China tries to rein in reports on disasters

"Now we can get the story, one way or another," says journalist Li Liang. After a gas explosion killed 166 miners in a state-run coal mine in Chenjiashan two years ago, hewas blocked for three days from reporting the story by officials who kept media from the site and locked them out of the hospital. Such obstacles are no longer as effective, he says.

China has been embroiled in a media crackdown in recent years in which dozens of websites have been shut, respected journalists banned from publishing, and a pair of journalists jailed – all under the rubric of president Hu Jintao's drive to "build a harmonious society."

Zhao Yan, a researcher for The New York Times arrested in 2004, stood trial last month in Beijing on charges of revealing state secrets, but he remains in jail without a verdict. Another journalist, Hong Kong citizen Ching Cheong, stood trial in Beijing last week on spying charges.

"Except for the immediate aftermath of the June 4 [Tiananmen Square] crackdown, this current government has been much more repressive in the detention and jailing of journalists, cyber-dissidents, and dissidents," says Merle Goldman, a Chinese media expert at Harvard University.

Journalists nevertheless unleashed a surprisingly bold storm of public criticism after the current draft of the Emergency Response Law was submitted to the National People's Congress for the first of three reviews in late June.

Editor Zhang Ping penned the strongest condemnation in a June editorial for Southern Metropolitan Daily: "Local government and those engaged in cover-ups should fine the media?" he wrote. "Is this or is this not absurd?"

The Emergency Response Law was reportedly conceived in the wake of the SARS scandal and is, the government says, primarily aimed at increasing transparency in government handling of emergencies. The current draft demands local governments provide information about emergencies "in a timely manner" and threatens negligent officials with removal. In a rare response to the criticism, a top official from the State Council insisted in a July 3 press conference that the fines would not affect "normal" reporting on emergencies.

Although they refuse to name names, some media scholars hypothesize the law was a genuine drive for transparency hijacked by party hard- liners in the propaganda department.

Li Kun, a professor of journalism at Beijing University, and most other observers consider it all but certain the restrictions will stay in some form, as Beijing rarely backtracks on draft laws once they've been made public. Opinion is more divided over what effect the law will have once it goes into effect, which could happen anywhere from a month to a year from now.

Most editors and reporters expect the threat of fines to scare publications into self-censorship, at least until they have time to figure out the new system. "It's like ping-pong," says the Economic Observer reporter. "It's always like this. We'll just find new ways to get things done."

Li Datong, outspoken former editor of the weekly Freezing Point who was banished to the research room in March after a conflict with propaganda officials, puts it in slightly grander terms.

"Chinese news media have matured immensely," he says. "This kind of progress, this kind of effort, it's impossible to contain."

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