China has a new draft law—one that is surely the envy of President Bush and his administration—that fines media outlets for reporting on “sudden incidents.” The proposed legislation would levy fines up to US$12,500 on media organizations or journalists who report on “outbreaks of disease, natural disasters, social disturbances or other so-called sudden incidents that officials determine to be false or harmful to China’s social order.” So reports Joseph Kahn in this morning’s New York Times.
This is a change for China’s relations with foreign media outlets. Until now, non-Chinese media operated under different, more lax rules although they were always monitored closely by security and operate under travel restrictions. Foreign media operations were, however, generally exempt from attempts at state censorship.
Chinese officials maintained that the new rules were intended to make government officials better manage the “sudden incidents” and to “prevent malicious behavior by journalists who willfully misled the public.” On the other hand, Kahn writes, “critics say the law could be used by government officials to forbid coverage of strikes, riots, epidemics or accidents that they prefer to keep secret.”
In America. on Independence Day, it’s important for us to remember all that means, the administration and the conservative attacks on the Times and other US media outlets notwithstanding. Good journalism isn’t always convenient; but it is necessary.
Howard French, in a related Times story, reports that the Chinese have announced their intention to regulate internet technologies—including instant messaging, search engines, and weblogs—and cellphones “because of more and more harmful information is being circulated online.”
Proposals currently under consideration include mandatory cellphone and website registration. Chinese citizens are currently able to purchase pre-paid cards in stores without identifying themselves. French quotes Isaac Mao, a popular Chinese weblogger: “The government has found their political lives under pressure from the media, and they’ve decided they have to strengthen their power. They are working on a variety of measures, which they will deploy one by one in order to reach their big goal, which is to take full control of things. They don’t want people to have any power, That’s the big goal of the government.”
Cai Wu, director of China’s Information Office of the State Council, cited 36.8 million Chinese weblogs, 16 million Chinese webloggers, and 97.1 million Chinese search engine users when he stated, “how could we not regulate such a huge market?” at the Sunlight and Green Internet Conference.
Update: Tuesday, 04 July 2006 10:23AM CDT: Bill Xia, chief executive officer of Dynamic Internet Technology, Inc. has an eye-opening first-person account of Chinese cyber censorship in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times.
China’s media clampdown law is still in the proposal stage and the way things work in China, the longer it stays in that stage, and the more it is talked about, the less likely it is to be enacted. The silver lining in all of this is that this proposed law is increasing Chinese importance of press freedom. If this law ends up not being enacted (and I think that is a real possibility) its proposal and subsequent failure will end up being a good thing for freedom of the press in China.