Central Propaganda Department Restricts Reporting on Air Quality, Food Safety

May 5, 2008

The Central Propaganda Department (CPD) of the Chinese Communist Party recently issued a notice to Chinese news editors restricting domestic coverage of topics relating to China's hosting of the 2008 Olympics, including air quality and food safety, according to a November 13 South China Morning Post (SCMP) report (subscription required).

The Central Propaganda Department (CPD) of the Chinese Communist Party recently issued a notice to Chinese news editors restricting domestic coverage of topics relating to China's hosting of the 2008 Olympics, including air quality and food safety, according to a November 13 South China Morning Post (SCMP) report (subscription required). The report said that the CPD, responsible for ensuring that China's media follow the Communist Party's lead, delivered the notice during the week of November 5 and that the notice "ordered journalists to steer clear of Olympics-related story ideas that could show the country in a bad light." A source who read the notice told the SCMP that it identified air quality, food safety, the Olympic torch relay, and the Paralympics as topics that had recently generated "unfavorable publicity" in the foreign media. The source said the notice "requires state media to put a spin on those topics to 'offset the bad publicity' created by those previous reports." The SCMP added that Chinese media regulators were becoming more aware of the influence domestic stories have on foreign media coverage of China, noting that "most foreign media pick up story ideas from the domestic press." CPD directives, which are frequently issued in response to politically sensitive events, may apply to any Chinese journalist.

Such notices violate international standards for freedom of expression. Article 19 of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which China signed and has committed to ratify, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), guarantees the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas. The ICCPR and UDHR permit states to restrict this freedom under a limited number of circumstances, but furthering a political agenda is not one of the permitted exceptions. In addition to the ICCPR and UDHR protections, Article 35 of China's Constitution provides that Chinese citizens enjoy freedom of the press.

The notice follows other instances this year where the CPD and local propaganda officials have exercised their power to restrict or manipulate domestic reporting for political reasons:

  • In August, the CPD issued an almost complete ban on reporting about a bridge collapse that killed 64 people amid suspicions of corruption and shoddy construction, according to an August 17 Associated Press report (reprinted in the International Herald Tribune).
  • In July, local propaganda officials in Beijing ordered a Beijing newspaper to discontinue its political reporting and warned other local papers not to issue "negative" news about food safety, according to a July 31 SCMP report (subscription required). The actions came amid rising international concern over the safety of China's food exports and followed the discovery that a Beijing television reporter had falsified a news report claiming that food vendors were filling steamed buns with pieces of cardboard.
  • In January, the CPD ordered media executives not to focus on problems in China's legal system or the excesses of corrupt officials and to emphasize stories "that preserve social stability and avoid triggering social conflict" in the run-up to the annual National People's Congress session held in March and the 17th Party Congress held in October, according to a February 27 Washington Post report.

The notice also calls into question China's commitment, set forth in the Beijing Olympic Action Plan issued by the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games in 2002, to "be open in every aspect to the rest of the country and the whole world" in its preparations for the Olympics. The plan also says that China will bring "into full play the role of public supervision" and that "the preparation for Olympic Games will be transparent." By restricting local media coverage of air quality and food safety, China threatens to hinder public monitoring of the air quality and food safety commitments it made for the Olympics, even as concern about China's ability to fulfill such commitments remains. In its bid, China promised that "air quality during the period of the Games in 2008 will be of a high quality, and meet Chinese and WHO [World Health Organization] standards." A 2007 report by the United Nations Environment Programme noted, however, that levels of small particulate matter "remain well above" current WHO air quality guidelines and that "despite the relatively positive trends of recent years, air quality remains a legitimate concern for Olympic organizers, competitors and observers, as well as for the citizens of Beijing." Controversies this year involving such food products as fish and eggs have called into question China's system for monitoring food production, putting greater spotlight on China's pledge to ensure the safety of food for Olympic participants, as reported in a July 11 Xinhua article (reprinted on the Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Olympics Games).

The recent restrictions on domestic reporters come in a year when hosting the 2008 Olympics has prompted China to issue regulations that, on paper, relax restrictions on foreign journalists reporting in China.

For more information about the CPD and restrictions on the reporting activities of Chinese journalists, see Section II--Freedom of Expression in the Congressional-Executive Commission on China's 2007 Annual Report.