Authorities Detain Two Foreign Journalists in Henan and Guangdong Provinces

Public security officers in Henan and Guangdong provinces detained two foreign journalists to prevent them from reporting on politically sensitive stories. The first incident occurred December 7 near Shanwei in Guangdong province, when a reporter from Hong Kong's TVB tried to enter Dongzhoukeng village to investigate reports of clashes between local residents and the government over property rights, according to a December 8 Radio Free Asia report. Chinese authorities detained the reporter, forced him to write a self-criticism, and would not allow him to enter the township.

The second event occurred December 9 in Shenqiu, Henan province, when public security officials detained Georg Blume, the Beijing correspondent for the German weekly Die Zeit, according to a December 9 report (in German) on the Die Zeit Web site. Blume said authorities began following him that morning, forcing him to cancel interviews, then later stopped his car and held him in a hotel, accusing him of conducting "illegal interviews." Blume said officials interrogated him, examined his computer, and forced him to sign a statement saying he had come to Henan without government authorization. Authorities released him after five hours, and asked him to leave and not come back. Blume was conducting research in 1 of the 20 villages that lie along the Shaying River, where cancer rates have been rising dramatically since the 1990s, according to an October 2004 China Daily report.

Local officials often try to prevent journalists from reporting on politically sensitive issues. In November 2004, the Beijing Daily reported that half of almost 15,000 reporters surveyed said they had experienced varying degrees of obstruction when trying to conduct interviews. Official obstruction ranged from having their equipment damaged to being physically assaulted and illegally detained, the responding reporters said. Another 2004 survey cited in the October 2005 edition of the Journalist Monthly found that the percentage of journalists surveyed who believed that incidents of "obstructionist interference" in investigative reports were "very severe" or "severe" was 25.6 percent in the case of radio reports, and 37.4 percent for reports on television. Almost 75 percent of the journalists ranked Party and government agencies as the top sources of interference.

The government has taken at least one step to limit official interference with news reporting (declassifying the number of fatalities caused by natural disasters) in the past six months, but Chinese authorities have issued new regulations that allow officials to restrict the press' ability to cover important news, including:

• In May 2005, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued its Circular Regarding Calling for Resolutely Strengthening and Improving Radio and Television Public Opinion Supervision Work, which mandated government screening for radio and television programs that "easily trigger mass incidents."
• In September 2005, the Ministry of Information Industry and the State Council Information Office promulgated the Rules on the Administration of Internet News Information Services, restricting who may report news on the Internet, and defining "news" to include reporting and commentary relating to "fast-breaking social events" [tufa shijian], a term that China's government and media use in reference to, among other things, riots and mass demonstrations.

Despite its desire to restrict reporting on major mass incidents, the central government often expresses dissatisfaction when local officials obstruct reporters from government-controlled news media, because such actions limit its ability to monitor areas where unrest may occur. For example, in March 2005, Xinhua complained that public security authorities in Shanxi province had "interfered with the regular interviews of a Xinhua reporter" and "illegally restricted his personal freedom." The central government, however, does not support foreign journalists in a similar manner when local authorities block them from conducting interviews and researching investigative reports. For example, when asked about reports that unidentified men detained and beat two foreign journalists attempting to reach Taishi village in Guangdong province to cover protests there in early October, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Kong Quan said:

What I know of the situation is that these journalists hid their identities, disguised themselves, and saw themselves as being just and honorable. Why did they not make it clear that they were there for an interview? If they went to learn about the villagers' protection of their civil rights, why did they say they were investigating such irrelevant issues as family planning and environmental protection?

On the national level, Chinese authorities restrict the activities of foreign journalists, and try to prevent foreign news media from investigating stories that might harm the image of the government and the Party. These restrictions are designed in part to protect the Party's image abroad, but the primary concern is that Chinese citizens will learn information from foreign news sources that is censored in China. According to a November 2004 report from the General Administration of Press and Publication, "various enemy forces strongly coordinate with each other, and take those things that cannot be published domestically abroad to be published, and then these once again infiltrate domestically."