Russian InterNYET
Russia did not get started with a great Internet wall when China did. Now it may be too late.
Russians are shunning state-controlled TV for YouTube
When the Soviet people turned on their television sets on August 19th 1991, they knew there was an emergency. Every channel was playing classical music or showing “Swan Lake” on a loop. A few hours earlier Mikhail Gorbachev had been detained during an attempted coup. As the Soviet Union crumbled, the fiercest street battles unfolded over television towers. “To take the Kremlin, you must take television,” said one of Mr Gorbachev’s aides.
Vladimir Putin took note. He began his rule in 2000 by establishing a monopoly over television, the country’s main source of news. It has helped him create an illusion of stability… But the Kremlin’s most reliable propaganda tool is losing its power. Russian pundits have long described politics as a battle between the television and the refrigerator (that is, between propaganda and economics). Now, the internet is weighing in.
According to the Levada Centre, an independent pollster, Russians’ trust in television has fallen by 30 percentage points since 2009, to below 50%. The number of people who trust internet-based information sources has tripled to nearly a quarter of the population. Older people still get most of their news from television, but most of those aged 18-24 rely on the internet, which remains relatively free.
YouTube in particular is eroding the state-television monopoly. It is now viewed by 82% of the Russian population aged 18-44. Channel One, Russia’s main television channel, reaches 83% of the same age group…
News is the fourth-most-popular YouTube category among Russians, after “do it yourself”, music and drama. Mr Navalny, who has become a dominant political voice on the internet, has two YouTube channels, one of which has daily news programmes. In the past year his audience has doubled. He has 2.5m subscribers and 4.5m unique viewers a month. His weekly YouTube webcast is watched live by nearly 1m people. By comparison, Channel One’s main evening news show is watched by 3m-4m people.
The Kremlin is desperately looking for ways to control the internet. “The government is trying to work out how to turn the internet into a television,” says Gregory Asmolov, an expert on the Russian internet at King’s College London. This, he argues, would require not only strict regulation, but control over physical infrastructure and dominance in providing content.
Last month the Duma preliminarily approved a law on “digital sovereignty” which tries to separate Russia’s internet from the global one. It wants to criminalise anti-government messages online, in effect reviving laws on “anti-Soviet propaganda”.
Yet controlling the internet will take more than a few laws. Unlike in China, where the ruling party built its “Great Firewall” by the early 2000s, in Russia the internet was a free zone both in terms of content and infrastructure, with hundreds of private service providers. In the early 2000s it became an alternative to state-dominated television…
[In 2011,] when the Kremlin tried to rig parliamentary elections, sites such as Golos (“Voice”) activated thousands of volunteer election monitors who recorded widespread violations. In the wake of street protests, Mr Putin unleashed repression both online and offline, including denial-of-service attacks on websites, new regulations and prosecution of activists. In 2014 he declared the internet a CIA project and demanded that national internet firms move their servers to Russia. The Kremlin launched groups of “cyber guards” to search for prohibited content, and tried to hollow out the volunteer movement by replicating independent crowdsourcing sites with its own. It even equipped polling stations with webcams, not to increase transparency, says Mr Asmolov, but to create a semblance of it. It also deployed an army of trolls to flood social media with derisive and inflammatory messages…
This heavy-handed approach has alienated young internet users. More recently, the government has changed tactics. Instead of persecuting users, it is establishing greater control over internet providers. New legislation on “digital sovereignty” will oblige them to install surveillance equipment that can be operated from a single control centre. This will allow the state to filter internet traffic, isolate regions or even cut off the worldwide web throughout the country in case of emergency. The government showed it can cordon off individual regions from the internet during recent protests in Ingushetia.
But replicating China’s “great firewall” may be difficult, says Andrei Soldatov, the author of “The Red Web” and an expert on Russian internet surveillance. Russia is more integrated into the internet’s global architecture; its biggest firms, like Yandex, have servers abroad, while global giants such as Google have servers in Russia. More importantly, Russians have grown used to sites like YouTube, which is a big provider of children’s entertainment…
Applying the new law fully, however, might be like smashing a computer screen with a hammer. The Kremlin will have a switch to bring down the internet if a political crisis erupts, but few ways to prevent it from erupting. Pulling the plug to block the protesters’ message from spreading would be the most powerful message of all. In 1991 almost no one had internet access. But everyone knew the country was in turmoil when they turned on the television and saw nothing but “Swan Lake”.
