There is never a dull moment for the media sphere in China, home to the most elaborate censorship apparatus in the world. Drawing on nearly 40 issues of the China Media Bulletin, Freedom House staff have identified the following as the year’s worst and weirdest developments surrounding press and internet freedom in China.
The Worst:
1. More state, less capitalism in China’s state capitalism
2. Thuggery and abusive detention
3. The rise—and threatened fall—of microblogs
4. An endless stream of forbidden topics
5. A quagmire for foreign companies
6. Beijing’s growing media influence abroad
The Weirdest:
1. Things are not as they appear
3. Maoist, mind-numbing, and mandatory
4. An open internet is harmful—unless you’re a golfer
5. False flags
6. I know you are but what am I?
The Worst
1. More state, less capitalism in China’s state capitalism: Over the past decade, the Chinese media sector has undergone a process of commercialization and the introduction of some competition, with ownership remaining in state hands and all media required to follow state and party censorship directives. In 2011, however, Chinese leaders appeared to be retreating from these reforms, strongly emphasizing propaganda value over commercial viability and audience demand. For example, all commercial TV ads were replaced with propaganda messages in Chongqing; sharp new restrictions were imposed on TV “reality” shows, ads during TV dramas, and the volume of entertainment general; and several periodicals respected for their muckraking journalism faced closure, dismissals, or tighter supervision. As if these moves were not clear enough, the authorities signaled their intentions with the announcement of across-the-board “cultural reforms” designed to reinforce public support for “socialism with Chinese characteristics."
2. Thuggery and abusive detention: In addition to censorship and criminal charges, a growing number of journalists, bloggers, and online activists were subjected to physical violence and arbitrary detention under harsh conditions, with sometimes fatal results. The year began with a reporter in Xinjiang being beaten to death and a dissident writer dying after delayed medical parole. Then came a string of abductions by authorities—including that of prominent artist and blogger Ai Weiwei in April—after calls for a Tunisian-style “Jasmine Revolution” in China appeared online in February. Ai was held incommunicado for months and threatened with torture, while others were beaten, deprived of sleep, and forcibly medicated. In May, reports emerged that government-hired thugs had poured boiling water on the outspoken father of a child killed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and in September a reporter was stabbed to death after exposing a food-safety scandal. In what has become an iconic symbol of the paranoid thuggery used to isolate dissidents in China, netizens and journalists have repeatedly faced assaults and detentions while attempting to visit activist Chen Guangcheng, a blind, self-taught lawyer being kept under a draconian form of house arrest. In December, Oscar-winning actor Christian Bale became the latest victim of these assaults, though his experience was comparatively mild.
3. The rise—and threatened fall—of microblogs: Although Twitter remains blocked in China, domestic microblogging services have rapidly grown in influence as a source of news and an outlet for public opinion, with the number of Chinese users surpassing 200 million during 2011. Despite the robust censorship already in place, including automated filtering of sensitive keywords and manual monitoring and deletions, microblogs’ speed of transmission and other “loopholes” enabled netizens to draw attention to incipient scandals and mount online campaigns on various topics. These included outrage over a notorious hit-and-run case involving the arrogant son of a powerful official, a campaign to identify abducted children, a bid to name and shame corrupt officials based on their luxury watches, efforts by independent candidates to run for local council seats, and most notably, the circulation of real-time news on a fatal high-speed rail crash and official attempts to cover up its cause. In response to these challenges, throughout the fall, top officials made repeated visits and statements designed to emphasize the need for domestic microblog providers to ramp up controls and eradicate “rumors.” Amid other reports of increasing controls and deletions, last week Beijing announced new rules that require real-name registration and avoidance of a laundry list of vaguely defined topics. If this trend continues, the “microblogosphere” of 2012 may be a shadow of its former self.
4. An endless stream of forbidden topics: Editors and internet-portal staff reportedly receive as many as three notices per day—by text message, phone call, or e-mail—that contain updates, adjustments, and minutiae pertaining to official censorship directives. The sheer breadth of topics allegedly targeted by such directives in 2011 indicates that the Chinese people are being systematically deprived of important information related to social affairs, governance, public health, and the wider world. News and discussion of the Arab Spring protests in the Middle East were sharply curtailed, with even the word “Egypt” censored online at one point. Other forbidden or restricted topics during the year included the above-mentioned train crash, an oil spill, the death of a herder in Inner Mongolia, labor unrest, a recent village revolt, official corruption, and assorted content related to Xinjiang and Tibet. Of particular note is the targeting of individuals’ names as “sensitive keywords.” A CMB special feature in July found that as prominent activists and lawyers were rounded up by security forces starting in February, their names began disappearing, in whole or in part, from the Chinese internet.
