Other departments, for example the State Council Information Office and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (formerly known as the Ministry of Culture until 2018), assist with censorship work. The CCP Propaganda Department (中共中央宣传部 CCPPD) is the main official institution responsible for censorship work. After 1995, the Chinese government expanded internet access because it thought that a developed internet would have a positive effect on economic growth it simultaneously adopted strategic censorship to control information. Following the protests and subsequent massacre, news censorship was strengthened because government officials considered that free media had promoted the "turmoil" and represented a potential threat to the regime. The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests were a turning point for Chinese censorship, especially after they were forcibly suppressed on 4 June 1989 following a declaration of martial law and People's Liberation Army troops being deployed, and the Chinese government was condemned internationally. To stimulate the economy, the Chinese government relaxed its control on media, which promoted media commercialization, profits, and growth. The People's Republic of China adopted the " Economic Reform" policy in 1978, which transformed China's economic structure from a planned economy to a market economy. In the Republican China period, the earliest known instance of Chinese censorship was in 1941 when the second volume of the book "Inside Asia", by John Gunther, was banned by the Nationalist government. Other views suggest that Chinese businesses such as Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba, some of the world's largest internet enterprises, have benefited from the way China blocked international rivals from the domestic market. Freedom House ranks the Chinese press as "not free", the worst possible ranking, saying that "state control over the news media in China is achieved through a complex combination of party monitoring of news content, legal restrictions on journalists, and financial incentives for self-censorship," and an increasing practice of "cyber-disappearance" of material written by or about activist bloggers. In August 2012, the OpenNet Initiative classified Internet censorship in China as "pervasive" in the political and conflict/security areas and "substantial" in the social and Internet tools areas, the two most extensive classifications of the five they use. Government officials have access to uncensored information via an internal document system.Īs of 2023, the World Press Freedom Index ranks China as the country with the second least press freedom in the world after North Korea. The Chinese government asserts that it has the legal right to control the Internet's content within their territory and that their censorship rules do not infringe on their citizens' right to free speech. This includes television, print media, radio, film, theater, text messaging, instant messaging, video games, literature, and the internet. The government has censorship over all media capable of reaching a wide audience. Since Xi Jinping became the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party ( de facto paramount leader) in 2012, censorship has been "significantly stepped up". The government censors content for mainly political reasons, such as curtailing political opposition, and censoring events unfavorable to the CCP, such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, pro- democracy movements in China, the Uyghur genocide, human rights in Tibet, Falun Gong, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is one of the strictest censorship regimes in the world.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |