China ratchets up control on expression

An emotional strike by 100 journalists at this city's most popular and lively newspaper follows a 16-month campaign to quash a broad range of "unapproved" public speech in areas verging on politics or society - a campaign that includes Internet blogs, and new restrictions on cellphones designed to smoke outsenders of renegade text messages.

In the case of Beijing News, whose progressive editor Yang Bin was replaced without warning last week, Chinese authorities dealt a seemingly fatal blow to a publishing project that two years ago gave the press some freedom to experiment.

Last June the paper reported on violent land disputes in Hebei province, and last month, in what may have precipitated the purge, it published tame, but independent, stories on the official coverup of a massive benzene chemical spill in the Songhua River.

Last Thursday, in a gritty south Beijing neighborhood, nearly 100 reporters left the news offices. They began a short-lived strike - a rarity in China - and signed a petition asking for Mr. Yang's reinstatement, describing the removal as a tragedy. Some wept publicly, according to sources at the meeting.

"We were happy with our paper and the idea we had. But now the editor is leaving and the idea will leave with him. I am very sad," said a journalist who spoke with foreign reporters despite the presence of security officials and a warning that she could lose her job.

While Beijing News is often described as "radical" or "bold" - it would not warrant that definition in a Western setting. The thick daily tabloid is a subtle blend of eye-catching photos, pop culture, and real-life stories about the good, bad, and ugly. Interspersed are full-page ads for clothes and credit cards that appealed to an aspiring urban middle class.

Editor Yang, who cut his teeth in the looser commercial media climate of south China, brought a professional ethos that captured the imagination of staffers. As one put it, "He asked us to be responsible, accurate, and true. He is a model for me and a man with high standards. I would hope that some day I could be like him."

Yet Beijing News was mainly quite moderate, not crusading - and many Chinese journalists say the real message behind Yang's removal is that even slight divergences from moderate norms may be punished. This discourages testing the boundaries of free expression, they say, since any paper could lose its license or leadership.

The sudden move on Beijing News is part of a systematic effort by the central propaganda department in Beijing to more-closely police speech and expression. In the past year, the party initiated the broadest ideological education campaign in a decade. In part, that campaign discourages liberality and freedom of expression. The official news service Xinhua this week, in fact, selected this party campaign as its No. 1 story of 2005, calling it "a massive political and ideological education drive among more than 68 million CPC members to maintain their moral and socialist ethical superiority, a new, great project to promote Party construction."

As a result, in the past year "public intellectuals" that spoke out on social welfare or the environment have been curbed from doing so in state media.

Page: 1 | 2