss the status of "public sentiment information collection and reporting."

The report contained no details about topics that the officials may have discussed, but for a discussion of what Chinese authorities mean by "public sentiment information work," see below.

"Public Sentiment" Defined

The Chongqing branch of the Central Propaganda Department convened a forum on September 14, according to an article posted on Xinhua's Web site the following day. Zhang Heshi, the head of both Chongqing's Party Central Committee and its Propaganda Department, told the meeting that, regardless of whether a newspaper or magazine is a "Party paper" or a "metropolitan paper," (which are the commercially oriented branches of the Party papers in China's provinces and larger cities) it must embrace the greater interests of the Party's and the government's work, carry out "constructive" public opinion supervision, and "sing the main theme."

Public security officials in Penglian, Shandong province, have issued a notice that all small and medium sized Web sites in the city must register with the police, according to a September 2 article on a Web site operated by the Dalian municipal government and local Communist Party Central Committee. The article states that the registration is necessary to "clean out" Web sites with "reactionary" and other types of "harmful" information. Public security officials intend to investigate Web sites that register and "punish" Web sites that fail to register.

The General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) announced a nation-wide inspection of China's evening newspapers, according to a September 21 article (in Chinese) on Xinhua's Web site. The report originally appeared in the China News Report, a publication of the All-China Journalists Association (ACJA). GAPP officials made the announcement at the first meeting of the "National Evening (Section) Quality Inspection Committee," which convened in Beijing on September 19. The GAPP's Periodical Bureau will supervise the inspection campaign, which will be conducted by an "internal" organization within the ACJA and will target 39 evening newspapers around China.

Writer Zhang Lin has been hospitalized since beginning a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment, according to a September 6 report from the Committee to Protect Journalists. On July 28, the Intermediate People's Court of Bengbu sentenced Zhang to five years imprisonment for inciting subversion. Zhang was accused of posting articles on the Internet and giving a radio interview. He is currently appealing the verdict.