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Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom 26 the voices of the reformers. After the Tiananmen massacres, the draft was completely abandoned. That is why today, the various levels of power can exert pressure on journalists with total impunity. Freedom of the press and human rights constitute the most serious problem now facing China. At the approach of the Olympic Games, all Chinese who have suffered oppression hope to be able to use this occasion to seek justice; the international community hopes that the Chinese government will improve the situation of the press and human rights in line with the pledge made in 2001. But the Chinese authorities see these internal and external pressures as “politicization of the Olympic Games.” Unhappily, counterattacking these criticisms by repressing freedom of the press only underlines this contradiction. Today, the Chinese press industry is increasing at the same pace as the economy as a whole. In 2005, it represented one seventh of the world’s press industry. Otherwise, the industry has unhappily not changed since the epoch of Mao Zedong. The director of the Central Publicity Department (formerly the Central Propaganda Department) was promoted to the Politburo at the Communist Party’s 14h Congress. It is no longer possible today to control the press by increasing the number of posts in the propaganda bureaus. Instead, the Publicity Department and the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) have recruited a large number of press review officials, and the provincial and local bureaus have done the same. The press review officials are generally retired senior officials who are paid for their work and required above all to be politically “reliable.” In general, they write one report a month, or more if the situation demands. These reports are used by the Publicity Department and the GAPP as sources for articles in Xinwen Yueping (Review of the News), a publication of whose tone and language recall those of the Cultural Revolution. The affair of Bing Dian (Freezing Point), which caught the attention of the international community, began in fact with an article that appeared in Xinwen Yueping. China is the only country in the world that practices such censorship of the press and of all publishing outlets, as shown by the surprising number of such press review officials. During times of crisis, the media have no right of initiative and are obliged to carry only information from the official agency Xinhua. That is how the Publicity Department has managed to extend its control over the press and publications aacross the country. This system is a hundred times more perverse than the one in Prussia that even Marx criticized in his time. Let us give some other examples: in March 2007, the economic magazine Caijing appeared with a cover-page interview with the jurist Jiang Ping, which stated that “the General Affairs Office of the Central Committee had decreed that the law on property should be adopted by the National People’s Congress.” The Publicity Department, in a fit of fury, ordered all copies of the magazine to be withdrawn from sale, and that a new cover be substituted at the magazine's expense.
Beijing Olympics 2008: Winning Press Freedom 27 On Jan. 19 2008, the weekly Nanfang Zhoumo organized a prize ceremony for the year 2007. A special prize in the magazines category was given to the review Yanhuang Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn of Yanhuang). As the name of the magazine appeared on the screen, Du Daozheng and Wu Si, respectively the editor and assistant editor, went to collect the prize. At that very moment, a mysterious but clearly influential caller demanded that the prize be withdrawn. This incident became the “scoop” of the ceremony. Du Daozheng, having been director of the GAPP, dared to denounce this situation to the Central Publicity Department, which denied having issued the order. Du Daozheng then referred to “the mystery call.” From this, once can see the extent to which the operations of the organs to control the press are secretive and obscure. No written document is accessible by the public, be it at the national, provincial or local level. Not only the Central Publicity Department interferes with the press. On July 30 and 31, 2007 the daily Xiaoxiang Chenbao (the Hunan Daily) and the Economic News of Hunan TV channel issued information about an increase in the price of tofu and losses suffered by producers of food based on soya beans. The National Development and Reform Commission alleged that this information was false, and on Aug. 5, it got the Xinhua agency to publish an article denouncing the information. But by then the price of tofu had in fact increased. Journalists who tell the truth are punished, and the rewriting of articles by the official media has become a Chinese specialty. For example, the journalist Xiao Shifeng of Xiaoxiang Chenbao was fired and, in another case, the reporter Zi Beijia of Beijing TV was condemned to a year in prison for an allegedy false report about adulterated dumplings. The journalist Pang Jiaoming of the China Economic Times (known for its articles about attacks on “false journalists”) received death threats after publishing an article denouncing the poor quality of materials used in the manufacture of rails for the nation's first highspeed rail line between Wuhan and Canton. The government denied the information and obliged the China Economic Times to fire the reporter. Zhu Wenna, a journalist on the magazine Faren - which belongs to the official newspaper Fazhi Ribao (Judicial Daily) - published an article on Jan. 1, 2008 accusing Zhang Zhiguo, a party official in Xifeng (Liaoning province) of failing to follow correct judicial procedures in a case against a businessman who had sent a satirical text message about him. The management of Fazhi Ribao ordered the journalist not to return to work, provoking such an outcry that the party official was dismissed. Since the Tiananmen events of 1989, a new method of controlling the press, by exerting economic pressure, has seen the light of day. Of the media belonging to the party, only the People’s Daily, the Guangming Ribao, the Jingji Ribao, the China Daily and the Qiushi review are supported entirely by public finances. The other publications have been pushed onto the market and mustcompete with each other for advertising revenues. Advertising agencies and enterprises have thus become the party’s “soft power.”
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