Hong Kong Ming Pao reports, during an Internet Oversight Meeting recently held in Beijing, the government gave orders to all Internet media about establishing a “self-discipline commissioner.” Eight websites which have micro-blogging services – Sina, Sohu, Netease, Iphonixe, Hexun, SOufang, 139Mobile and Juyou9911 – will make a commitment to set up a “self-discipline commissioner.”
Those “self-discipline commissioners” are specifically responsible for monitoring and censoring online information including porn, violence and politically-sensitive content. Although “self-discipline commissioner” is responsible to his/her own Internet media, his/her work agenda is independent from those company’s internal editorial control processes.
September 1, 2010
Chinese Websites Establish “Self-discipline Commissioners”
March 3, 2010
NYT: Chinese Editorials Assail a Government System
BEIJING — In a country where the press is tightly managed by the state, the identical editorials that appeared Monday in more than a dozen publications calling for reform of China’s onerous household registration system were noteworthy.
“China has suffered for a long time under the hukou system!” the editorials declared, using the Chinese term for the residency permits that tie government benefits to a person’s registered hometown. “We believe in people born to be free and people possessing the right to migrate freely!”
But a few hours later, the editorials had largely vanished from the Internet, presumably erased by a government that is wary of abandoning a 50-year-old system that many critics say has fed the surging gap between China’s urban and rural population.
March 19, 2009
Chinese spy comes clean in USA
WASHINGTON (AFP) — A man who said he was a Chinese spy appealed Thursday to the United States to pressure Beijing, charging it was running a vast intelligence operation at home and abroad to suppress dissent.
Li Fengzhi visited the US Congress to talk to lawmakers and appeal for asylum. His supporters said it was the first time a Chinese intelligence officer had defected.
A visibly nervous Li told a news conference that he served for years inside China for the Ministry of State Security but had grown “furious” that his job entailed spying on dissidents, spiritual groups and aggrieved poor people.
“China’s government not only uses lies and violence to suppress people seeking basic human rights, but also does all it can to hide the truth from the international community,” he said.
Li said that despite China’s rapid economic growth, “a government that disrespects and suppresses its people cannot be stable.”
“When the West engages with China, if it only focuses on temporary economic and political benefits but keeps silent on human rights issues, it is tantamount to reciting from the book of the communist party’s tyranny,” he said.
Li, a bespectacled man in his early 40s, gave few details about his own past, saying he feared for family members in China. His supporters said he slept for only one hour the night before his news conference.
China’s Ministry for State Security operated a worldwide network to steal secrets from foreign countries, Li said, adding the agency also keep a close watch on Chinese citizens overseas.
The communist party “uses huge expenditure of funds to suppress ordinary citizens and even extend their dark hands overseas,” he said.
Li said he defected “several” years ago to the United States but did not speak publicly until this month.
He renounced his membership in the communist party as part of a drive led by supporters of the Falun Gong, a movement combining meditation and Buddhist-inspired teachings that China banned as an “evil cult”
in 1999.
One of China’s highest profile defectors — Chen Yonglin, a diplomat in Sydney who sought asylum in 2005 — has said Beijing had more than 1,000 agents in Australia alone who kidnapped some Chinese and repatriated them for political reasons.
I know this picture is really evocative, butguess what, it is real. But for me, it is not the technology and industry spies that freak me out. It is the cold war type who are there to influence public policiy on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. They are there to beat down dissent and bolster propaganda in the Chinese communities around the world. Proportionately, I don’t know how many are assigned to this section, but the amount of Chinese spies in Canada represents the biggest intelligence security threat of any country.
March 17, 2009
National Post: Canada’s CBC taking the Communist Party of China’s stance on Falun Gong???
Posted: March 17, 2009, 5:21 PM by NP Editor David Matas, CBC
When it comes to covering Falun Gong, both the English and French branches of CBC have adopted a view of the world disturbingly similar to that of the Communist Party of China.
Falun Gong is a spiritual movement that combines ancient Chinese traditions, Buddhist and Taoist practices, and qi gong exercises. Founder Li Hongzhi began writing and speaking about Falun Gong in 1992. The movement took off, growing to a Chinese government estimate of 70 to 100 million practitioners by 1999. The growth was partly attributable to encouragement by the Chinese government itself, which was impressed by Falun Gong’s health benefits.
But in 1999 then-President Jiang Zemin — out of jealousy that something an outsider proposed could become so popular while his own “Three Represents” writings languished in confusion and obscurity — spurred the government to ban the practice. To justify the banning, the Communist Party of China (CPC) developed a conspiracy fantasy. All those individuals engaging on their own or in small groups in harmless, indeed healthful, exercises, the CPC alleged, were part of some vast organization aimed at overthrowing communist rule. (more…)
March 4, 2009
China rule of law, oxymoron
Most of the issues plaguing the world could be solved with a comprehensive legal understanding. In China the biggest problem is corruption, and that is due to the people in power not abiding by the constitution and instead using fear tactics to keep the people quiet.
The point is that the top level of the CCP cannot rectify this issue (in my opinion). If the top levels stop the lower levels from doing whatever they want to get rich and live an exploitative lifestyle, then the top CCPers would no longer have the tools to run the lower levels and control the whole society as it does through fear.
If the lower levels did not have the huge incentive of total freedom to exploit, then why would they lie boldfaced through the media? Why would they do so much harm on behalf of the CCP to keep the people quiet?
They do that because they have an understanding with the top level. They have sold their mafia services to the top level for freedom of corruption.