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Labels: censorship, political culture, politics, Russia, social media
Extent of censorship in China
How far do you have to go to censor people's thinking?
From 'rice bunny' to 'back up the car': China's year of censorship
China stepped up its campaign in 2018 to control what news and information its citizens can see.
While censors continued heavy handed control for any content deemed dangerous for social stability, including Peppa Pig videos and the letter “n”, regulators also deployed more sophisticated methods… to curate and shape what Chinese residents consume.
Authorities have been forcing activists on Twitter to delete their accounts and shutting down the social media accounts of university professors. Apolitical content is coming under more scrutiny. In October, almost 10,000 social media accounts for outlets publishing entertainment and celebrity news were closed.
The country’s largest internet companies have also stepped up self-censorship…
“WeChat group takedowns and news item deletions are happening with greater regularity across a shifting slate of topics,” said Rui Zhong, a programme assistant at the Kissinger Institute on China.
These were some of the banned phrases this year:
At the March annual meeting of China’s national legislature, lawmakers voted almost unanimously to abolish term limits for the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, allowing him to stay in power indefinitely.
In the leadup to the meeting and afterwards, phrases like “amend the constitution”, “I don’t agree”, “proclaiming oneself emperor” and the letter “n” were censored…
In September, Chinese economist Wu Xiaoping released a controversial commentary arguing that the utility of the country’s private sector had been exhausted and such companies should now step aside.
Commentators quickly criticised Wu’s proposal as “driving history backwards” to a time of a command economy. As a result, the term “back up the car” was also censored.
In January, a woman named Luo Xixi published allegations against a professor who forced himself on her when she was a student 12 years ago. Inspired by her account and the subsequent firing of the professor, other women began posting under the hashtag #MeToo or in Chinese version, woyeshi #我也是 .
When that phrase was censored, internet users began using a homonym mitu #米兔 or “rice bunny’. That too was blocked…
In November, officials in Quanggang in the southern Fujian province reported a spillage of C9, a crude oil that is toxic to humans, off the coast of Fujian.
Local residents posted photos and accounts online of residents being sent to the hospital, arguing that the leak was more serious than officials claimed. Internet searches for “Xiamen Quangong carbon leakage” were blocked and video and posts related to the spill were deleted…
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Labels: censorship, China, political culture
Control social media
The great Chinese firewall is well known. Who's in charge of maintaining it? Why a protege of Xi Jinping.
Is
guanxi any different from the links between members of political elites elsewhere?
Beijing names new internet watchdog as China keeps door closed to global tech giants
China has officially named Zhuang Rongwen as the new chief of the agency supervising China’s internet.
 |
| Zhuang Rongwen |
The announcement that Zhuang would replace Xu Lin as head of the Cyberspace Administration of China confirms a report by the South China Morning Post last week, which also said that President Xi Jinping was seeking to shake up the country’s propaganda and censorship wings.
Xu, a former aide to Xi in Shanghai, is expected to become the party’s new international propaganda chief, sources told the Post last week…
Zhuang, in his new role as China’s cyberspace tsar, will be a key figure for global technology giants trying to get a foothold in the market of about 800 million online users…
China still bans a long list of social media platforms and websites from accessing the China market, including Twitter, Google, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook…
Zhuang, 57, who earlier worked under Xi in the province of Fujian, is rising quickly in the official hierarchy…
Zhuang’s career path had little to do with ideology control before his promotion to the cyberspace administration in 2015 as a deputy director…
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Labels: censorship, China, guanxi
Cartoon subversion
Peppa Pig, subversive symbol of the counterculture, in China video site ban
The latest subversive symbol in China is a small pink cartoon pig: Peppa Pig to be precise.
 |
| Peppa Pig and family |
The wildly popular children’s character was recently scrubbed from Douyin, a video sharing platform in China, which deleted more than 30,000 clips. The hashtag #PeppaPig was also banned, according to the Global Times, a state-run tabloid newspaper.
