China / Asia

  
Rescuers evacuate a Chinese woman from her home. (AFP)

A year after Wenzhou, China still censoring disaster stories

New York, July 24, 2012–A year after drawing public ire for censoring coverage of a high-speed train crash, Chinese authorities should allow journalists to freely cover the aftermath of Saturday’s deadly flooding in and around the capital, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. International news accounts said 37 people died in Beijing and up…

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Xi Jinping's youth is the subject of an article that may be related to a newspaper editor's reassignment. Xi is expected to be China's next president. (AP/Jason Lee)

Chinese censors move staff from outspoken papers

Top figures at two outspoken newspapers in China were shuffled or suspended this week, according to online news reports.

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China’s diverse censors

Attempts to rein in microblogs like Sina Weibo are a huge part of China’s sophisticated information control strategy these days. However, news reports last week serve as a reminder that propaganda authorities also rely on methods that are more old school. 

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A police officer stands guard as protesters gather in the city of Shifang. (Reuters/Petar Kujundzic)

Shallow victory for China’s journalists, protesters

Shi Junrong, Xi’an Evening News bureau chief in the city of Wei’an, ran into trouble recently after he reported on the costly brand of luxury cigarettes favored by local officials. He announced on his microblog that the paper suspended him soon after, according to the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Asia.

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The New York Times takes on China’s censors

Well, that didn’t take long. Just days after The New York Times’ soft launch of its Chinese-language edition and accompanying microblog accounts, Berkeley-based China Digital Times website reports that the @nytchinese Sina Weibo feed is no longer accessible in China, along with two accounts hosted by Netease and Sohu. We couldn’t pull them up this…

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In China, Internet users have been blocked from accessing the website of the Bloomberg news agency. (AFP/Ed Jones)

China blocks Bloomberg for political report

New York, June 29, 2012–Chinese censors should unblock the website of the Bloomberg news agency, which became inaccessible today following a story on the vice president’s family and its financial assets, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

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What China’s Weibo censorship does, and does not, reveal

A flurry of research on Weibo censorship underscores what we already know about the Chinese company Sina’s microblog service–with a few surprises thrown in. 

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Don’t punish Chinese restrictions with more restrictions

The Committee to Protect Journalists is watching with concern the progress of H.R. 2899, the Chinese Media Reciprocity Act of 2011, which is under discussion Wednesday in front of the Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement. The bill seeks to reduce the number of visas available to journalists (and their families) working in the United…

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Chinese writers sentenced for ‘essays of inciting nature’

Chinese activists Lü Jiaping, his wife Yu Junyi, and an associate, Jin Andi, were imprisoned in 2010 without their families being informed. The full details of their 2011 trial and sentences were not made public until 2012, according to the English-language Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

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A police officer films members of the press gathered outside the Beijing hospital where Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng was staying on May 3. (AFP/Ed Jones)

In China, press rights equal press control

China’s state news agency Xinhua published the full text of the state council’s National Human Rights Action Plan 2012-15 on Monday. There is no section dedicated to press freedom. But the most striking omissions can be found in the text itself.

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