Coercive Censorship in China

Censorship or control of the exchange and sharing of information is a coercive way of life in China. This fact of reality is yet again demonstrated as China continues to suppress official information about its casualties in the extremely fatal face-off with India recently. It is reported that Chinese people are venting their exasperation and disappointment over the lack of reporting about the loss of lives of the Chinese soldiers.

Contrasting China, the Indian democracy has revealed it lost 20 of its soldiers in the hand-to-hand combat with the Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley. Whereas for the families, friends of the PLA soldiers posted in the region the situation is still covered in censorship.

Censorship in China is implemented or mandated by its ruling party, the Communist Party of China. The government controls and filters content for mainly political reasons, as well as to retain its command over the general population. The Chinese government claims that it has the legal right to censor the Internet's content within their territory and that their censorship rules do not contravene the citizen's right to free speech. The government of China defended some forms of censorship as a way of upholding good morals. It is believed that Ever Since Xi Jinping became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China in 2012, censorship has been "significantly stepped up".

The government holds censorship over all media capable of reaching a widespread audience. This includes television, print media, radio, film, theater, text messaging, instant messaging, video games, literature, education sector and the Internet. Alarmingly the Chinese officials have access to uncensored information through an internal intelligence system.

Reporters Without Borders, an international non-profit and non-governmental organization that safeguards the right to freedom of information ranks China's press situation as "very serious", the worst ranking on their five-point scale. According to them, China has over 2,800 surveillance centers devoted to text messaging. For more than a decade now, cell phone users in Shanghai and Beijing have been running a risk of having their text messaging service cut off if they were found to have sent "illegal or unhealthy" content. Freedom House, a US backed NGO, ranks the press there as "not free", the worst 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. China's internet censorship is regarded by many as the most insidious and sophisticated in the world. The system for blocking sites and articles is referred to as "The Great Firewall of China". They have been unilaterally shutting down hundreds and thousands of domestic and international websites.

The censorship in China has been accused of being used not only for political protectionism but also for economic protectionism. Tsinghua University professor Patrick Chovanec has surmised that the Chinese ban on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube may have been done in part to grant a business advantage to the Chinese competitors. Likewise, China has been accused of using a double standard in attacking Google for "obscene" content that is also present on Chinese competitor Baidu. In fact some experts suggest that Chinese businesses such as Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba, being the world's largest internet enterprises, have benefited from the way China blocked international rivals from the domestic market.

I do not think this can go for long as people in china have already started questioning the Government on their callous handling of sensitive matters. Thank you and see you again with another episode on Mentor Talk.