Danelle - Post #9 Chinese Official's Threat Sets Off a Media Furor

Another article I found to be of interest regarding freedom of speech and the press in China:

Chinese Official’s Threat Sets Off a Media Furor

By SHARON LaFRANIERE and JONATHAN ANSFIELD

Published: March 21, 2010 NY Times

BEIJING — In another era, the brusque response of Li Hongzhong, the governor of Hubei Province, to a reporter’s question about a scandal on his home turf might have been the end of it.

Infuriated that the reporter would even ask about the case — in which a waitress at a karaoke bar killed a government official in self-defense — he threatened to go to her boss, seized her audio recorder and marched off, according to reports of the encounter.

But instead of fizzling out, the March 7 episode has blossomed into a cause célèbre for free-press advocates in China. In a rare display of unity, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists posted a letter of protest on the Internet demanding the governor’s resignation.

Two Communist Party elders publicly condemned his behavior. And a storm of discussion erupted online before the authorities could contain it.

Chinese media analysts say the reaction was a sign of a slow boil in the media over tighter government restraints. While the authorities have effectively reined in the media in the last year, Chang Ping, a prominent media commentator, said the Internet had vastly complicated their task.

“When the government tries to contain something, it could achieve the opposite result, spurring people on instead of putting people off,” he said. Mr. Chang, who was forced out as deputy editor of Southern Metropolis Weekly in 2008 for challenging censorship, said the controversy had given journalists “a chance to vent all their anger and frustrations.”

The governor’s outburst happened at a moment when many journalists are chafing under the incessant orders and regulations of state censors. Some liberal members of the media are agitating for more freedom, even as the government bolsters state-controlled news agencies and expands its control over mass communication, from cellphone messages to individual Web sites.

Just before the opening this month of the National People’s Congress, the editors of 13 newspapers published a joint editorial calling for the reform of household registration laws that deprive migrants of public services. Propaganda authorities responded by ordering the dismissal of a prominent editor behind the effort and warning others.

Governor Li’s confrontation with the reporter neatly illustrates the yawning gap between the government’s promises of openness and accountability and the daily reality of censorship. Just two days earlier, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, reading aloud his annual report to the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, cited the need for the government to “let the news media fully play their oversight role.”

Yet Mr. Li, a delegate to the legislature, grew indignant when a Beijing reporter buttonholed him outside a conference chamber at the Great Hall of the People and asked for his thoughts about the case of the karaoke waitress. The 21-year-old waitress had fatally stabbed a local party official after he and a companion tried to force her into sex at a karaoke parlor.

Despite official efforts to suppress the scandal, the waitress’s arrest on murder charges incited online fury, drawing worldwide attention and turning the waitress into a national hero. The charges were reduced, and she was freed without serving a prison term.

By all accounts, Mr. Li did not take the question well. He asked the reporter, identified as Liu Jie, which publication she represented. When she said she wrote for People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s paper of record, he exploded.

“So you’re from a party paper!” he scolded. “Is this how a party paper guides public opinion? I’m going to the chief of your paper!”

He then snatched her recorder and stalked off toward the elevator, according to a report on the Web site of the independent-minded Beijing magazine Caijing.

Caijing’s report survived online for 18 hours before government censors ordered it removed. Caijing responded by publishing criticisms of the governor’s conduct by two of the party’s liberal elders: Zhou Ruijin, former deputy editor of People’s Daily, and Zhong Peizhang, former news director for the party’s propaganda department. Censors ordered both taken down.

But so far, the authorities do not appear to have stopped the online spread of the protest letter about the episode, although they have blocked the Web site of the protest’s prime organizer.

By late last week, the March 12 letter had garnered more than 1,000 signatures. It calls on the legislature to investigate the governor’s conduct and to force him to apologize and resign from his official posts. It cites the governor’s rank, the “sacrosanct” setting and the fact that “Wen Jiabao’s words were still ringing in our ears” when the governor delivered his diatribe.

David Bandurski, a media analyst and author at the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong, said the letter showed that some of China’s journalists and intellectuals were trying to push back against what they see as a “winter” of censorship.

“People are sticking their necks out a little bit more,” he said.

Still, he predicted that the governor would end up with no more than a slap on the wrist, at most.

In an interview published on March 11 in Xinkuaibao, a newspaper in Guangdong Province, Governor Li gave no ground.

He stressed that Ms. Liu had told him that she worked for People’s Daily when in fact, he later discovered, she was employed by Beijing Times, a commercial affiliate of People’s Daily. He said he had taken her recorder because she did not identify her paper “in a straightforward manner.” He later returned it.

“I don’t think an apology is called for,” he said.

It is unclear whether the reporter or her publication will be called to account. Before the National People’s Congress convened, propaganda authorities briefed the top editors at Chinese media outlets on a lengthy list of banned topics.

The list ranged from general prohibitions (“No negative news allowed on the front pages”) to microediting (delegates to the congress should not be described as “thundering,” which has a slang connotation of ridiculousness). For example, there were instructions on which official reports were acceptable for coverage of the notorious “poisonous cowpea incident,” in which a pesticide was found in cowpeas that had been grown in Hainan Province and shipped to other parts of China.

The list may not have filtered down to individual reporters like Ms. Liu. According to an editor at one party publication, it included restrictions on reporting related to the case of the karaoke waitress.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/world/asia/22press.html)

My Analysis:

We have previously discussed Google's ongoing struggles with the Chinese government regarding censorship. While it is understandable for an American company to take such a stand with regards to free speech, what is truly interesting is the current upheaval in Chinese media circles regarding censorship of their materials. More telling than the media's pushback against government censorship is that Communist Party elders are now also speaking on behalf of a more open society (although they seem to talk the talk more than walk the walk). While there will likely be little or no consequence to Governor Li as a result of the upheaval this has certainly ignited a fire in Chinese media, academic and legal circles and I doubt this fire will fizzle. Instead I expect this will continue to spread and if the Chinese government is not careful in addressing protestors' concerns this could lead to an explosion. I put my money on this becoming an explosion (even if it's a small one). To the dismay of many Chinese citizens, I do not think China's government will have a change of heart over night. We are sure to see the tension grow and with that will stem all of the consequences of anarchy and a new generation of Chinese citizens who will be free thinking and free to speak.