Censorship in the People's Republic of China

Censorship in the People's Republic of China is the limiting or suppressing of the publishing, dissemination, and viewing of certain information in the People's Republic of China (PRC). The majority of such censorship is implemented or mandated by the PRC's ruling party, the Communist Party of China (CPC). The special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau have their own legal systems, and Taiwan is not controlled by the PRC government, so censorship does not apply in these regions.

Censored content often includes information that relates to Falun Gong, Tibetan independence, Taiwan independence, police brutality, anarchism, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, freedom of speech, democracy, pornography, certain news sources, certain religious content, and many websites.

Censored media include essentially all capable of reaching a wide audience including television, print media, radio, film, text messaging, video games, and the Internet.

Reporters Without Borders ranks China's press situation as "Very serious", the worst ranking on their five-point scale.^[1] China's Internet censorship policy is labeled as "Pervasive" by the OpenNet Initiative's global Internet filtering map, also the worst ranking used.^[2]

Subject matter and agenda

Censorship in the PRC encompasses a wide range of subject matter. The agendas behind such censorship are varied; some are stated outright by the Chinese government itself and some are surmised by observers inside and out of the country.

Political

Censorship in China is largely seen as a measure to maintain the rule of the Communist Party of China. Censorship helps prevent unapproved reformist, separatist, "counterrevolutionary," or religious ideas, peaceful or otherwise, from organizing themselves and spreading. Additionally, censorship prevents Chinese citizens from discovering or learning more about past and current failures of the Communist Party that could create or inflame anti-government sentiment. Measures such as the blocking of foreign governments' websites may also be intended to prevent citizens from learning about alternative systems of governance and demanding similar systems.

Cultural

The PRC has historically sought to use censorship to mold or protect the country's culture. During the Cultural Revolution, foreign literature and art forms, religious works and symbols, and even artifacts of ancient Chinese culture were deemed "reactionary" and became targets for destruction by teams of Red Guard.

Although much greater cultural freedom exists in China today, continuing crackdowns on pornography, the 2006 banning of foreign cartoons from Chinese prime time TV,^[3] and limits on screenings for foreign films could be seen as a continuation of cultural-minded censorship.

Moral

Some censorship in China has been justified as upholding proper morals. This includes limitations on pornography^[4] and violence in films.^[5]

Religious

Though government tolerance of religion has improved since the end of the Cultural Revolution, a number of religious texts, publications, and materials are still banned or have their distributions artificially limited in the PRC. Foreign citizens are also prohibited from proselytizing in China.^[6]

The Falun Gong spiritual movement has been labeled an "evil cult" in China and virtually all religious texts, publications, and websites relating to the group have been banned.

Christian Bibles are allowed to be printed in China but only in limited numbers and through a single press.^[7] This has resulted in unauthorized printing, smuggling, and sales of Bibles in China in an attempt to meet demand for the texts.

In 2007, anticipating the coming "Year of the Pig" in the Chinese calendar, depictions of pigs were banned from CCTV "to avoid conflicts with ethnic minorities".^[8] This is believed to refer to China's population of 20 million Muslims (to whom pigs are considered "unclean").

Economic

In recent years, censorship in China has been accused of being used not only for political protectionism but also for economic protectionism.

In February 2007, the website of the French organization Observatoire International des Crises was banned in the PRC after it posted an article on the risks of trading with China.

"How do you assess an investment opportunity if no reliable information about social tension, corruption or local trade unions is available? This case of censorship, affecting a very specialised site with solely French-language content, shows the [Chinese] government attaches as much importance to the censorship of economic data as political content," the organization was quoted as saying.^[9]

Furthermore, the official ban on most foreign films hardly affect Chinese citizens, such films can easily be acquired in pirated formats, allowing Chinese to view such films to be financially accessible while keeping their money within the domestic economy.

Additionally, while the rise of Wikipedia has marginalized most online encyclopedias, the blocking of Wikipedia in China has created a climate in which for-profit services such as Baidu Baike can operate.

Internet

A comparison of image search results on the term "Tiananmen" between Google France and Google China (February 15, 2006). The Google China results have omitted images from the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

China's Internet censorship is regarded by many as the most pervasive and sophisticated in the world. According to a Harvard study, at least 18,000 websites are blocked from within the country.^[10] Certain search engine terms are blocked as well, and 52 cyber dissidents are reportedly imprisoned in China for their online communications.^[11]

Television

Foreign news broadcasts in China such as CNN, BBC World Service, and Bloomberg TV are occasionally censored by being "blacked out" during controversial segments. CNN has reported that their broadcast agreement in China includes an arrangement that their signal must pass through a Chinese-controlled satellite. In this way, Chinese authorities have been able to blackout CNN segments at will.^[12] Blacked out content has included references to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989,^[12] the Dalai Lama,^[12] the death of Zhao Ziyang,^[13] and negative developments about the Beijing Olympics.^[14]

Education

Educational institutions within China have been accused of whitewashing PRC history by downplaying or avoiding mention of controversial historical events such as the Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, and the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989.

