

China is world's worst jailer of the press; global tally second worst on record - tokenadult
https://cpj.org/reports/2014/12/journalists-in-prison-china-is-worlds-worst-jailer.php

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coldtea
> _China is world 's worst jailer of the press_

Yep, if you don't control the journalists completely, you've got to jail them
to cencor them.

If, on the other hand, they'll print anything the government tells them as if
it was The Truth, and would hardly question much, besides some partisan BS,
why bother?

Especially if the few facts that sometimes escape this self-sencorship are
burried in a cloud of illogical opinions, half-informed BS and propaganda, so
the population doesn't even know what to think about those either...

------
xnull2guest
I can't help but to add a counterpoint here for the United States. The
incarceration rate in the United States is over five times that of China
(although these numbers exclude prisoners in US Territories, military
facilities, immigration and customs, facilities controlled by the Marshall's
Service, and juvenile facilities, which would further increase the ratio). In
fact, of first world nations, the United States leads every other nation for
incarceration rate including Cuba, Russia, Rwanda, Belarus, and Iran.

Besides controversies related to race, America has also seen a large number of
prison scandals in the past few years including:

1: kickbacks to the judicial system to pipeline truly innocent children into
juvenile detention
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal))

2: the forced, uninformed and/or coerced sterilization of prisoners
([https://www.google.com/?q=california+forced+sterilization+of...](https://www.google.com/?q=california+forced+sterilization+of+inmates#safe=off&q=california+forced+sterilization+of+inmates))

3: documented overuse of solitary confinement
([http://americamagazine.org/issue/solitary-
scandal](http://americamagazine.org/issue/solitary-scandal)) in some cases for
40 straight years
([http://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/24/longest_serving_us_pr...](http://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/24/longest_serving_us_prisoner_in_solitary))

4: a lack of legal opportunity in high density prisons for a speedy trial,
even in the case of child offenders
([http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/1/accused_of_stealing_a_...](http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/1/accused_of_stealing_a_backpack_high))
and for those with mental issues
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_DeFriest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_DeFriest))

5: the premeditated use of penal labor as a cheap replacement for unskilled
labor ([http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/prison-
labor_n_2272...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/prison-
labor_n_2272036.html))

6: the use of untested, classified and ineffective lethal injections on death
row inmates (for example that of Joseph Wood
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Joseph_Wood](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Joseph_Wood))

However, the United States is not nearly as bad to journalists. If you are a
foreign journalist in the US that is not liked you will be deported (Ibrahim
Jassam, Jason Rezaian and Yeganeh Salehi) and/or harassed during travel (Laura
Poitras) and if you are a domestic journalistic enterprise you may be
surveilled (like the Associated Press surveillance scandal this
administration, or the countless others from recent times). You may be
aggressively prosecuted to reveal sources (ruining your ability to keep
secrecy of sources and therefore trustworthiness to confidential informants) a
la Risen. You may be pressured into not running certain stories (like The
Washinton Post's 2004 story about the NSA mass surveillance that was pushed
under the radar). You may lose access to officials or be blocked from
attending or asking questions at press releases or in the converse be given
access to these things for running certain stories or positive slants on them
(Judith Miller, Ken Dilanian). You may be threatened with the Espionage Act
for handing national documents (Glenn Greenwald). But you will probably not be
directly imprisoned.

~~~
enupten
The fact that an amateur on the Internet can dig dirt up speaks scores for the
US (as flawed as it is) than it does for China.

Oh sweet irony.

~~~
phaemon
Are you suggesting it's difficult to find articles that criticise China on the
Internet?

~~~
dak1
It's difficult to find articles written in Chinese, hosted on servers or
social media and news sites in China that criticize China, yes.

Conversely, it's beyond easy to find articles written in English, hosted on US
servers and social media and news sites in the US that criticize the US.

So the parent's point seems to stand.

~~~
xnull2guest
This isn't really true. Take for example the Harvard Study on Chinese
Censorship "Reverse-engineering censorship in China: Randomized
experimentation and participant observation" by King, Gary, Pan, and Roberts
([http://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/experiment_0.pdf](http://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/experiment_0.pdf)).

Scathing criticism is regularly posted about the Chinese government and is not
subject to any censorship. There are a few key areas that are censored:
notably relations with Tibet and historical political uprisings.

~~~
mahranch
> _Scathing criticism is regularly posted about the Chinese government_

Did you actually read the study? That's not what they studied. They studied
whether postings were held for review more on social media sites over standard
media. And they weren't held more. What they found was that the CCP on social
media takes a "post first, censor later" approach. That doesn't mean they
don't censor social media. On social media, posts are "Reviewed".

If you scroll down to the bottom of the study, they even give a listing of
words that usually trigger a "review" flag.

From your linked study: " _In total, 66 of the 100 sites in our sample
(automatically) review at least some social media submissions, and 40% of all
of our individual social media submissions from our 100 sites (and 52% of
submissions from sites that review at least sometimes) are put into review. Of
those submissions that go into review, 63% never appear on the web._ "

~~~
xnull2guest
Did _you_ actually read the paper? You quote from the results section. Did you
go directly there?

Here's the opening paragraph. You'll find plenty in the paper to support it,
although this is directly supported with a citation from their previous paper
([http://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/censored.pdf](http://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/censored.pdf)):
"We begin with the theoretical context. The largest previous study of the
purpose of Chinese censorship (2) distinguished between the “state critique”
and “collective action potential” theories of censorship and found that, with
few exceptions, the first was wrong and the second was right: Criticisms of
the government in social media (even vitriolic ones) are not censored, whereas
any attempt to physically move people in ways not sanctioned by the government
is censored. Even posts that praise the government are censored if they
pertain to real-world collective action events (2)."

Critique of the state is _not_ censored. The paper goes on to show that even
discussion about having a multiparty American-style Constitutional system is
not subject to censorship.

There are very select things that are censored, and these things that are
censored (calls for direct collective action and specific topics related to
these) see both:

1.) foreign propaganda attempts, which is a strong reason for the Chinese
government to be interested in disruption (this is also true in America)

2.) parity with movement disquieting behavior of Western states (the US
disquiets movements through mechanisms other than direct censorship including
direct organizational infiltration, Fusion Centers, IRS harassment, JTRIG type
'warnings', character assassination, bribery, etc)

