September 2006 Archives
By REUTERS | The New York Times
September 30, 2006
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - China's new restrictions on foreign media raise concerns about its respect for trade rules as well as human rights and freedom of expression, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.
Opening a Reuters photo exhibition at European Commission headquarters on Friday evening, Barroso said European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson had contacted the Chinese authorities to complain about the measures.
``The Commission has already expressed its concerns over the repercussion these measures are likely to have in terms of trade, foreign operations in China and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms,'' Barroso said in a speech.
``We will continue to do our utmost to defend open markets and freedom of expression,'' he said.
The new rules, announced this month, bar foreign companies such as Reuters and Bloomberg LP from selling news and information directly to clients in China.
``Let us not beat about the bush -- these measures are likely to have an extremely severe impact on foreign news agencies in China, and on Reuters in particular,'' Barroso said.
Chinese leaders have sought to play down the impact of the measures, announced by the official news agency Xinhua, which also acts as regulator of the foreign media.
The new rules require foreign media to seek Xinhua's approval to distribute news, pictures and graphics, and the agency has said it could censor reports distributed by foreign media and delete forbidden content.
However, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said on a visit to London that China's open policy toward foreign media and financial information agencies remained unchanged and the government would protect their freedom and rights.
And a senior Chinese diplomat said this week the rules were not motivated by ideology or politics.
``This has nothing to do with ideological or political considerations. It's merely on the economic consideration'' and to bring order to the market, said Xie Xiaoyan, deputy commissioner of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's office in Hong Kong.
International rights groups have denounced the rules as an attack on media freedom in China, where the ruling Communist Party is trying to keep a tight grip on information.
By BBC News
September 28, 2006
China has denied a BBC report that organs taken from executed prisoners are sold for transplant.
Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said such organs could be transplanted but the use was "very cautious".
Mr Qin said: "The sales of organs are prohibited, [donating organs] must have the consent of the donor himself."
The undercover BBC report said one hospital confirmed it could provide a liver for £50,000 ($94,400), and it could come from an executed prisoner.
AFP news agency quoted Mr Qin as telling reporters that death-row prisoners had to provide written consent.
The donation must also be approved by provincial health officials and the provincial high court, he said.
"Concerned health administrative departments deal with those operations in strict accordance with the law," Mr Qin said.
'Present to society'
The undercover investigation by the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes said that organs from death row inmates were being sold to foreigners who needed transplants.
He visited No 1 Central Hospital in Tianjin, ostensibly seeking a liver for his sick father.
Officials there told him that a matching liver could be available in three weeks.
One official said that the prisoners volunteered to give their organs as a "present to society".
He said there was currently an organ surplus because of an increase in executions ahead of the 1 October National Day.
China executes more prisoners than any other country in the world. In 2005, at least 1,770 people were executed, although true figures were believed to be much higher, a report by human rights group Amnesty International said.
In April 2006, top British transplant surgeons condemned the death-row transplant practice as unacceptable and a breach of human rights.
But the No 1 Central Hospital carried out 600 liver transplants last year, our correspondent says, and the organ transplant industry has become big business.
The Epoch Times
September 27, 2006
Authorities deny attorney's access to Gao Zhisheng and Guo Feixiong, famed human rights lawyers
The attorney who is representing detained human rights lawyers Gao Zhisheng and Guo Feixiong has been unable to meet with his clients.
Mo Shaoping, their defending attorney, said that the Public Security Department has no reason to deny attorneys the right to meet with their clients, according to Chinese law.
After receiving authority from Gao's older brother to represent Gao Zhisheng, Mo applied to the Beijing Public Security Bureau Preliminary Hearing Department on September 19 for a meeting with Gao Zhisheng, and submitted all necessary legal documents.
In accordance with regulations, authorities should respond within 48 hours, but the Beijing Public Security Bureau indicated they needed to investigate the matter to decide whether they were going to handle the case. Mo is waiting for an answer.
Mo is also representing human rights attorney—Guo Feixiong, who has been detained by the Guangzhou Authority with the charge of "illegal business operation."
On September 20, Mo also submitted an application and all related legal documents to the police for a meeting Guo.
Guo's wife, Zhang Qing, visited the detention center where Guo was being held to give him his spectacles, books, stationery and some items for his daily needs, but the authorities only allowed the spectacles in.
