Chinese Stranglehold

Severe restrictions have been placed by the Propaganda Department on media coverage of the high-speed train crash on July 23 in the southeastern Chinese city of Wenzhou, in which 39 people were killed, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Wang Qinglei, a producer with state-owned China Central Television, was fired on July 27 because of his investigative...

Authorities in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region restricted domestic reporting on the student-led protests, which were sparked after Chinese coal mine employees killed two ethnic Mongolians who voiced complaints about the environmental impact of mining in mid-May, New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting international news reports...

Amid a harsh media crackdown, Chinese authorities censored discussion of the May 12, 2008, Sichuan earthquake anniversary that referenced independent investigations into the damage, according to international news reports. New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) interviewed filmmaker Alison Klayman about activists imprisoned for documenting official negligence...

Two Guangzhou-based journalists, who advocate for political reform amid tightening restrictions on free expression, have been dismissed. While several bloggers and activists have disappeared or been detained in the last month after anonymous calls for demonstrations in support of political reform were published online, journalists in traditional media are now also being targeted, according to New...

The secret sentencing of a Uighur website editor emerged this week, eight months after he was tried along with other journalists and dissidents charged in the 2009 unrest in northwestern Xinjiang, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. A court in the far-western district of Aksu sentenced Tursunjan Hezim, who edited a well-known Uighur website, Bilik, to seven years in prison on...

New York-based press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has rejected statements by a Chinese government official that international reporters are not being detained, attacked, and harassed in China. CPJ called on the police to end their anti-media attempts to stop foreign journalists from reporting on possible anti-government demonstrations in what has become known as the...

Chinese security officials' concerted attack on the foreign press in a busy commercial street near Tiananmen Square in Beijing Sunday is a return to the restrictions international reporters faced before they were eased in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics. Police briefly detained more than a dozen foreign journalists and assaulted at least two at the site of a planned anti-government protest in...

A Bloomberg News journalist was assaulted Sunday in Beijing while covering the deployment of police in response to online calls for protests in the Chinese capital, the agency reported. At least five men in plain clothes, who appeared to be security personnel, punched and kicked the reporter at Beijing’s Wangfujing shopping street at 2:45 p.m. local time Sunday. They also took the video camera he...

China’s Propaganda Department, which is under the direct orders of the country’s Communist Party, has marked the New Year with a series of directives to the media. Regarded as state secrets, they have been delivered by word of mouth to journalists at meetings where note-taking has been banned. However, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has obtained details of the...

China's colossal Sanmenxia dam has a new victim – Xie Chaoping, a journalist who was arrested without a warrant in the northeastern city of Weinan on August 19 after writing a book about the fate of those displaced by the dam, according to delayed reports. He is now reportedly being held by the Public Security Department in Beijing. Much has been written about this dam, a major source of...