Linn Maung
On May 3, the globe observed globe Press Freedom Day. However, alarming new information highlights that China continues to be the world’s worst country for imprisoning authors and journalists. China was ranked 172nd out of 180 countries and territories in Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) most recent World Press Freedom Index, placing it near the bottom of the list. With more than 100 journalists detained at this time, the Beijing administration was once again exposed as the world’s largest detainer of journalists.
The CCP “continues to exercise strict control over information channels, implementing censorship and surveillance policies to regulate online content and restrict the spread of information deemed to be sensitive or contrary to the party line,” according to the RSF report, which criticised the CCP’s stringent censorship practices. What a waste of promoting free speech and the press.
Under the autocratic administration of Xi Jinping, journalistic freedom looks to be being suppressed more severely. While China’s numerical ranking did go up somewhat from the previous year, RSF pointed out that this was purely because of other countries’ conditions getting worse, such as Afghanistan, and not because Beijing had implemented any reforms that were constructive.
Again, not as a result of any appreciable advancements, but Hong Kong’s press freedom score rose somewhat. The strict “National Security Law” that Beijing enacted in 2020 in response to pro-democracy demonstrations caused journalists to be persecuted, according to RSF, which clarified why Hong Kong’s improvement was “misleading” and why its freedom score actually decreased.
According to a recent PEN America report, China arrested more than 100 writers in 2023—more than any other nation. Fifty internet pundits were among those detained; they were accused of the ridiculously nebulous “crime” of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for little more than expressing their thoughts on social media.
This crackdown’s scope is disgusting and astounding. “No one knows how many journalists in China have been persecuted to death, how many have been secretly arrested, sentenced, persecuted, and tortured,” said Canadian journalist Sheng Xue. It is impossible to determine the full scope of this repression due to the CCP’s complete control over information.
Lai Jianping, a Chinese human rights attorney, declared categorically that press freedom in China is “declining and deteriorating.” He contends that the CCP’s growing fears in the face of escalating political, economic, and social unrest are the cause of its tightening grip on free expression and the media. Fearing that its iron grasp on power may loosen, the party cracks down on opposition with ever-tougher policies.
Press freedom is being systematically and purposefully destroyed, which poses a serious threat to democratic principles, free speech, and human rights. When freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas are criminalised, it creates an impenetrable barrier of censorship that allows abuses of power, corruption, and human rights violations to continue unabated.
The attack Beijing is launching on writers and journalists is an attack on the very truth. The CCP leadership can promote its own warped narrative and Orwellian alternate reality without opposition by repressing opponents and independent voices. Unrestricted access to information and a range of viewpoints—the cornerstones of an informed public in a free society—are denied to citizens.
It says volumes about the total lack of legitimacy and moral standing of an authoritarian system if objectivity and accuracy represent an existential threat to it. A government that imposes laws by coercion instead of popular agreement can never allow for the free press that is necessary to hold the powerful accountable.
The CCP continues to be a cruel, merciless dictatorship that is intolerant of fundamental liberties, as seen by China’s persecution of writers and journalists, notwithstanding its claims to global leadership. Writers and journalists are not criminals; rather, any really rights-respecting community should value and protect these truth-tellers and defenders of free thought. It is morally required of the international community to denounce China’s campaign of repression against press freedom. Writers and journalists who have been wrongfully imprisoned or vanished must be released right away. The so-called made-in-China authoritarian capitalist prosperity cannot be accepted as a superior form of government than liberal democracy as long as this tyranny persists.
