US-China Commission Report - Fatal System Error

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media, the Internet, popular entertainment, cultural activities,
and education.
• The Central Propaganda Department and its subordinate regional
bodies exercise extensive authority over the hiring and firing
of personnel in the media, educational, and entertainment
sectors.
• Personnel working in the media, educational, and cultural fields
have been conditioned into self-censorship by the rewards and
punishments of China’s information control system and also face
possible fines, demotion, termination of employment, and even
prison for publishing information contrary to the party’s preferred
narratives.
• The Chinese government did not fully honor promises of greater
media freedom that it made in conjunction with its bid to host
the 2008 Olympic Games. Those promises now appear to have
been tactical moves intended to smooth the way for the games
rather than serious statements of policy intent. There were limited
improvements in the latitude granted to foreign journalists,
particularly in terms of travel rights within the country. However,
many western journalists, particularly those from the
United States and the United Kingdom, remained subject to government
scrutiny and to opaque regulations restricting their activities.
• The Chinese government has established an extensive physical
infrastructure to screen and monitor information on the Internet.
An Internet police force of large but indeterminate size monitors
and censors information on the Internet.
• The propaganda system’s central purpose is to perpetuate the political
authority of the Chinese Communist Party by concealing
negative information about the party and its history and by propagating
narratives intended to bolster the party’s authoritarian
rule. The propaganda system also actively seeks to inflame Chinese
nationalism in order to co-opt nationalist sentiment as a
means of legitimizing the party’s authority.
• The U.S. government takes the position that current Chinese
government regulations requiring all financial services companies
to operate through a subsidiary of the Xinhua news agency,
and similar regulations that make a Xinhua subsidiary a regulator
of all financial services information, violate China’s signatory
commitments to the WTO.