The seemingly innocuous cartoon’s downfall appears to be no fault of its creators. Instead the problem is Peppa’s association with counterculture memes and “society people” – a slang term for lowlifes and gangsters.
People who upload videos of Peppa Pig tattoos and merchandise and make Peppa-related jokes “run counter to the mainstream value and are usually poorly educated with no stable job”, the Global Times said. “They are unruly slackers roaming around and the antithesis of the young generation the [Communist] party tries to cultivate.”…
Peppa Pig was introduced to Chinese audiences in 2015, when the cartoons were aired on state broadcaster CCTV, and has since become immensely popular. Two Peppa Pig theme parks, in Beijing and Shanghai, are set to open next year…
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Labels: censorship, China, subversion
Mao wannabe? or Yuan wannabe?
Outside commentators are jumping on the bandwagon that is likening Xi Jinping to Mao Zedong's authoritarian and dictatorial ways. We'll have to see how accurate their predictions are.
China’s Censors Ban Winnie the Pooh and the Letter ‘N’ After Xi’s Power Grab
During his more than five years in power, Mr. Xi has cultivated an image as a man of the people — a centered, sympathetic leader who lines up with workers to buy pork buns while also guiding the world’s most populous nation to growth and global influence.
But the move to abolish term limits, announced on Sunday, has resurrected deeper fears in Chinese society, where memories remain of the personality cult of China’s founding father, Mao Zedong, and the fevered emotions and chaos that it conjured.
Anxious to suppress criticism, and maintain an appearance of mass support, the Communist Party’s censors have scoured the internet and social media for content deemed subversive. The sanitizing has included many images of Winnie the Pooh — Mr. Xi is sometimes likened to the cartoon bear — and search terms like “my emperor,” “lifelong” and “shameless.”
For a short time, even the English letter “N” was censored, according to Victor Mair, a University of Pennsylvania professor, apparently to pre-empt social scientists from expressing dissent mathematically: N > 2, with “N” being the number of Mr. Xi’s terms in office…
Retirees who endured the trauma of Mao’s Cultural Revolution are warning of a return to dictatorship. University students are posting quotes from George Washington’s farewell address online. Business executives, concerned about the Communist Party’s growing grip on private enterprises, are hastening plans to relocate overseas…
While some have likened Mr. Xi to Mao, others reached further into Chinese history, comparing Mr. Xi to Yuan Shikai, an early 20th-century warlord who briefly restored China’s monarchy with himself as emperor.
For all the discontent, analysts said it was unlikely anything would block Mr. Xi’s attempts to extend his rule…
For one, much of the frustration over the term-limits plan is limited to the urban elite. Mr. Xi remains immensely popular among farmers and blue-collar workers, as well as a new generation of young nationalists…
For another, Mr. Xi already has an iron grip on Chinese society. A sweeping anticorruption campaign has ensnared tens of thousands of officials and imposed discipline on the Communist Party and other powerful institutions like the People’s Liberation Army… There have also been conspicuously public arrests of lawyers and dissidents…
While the plan to abolish term limits may be one of the most important political decisions in decades, many citizens are simply unaware of it. The decision has been buried inside newspapers and mentioned only in passing on television news shows…
Mr. Xi’s maneuvering has rekindled memories of the Cultural Revolution, the decade-long upheaval instigated by Mao that fractured Chinese society and left more than one million dead.
Many see echoes of Mao’s obsession with power in Mr. Xi, who has placed the ideal of absolute loyalty to the party at the center of everyday life. Like Mao, Mr. Xi has also filled China’s society with political slogans and used propaganda to present himself as the leader needed to guide China to its destiny.
Critics argue that by putting such a personal stamp on power and eliminating the previous collective leadership model, Mr. Xi is setting the stage for a return to the excesses of personal loyalty and fanaticism that nearly tore China apart during Mao’s time…
Others harbor nostalgia for the politics of the Cultural Revolution, which they see as a time of decisiveness and ideological purity. They dismiss criticism of Mr. Xi’s strongman tendencies, saying centralized power is a sign of prosperity and stability…
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Labels: censorship, China, constitution, leadership, politics
Back to the Cultural Revolution?
Rules about what is and is not permissible online in China are vague. So is what is online. Maybe there's a reason for that.