5. A quagmire for foreign companies: Foreign firms attempting to gain access to the vast Chinese market have faced countless obstacles, and the internet sector is no exception. Applications that fail to comply with the government’s censorship and surveillance demands, which many in the democratic world would find unpalatable or even illegal, are generally banned in China, allowing their domestic competitors to flourish. Vexingly, these same competitors are allowed to court foreign investors with U.S. stock listings. In 2011, various applications that still have access—including LinkedIn, Google+, Skype, and Gmail—were plagued by rumors or temporary disruptions indicating that they might join the likes of Facebook and Twitter, which are permanently blocked. Others, like Flipboard or Bing, made compromises that entailed partnering with censored domestic services like Renren or Baidu to gain a foothold in China. Engagement in the Chinese market can even bring risks at home. Cisco faced two lawsuits in the United States claiming that its network technologies had been used to monitor, identify, and arrest democracy activists and Falun Gong practitioners, who were subsequently imprisoned and tortured. In a promising development toward year’s end, the U.S. Trade Representative took an important first step in confronting the Chinese government on its opaque, discriminatory censorship policies vis-à-vis U.S. companies, filing a request for information at the World Trade Organization.
6. Beijing’s growing media influence abroad: Barely a week goes by without some new evidence of the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to sway foreign audiences, partner with other regimes’ state media, or suppress overseas criticism of its policies. During 2011, news items in the CMB’s Beyond China section covered China-related developments in over two dozen countries. These included content-sharing agreements with state media in Syria and Zambia, assistance to Ethiopia’s government in jamming dissident broadcasts, the launch of Arabic and Thai-language versions of China’s Baidu search engine, and the jailing of Falun Gong radio broadcasters in Indonesia and Vietnam. Perhaps most bizarrely, an enormous, Chinese-donated television screen showed progovernment programming in the capital of Zimbabwe. Such efforts were not limited to the developing world. Tibetans faced protest restrictions in Hungary, various encroachments were made into the media scene in Taiwan, and the United States witnessed Chinese state-sponsored Bible tours, a Maoist ballet, Chinese state-media inserts in leading American newspapers, and a new Chinese state television office in Washington, DC.
7. China-based cyberattacks: Throughout 2011, there were numerous reports of cyberattacks, cyberespionage, and hacking that originated in China, and evidence steadily accumulated that these acts were carried out with government approval. The targets included Britain’s Foreign Office; at least five multinational energy companies; the French Finance Ministry; and the accounts of hundreds of Gmail users, including human rights activists, journalists, military personnel, and senior government officials in the United States and South Korea. Despite Chinese denials of official involvement, various incidents pointed to a robust government—and often military—connection to these attacks. In July, a short video clip from a state-run TV program about cybersecurity inadvertently admitted that the Chinese military had designed and used special software to target overseas critics. In October, the Financial Times reported that many of the 500 employees at a technology company near Beijing belonged to a militia unit organized by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to specialize in cyberwarfare. And in December, U.S. intelligence agencies identified between 12 and 20 Chinese groups—many connected to the PLA—as being responsible for cyberespionage attacks that have stolen billions of dollars’ worth of data from U.S. companies and government entities.
The Weirdest
1. Things are not as they appear: Chinese officials frequently call for a crackdown on “fake news,” but the targets often involve factual accounts of corruption, police brutality, and other abuses. To make matters worse, state media were repeatedly caught indulging in fabrications of their own during 2011. In January, alert netizens noticed when state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) used footage of fighter jets from the 1986 Hollywood blockbuster Top Gun as part of a news segment on a Chinese air force drill (video). In June, a government website in Sichuan Province posted a photograph of three local officials inspecting a newly constructed road, but in the blatantly altered photo, the men appeared to be floating above the road without casting shadows. Dozens of parodies soon blossomed online, showing the three officials with dinosaurs, on the moon, or examining an injured soccer player. Such fakery was not limited to government entities. In July, an American blogger reported sightings of a fake Apple store in Yunnan Province (photos). Even some of the salespeople said they believed they were working for a genuine outlet. According to the blogger, “A ten minute walk around the corner revealed not one, but TWO more rip-off Apple stores.”
