Freedom of Expression

In January 2005, a Communist Party official at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) gave a report at the CASS annual meeting that discussed "the central authorities' problems regarding the need to emphasize and strengthen the Party's leadership of ideology work, and realistically consolidate the guiding position of Marxism in the ideological domain." According to the report, the appearance of the Internet poses a new challenge to the Party's leadership. The speaker justified recent Party policy statements calling for increased censorship as necessary to counteract threats posed by "Western enemy forces."

The Chinese government's crackdown on private Web sites has resulted in over 130,000 private Web sites registering with government authorities in Shanghai, according to an August 18 article in the People's Post and Telecommunication News. Before the campaign began, fewer than 4,000 non-commercial Web sites in Shanghai had registered with the government, the article said.

Officials have conducted the campaign pursuant to the Registration Administration Measures for Non-Commercial Internet Information Services that the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) promulgated on February 8, 2005. Official efforts have resulted in the closure of thousands of Web sites whose operators failed to register with the MII and public security offices.

The People's Daily has published an interview with Zhu Hong, the head of China's State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television, in which Zhu discusses new regulations on foreign television programs in China. Some excerpts:

The Kashgar District People’s Intermediate Court sentenced Uighur author Nurmemet Yasin to ten years' imprisonment on February 2, 2005, for publishing a story "inciting splittism." According to a Uighur-language Radio Free Asia report , Yasin published "The Wild Pigeon" in the Kashgar Literature Journal in the fall of 2004, and was arrested in Bachu County (Maralbeshi) on November 29, 2004. The story tells of a wild pigeon that travels far from home, only to be captured by humans and confined to a birdcage. The wild pigeon encounters several tamed pigeons who have lost their souls, in addition to their freedom, in exchange for regular feedings from the humans. The wild pigeon opts to commit suicide rather than remain imprisoned. Chinese authorities apparently interpreted the story as an allegorical criticism of Han Chinese policies in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The court tried Yasin in closed hearings, and RFA sources report that he was denied access to a lawyer.

China's state-run media report that the State Administration for Radio, Film, and Television has issued two notices intended to regulate the political ideology of television editors and reporters, and the private lives of television announcers:

The respected U.S.-based human rights NGO Human Rights in China has published an edition of its journal China Rights Forum that focuses on China’s criminal justice system. The issue features English-language articles and translations of Chinese materials on a range of criminal justice topics, including criminal procedure reform, re-education through labor, the court system, torture, defense lawyers, recent wrongful conviction cases, and criminal provisions on subversion and state secrets. The issue also includes a list of lawyers currently detained in China, a profile of imprisoned journalist Shi Tao, and a resource list of online materials on China’s legal system.

Liu Yuzhu, head of the Ministry of Culture's Market Department, wrote an article entitled "Actively Responding to the Challenge of the Internet Era," which was published in the January edition of "Seeking Truth" [Qiu Shi], the official journal of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee. Liu praised the many benefits that the Internet has brought to China, but warned of a "cultural invasion," and claimed that Web sites of foreign countries such as the United States represent a threat to China's culture, society, and political structure. He encouraged increased censorship of foreign Web sites and called on domestic Web site operators to step up their self-censorship.

In January 2005, Xinhua reported that government officials seized over 200,000,000 "illegal publications" in 2004, and a CECC review of official reports shows that authorities seized hundreds of thousands of these publications solely because of their political content. This censorship appears to be in addition to the General Administration of Press and Publication's banning of 170 publications with "problematic topic selections" in 2004 that the People's Daily reported in February 2005. Instead, the Chinese agency responsible for this political censorship is called the National Sweep Away Pornography and Strike Down Illegal Publications Task Force (sometimes translated as the "Office for Eliminating Pornography and Illegal Publications," or the "Office of National Anti-Piracy and Pornography Working Committee").