Chinese Stranglehold

BEIJING, Jan. 24 - China's Propaganda Department on Tuesday ordered the closing of Bing Dian, an influential weekly newspaper that often tackled touchy political and social subjects, as the authorities stepped up efforts to curb the spread of information and views the Communist Party considers unfavorable. The shutdown came the same day that Google announced that it would begin steering its...

IT wasn't so long ago that the Internet was seen as a trap for China. The country desperately needed to foster economic growth, and in the early 1990's much of the globe was plugging itself in. Sooner or later, the thinking went, China would have to plug into the Web, too, and however efficiently its leaders might have controlled information in the old days, they would be no match for this new...

BEIJING, Jan. 7 (Xinhuanet) — Men still play the dominate role in China’s media industry, and most news stories disregard or reveal insensitive attitude towards gender problems, according to a survey released by China’s Women Reporter Association Saturday. Among China’s broadcasters, 69 percent are female, and among journalists, 54 percent are female. However, about 81 percent news stories are...

BEIJING (Reuters) - Forget loners in pyjamas and slippers pouring out their hearts in anonymous solitude. China's bloggers are going offline - and they're having a blast. Among the best known is "Dai San Ge Biao", literally meaning 'wears three watches' but also a play on former leader Jiang Zemin's Three Represents, or "San Ge Dai Biao", political theory. A bespectacled journalist by day whose...

A good way of getting a laugh in a room filled with business people is to utter the words: "Trust me, I'm a journalist." The ribaldry was good natured when I witnessed it a couple of weeks ago but it underscored a feeling that journalists languish somewhere in the realms of property salesmen when it comes to public esteem. Yet, perhaps surprisingly, there is cause for a better assessment and it...

DALIAN, China (UPI) -- China has reduced the six-year jail sentence given a journalist, who had written about political corruption due to good behavior and ordered the man released. The court in Dalian, in northeastern China, ordered Jiang Weiping freed, and was he reunited with family members, the BBC said. Jiang was sentenced in June 2001 on charges of illegally supplying state secrets and...

BEIJING – An emotional strike by 100 journalists at this city's most popular and lively newspaper follows a 16-month campaign to quash a broad range of "unapproved" public speech in areas verging on politics or society - a campaign that includes Internet blogs, and new restrictions on cellphones designed to smoke outsenders of renegade text messages. In the case of Beijing News, whose progressive...

At least 100 Beijing News reporters have walked out, after Chinese authorities removed three editors of the unusually outspoken newspaper on Thursday. The two-year-old Beijing News tabloid newspaper has enjoyed rising circulation, and become known for stories that are more critical of authorities than those typical of China's tightly-controlled, state-owned media. Stories the paper published...

BEIJING -The top editor of one of China's boldest newspapers has been dismissed in what observers said was a move to strengthen Communist Party control over the media. Yang Bin, the editor-in-chief of the Beijing News – a tabloid that has often reported on official missteps and misdeeds – was removed on Wednesday, Chinese journalists and media experts said. The precise reasons for Yang's dismissal...

New York, December 28, 2005–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Thursday's court decision upholding the conviction of Internet writer Zheng Yichun on charges of "inciting subversion" for his articles criticizing the government. The Liaoning Supreme People's Court rejected Zheng's appeal, making it more likely that he will serve a prison term of seven years. "Zheng has done nothing more...