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Who said the Chinese never speak out?

04.10.2010

The electronic Great Wall around China is getting taller and more effective. The government still controls most of the print media. Communist Party and government leaders continue to order arrests of journalists, bloggers and intellectuals. Directives from the Central Propaganda Department and local officials trample on media freedom.

But, with perseverance and courage, journalists, Internet users, bloggers, artists, lawyers and intellectuals are managing to open breaches in China’s censorship. In recent weeks, Reporters Without Borders has noted a series of encouraging victories by these tireless free speech activists.

It is up to the Chinese above all to wage the fight against censorship in China, but they need the support of the international blogosphere and information sector companies. The fight for free expression in a country that is now a major international power also needs significant solidarity gestures.

That is why Reporters Without Borders is supporting Chinese intellectual Liu Xiaobo’s candidacy for the Nobel Peace Prize. A staunch defender of free expression who was given an 11-year jail sentence for helping to draft the Charter 08 manifesto, Liu Xiaobo embodies the peaceful and selfless struggle for freedom being waged by activists in China and many other parts of the world.

Effective protests

Recent events in China suggest that a turning point is being reached in the possibilities for effective action by journalists and Internet users against repression and censorship.

“I will never regret writing this book,” Xie Chaoping claimed when he was freed on 17 September after being detained for several weeks in the central province of Shaanxi for writing about the Sanmenxia dam. He was released for lack of evidence after winning a strong show of support from the Chinese public. More information: http://en.rsf.org/china-journalist-...

“I wrote the truth,” said Economic Observer reporter Qiu Ziming at the end of July after the authorities in the eastern province of Zhejiang withdrew the libel charges they had brought against him for accusing a local battery manufacturer of improper practices. When Qiu went into hiding and protested his innocence in his blog, he won an enormous amount of support online and was transformed into an Internet hero. More information about Qiu: http://en.rsf.org/china-business-re...

“The Beijing police chief apologised to me, the magazine Caijing and all the journalists,” Caijing deputy editor Luo Changping wrote on Twitter on 21 September. Luo, who was arrested by the Beijing police for a story headlined “Security companies given special task of intercepting petitioners,” said the police finally promised not to prosecute anyone in connection with the article. To follow Luo on Twitter: http://twitter.com/lianyue

Journalists sticking together

These positive developments were the result of public support, which is having an increasing impact on the Chinese authorities. In some cases, this “agitation” was initiated by news media or informal groups of journalists in certain regions.

“The Internet’s development opens up new possibilities,” Xiao Jianfeng, the editor of Hunan Ribao (Hunan Daily), wrote after the authorities closed down an online discussion forum that was appreciated by many journalists. “If a website is closed, another is created elsewhere. The government is mistaken. Suppressing and closing websites is not a good method. It should instead try to solve the problems.”

Launched by Nanfang Dushi Bao, a newspaper based in southern China, the Dushibao Lianmeng (Association of Metropolitan Journalists) website was used by the staff of 13 local newspapers for exchanging information and discussing issues.

Some of the debates on Dushibao Lianmeng, such as the one about the residence permit system known as the “hukou,” upset some Communist Party leaders. The journalists had all called for the abolition of the system, which discriminates against rural residents working in the cities. The Propaganda Department recommended closing the forum in the conclusions of its March investigation into this “incident.”

Ye Du, a journalist based in the southern city of Guangzhou who belonged to the forum, said mutual assistance among news media is quietly growing in China despite new regulations. For example, if a newspaper cannot report a local story because it has been censored by the provincial authorities, a newspaper from another province may take on the job of covering it. While regretting the forum’s closure, most of its participants think its disappearance will have little impact on press freedom as another one will soon spring up in its place.

“The police do not have the right to arrest journalists without reason,” said the banner displayed by ten journalists in Yichun, a northeastern city near the Russian border, on 28 August. They were protesting against the detention of four fellow-journalists, who had been arrested by the local authorities while covering a plane crash in which 42 people were killed. The ten journalists staged two silent and anonymous demonstrations outside the local Propaganda Department office. The images of the protest circulated immediately online. The detained journalists were freed in the afternoon and received apologies from the local authorities.

The Chinese love plays on words. Their language lends itself to punning as it has lots of homophones.

Internet users have been attacking the online censors with humour and creativity for years. The resistance against censorship has come above all to be represented by a mythical creature called the “Cao Ni Ma” (Grass Mud Horse), a homonym for “Screw Your Mother.” Internet users mock the Party’s censorship by posting bogus animal reports and songs about the Cao Ni Ma: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKx1...

More recently, stories of an imaginary lizard called Yake (Ya Ke Xi in Mandarin) have circulated in response to a Chinese New Year show on state TV that showed Uyghurs from the troubled western province of Xinjiang singing the government’s praises and repeating that the Communist Party Central Committee’s policies were “good” (“yakexi” in Uyghur).

Shocked by the crudeness of this propaganda when the situation in Xinjiang is so problematic, humorists invented a lizard (“xi” in Mandarin) called Yake who patrols and censors the Internet and symbolises Central Committee policies. According to its creators, Yake is now dying out in Russia (after a golden era there) but is still thriving in Cuba, North Korea and China. Yake, who has a forked tongue, feeds on river crabs (“he xie” in Mandarin). “He xie” is a homonym of the word for “harmonising,” President Hu Jintao’s political leitmotiv and a government euphemism for censorship.

In all, Chinese bloggers and Internet users have invented about ten creatures to represent China’s online censors.

Cartoons are also increasingly being put into the service of media freedom. When Xie Chaoping, the author of the book about the Sanmenxia dam, was detained, lots of cartoons appeared in support of the campaign for his release.

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