Freedom of Press: July 2006 Archives

Reporters without Borders
July 12, 2006

Hu Jintao, President of China

Hu, in power since October 2003, has set the government’s Propaganda Department on the media and since December 2005 the management of three of the country’s most independent papers has been purged and a dozen journalists and cyber-dissidents arrested by the secret police. Hu (also head of the Communist Party and the army) personally ordered the arrest of New York Times employee Zhao Yan and Hongkong investigative journalist Ching Cheong. He expressed admiration in 2004 for Cuba’s use of propaganda, a filtered Internet and monitoring foreign journalists as a way to control the media.