By Joseph Kahn | The New York Times
26 September 2006
BEIJING, Sept. 25 — As the storm clouds of a national anticorruption campaign loomed on the horizon last spring, Chen Liangyu, the Communist Party boss of Shanghai and one of China’s most powerful officials, summoned reporters from the main state news agency to his office for a rare interview.
Mr. Chen told the reporters that, as chief of China’s wealthy East Coast commercial center, he felt obliged above all “to carry out the orders of the party center,” a public pledge of obeisance to President Hu Jintao.
That vow of fidelity came too late to rescue Mr. Chen. As an heir of the influential Shanghai-centered political machine built by Jiang Zemin, China’s former top leader, Mr. Chen never won the trust of Mr. Hu, whose own power has grown steadily more formidable, party officials said.
On Sunday, security forces put Mr. Chen, 59, under a form of house arrest. The state news media reported Monday that he had lost his political posts, including his membership in the ruling Politburo, and that he might face criminal charges.
Such purges, common in Mao’s time, rarely occur in today’s China, which prizes political stability above all and does not generally let factional infighting spill into the public realm. Mr. Chen is the first member of the Politburo to be forced from power since 1995.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PRESS RELEASE
September 21, 2006
China: Olympic countdown to human rights reform
"By allowing Beijing to host the Games you will help the development of human rights": Liu Jingmin, Vice-President of the Beijing Olympic Bid Committee, April 2001
With 687 days to go before the start of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government needs to work quickly if it is to fulfil its promise to the International Olympic Committee to improve human rights ahead of the 2008 Games.
In its latest assessment of the Chinese government's performance in four benchmark areas of human rights ahead of the Olympics, Amnesty International found that its overall record remained poor. There has been some progress in reforming the death penalty system, but in other crucial areas the government's human rights record has deteriorated.
"The serious human rights abuses that continue to be reported every day across the country fly in the face of the promises the Chinese government made when it was bidding for the Olympics," said Catherine Baber, Deputy Asia Pacific Director at Amnesty International. "Grassroots human rights activists -- including those working with residents forcibly evicted from buildings on Olympic construction sites -- are harassed and imprisoned. Thousands of people are executed after unfair trials for crimes including smuggling and fraud."
"There has been a renewed crackdown on journalists and internet users in the past year -- a fact that makes government commitments to 'complete media freedom' ring hollow," said Catherine Baber. "The current state of affairs runs counter to the most basic interpretation of the 'Olympic spirit' with the 'preservation of human dignity' at its heart."
Amnesty International has sent its findings to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which has said it would act if human rights commitments by China were not upheld in practice. The organisation is urging the IOC to use its influence with the Chinese authorities and to speak out on behalf of individuals such as Ye Guozhu.
Ye Guozhu was forcibly evicted when his home became part of a site for development in preparation for the Olympic Games. He was sentenced to four years' imprisonment after he sought permission to organize a demonstration in Beijing with other victims of forced evictions in December 2004. Amnesty International considers Ye Guozhu a prisoner of conscience. It has recently emerged that Ye has been tortured in detention, including being suspended from the ceiling by his arms and suffering beatings with electro-shock batons.
As well as carrying out forced evictions from Olympic related sites, Beijing city authorities have decided that in order to clean up the city's image in the run-up to the Olympics, targets of 're-education through labour' -- imprisonment without charge -- should to be expanded to include 'unlawful advertising or leafleting, unlicensed taxis, unlicensed businesses, vagrancy and begging'.
"Gleaming stadiums and spectacular parades will be worthless if journalists and human rights activists still can not speak out freely, if people are still being tortured in prison, or if the government continues its secrecy about the thousands of people executed," said Catherine Baber.
"We urge the Chinese authorities to press ahead with its promises to improve human rights so that when August 2008 arrives the Chinese people can be proud in every respect of what their country has to offer the world."
Notes to Editors
Amnesty International is publishing regular assessments of four key areas for human rights reform in the run-up to the Olympics. These form a core component of the organisation's broader agenda for human rights reform in China. In this latest assessment, some of the main developments and recommendations are as follows:
The death penalty
Continues to be applicable to around 68 offences, including crimes such as tax fraud and drug offences. Eight - ten thousand are people executed each year, according to estimates by Chinese academics.