68 Things You Cannot Say on China’s Internet
Song Jie, a writer in central China, knows what she can and cannot write in the romance novels she publishes online. Words that describe explicit sexual acts are out, of course. So are those for sexual organs. Even euphemisms like “behind” or “bottom” can trigger censorship by automatic software filters or a website’s employees…
Other prohibitions inside China’s Great Firewall, the country’s system of internet filters and controls, are trickier to navigate, in part because they are subjective and even contradictory…
While China has long sought to block access to political material online, a flurry of new regulatory actions aims to establish a more expansive blockade, recalling an earlier era of public morality enforced by the ruling Communist Party.
In a directive circulated this summer, the state-controlled association that polices China’s fast-growing digital media sector set out 68 categories of material that should be censored…
The guidelines ban material that depicts excessive drinking or gambling; that sensationalizes “bizarre or grotesque” criminal cases; that ridicules China’s historical revolutionary leaders, or current members of the army, police or judiciary; or that “publicizes the luxury life.” …
Despite the efforts of censors, the internet has long been the most freewheeling of China’s mass media, a platform where authors and artists — as well as entertainment studios — could reach audiences largely free of the Propaganda Department’s traditional controls on broadcasting, publishing, cinema and stage.
But the new restrictions — which expanded and updated a set of prohibitions issued five years ago — reflect an ambitious effort by President Xi Jinping’s government to impose discipline and rein in the web…
In June, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television announced a new rating system for online bookstores and publishers based on criteria that included upholding moral values…
The directive also ordered online producers to submit plans for creating new dramas between now and 2021 that “praise the party, the nation and heroes so as to set a good example.”…
China’s censorship agencies exercise overlapping jurisdiction over the internet and often employ policies that create confusion. The result has been a layered system of control that begins with self-censorship by those who create online content, followed by policing by web platforms, which are often private enterprises, and finally, when necessary, intervention by government regulators or the police.
Some regulations are explicit — no depiction of killing endangered species or underage drinking, for example. Others are imprecise. One, for example, prohibits blurring the lines between “truth and falsity, good and evil, beauty and ugliness.”
Critics say the rules are meant to be so vague that the authorities can justify blocking anything, as circumstances dictate.
“The tightening of content censorship is the general trend, but for content creators, they never know where exactly the lines lie,” said Gao Ming, who until recently produced a satirical podcast on current affairs called Radio HiLight…
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Labels: censorship, China
Not in our name
Even in the highly regulated and followed Chinese Internet, political fraud is possible.
China’s Communist Youth League says Twitter accounts opened in its name are fake
The Communist Party’s youth wing will ask Twitter to close down all accounts recently opened in its name on the social media platform, saying it did not set them up.
 |
| CYL members |
“We reserve the right to take any other legal action against [this infringement],” the Communist Youth League of China’s publicity office said in a statement on Wednesday…
At least two accounts claiming to be run by the youth league were set up earlier this month. Tweets from the accounts written in Chinese began appearing last week…
The accounts were discovered by internet users… both of which appeared to be genuine at first.
One of them… has been tweeting news from the youth league’s official Weibo account, China’s version of Twitter, and following the Twitter accounts of mainland state media outlets such as CCTV, People’s Daily and Xinhua.
In recent days it has been flooded with criticism of the Chinese authorities.
The second account… has been tweeting news from Hong Kong and Taiwan, including stories about pro-independence banners at Hong Kong universities…
The government has in recent months tightened internet controls including shutting down virtual private networks that allow people to access these websites as it tries to prevent internet users from viewing content it deems inappropriate…
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Labels: censorship, China, politics
Winnie (not in China)
This reminds me of the political jokes that used to come out of the Soviet Union — published in
mimeographed samizdat and smuggled out from behind the
Iron Curtain.
Why China censors banned Winnie the Pooh
The blocking of Winnie the Pooh might seem like a bizarre move by the Chinese authorities but it is part of a struggle to restrict clever bloggers from getting around their country's censorship…
Winnie the Pooh has joined a line of crazy, funny internet references to China's top leaders.
The Chinese name for and images of the plump, cute cartoon character are being blocked on social media sites here because bloggers have been comparing him to China's president.
