Freedom of Expression

The following is a partial translation by CECC staff of an article entitled "Grasp the Techniques of Mastery and Guidance of Public Opinion: Raise the Quality of Responding to and Understanding Public Opinion Crises," which appeared in the February 2005 edition of the Chinese government's "News Journalist" magazine. This article was part of a state-sponsored propaganda campaign to justify deploying Party and government personnel to manipulate public opinion.

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The following is a partial translation by CECC staff of an article entitled "Sensitive Topics Fill Cyberspace: How to Regulate and Control Emotional Public Opinion on the Internet," which appeared in the October 2004 edition of the People's Liberation Army's "Military Journalist" magazine, and subsequently republished on the People's Daily Web site. This article was part of a state-sponsored propaganda campaign to justify deploying Party and government personnel to manipulate public opinion.

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As expression has become more open, more and more "sensitive topics" have begun to appear--true crime, inside the scenes, secrets, and some are extremely sensational. This kind of news on the Internet has lead to a kind of emotional unburdening of the popular will, and emotional public opinion is filling the air.

For the second time in a week, the People’s Daily, China’s official government newspaper, has published an editorial calling for increased restrictions on the free flow of information on the Internet. On December 6, the People's Daily print edition reprinted a three-week-old editorial from the Wenhui Bao calling on authorities to use the law to silence speech that "provokes trouble," or "confuses public opinion." On December 8, the paper ran its own opinion piece emphasizing that the Internet represents an important tool for the Communist Party to manipulate public opinion:

Chinese government authorities abruptly cancelled a planned international academic conference on constitutionalism and democracy that was to begin on May 19, according to reports by the Associated Press and South China Morning Post. Fordham University and the China University of Politics and Law jointly organized the three-day conference, entitled "Constitutionalism and Political Democratization in China - an International Conference." Some commentators speculate that the government cancelled the conference because it was scheduled too close to June 4, the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Xinhua reported that on April 30 the Changsha Intermediate People's Court sentenced Shi Tao to 10 years imprisonment and two years deprivation of political rights for disclosing "state secrets." According to Xinhua, the state secrets in question consisted of information he learned at a meeting of the editorial board of the newspaper at which he worked.

Xinhua reports that according to China's National Sweep Away Pornography and Strike Down Illegal Publications Task Force, Chinese authorities seized over 200,000,000 "Illegal Publications" in 2004. The confiscations were made as part of the "Sweep Away Pornography and Strike Down Illegal Publications" campaign that China's government launched 16 years ago. Although the report focused on the anti-pornography and intellectual property protection aspects of the campaign, in fact the campaign is an extension of the Chinese authorities' attempts to ensure that the Communist Party and the government retain control over all publishing in China. For example, last November Xinhua reported that China's government had banned 60 publications as part of the campaign, and that titles of the banned publications included: "Legal News," "China Education Magazine," and "Citizens and Law."

On April 19, the Guangming Daily Web site published an article by two writers from the Nanjing Military Command Institute calling for increased Party and government control over Internet content and the ideology of Internet users. The authors make the following suggestions:

• strengthen patriotic education;
• increase the number of Internet propagandists;
• require private Web sites to observe strict self-discipline and sign guarantees with their government sponsor.

The authors claim these steps are necessary to counteract not only domestic factors, such as Internet users with "weak powers of discrimination," but also "enemy forces." According to the authors:

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) issued a press release today characterizing the arrest of Shi Tao on charges of disclosing state secrets as "absolutely scandalous." The Independent Chinese PEN Center reported that officials from the state security bureau of Changsha, Hunan province took Shi into custody at his home in Taiyuan, Shanxi province on November 24, 2004. Shi worked for the daily Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News).

According to RSF, in April 2004, Shi sent the online newspaper Min Zhu Tong Xun the abstract note of a document sent to his newspaper by Chinese authorities "warning journalists of the dangers of social destabilisation and risks linked to the return of certain dissidents on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre." The Ministry of State Security told the Procuratorate the document was "top secret."