In 2005, customs officials in China seized a shipment of textbooks intended for a Japanese school in the country because maps in the books depicted mainland China and Taiwan using different colors.^[15]

In a January 2006 issue of Freezing Point, a weekly supplement to the China Youth Daily, Zhongshan University professor Yuan Weishi published an article entitled "Modernization and History Textbooks" in which he criticized several middle school textbooks used in mainland China.^[16][17] In particular, he felt that depictions in the books of the Second Opium War avoided mention of Chinese diplomatic failures leading up to the war and that depictions of the Boxer Rebellion glossed over atrocities committed by the Boxer rebels. As a result of Yuan's article, Freezing Point was temporarily shut down and its editors were fired.^[18][19]

A new standard world history textbook introduced in Shanghai high schools in 2006 supposedly omits several wars and mentions Mao Zedong, the controversial founder of the PRC, only once.^[19]

Zhang Ming, the dean of political sciences at Renmin University of China, was fired on March 16, 2007 after complaining about academic freedom in China among other issues.^[20]

In the FRONTLINE documentary "The Tank Man", four students from Peking University are seemingly unable to identify the context of the infamous Tank Man photo from the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 which were sparked by Peking University students.^[21] The segment implies that the subject is not addressed in Chinese schools.

Indeed, On June 4, 2007, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, a small ad reading "Paying tribute to the strong(-willed) mothers of June 4 victims" was allowed to run in a newspaper in southwest China. The clerk who approved the ad had never heard of the protests and had been told by the placer of the ad that June 4th was the date of a mining disaster.^[22]

Film

China has no motion picture rating system, and films must therefore be deemed suitable for all audiences to be allowed to screen.^[5][23]

For foreign-made films, this sometimes means controversial footage must be cut before such films can play in Chinese theaters. Examples include the deletion of scenes showing hanging laundry in Shanghai during Mission: Impossible III, the removal of a reference to the Cold War in Casino Royale,^[24] and the omission of footage containing Chow Yun-Fat that "vilifies and humiliates the Chinese" in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.^[25] Prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the PRC administration announced that "wronged spirits and violent ghosts, monsters, demons, and other inhuman portrayals" were banned from audio visual content.^[26]

Regardless, Chinese censors still clear only twenty foreign films a year to show within the country.^[5] Despite this, almost all internationally released foreign films are freely available in Chinese and English language versions through the counterfeit trade in DVDs.^[26]

All audio visual works dealing with "serious topics" such as the Cultural Revolution must be registered before distribution on the mainland.^[27] Films by PRC nationals cannot be submitted to foreign film festivals without government approval.^[28]

Short Message Service

According to Reporters without Borders, China has over 2,800 Short Message Service (text messaging) surveillance centers. During the SARS outbreak of May 2003, a dozen Chinese were reportedly arrested for sending text messages about SARS.^[29] During protests over a proposed chemical plant in Xiamen during the summer of 2007, text messaging was blocked to prevent the recruitment of more protesters by SMS.^[30]

Video games

In 2004, the Ministry of Culture set up a committee to screen imported online video games before they entered the Chinese market. It was stated that games with any of the following violations would be banned from importation:^[31]

• Violating basic principles of the Constitution
• Threatening national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity
• Divulging state secrets
• Threatening state security
• Damaging the nation's glory
• Disturbing social order
• Infringing on others' legitimate rights

The State General Administration of Press and Publication and anti-porn and illegal publication offices have also played a role in screening games.^[32]

Examples of banned games have included:

• Hearts of Iron (for "distorting history and damaging China's sovereignty and territorial integrity")^[33]
• I.G.I.-2: Covert Strike (for "intentionally blackening China and the Chinese army's image")^[34]
• Command & Conquer: Generals - Zero Hour (for "smearing the image of China and the Chinese army")^[33]

As with films, piracy makes acquiring banned video games in China still possible.

Self-censorship

Although not subject to the mainland's censorship laws, Hong Kong media have been accused of practicing self-censorship so as to be allowed into mainland media markets and to be granted fuller journalistic access to the mainland.^[35][36]

At the launch of a joint report published by the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) and "Article 19" in July 2001, the Chairman of the HKJA said: "More and more newspapers self-censor themselves because they are controlled by either a businessman with close ties to Beijing, or part of a large enterprise, which has financial interests over the border."^[37]

For example, Robert Kuok, who has business interests all over Asia, has been criticised over the departures of several China desk staff in rapid succession since he acquired the South China Morning Post, namely the 2000-01 editorial pages editor Danny Gittings, Beijing correspondent Jasper Becker, and China pages editor Willy Lam. Lam, in particular departed after his reporting had been publicly criticised by Robert Kuok.^[37]

International corporations such as Google, Microsoft, MySpace, and Yahoo! willingly censor their content for Chinese markets in order to be allowed to do business in the country