When Xi Jinping and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe endured one of the more awkward handshakes in history netizens responded with Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore shaking hands…
It is not only that China's censors will not tolerate ridicule of the country's leader, they do not want this beloved children's character becoming a kind of online euphemism for the Communist Party's general secretary.
In other countries such comparisons might be thought of as harmless enough and some might even think that having Winnie as your mascot could even be quite endearing: not in China.
Here the president is "Mr Grey." He doesn't do silly things; he has no quirky elements; he makes no mistakes and that is why he is above the population and unable to be questioned…
Winnie the Pooh has actually fallen foul of the authorities here before. This renewed push against online Pooh is because we are now in the run-up to the Communist Party Congress this autumn.
The meeting takes place every five years and, amongst other things, sees the appointment of the new Politburo Standing Committee: the now seven-member group at the top of the Chinese political system.
Xi Jinping will also be using the Congress, which marks the beginning of his second term in office, to further solidify his grip on power by promoting allies and sidelining those seen as a threat…
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Labels: censorship, China, leadership, politics, social media
Russian media integration
Media integration in Russia is done less directly than in China, but the results are very similar.
In Putin’s Russia, the hollowed-out media mirrors the state
Today, the three major Russian TV channels are either directly owned by the state, operating as state enterprises… or owned by a subsidiary of one of Russia’s largest oil and gas companies…
Members of Putin’s administration – today it’s his deputy chief of staff Alexey Gromov – control the political coverage and decide both what foreign and domestic policies are to be covered, and how and, more importantly, what is not to be covered…
The editors-in-chief of all the major media in Russia attend regular “strategy meetings” with Putin’s staffers. It’s like Fight Club: no member will admit to its existence – but it’s fairly easy to deduce, given how coordinated the coverage is on the most watched TV shows across all three major news channels…
In their minds, reporters working for state news outlets – which effectively are almost all news outlets in Russia – are public servants first and journalists second (if at all)…
Today, the Russian state employs both hard and soft power to further its grip on the country’s media. New restrictive laws are passed with dispiriting predictability: foreign media franchise owners are forced out of their stakes in international brands such as Forbes or Esquire based in Russia, fines and other penalties are introduced for not covering controversial subjects such as terrorism and drug abuse in terms that “do not explicitly discourage the behaviour”. Independent outlets are threatened into self-censorship and choked of the things they need to survive – such as cable services or access to print shops – if they don’t comply…
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Labels: censorship, journalism, politics, Russia
A firm hand by Iran
By its own account the Iranian government is going to great lengths to control social media. Especially social media used by younger people. Can it work there better than it does in China?
Iran bans 14 thousand websites and accounts weekly
Iranian Prosecutor Ahmad Ali Montazeri, who presides the Internet censorship Committee in the country, has banned and closed 14 thousand websites and social networking accounts in Iran.
In an interview with al-Khabar Iranian channel on Tuesday, Montazeri stressed that the main reason behind this decision was the content of these websites and pages that was “against the religion and ethics.”
Montazeri added: “we are under an attack targeting our religious and national values by foreign channels and hostile networks.”…
Security forces announced the arrest of young active men and women who were spotted by the “internet army” as organizing online catwalks on Instagram.
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Labels: censorship, Iran, social media
Remember, we're in charge
I guess they needed reminding because the Communist Party of China delivered a powerful message to "publishers" of news about who is in charge.
China seeks to eradicate 'vile effect' of independent journalism
Top Chinese internet portals had been forbidden from producing original reporting on politically sensitive topics in what experts say is the latest step in President Xi Jinping’s battle to bring Chinese journalism under control…
Such independent journalism had “seriously violated regulations and had a completely vile effect,” the watchdog’s Beijing operation said, according to Reuters.
 |
| Chinese president Xi Jinping meets staff at China Central Television (CCTV) |
Citing a CAC official, the Global Times, a Beijing-controlled tabloid, said online portals were permitted to publish stories on “social and political issues” only if they had been sourced from government-controlled news agencies.
Law enforcement against such websites would be “enhanced”, the official warned…
Qiao Mu, a journalism professor from Beijing’s Foreign Languages University, said online portals had long been barred from publishing original news stories about politically sensitives subjects.