No-one sentenced to death receives a fair trial: failings include lack of prompt access to lawyers, no presumption of innocence and evidence extracted under torture.
Widespread extraction of organs from executed prisoners -- new regulations in July 2006 only deal with transplants from live donors.
In a positive development, the Supreme People's Court is to reinstate its power of final review and approval of all executions -- hopefully leading to a reduction in death sentences.
Amnesty International calls on the government to increase transparency by publishing full national statistics on death sentences and executions as a step towards full abolition.
Fair trials, torture and imprisonment without charge ('administrative detention')
Hundreds of thousands of people are believed to be held in 're-education through labour' facilities and other forms of imprisonment without charge across the country.
Police have unchecked power to impose sentences of up to three years for 'minor offences'.
Those imprisoned at such facilities are at high risk of torture or ill-treatment, especially if they resist 'reform'.
Amnesty International calls for the abolition of 're-education through labour' and other forms of administrative detention.
Human rights activists and defenders
People are increasingly airing complaints in public: 87,000 protests, demonstrations and other 'public order disturbances' in 2005, compared with 74,000 in 2004, according to government figures.
Activists, including lawyers and journalists, face severe obstacles in drawing attention to abuses -- they are harassed, arbitrarily detained and tortured.
May 2006 regulations for lawyers tighten official controls and may dissuade lawyers from representing victims of human rights abuses at the local level.
Amnesty International calls on the government to change vaguely-worded clauses in the Criminal Law, such as 'leaking state secrets abroad' and 'subverting state power', which are often used to suppress legitimate human rights activities.
Media freedom
The websites of hundreds of international organizations remain blocked by the Chinese authorities and numerous Chinese websites have been closed down over the past year.
Police have detained foreign journalists on at least 38 occasions over the last 2 years, according to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Beijing.
Chinese authorities have intensified controls over Chinese media outlets in the past year, closing publications such as Freezing Point (Bingdian) and dismissing critical journalists.
Amnesty International calls on the government to release all journalists detained for their peaceful reporting activities and to ensure both domestic and foreign journalists are able to cover issues of public concern without censorship.
The full assessment will be available from 21 September 00:01 GMT at: http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engasa170462006.
The President of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, has regularly referred to China's human rights commitments when questioned publicly about China and the Olympics. On the BBC Hardtalk programme in April 2002, he promised to act if human rights in China were not acted upon to his satisfaction.
Public Document
For more information please call Amnesty International's press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5566
Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW. web: http://www.amnesty.org
For latest human rights news view http://news.amnesty.org
By RADIO FREE ASIA
September 19, 2006
DELHI—Authorities in the Tibetan region of Karze in China’s southwestern Sichuan province have detained a 22-year-old monk as part of a broader crackdown on anti-Chinese sentiment, making him the eighth Buddhist monk arrested or detained there this year, Tibetan sources said.
Lobsang Palden, a monk at Karze monastery, was detained Aug. 15, sources said.
“When police raided his room in the monastery, they found several incriminating documents including photos of [Tibet’s exiled religious leader] the Dalai Lama,” a Tibetan from the region told RFA.
“Relatives learned that he was severely beaten in detention when he refused to implicate others."
Karze police officials contacted by phone refused to confirm the arrest.
Sources described Lobsang Palden as the eighth monk arrested by Chinese police in the Karze area this year, where signs of opposition to Chinese rule in the Himalayan kingdom appear to be on the rise.
By RADIO FREE ASIA
September 15, 2006
HONG KONG — Authorities in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou have detained prominent civil rights lawyer Guo Feixiong on suspicion of "running an illegal business."
Guo, who is also known as Yang Maodong, was taken from his home at 9 a.m. Thursday by plainclothes officers and is being held at the Guangzhou No.1 Detention Center, his wife said Friday.
"Yesterday morning as I was taking our son to kindergarten," Guo's wife Zhang Qing told RFA's Mandarin service. "I had just arrived at the gate when I was detained by a big chap who grabbed me by both arms and pulled me onto a minivan. He said he was from the Public Security Bureau."
She had been driven to see her husband, who told her to stay calm. Then he was taken away, and Zhang was handed a search warrant for her home and a document saying that Guo was being held under "criminal detention," she said.
