Freedom of Expression
An article from the Beijing Evening News carried on the People's Daily website reports that, according to the book "Global Chinese Printing," China has the world's fastest-growing publishing market, with a sales rate increasing at over $300 billion a year. The author of the book, Xin Guangwei, is an employee of the Chinese government's General Adminstration of Press and Publication, which is responsible for book and newspaper censorship in China.
Hu Shuli, editor of the respected economic journal Caijing, notes the willingness of the State Statistical Bureau to readjust past statistics to avoid the appearance of an overheating economy. She observes that such incidents reduce the credibility of economic statistics issued by the Bureau. Ms. Hu suggests three ways to address the problem: 1. Encourage NGOs and academics to issue their own unofficial figures, thus allowing competition to strengthen the quality of experts in the field. There is no reason for a state monopoly on the generation of statistics, Hu says. 2. Make the entire process transparent by explaining which methods, sampling techniques, etc., the Bureau used in coming to those results. 3. Establish principles to guide professional statisticians, from managers to the investigators on the lowest level. This will raise the quality of professionals in the field of statistics and help avoid conflicts of interest.
The Singapore Straights Times reports that a book banned by China's government, "A Survey Of Chinese Peasants" by Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao, won the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage's first prize. According to the Straights Times, "A Survey Of Chinese Peasants" is the second book in four years that has been banned by the Chinese government and yet won international accolades. Gao Xingjian won the 2000 Nobel Prize for literature despite having his works banned in his native country.
Reporters Without Borders reports that a court in Shenyang in Liaoning province has sentenced Kong Youping and Ning Xianhua,to 15 and 12 years in prison respectively for subversion. Their crime was posting articles on the Internet in support of the Chinese Democratic Party. Under Chinese law, besides the Communist Party there are only eight authorized political parties. According to China's Constitution, each of these parties is "supervised and led" by the Communist Party.
Citing the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Asia News Network, the Singapore Straights Times reports that Zhao Qizhen, head of China's State Council Information Office, told Japanese reporters that China was guiding the mass media on reporting about Japan, and that "there will be no anti-Japan reporting by major news organisations."
The China Information Center announced that three times in the past week public security officers in Chongqing have detained and interrogated Yang Zheng. According to CIC, Yang is a professor who wrote commentary for the CIC website several times in 2003, and public security officials interrogated him "on charges of publishing 'reactionary articles' overseas, having contact with overseas scholars and disseminating liberal political opinions in his teachings."
Citing Xinhua, the People's Daily reports that, in order to encourage nationalism as part of the 55th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Communist Party's Central Propaganda Department and various government agencies have jointly issued a list of the "three one-hundreds." The list includes "100 patriotic educational records, 100 patriotic educations songs, and 100 types of patriotic educational books." The Central Propaganda Department is the Communist Party agency responsible for ensuring that China's publishers do not print anything that is inconsistent with the Communist Party's political dogma. It does this by:
Boxun is reporting that the Changzhou Intermediate People's court in Jiangsu province has sentenced journalist and essayist Huang Jinqiu to twelve years imprisonment for subversion. According to Boxun, the sentencing document stated that Huang was guilty of organizing, planning, and carrying out subversion of the national regime for posting reactionary essays on the Internet in his capacity as a member of the preparatory committee of the China Patriot Democracy Party.
Radio Free Asia reports that three law professors from Beijing University, Yu Jiang, Xu Zhiyong, and Teng Biao, have written an open letter to the China's leaders to protest the Chinese government's closure of Yitahutu, an online chat room run by Beijing University students. Chinese authorities shut down the Web site two weeks ago ahead of the 4th Plenum of the Communist Party's 16th Central Committee. Citing Boxun, RFA reported the letter, which was addressed to Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, said: "Without any warning or announcement from the relevant authorities, the Yitahutu Web site beloved of teachers and students has been shut down. . . . We currently have no legal or open platform from which to discover which authority ordered this, for what reason, and according to what laws." RFA also reported that one of the authors of the open letter had complained that Web sites in China were unwilling to post the open letter.
In August the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) issued an announcement stating that, as part of a campaign launched in January, over 700 "reporter stations" had been shut down. Under Chinese law (see below), a "reporter station" is roughly equivalent to a bureau, where a newspaper may station reporters in order to conduct interviews and gather news. The GAPP determines which newspapers can set up reporter stations. On September 28 the People's Daily website carried an article outlining some of the details of the crackdown.