Previously, however, the enforcement of such regulations has been patchy…
Qiao said he also believed recent news events in China – including deadly flooding and an international tribunal’s rejection of Chinese claims in the South China Sea – meant Beijing was nervous about losing control of the media narrative.
“This has not been a quiet summer … authorities are worried that [such] reporting might have an effect on social stability,” he said…
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Labels: censorship, China, Communist Party, political culture, politics
Reception of unwanted information
There are a lot of questions raised by this report. How many dishes were turned in? How many were seized? How long was the collection period? How many still functioned? What were the demographics of the owners? Was it more than a publicity stunt by the Basij?
One thing to note is that many of the Farsi language satellite channels are sponsored by monarchist exiles in the USA and Europe who are intend to undermine the authority and legitimacy of the revolutionary government.
[Thanks to my editor for spotting this article that I missed.]
Iran destroys 100,000 'depraving' satellite dishes
Iranian authorities have destroyed 100,000 satellite dishes and receivers as part of a widespread crackdown against illegal devices they say "deviate morality and culture".
 |
| Destroying old satellite dishes |
General Mohammad Reza Naghdi, the head of Iran's Basij militia, oversaw the destruction ceremony in Tehran on Sunday and warned of the impact that satellite television was having in the country…
"What these televisions really achieve is increased divorce, addiction and insecurity in society."
Naghdi said that a total of one million Iranians had already voluntarily handed over their satellite dishes to authorities…
Iranian police regularly raid neighbourhoods and confiscate dishes from rooftops, and under Iranian law, satellite equipment is banned and those who distribute, use, or repair them can be fined up to $2,800…
"Most of these satellite channels not only weaken the foundation of families but also cause disruptions in children's education and children who are under the influence of satellite have improper behaviour," Naghdi said.
There are dozens of foreign-based Farsi satellite channels broadcasting mostly news, entertainment, films and series…
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Labels: censorship, civil society, Iran
China's firewall
The firewall is political. It's becoming more effective.
The Internet was supposed to foster democracy. China has different ideas.
It is part of China’s larger effort to… disprove the notion that the flow of ideas across the World Wide Web would be an unstoppable force toward democracy. News and information that might threaten the Communist Party are kept out of the country under a system of censorship known as the Great Firewall, while foreign social-media networks such as Facebook and Twitter that allow private citizens to share ideas and join forces are also banned. Behind the wall, China’s own social-media networks are closely policed to ensure public opinion does not coalesce into a threat to one-party rule…
Indeed, social media is increasingly being harnessed by autocratic regimes to bolster their rule, says University of Toronto political scientist Seva Gunitsky. It helps dictatorships gauge public opinion and discover otherwise hidden grievances, while also allowing them to disseminate propaganda and shape the contours of public debate.
“China has been at the forefront of this, and they are quickly getting very sophisticated about it,” he said. “Social media can allow autocrats to become stronger, more informed and more adaptable…
Censors work selectively, especially targeting posts that threaten to spur some form of collective action. Pro-government voices generally do not engage critics in discussion or argument… but do often subject them to personal attack…
Ordinary citizens, meanwhile, were warned off with a threat of up to three years in jail for spreading rumors if their posts were viewed more than 5,000 times or reposted 500 times.
Real-name verification was introduced for social-media accounts, while the government warned Internet giant Sina last year to intensify its own censorship of online comments…
Broadening the campaign, China’s Internet regulator told news websites on June 21 to crack down on online comment sections, cleaning up comments that violated what are described as “nine don’ts and seven bottom lines,” including endangering state security, challenging socialism and inciting ethnic hatred…
Some posters are popularly believed to be paid — the “wumao” (the 50-cent Party) who are supposedly given half a renminbi ($0.08) for every post praising the government or denigrating its critics.
But a much larger number may just be employees of the state, doing part-time work outside their main jobs to support the party’s agenda.
