'Spreading rumors' online in China punishable by 7 years in prison...
This article is guilty of spreading panic and disorder
More general signs of a crackdown on expression
Dec 5th 2015 | BEIJING |
Xi Jinping nixes the negativity
IN THE middle of August Zhao Shaolin, a retired Communist
Party boss of Jiangsu province in eastern China, was carted away by the
country’s anti-corruption commission. Nothing unusual there. Dozens of local
party bosses have fallen foul of a national anti-bribery campaign. What was
surprising were the charges levelled against him. These usually stress the vast
wealth the accused is said to have squirrelled away by his or her nefarious
activities. Mr Zhao’s crime, according to Beijing News, a party newspaper, was
to flout party discipline by criticising government policies. Some people, Xie
Chuntao of the Central Party School sniffed, think “they are cleverer than the
Party, which cannot be allowed.”
Mr Zhao was not the only one. In mid-October the
anti-corruption commission arrested two serving provincial party chiefs, in
Hebei near Beijing and Guangxi in the south. Their list of crimes also included
criticising the party. On October 12th the Politburo approved a new edition of
the party’s rules. It was, Xinhua, the state news agency, said, “the most
complete and stringent code of conduct” in the history of the Communist Party.
It bans party members from making “negative comments” or “irresponsible
remarks” about policy. Members may debate issues—but only if they say nice
things.
This stress on ideological conformity marks a return to
older habits. In September 2013 Xi Jinping, China’s president, had called
criticism and self-criticism “a powerful weapon…The more you use it, the more
you improve the ability of leaders to discover and solve their problems.” Yet
over the past few months, and not for the first time in the history of the
People’s Republic of China, a more open debate has given way to tighter
restrictions on expression, which has never been wholly free.
In his key speech last year on the arts, Mr Xi not only
called for “positive energy” in the arts. He also slammed modern architecture
and the emulation of western art. The timing of the speech made liberals
uncomfortable. It was to celebrate the anniversary of a speech by Mao Zedong
which paved the way for a spasm of violence called the Rectification Campaign
in which 10,000 people died. Criticism of that monster Mao himself has again
become unacceptable. After a popular television anchorman, Bi Fujian, was
unwittingly filmed singing a parody of a Peking opera mocking the Great
Helmsman, he was fired.
The media are feeling the chill. Last month Zhao Xinwei,
the editor of Xinjiang Daily, was sacked, apparently for expressing worries
about an anti-terrorist crackdown in the Muslim-majority province of Xinjiang
in China’s far west. In August Wang Xiaolu of Caijing, a financial magazine,
was paraded on state television and confessed to spreading “panic and disorder”
during the summer’s stockmarket crash. His crime was to report that the China
Securities Regulatory Commission was looking for ways to stop propping up the
market.
At the same time, three of China’s last remaining liberal
publications, Southern Weekend, Southern Metropolis and Southern Daily,
collectively known as the Southern series, got a visit from the censors. A
reporter who works there told the Committee to Protect Journalists, a lobby
group in America, that the subsequent fawning coverage of a big military parade
on China’s national day “killed the last bit of expectation and good impression
that the public has for the Southern series.” Getting the message, 50 media
organisations signed a “self-disciplinary pact” in September, promising not to
“publish or spread opinions that damage the look of the party and our country.”
Summing up the expanding range of restrictions earlier
this year, Freedom House, an American non-governmental organisation, said that
out of 17 frequent objects of censorship—such as grassroots activists,
professors and Tibetans—11 have faced more intense pressure under Mr Xi. Over
100 lawyers were rounded up in the summer. A group of feminists were arrested
(then bailed) on charges of “provoking trouble”. In fact, they were drawing
attention to sexual harassment on public transport. Academics are being told to
watch their step.
Since he came to power in 2012, Mr Xi has repeatedly
rejected insidious western ideas such as a free press and human rights. At the
same time, however, he has balanced that tradition of command and control by
occasionally talking about the importance of China’s constitution, a more
liberal document. Three things are happening now to cause him to emphasise the
control side of things.
First, his self-appointed task to clean up a rotten
Communist Party is becoming ever more daunting. The anti-corruption campaign
has netted thousands of high-ranking officials, and there is little sign that
it is faltering. (As well as the first arrests of serving provincial bosses,
this year has seen an expansion of the campaign to go after the bosses of
state-owned enterprises.) Mr Xi may have concluded that restricting the
opinions of party members is necessary in order to push his campaign forward.
Second, the government is trying to beef up controls over
social media, which exploded just as Mr Xi was coming to power. New guidelines
from the State Internet Information Office, issued in August, impose
restrictions on China’s so-called microblogs (blogs published, for example, on
WeChat, an instant-messaging service). Revisions to the criminal code which
came into force in November make “spreading rumours” online punishable by up to
seven years in prison—and the law does not specify what counts as a rumour. And
a draft cyber-security law would require internet companies to restrict online
anonymity and report ill-defined “security incidents” to the government.
Thirdly, it seems likely that a slowdown in the economy
is reviving fears that labour or other forms of unrest could threaten the
party’s grip on power. It claims legitimacy from the fact that living standards
have risen fast for many years; as those standards rise more slowly, ordinary
people may start to complain about their rulers. Party leaders feel that sort
of thing should be pre-emptively squashed.
The Chinese president has called slower economic growth
“the new normal”. Tighter controls on expression are becoming a new normal,
too.
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