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.