By China Watcher*

It’s the crackdown season for China with the launch of the new “Five Year Governance Plan” by president Xi’s Communist Party targeting the private sector. It can be said the Chinese Communist Party has left no stone unturned with censorship from technology giants to the entertainment business and far beyond its boundaries.

The authorisation era of the data available to the Chinese citizens in the past decade have tightened since the 2012 presidential election and Xi Jinping coming in power. World most commonly used applications like Reddit, Yahoo, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook including YouTube are banned in China. Chinese censorship of data and the internet are leading towards chaos and everyone can feel the heat. The extent of control on international media and audience has led to buying of legacy companies or funding digital venture overseas including a free graduate degree in communication, expense-paid tours, funding for advertorials and sponsored journalistic coverage to tell the Chinese story.

In Jan 2021 London Sunday Times exposing CCP’s desperate attempts to pull together its fallen reputation by funding YouTubers. The father-son duo is seen praising the Chinese propaganda especially that of Camps in Xinjiang of the Uyghur Muslims. Titles of the video include “Need to safe China”, “The USA destroying Huawei”, “Safe China”, “Western media lying about China”, “Muslim food streets”. All these videos present an overrated picture of an infrastructural developed country with job opportunities and flourish markets.

China worldwide narrative sway propaganda is also evident in African, the Asia-Pacific region and to an extent in Latin American countries and Europe too. While Chinese media is strictly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, Beijing aims to exploit the voice of the free press outside its territories.

Star Times, a Chinese electronic and media company has strong hols in the African- Saharan region. South China Morning Post, an English based newspaper in Hong Kong is owned by Alibaba Groups, a Chinese based company. CGTN, China Global Television Network controlled by China Media Group (Government of the Peoples Republic of China) now runs on Spanish, French, Arabic and Russian channels.

Vivien Marsh, a visiting scholar at the University of Westminster, with an in-depth study of CCTV Africa’s coverage reported in 2014 during the Ebola outbreak “about 17% of stories related to Ebola outbreak emphasised Chinese role in providing doctors and medical aid”.

Marsh added “They were trying to do positive reporting”, “But they lost journalistic credibility to me in the portrayal of China as a benevolent parent.”

In Feb 2021 Beijing pulled the plug on Britain’s BBC World News. China’s move was based on BBC reporting incidents of rape, abuse and torture by women belonging to the Muslim Uyghur Minority, in Xinjiang Chinese in the claimed “educational camps”.

Beijing called the reports false and the state-funded media house Xinhua News Agency (NRTA) reported: “the BBC violated regulations in its China-related reports and that its broadcast application would not be renewed”. Hu Xijin, editor of the Chinese state-affiliated media, Global Times, tweeted “the reports were all false. The BBC has become a bastion of the Western public opinion war against China.” Britain gave it back to China by revoking China’s state-owned CGTN network.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) pointed out China rank in the World Press Freedom Index, which is 177 out of 180 and called for an immediate release Huang Xueqin, a Chinese investigative journalist Huang Xueqin who on 19th Sep 2021, was arrested in Guangzhou city, China with labour activist Wang Jianbing under suspicion of ‘inciting subversion of state power’.

In Sep 202, the Baltic nation Lithuania warned the world against Chinese censor- detect games where Chines mobile phones like Xiaomi Mi 10T 5G, Huawei P45 5G and OnePlus could detect and censor terms like “free Tibet”, “China’s Democracy Movement” and other 449 terms. Chinese censor game now extends to American Multinational Technology Corporation, LinkedIn.

In Oct 2021, Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian a journalist and author of the weekly Axios China newsletter, an American based website in Virginia who writes on the high-impact investigation, exclusives and analysis on Chinese based projects reported notification from LinkedIn, baring her profiles from the Chinese Version due to prohibited content, with refrains from sharing the activity leading to such bar.

Another US-based journalist Melissa Chan, a Chinese broadcast journalist focusing on world issues involving China and Chines influence beyond its borders shared a screenshot with the LinkedIn notification with a “case number” and “closed status”. In her tweet, she described her prohibited content as an “essay on Democracy” and a piece she wrote on “Uyghurs Muslims community” in exile in Xinjiang province of China.

CCP driven censorship is curtailing the freedom of speech and violating the vulnerable rights of journalists. Sooner or later the burdened curtain will fall flat.

—* The writer is a veteran journalist based in Singapore