Freedom of Expression

This commentary published on the Boxun Website by dissident Fang Jue argues that China must not limit democratization to the inner-Party democracy emphasized in the recent plenary meeting. The drafters of the anti-corruption regulations issued by the Party last winter hoped to use inner-Party democracy to avoid concentration of power in the hands of potentially corrupt Party bosses. Fang points out that even if a perfect democracy could be constructed inside the Party, it would include only 5% of the population. To be able to join the mainstream of the great nations of the world, says Fang, the government must start now to broaden reform and open communications with all progressive forces inside China. Fang Jue was formerly a vice director of the planning commission in Fuzhou Province. He wrote "China Needs a New Transformation: Program Proposals of the Democratic Faction," released to the media in 1998, which presented the views of progressives in the CCP.

Lu Jianping, a professor at China's People's University, is quoted in a Xinhua article as saying that, while it is possible to use China's regulations on crimes relating to national security to address subversion on the Internet, practice has shown that crimes like this generally cause greater harm to society when they are committed via the Internet. Professor Lu therefore expressed the belief that such crimes should be brought within a distinct "Internet crime" framework. Professor Lu stated that China is currently behind some developed nations in its Internet crime legislation activities, and that he believed Chinese criminal law experts would use international exchanges, such as the International Criminal Law Conference which recently convened in Beijing ( co-sponsored by the International Association of Penal Law and the Chinese Law Society), to introduce foreign trends into Chinese Internet crime legislation.

Xinhua reports that, as part of a nation-wide campaign called "Sweep Away Pornography and Strike Down Illegal Publications" launched by the Chinese Communist Party's Central Propaganda Department and China's General Administration of Press and Publication and now in its 15th year, authorities in Anhui province convened a "focused action" wherein over 220,000 books and 110,000 CDs were destroyed. Xinhua reported that during the campaign, Anhui provincial authorities have so far shut down 325 illegal vendors and confiscated over 3,820,000 publications, of which over 30,000 were deemed illegal because of their political content.

The People's Daily reports that three of China's largest Internet portal companies have formed a "self-discipline alliance." According to the report, Sina.com, Sohu.com, and Netease announced on September 15th that they were establishing a "Wireless Internet Honesty Self-Discipline Alliance" in order to "build an honest and prosperous Internet and resist harmful information." In December 2003 the People's Daily reported (story in Chinese) that Sina, Sohu, Netease and dozens of other Internet news outlets jointly signed an "Internet News Information Service Self-Discipline Pledge" promising to "voluntarily submit to government administration and public supervision" and not disseminate any information that might threaten social stability or be otherwise "harmful." Prior to that, in March 2002 these companies and hundreds of others

Citing Radio Free Asia, the Epoch Times reports that authorities in Shanghai are demanding all Internet Cafes install software on each terminal that will enable the government to monitor all aspects of their customers' computer usage.

The Washington Post reports that Chinese authorities on Friday released Cheng Yizhong, former editor of the Southern Metropolitan Daily, a pioneering newspaper in Guangdong. The report stated that Xu Zhiyong, Cheng's lawyer, said in a statement: "We hope all those officials who defy the progress of time and, for their own selfish interests, try to suppress freedom of speech and social conscience have learned a lesson. . . . We hope they won't manufacture absurd cases of injustice again. We hope they won't damage China's image again."

The Post article cites Party sources as saying that the charge was initiated in retaliation for the Southern Metropolitan Daily's "aggressive reporting."

Yu Huafeng and Li Minying, two senior managers with the Southern Metropolitan Daily's publisher who were arrrested at about the same time as Cheng, are currently serving prison sentences of 8 and 6 years, respectively.

Xiao Qiang, former director of Human Rights Watch, New York, writes about the list of words secretly blocked by QQ2003, China's most popular Instant Messaging Service. This list of words is in a program file, COMtoolKit.dll, automatically included with the QQ2003 software when customers first install it. The list covers several categories of terms: sex (15%), Falungong (20%), current officials' names (15%), political rights (10%), and corruption (15%). Interestingly, Jiang Zeming's legacy theory, the "Three Represents," is also included among the items blocked.

This month's edition of "China Journalist" (a monthly publication of Xinhua) includes an editorial (in Chinese) discussing the role of "supervision of public opinion." Written by Cuo Jinchang, Xinhua's deputy secretary, and Lu Feng, deputy director of Xinhua's economics bureau, the article provides a brief history of this concept and discusses its current status. It also reaffirms that "supervision of public opinion" must be done in a manner that reinforces the authority of the Chinese Communist Party.