Various arms of the Chinese government, together with individual state employees, by their own admission operate more than 150,000 official Weibo [a government-approved version of Twitter] accounts, but the real number of accounts run by state employees could be far higher…
Others are volunteers, reportedly recruited by the Communist Youth League in the millions to spread “positive energy” and “civilize” the Internet…
True believers could come from a new breed of young people, brought up after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, who are proud of China’s rising global power and suspicious of Western criticism as an attempt to block its rise…
President Xi says he wants an Internet that is “clear and bright” but in April told leaders of the country’s top Internet companies, as well as officials and academics, that he did not want to shut down criticism entirely.
Indeed, he called for “more tolerance and patience” toward netizens and said he welcomed online criticism “whether mild or fierce,” as long as it arises from goodwill, the People’s Daily reported.
Authorities then apparently censored negative reactions to his speech on social media…
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Labels: censorship, China, Internet, politics, social media
Unfree press
Russian president Putin is not fond of independent reporting. What does he fear from investigative journalism when his popularity ratings are so high?
Removal of Top Editors Signals Trouble for Independent Russian Paper
Three senior editors at the media organization controlled by Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire and Brooklyn Nets owner, left their jobs on Friday, apparently victims of the Kremlin’s ire for reporting too many details about the family and friends of President Vladimir V. Putin.
The departure of the three editors from the RBC newspaper and news service was widely viewed as the death knell for one of Russia’s last independent paper…
Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, denied on Friday that the RBC editors’ departure had anything to do with pressure from the Kremlin…
Most analysts expect that Mr. Prokhorov will be pushed to sell the company to some friend of the Kremlin who will turn it into another government mouthpiece…
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Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
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The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
Two pages summarizing the course requirements to help you review and study for the final and for the big exam in May. . It contains a description of comparative methods, a list of commonly used theories
, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6,
and
a description of the AP exam format
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Labels: censorship, politics, Russia
Fight corruption our way
While the official fight against corruption in China continues, the Party wants to be in control of the process. Thus there is censorship of the Panama revelations.
Former Top Military Official in China Took ‘Huge’ Bribes, Inquiry Finds
Prosecutors in China have completed an investigation of the former top military officer in the country, finding that he and his relatives took “huge” bribes, the official state news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday.
Military prosecutors found that the former general, Guo Boxiong, 73, who served as China’s foremost military official for a decade until his retirement in 2012, took bribes in exchange for helping other officers win promotions or transfers…
His prosecution illustrates the lengths to which President Xi Jinping, who also serves as chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party, will go to purge the People’s Liberation Army of corruption.
The two top military officers under Hu Jintao, Mr. Xi’s predecessor, who both served on the party’s 25-member Politburo, have been expelled from the party on suspicion of graft…
China Censors Mentions of ‘Panama Papers’ Leaks
The release of the “Panama Papers” is setting off a political firestorm the world over…
But in China, where the names of relatives of several top leaders have been found in the leak of millions of pages of documents from a Panamanian law firm… most citizens will never hear of the news…
Censors have been working hard to ensure that news of the leaks does not penetrate China’s “Great Firewall” of Internet controls…
A censorship notice sent by a Chinese provincial Internet office told editors to delete reports on the leaks, according to China Digital Times…
Surely the most politically sensitive leak, for China’s censors, was the revelation that Deng Jiagui, the brother-in-law of President Xi Jinping, had set up two British Virgin Islands-registered companies through Mossack Fonseca in 2009… [B]y the time Mr. Xi became China’s top leader in late 2012, the companies were dormant…
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Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
Just The Facts! is available. Order HERE.
Amazon's customers gave this book a 5-star rating.
The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
Two pages summarizing the course requirements to help you review and study for the final and for the big exam in May. . It contains a description of comparative methods, a list of commonly used theories
, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6,
and
a description of the AP exam format
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Labels: censorship, China, leadership, politics
Editor's protest
To outsiders, the resignation of an editor over content restrictions might not seem unusual. In China, a voluntary resignation is nearly unheard of.
Editor Says He Is Resigning Over Media Controls in China
An editor at a prominent Chinese newspaper said he was stepping down from his job because he could no longer withstand the pressures of strict control of the country’s media, according to a resignation note posted online.
