UNSTOPPABLE WAVE:

China's censored media answers back (Tim Luard, 2/23/06, BBC)

A media clampdown - the latest of many over the years - has seen a string of journalists disciplined, dismissed or even jailed for violating official guidelines.

Some of the campaign's targets, however, are refusing to be silenced.

And they have found plenty of supporters - some in unlikely quarters - willing to speak up on their behalf.

"There is now an unstoppable wave of demands for more freedom of expression and resistance to the old propaganda policies," said Jiao Guobiao, who was forced to resign his post as a journalism professor last year after accusing the government of handling the press in a manner worthy of Nazi Germany.

The row over the extent of people's right to know shows that the Communist Party's authority is ebbing away, he said.

But without censorship, the party could not maintain its rule for a day, he added. [...]

Propaganda officials have also faced other public challenges to their authority, including a rare strike by reporters in support of three editors dismissed from a leading daily, the Beijing News, late last year.

But what really worries them is that those now pushing for a lifting of censorship include not just journalists and activists, but also people in business, government and law who believe media reform is a necessary part of China's modernisation.

"It is not good for the Communist Party to keep to its old ways", said Jiang He, who runs a hi-tech company in the western city of Chongqing.

China's rapid economic growth is proving a strong force for change, he said, pointing out that the media was already far more open in many ways than in the past.

"It's such an information age. There's no way anyone can block everything," he said.

Dictatorships that lose the will to murder those who oppose them don't have a terrific record of longevity.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 24, 2006 8:51 AM