By Joseph Kahn | The New York Times
September 15, 2006
Chinese officials on Thursday promised that new rules restricting the sale of foreign wire service news would not affect press freedoms. But they also strongly defended efforts to control the distribution of financial and economic news inside the country.
The New China News Agency, China’s main government news agency, also known as Xinhua, issued regulations on Sunday that would make it the gatekeeper, and presumably also the revenue collector, for all kinds of reports from news agencies sold in China.
The regulations threaten to disrupt a business valued by major Western financial news providers, including Reuters and Bloomberg, at about $100 million a year. Most of the revenue comes from banks and brokerage houses that subscribe to Western news and data services to keep abreast of developments affecting stock, bond and currency markets. Very few news outlets in China subscribe directly to foreign wire services.
The news agency’s attempt to commandeer that business, a repeat of a failed effort it undertook in 1996, raised charges that it sought to use its regulatory authority to enhance its bottom line.
The United States, the European Union and the major players in the financial news and information business protested the agency’s announcement, prompting a vigorous and so far uncompromising defense from Chinese officials.
By BBC World News
September 13, 2006
China has announced tighter controls governing communication between court officials and the media.
Special spokesmen would now release all information to journalists, state-run Xinhua news agency said, and leaks from court officials would be punished.
Officials would decide on releasing details of "sensitive cases", including ones involving foreigners, Xinhua said.
Correspondents say the move comes as China tightens its already rigid control over the country's media.
Xiao Yang, President of the Supreme People's Court, said that 65 official spokesmen had been appointed.
"With the spokesman system, the courts will adopt a more positive attitude towards news reporting and publicity work," Xinhua quoted him as saying.
"All the important information will be released by the spokesmen."
But cases involving foreigners, national security, ethnic groups, religion and "sensitive issues" would be examined before being released to the media, his deputy Cao Jianming said.
Those giving "improper" news to the media would be punished, he said.
By REUTERS | The New York Times
September 12, 2006
International rights groups denounced new Chinese curbs on the dissemination of foreign news as a step backward ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when thousands of journalists will descend on the country's capital.
The official Xinhua news agency announced rules on Sunday requiring foreign media to seek its approval with immediate effect to distribute news, pictures and graphics within China.
Warning against dissemination of news that endangers national security, sabotages national unification or promotes cults, the rules empower Xinhua to censor reports distributed in China by foreign media and to delete forbidden content.
The rules also seek to bar international financial information companies, including Reuters and Bloomberg, from selling news services directly to Chinese customers such as banks and brokerages.
Editorial | The New York Times
September 13, 2006
China has long prided itself on its ability to master capitalism without indulging in the messy business of democracy. So Beijing got a twofer this week when it gave the state-run Xinhua news agency monopoly control over the lucrative financial news business and the power to administer broad censorship rules for all foreign news entering China.
Xinhua even got to announce the news of the new regulations. Not surprisingly, it didn’t quote any critics.
Foreign agencies have long been barred from selling general news directly to the Chinese media. Some foreign companies have been quietly testing the limits as the number of Chinese media outlets has grown and Chinese editors have become more daring. Xinhua sent a clear warning to all sides, listing 10 categories of news covering politics, religion and national unity — code for Taiwan —that could not be released into China.
For the last decade financial news providers received better treatment and were allowed to sell their less politically sensitive information directly to banks and brokers. Now, under the new rules, they will have to distribute their wares through a designated agent of Xinhua — a fine way to get Xinhua, which is eager to sell its own financial news, a guaranteed cut of that multimillion-dollar action.
All of this comes at a time when honest journalism is increasingly under attack. Last month, a Chinese court sentenced Zhao Yan, a New York Times researcher and journalist, to three years in prison on a specious fraud charge. Soon after, another court sentenced Ching Cheong, a reporter for The Straits Times newspaper of Singapore, to five years in prison on trumped-up espionage charges.
Media organizations and governments, including the Bush administration, are right to protest these abuses as loudly and as often as they can. But the painful reality is that China’s autocrats aren’t usually moved by appeals to their better nature — or for that matter warnings that keeping such a tight lid on a society undergoing rapid changes could eventually explode in their faces.