The announcement follows increasing emphasis by Chinese leaders on control of the media…
The resigning journalist, Yu Shaolei, has worked at Southern Metropolis Daily, a newspaper based in the southern city of Guangzhou, since 2000, and most recently he served as editor of the culture department…
Mr. Yu’s post included a short explanation of his decision. China Digital Times, a website affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley, gave this translation of the message:
“This spring, let’s make a clean break. I’m getting old; after bowing for so long, I can’t stand it anymore. I want to see if I can adopt a new posture. To the person responsible for monitoring my Weibo and notifying his superiors about what I should be made to delete: You can heave a sigh of relief. Sorry for the stress I’ve caused you these last few years, and I sincerely hope your career can take a new direction. And to those friends who care about me, I won’t even say goodbye, Southern Media Group.”
The Southern Media Group, also called the Nanfang Media Group, is the parent company for some of the country’s most aggressive publications. But those outlets have increasingly been restrained and muzzled…
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Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
Just The Facts! is available. Order HERE.
Amazon's customers gave this book a 5-star rating.
The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
Two pages summarizing the course requirements to help you review and study for the final and for the big exam in May. . It contains a description of comparative methods, a list of commonly used theories
, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6,
and
a description of the AP exam format
. $2.00.
Order HERE.
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Labels: censorship, China, journalism, politics
Analysis of Chinese politics
Yesterday's blog post featured
The Guardian (UK) article about some resistance to political censorship in China. Today, Chris Buckley, writing in
The New York Times offers more details and more analysis.
Tempest in a teapot? China is a huge teapot and this is a little tempest, but we won't know much until much later.
Chinese Tycoon Criticizes Leader, and Wins Surprising Support
When a sharp-tongued real estate tycoon publicly derided President Xi Jinping’s demand for unstinting loyalty to the Communist Party from the Chinese news media, the party’s response was predictably swift and harsh.
 |
| Ren Zhiqiang |
His microblogs, which had tens of millions of followers, were erased overnight. Party websites unleashed an onslaught, calling the tycoon, Ren Zhiqiang, a capitalist traitor in language reminiscent of the Mao-era purges. The authorities vowed further punishment.
What happened next, however, was a startling departure from the standard script.
Journalists, scholars and party insiders came forward to defend Mr. Ren. A professor at the party’s top academy spoke up. A prominent magazine rebuked censors. A letter supporting him signed by a staff member at the state news agency spread online. A party newspaper warned about the risks of crushing all dissent.
The unexpected backlash sent a shiver through the political landscape here, exposing deepening unease about the adulatory promotion of Mr. Xi and his demands for unquestioning public obedience…
Until these remarks, Mr. Ren, 65, had seemed to be at least partly protected by his elite status in the Communist Party as… a friend of the party’s powerful anticorruption chief, Wang Qishan… Mr. Wang was Mr. Ren’s political instructor in junior high school…
Several of Ren's defenders said the episode had crystallized their fears that the exaltation of Mr. Xi and severe treatment of even mild dissent threatened to curtail the already limited room for debate. Some said that Mr. Ren’s vilification carried worrisome echoes of the “mass criticism” of the decade-long Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966...
The controversy does not suggest that Mr. Xi’s control is in danger; he remains powerful and popular with many Chinese people, who have welcomed his drive against graft…
Mr. Ren’s connection with Mr. Wang has kindled speculation that the case is a sign of a higher-level power play. Was Mr. Wang sending a signal to Mr. Xi? Could the cracks of dissent exposed by Mr. Ren point to more destabilizing internal rifts?
No one outside the party’s inner circle knows, but if officials have held back from punishing Mr. Ren, his connections may explain why…
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. Use the search box to look for country names or concept labels attached to each entry.
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Amazon's customers gave this book a 4-star rating.
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
Just The Facts! is available. Order HERE.
Amazon's customers gave this book a 5-star rating.
The Comparative Government and Politics Review Checklist.
Two pages summarizing the course requirements to help you review and study for the final and for the big exam in May. . It contains a description of comparative methods, a list of commonly used theories
, a list of vital concepts, thumbnail descriptions of the AP6,
and
a description of the AP exam format
. $2.00.
Order HERE.
What You Need to Know: Teaching Tools, the original version and v2.0 are available to help curriculum planning.
Labels: censorship, China, Communist Party, leadership, politics
Just The Facts! 2nd edition is a concise guide to concepts, terminology, and examples that will appear on May's exam.
