Asia

China

{This graph represents scores that have been modified by CIMA so that higher scores indicate a better media situation. It is intended to show trends over time; each index measures significantly different factors of press freedom. To see an explanation for how this graph was created, click here.}
 

Although China is home to the world’s largest population of internet users, many of whom have shown increasing creativity in pushing back against censorship, the country’s internet environment remains one of the world’s most restrictive. This reflects the Chinese Communist Party’s paradoxical “two-hand strategy” for managing digital technologies: promoting access for the purposes of economic advancement on the one hand, while attempting to secure control over content, especially political communication, on the other.1The Chinese authorities thus maintain a sophisticated and multilayered system for censoring, monitoring, and manipulating activities on the internet and mobile phones.

This system has been enhanced, institutionalized, and decentralized in recent years, while the ability of citizens to communicate anonymously has been further constrained.

Rights campaigners and some ordinary users continue to face prison time for their internet-related activities. Taken together, these controls have contributed to the Chinese internet increasingly resembling an intranet. Many average users, isolated from international social media platforms and primarily exposed to a manipulated online information landscape, may have limited knowledge of key events related to their own country, even when these make headlines around the world.

Read more on Freedom House's site...

Reporters Without Borders Description:

China is the world’s biggest prison for journalists, bloggers and cyber-dissidents. Most of the around one hundred prisoners have been sentenced to long jail sentences for “subversion” or “divulging state secrets” and are held in harsh conditions, with journalists often being put to forced labour. The local authorities, fearful of bad publicity from reports on corruption and nepotism, continue to arrest journalists.

For their part, the political police concentrate their efforts on human rights activists. First dissident Hu Jia then academic Liu Xiaobo, who was sentenced in December 2009 to a long prison term for online posts, were imprisoned for their involvement in the launch of Charter 08 that was signed by thousands of pro-democracy activists. More than one hundred of the signatories have been arrested, threatened or summoned by the political police from one end of the country to the other.

Read more on RSF’s site…

Operating under the strictures of the central propaganda department, official Chinese media either ignored or denounced the October 8 award of the Nobel Peace Prize to human rights defender and writer Liu Xiaobo. Authorities, who considered the award an insult, also blacked out coverage of Liu's prize on international news broadcasts from the BBC and CNN. The case highlighted significant, ongoing official censorship, and formed a backdrop for a national discussion on the potential for press reforms. Five days after the award was announced, 23 senior Communist Party members called for a sweeping overhaul of China's media censorship policies. "Our core demand is that the system of censorship be dismantled in favor of a system of legal responsibility," said the authors, largely retired party elders, many of whom held ranking positions in the media. Widely distributed by e-mail and posted on the Sina news portal, the letter criticized the propaganda department's unchecked control on news and information, calling it "an invisible black hand." Though the letter was very likely drafted before the Nobel prize was announced, its message was delivered at a moment of heightened attention.

The situation was reflected in CPJ's 2010 census of imprisoned journalists, which charted a spike in work-related jailings. At least 34 journalists were imprisoned on December 1, tying Iran for the highest figure in the world and reflecting a significant jump from the 24 imprisonments that CPJ documented in 2009.

Read more on CPJ’s site...

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