What they do understand is how rich they’ve gotten since joining the World Trade Organization. These new rules appear, at a minimum, to violate their W.T.O. pledges to liberalize access to financial information. Trade officials and foreign business leaders need to remind Beijing’s leaders of those promises. And they need to warn them that a country that keeps a stranglehold on information is not a great place to invest. [emphasis by TAC]
By BBC World News
September 5, 2006
Zambian commentators have condemned China, after its ambassador got involved in the campaign for this month's presidential election.
Political Analyst Michael Banda said Ambassador Li Baodong's comments were "shocking and unacceptable".
Mr Li had said Chinese investors were "scared" to go to Zambia in case opposition leader Michael Sata won.
Mr Sata has said foreign companies, including Chinese, mistreat workers and has also met Taiwanese businessmen.
China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and cuts diplomatic ties with any country which recognises Taiwan's independence.
By THE ASSOICATED PRESS
08 September 2006
The Dalai Lama declared Thursday that he was proud to be named an honorary Canadian citizen, a move that has drawn sharp criticism from China.
The leader of the world's Tibetan Buddhists spoke after arriving in Vancouver for the inauguration of the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education, the world's first educational center in his name.
When he was granted the citizenship by Canada's Parliament earlier this summer, China complained to the Canadian government that it could could harm relations.
"Wherever I go, it creates some inconvenience," he told a news conference at Vancouver city hall. "I'm sorry. I hope it's not my mistake."
Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs says Canada recognizes China as the legitimate government of China and Tibet, but has great respect for the Dalai Lama.
Only two other people have been granted honorary Canadian citizenship: South African leader Nelson Mandela and Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved Jews from extermination during World War II.
The Dalai Lama said Thursday Vancouver was chosen as the site of the center because its multiethnic and multiracial population gives it harmony.
"This is purely educational, not political," he said of the center.
The Dalai Lama, a Nobel peace prize winner for his struggle for Tibetan autonomy, fled into exile in northern India in 1959, following a failed uprising against Chinese rule, and is still widely revered in Tibet.
By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
04 September 2006
URAD QIANQI, China — Dark as soy sauce, perfumed with a chemical stench, the liquid waste from two paper mills overwhelmed the tiny village of Sugai. Villagers tried to construct a makeshift dike, but the toxic water swept it away. Fifty-seven homes sank into a black, polluted lake.
The April 10 industrial spill, described by five residents of the village in Inner Mongolia, was a small-scale environmental disaster in a country with too many of them. But Sugai should have been different. The two mills had already been sued in a major case, fined and ordered to upgrade their pollution equipment after a serious spill into the Yellow River in 2004.
The official response to that spill, praised by the state-run news media, seemed to showcase a new, tougher approach toward pollution — until the later spill at Sugai revealed that local officials had never carried out the cleanup orders. Now, the destruction of Sugai is a lesson in the difficulty of enforcing environmental rules in China.
By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
September 4, 2006
A Chinese researcher for The New York Times, sentenced to three years in prison for fraud, decided on Monday to appeal his conviction, one of his lawyers said.
Zhao Yan, 44, who worked in The Times’s Beijing bureau, won a victory on Aug. 25 when a Beijing court dismissed the more serious charge against him of leaking state secrets to the newspaper. But the court convicted him of a lesser, unrelated fraud charge that dated to 2001, when he worked as a journalist for a Chinese publication.
Mr. Zhao, who has already been in detention for nearly two years, has repeatedly denied both charges. Guan Anping, a defense lawyer, on Monday described the fraud conviction as “absurd” and said the court’s refusal to allow any defense witnesses to testify on Mr. Zhao’s behalf was “definitely a major procedural problem.”
Mr. Guan, who met with Mr. Zhao on Monday, criticized the fraud verdict as filled with “contradictions” and asserted that the court seemed “to only take a very superficial look at the facts of the case.”
Technically, Mr. Zhao’s decision to appeal to the Beijing High Court means the higher judicial body could reconsider the dismissal of the state secrets charge. But Mr. Guan said such a move was unlikely.
Mr. Zhao worked as a journalist at several Chinese publications before joining The Times in April 2004 as a researcher. He was arrested in September 2004 in connection with an article in The Times published 10 days before the arrest. That article revealed that former President Jiang Zemin had unexpectedly offered to resign his last leadership post as military chief.
