China Continues To Be Unfriendly To Journalists

Fang Shimin, a Chinese journalist, was recently attacked by an unidentified assailant wielding a metal hammer. Fang escaped with minor injuries, but believes the attack is related to his work as a journalist.

Known in China as the "science cop," Fang concentrates on exposing flawed or weak scientific claims or research, fraudlent resumes and plagarism. He has received several threats.

"In an ideal world, some more formal and organized watchdogs ... professional organizations or a governmental agency would be in place," Fang said. "But China does not have these, so individual watchdogs become essential."

This attack followed a similar assault of Fang Xuanchang, an editor at Caijing magazine who has exposed multiple doctors promoting dubious miracle cures. He was beaten by two men while walking by his house in June. These two attacks are painful reminders that censorship is not the only risk facing journalists in China.

Fang Shimin, who writes under the pen name Fang Zhouzi, is a rare example of a journalist in China. "Fang Zhouzi touches upon power and business and the officials who support those businesses, because with any business, behind it there are officials in support," says Li Datong, former editor of Freezing Point. "So it's a matter of facing up to power. Chinese media, generally speaking, don't do a good job of this."

China is the leader in terms of jailing journalists; 24 were put in prison last year according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. It also ranks near the bottom of the annual index of press freedom, complied by Reporters Without Borders.

Beijing police are investigating both attacks, but no arrests have been made so far. The attacks continue to contribute to the culture of fear that journalists and other whistle-blowers encounter.

"I will continue what I am doing," Fang Shimin said. "And of course I will take some security measures."

Photo Credit: CreativeCommons.org

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China Fires Back at Google

Recently Google and China are at a stand off over censorship and human rights activistism.

Goggle first announced that it would consider pulling out of China as of January, saying that it would no longer censor search results of the Chinese government after a set of cyber attacks targeting human rights activists.

"... we stopped censoring our search services--Google Search, Google News, and Google Images-- on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong..."

However, in response to the recent tactic of redirecting Chinese users to its uncensored Hong Kong site the Chinese government began disabling certain searches or blocking the results, according to the New York Times.

Along with the change there has been some backlash for Google. China Mobile is expected to cancel a deal that was supposed to make Google its default mobile search provider.

People believe that Googles anti-censorship movement against China hasn't had much success, at least from the Chinese Internet users perspective.

In response Google said it hopes that the Chinese Government will respect its decision and announced it will be "carefully monitoring access issues," leaving people around the world wondering: what is Google going to do next?

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China to Censor: Text Messages?

Given China's history of censorship and the country's well-publicized recent battle with Google, one is rarely surprised by new reports of censorship in China. Providers of mobile phones in China recently announced plans to monitor the texts of citizens for "illegal or unhealthy content," immediately stopping a person's cellphone service if such content is detected.

The phone companies will pass any potential violations on to the police for review and prosecution. If a customer is relieved of the charges, his or her phone service will begin again.

This crusade is officially part of an effort to keep pornography from the country. Over 5,000 people were arrested in China last year on internet pornography charges.

Phone services haven't been explicit on what constitutes a punishable offense, but services will monitor a specific list of words provided by officials. Every communication using these phone services will be monitored, including conversations between a husband and wife.

China's going farther than expected for this one. With no idea about what words and phrases to avoid, people are sure to get their phones disconnected often. A majority of the 'criminals' investigated by the police will be innocent. Anyone who is actually talking about something illegal will use codes or slang. This is an absolutely useless endeavor and will cause much more harm than good... but isn't that always the way?

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