2. Censorship to the max: The Chinese Communist Party is well known for its hypersensitivity to information that would be considered innocuous in most countries. But sometimes the extent of the censors’ paranoia still manages to surprise. In March, China’s media regulator urged television broadcasters to refrain from airing popular fantasy dramas that involve characters traveling back in time, as they could encourage harmful phenomena like “feudalism, superstition, fatalism, and reincarnation.” In September, the same regulator issued a one-year suspension for Super Girl, a wildly popular American Idol–like talent competition, possibly because it was devoid of propaganda value, entailed subtle democratic ideas, and generated unchecked emotion in viewers. But perhaps the most notable excess during the year was the relentless crackdown on “jasmine” after the so-called Jasmine Revolution that unseated the authoritarian president of Tunisia in January. In May, the New York Times reported that the word itself had been targeted by Chinese censors in virtually all contexts, both online and off. Even video clips of President Hu Jintao singing the folk song Molihua (Jasmine) at public events were removed from the web, and in an unfair blow to the flower industry, the China International Jasmine Cultural Festival was cancelled.
3. Maoist, mind-numbing, and mandatory: In June 2011, a state-sponsored movie celebrating the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party was released in theaters in China and overseas. The soporific film was widely panned and proved unable to draw crowds on its own, prompting the Chinese authorities to employ various tactics to ensure its “success.” These included censoring online reviews to prevent critical comments, requiring state-owned enterprises to arrange theater trips for employees, and delaying the release of Hollywood blockbusters such as the new Transformers and Harry Potter films. Most creatively, some moviegoers reported being forced to purchase tickets for the party film and then having the tickets manually altered to show the movie they were actually going to see. Other preparations for the party’s 90th anniversary included authorities in the city of Chongqing ordering local residents to familiarize themselves with 36 Maoist-era “Red Culture” songs, holding a Communist-themed singing competition at Henan Normal University, and organizing a Beijing event in which 90 senior Chinese officials sang revolutionary classics. In a peculiar endorsement, state media reported that former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder praised the creativity of the campaign, and suggested that Chongqing’s “red song” artists carry out cultural activities with German arts groups. Separately, in a display of the absurd monotony that results from a harsh censorship regime, the party mouthpiece People’s Daily published a front page—covering the closing ceremony of the annual National People’s Congress session—that was virtually identical to the previous year’s.
4. An open internet is harmful—unless you’re a golfer: In November, organizers of the World Cup golf tournament held on the southern Chinese island of Hainan succeeded where the International Olympic Committee failed in 2008—they convinced the Chinese government to grant uncensored internet access for the international sporting event. The open access, which was made available through a server based in Hong Kong to more than 120,000 attendees and participants, allowed journalists and fans from China to temporarily enjoy a privilege that is routinely denied to their 1.3 billion fellow citizens. The Communist Party constantly warns that an uncensored internet would be terribly harmful to society, but it apparently believes that golf lovers are immune to these insidious effects.
5. False flags: In March, reports emerged that the U.S. film studio MGM was digitally removing Chinese flags and military symbols from its forthcoming remake of the Cold War drama Red Dawn, in which a gaggle of American farm kids help repel a Communist invasion. The replacement emblems are apparently North Korean. According to the Los Angeles Times, a leaked version of the script had drawn critical comments from the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece Global Times last year, prompting the change. It is unclear how the filmmakers might deal with scenes in which the invaders speak in their native tongue. In November, a scene featuring the Tibetan flag was reportedly altered for a new Bollywood film, Rockstar, sparking protests among Tibetans living in exile in India. The two incidents illustrate the preemptive self-censorship carried out by some foreign media producers as they seek a greater foothold in China’s fast-growing film market.
6. I know you are but what am I?: In April, the Chinese government published a tit-for-tat response to the U.S. State Department’s annual human rights reports, which cover nearly every country in the world, including China. Oddly, the Chinese critique of U.S. human rights practices included “fairly strict restriction” of the internet. CMB editors found that roughly 80 percent of the sources cited in the Chinese report were U.S. media outlets, websites, government entities, and civil society groups, indirectly undermining the report’s claim that the United States had “turned a blind eye to its own terrible human rights situation and seldom mentioned it.” In a similar case of turnabout, an editorial in a Chinese state-run newspaper criticized what it said was a U.S. media blackout on the Occupy Wall Street protests in September. Even as U.S. media coverage ramped up, China’s media quickly lost their enthusiasm for the protest movement, particularly after online appeals called for similar protests in China. Domestic microblogging services began blocking all phrases that combined the word “occupy” with the name of a place in China, including “Occupy China.”