By REUTERS | via (uncensored) YAHOO
04 September 2006
China has banned director Lou Ye from making movies for the next five years after he submitted "Summer Palace" to the Cannes Film Festival without official approval, state media reported on Monday.
Lou thumbed his nose at the film bureau by submitting his movie, a romance set against the backdrop of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests that also features explicit sex scenes, without first clearing the screening with China's censors.
"A senior official with SARFT (the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television) confirmed the punishment to Xinhua on Monday but refused to discuss the case further," the official state news agency reported.
Calls from Reuters to the film bureau at SARFT went unanswered and an official at the administration's general office declined to comment.
by Radio Free Asia
August 30, 2006
Chinese women are committing suicide at an alarming rate, especially in rural areas left out of the country's economic boom. But experts say economic success is also taking its toll in the form of growing numbers of suicides among the urban middle classes.
Recent studies of depression and suicide in China have revealed a unique social pattern: China is the only country in which the suicide rate for females is higher than for males.
"I believe that the high suicide rate among Chinese women has to do with the low status of women throughout Chinese society," counselling psychologist Zhan Chuhua told a recent Investigative Report series on mental health.
Women face major hurdles
"Often Chinese women lack resources to support them, so that when they run into problems, especially in their marriages, it is easy for them to become victims," said Zhan, who has worked on the Kangning Mental Health Hotline in the southern city of Guangzhou for many years.
"In the workplace too, it is far more difficult for women than it is for men. For example, if a working woman gets pregnant, she will find it very difficult. And the likelihood of being on the receiving end of harassment is much higher for a woman. So all of this adds to the difficulties in the life of a Chinese woman, so that's probably why the suicide rate is higher," he added.
By Joseph Kahn | The New York Times
September 1, 2006
When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise. The new standard world history text drops wars, dynasties and Communist revolutions in favor of colorful tutorials on economics, technology, social customs and globalization.
Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese Communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao only once — in a chapter on etiquette.
Nearly overnight the country’s most prosperous schools have shelved the Marxist template that had dominated standard history texts since the 1950’s. The changes passed high-level scrutiny, the authors say, and are part of a broader effort to promote a more stable, less violent view of Chinese history that serves today’s economic and political goals.
Supporters say the overhaul enlivens mandatory history courses for junior and senior high school students and better prepares them for life in the real world. The old textbooks, not unlike the ruling Communist Party, changed relatively little in the last quarter-century of market-oriented economic reforms. They were glaringly out of sync with realities students face outside the classroom. But critics say the textbooks trade one political agenda for another.
They do not so much rewrite history as diminish it. The one-party state, having largely abandoned its official ideology, prefers people to think more about the future than the past.
The new text focuses on ideas and buzzwords that dominate the state-run media and official discourse: economic growth, innovation, foreign trade, political stability, respect for diverse cultures and social harmony.
J. P. Morgan, Bill Gates, the New York Stock Exchange, the space shuttle and Japan’s bullet train are all highlighted. There is a lesson on how neckties became fashionable.
The French and Bolshevik Revolutions, once seen as turning points in world history, now get far less attention. Mao, the Long March, colonial oppression of China and the Rape of Nanjing are taught only in a compressed history curriculum in junior high.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | The New York Times
September 1, 2006
China's jailing of a Hong Kong reporter as a spy reflects a deepening dilemma for the communist government: how to tighten control over information in an increasingly open, Internet-savvy society.
Ching Cheong, a correspondent for The Straight Times in Singapore, was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison after being convicted of selling secrets to Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its territory.
His conviction came amid a government campaign to rein in a freewheeling press that has seen dozens of journalists and Internet essayists jailed. But the crackdown goes further: China is also tightening controls over legal activists, charities and even mapmakers, whom a state news agency accused this week of threatening national security with unauthorized surveying.
The effort highlights the communist leadership's desire to put the brakes on the societal changes that have been occurring since economic reforms started 25 years ago. In exchange for a more vibrant economy, the government has been forced to ease social controls, giving Chinese the freedom to live where they want, travel or study abroad and post their opinions on the Internet.
While much of Chinese society is hurtling forward to catch up with the West, the leadership is trying to claw them back.
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