Title: Media Censorship in China | Council on Foreign Relations
Headings: Media Censorship in China
Media Censorship in China
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Introduction
Official Media Policy
How Free Is Chinese Media?
The Censorship Groups
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Exerting Control
“To the degree that China’s connection to the outside world matters, the digital links are deteriorating.”
Foreign Media
“Some people in China don’t look at freedom of speech as an abstract ideal, but more as a means to an end.”
U.S. Technology in China
U.S. Relations With China
Circumventing the Censors
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Content: More on: China
Censorship and Freedom of Expression
Digital Policy
Media
Xi Jinping
Exerting Control
The Chinese government deploys myriad ways of censoring the internet. The Golden Shield Project, colloquially known as the Great Firewall, is the center of the government’s online censorship and surveillance effort. Its methods include bandwidth throttling, keyword filtering, and blocking access to certain websites. According to Reporters Without Borders, the firewall makes large-scale use of Deep Packet Inspection technology to block access based on keyword detection. As Ng points out, the government also employs a diverse range of methods to induce journalists to censor themselves, including dismissals and demotions, libel lawsuits, fines, arrests, and forced televised confessions. “To the degree that China’s connection to the outside world matters, the digital links are deteriorating.” Evan Osnos, New Yorker
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As of February 2017, thirty-eight journalists were imprisoned in China, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a U.S.-based watchdog on press freedom issues. In 2009, Chinese rights activist Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to eleven years in prison for advocating democratic reforms and freedom of speech in Charter 08, a 2008 statement signed by more than two thousand prominent Chinese citizens that called for political and human rights reforms and an end to one-party rule. When Liu won the Nobel Peace Prize, censors blocked the news in China.