If the tope level CCPers start cracking down on illegal activity in the true sense of the word, then they will be the first ones to go to jail, so how can the CCP implement it’s own doom?
Gao Zhisheng is known as “the conscience of China”. He is self taught lawyer, a great lawyer who believes in the spirit of the law and justice, so of course, he is in jail suffering torture for that under the CCPs orders since 
they do not want anyone disturbing the way they have it set up. They do not want people with conscience showing courage and influencing others to stand up.
China Human Rights Getting Better, At Least According To An Analyst In America
This is an older article, but it is good because it shows an overall positive movement by the Chinese people. I know it might seem that I am always frustrated that the people in China don’t solve the problems of human rights, but maybe they are and I just am not seeing it reported…
Sociologist Ching Kwan Lee, a sociologist at the University of California-Los Angeles, writes in the summer issue of the American Sociological Association’s Contexts magazine that there is a ‘quiet revolution’ happening among citizens of China that isn’t recognized by the louder human rights activists.
In the case of labor rights, despite a series of labor laws passed since the 
1990s, Lee asserts that labor standards in China have remained extremely bad since the country’s economic reform began 30 years ago. As a result, non-governmental organizations have formed to provide legal and other services; the legal profession has ballooned; and workers are protesting through civil disobedience and other strategies.
Property ownership is another area in which local governments violate 
citizen rights in pursuit of financial gains from land lease sales and urban redevelopment. Homeowner activism has included petitions, mass occupations of property management company offices, development and use of neighborhood Web sites, hunger strikes and other strategies. In addition, homeowners’ associations are increasingly being formed to advocate for rights and prevent power abuses by the local government.
In the area of land rights, thousands of conflicts, some violent, arise every 
year in China due to illegal land grabs by local officials, withholding of farmer compensation and lack of job replacement for those whose land has been taken. An estimated 34 million farmers have lost some or all of their land over the past two decades. Rural Chinese citizens are reacting to these rights violations by issuing public statements, filing lawsuits and organizing collective protests.
“Today’s rights activism in China provides a look at the forces driving the near-total transformation of the most populace nation in the world,” Lee said. “Attention may shift away from China after the 2008 Olympic Games conclude, yet the struggles between economic growth and social stability; between authoritarian rule and a more responsive state and involved citizenry; and between local and central governments will continue to shape and define China for the long-term future.”
January 28, 2009
Is there any point in taking on the Communist Party?
Telegraph: Prof Xu [Xu Youyu (徐友渔)] said he was deeply pessimistic about the future. He acknowledged the point that there were leaders now in high office who had very similar experiences to his own – disillusionment with the Cultural Revolution, adoption of a reform agenda, study abroad – but, as he put it, “it is the seat that is important, not the personal view”. In other words, the very act of joining the apparatus removed any scope for personal opinion to emerge, and by the time you reached the top, it was too late – your mast was firmly attached to the (single) sail. He saw little chance for reform from within. In these circumstances, the only position for intellectuals such as him was to stand apart and hold on to their personal truths, such as those espoused in the Charter.
In fact, elsewhere in the interview he was less bleak. He rightly located some of the arguments about the Charter in the very lively debate in China’s intellectual world, including newspapers, between those who believe that notions of human rights, freedom of speech and democracy and so on are “universal values” to which China should ascribe, or whether they are Western values which West-friendly academics (such as him) are trying to impose on an unwilling and unready nation. Prof Xu, needless to say, argues for the former, and wonders whether those who argue against are really serious. What world do they believe in?
October 11, 2008
The Tibetans will not be able to get any justice from the CCP.
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By Abhishek Madhukar
DHARAMSALA, India (Reuters) – The Tibetan government-in-exile said on Sunday it would make a final decision on whether to continue dialogue with China to ease tension in Tibet after their next encounter ends in October.
“I think the talks may go on, but these talks will only be about talks. They (China) will not really give us anything, concede anything,” Karma Chophel, speaker of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, said in Dharamsala, the base of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
“If in the eighth round of talks we see a ray of hope, then there will be a ninth round of talks, otherwise not,” Chophel told Reuters in Dharamsala.
The extraordinary meeting comes after months of anti-China protests across the world, sparked off by unrest in Tibet in March which China suppressed.
Envoys of the Dalai Lama and China met in July to defuse the situation (Tibetan unrest), the latest of several rounds of talks since 2002, but the Tibetan envoys appeared disillusioned.
They said China lacked serious commitment to solve the crisis after their return.
Of course the CCP cannot provide the Tibetan people with the freedoms that they need. The Tibetan peoples spirits have not been bought and terrorized as much as the Chinese. The CCP can offer bribes, but it cannot offer any freedom and rights, the CCP is fundamentally opposed to these values and fears justice more than anything. The Chinese people are not allowed freedom of the press and expression, they are not provided with a justice system. They are offered threats and bribes from the CCP, but the Tibetans don’t want to give up their rights. That is why, to the CCP, the Tibetan cause is best reserved as a propaganda scapegoat, that is the best use the CCP has for Tibet.
July 10, 2008
When the communist party says it needs to take maximum cautionnary actions to prevent terrorism, it means it is scared of dissidents.
I have not done enough research on Muslims in China who want an independent Xinjiang. If that situation is similar to Tibetan independence movement, then it is the CCP who twists everything into what it is not. Tibetans are not terrorists and they may have committed some crimes this year while rioting against communist oppression, they definitely do not fit the definition of terrorists (CCP is exactly a terrorist sice it uses threats to keep people in line with it’s se;f serving policies).
The CCP does not want anyone to know that the Tibetans are real people with real grievances who want real solutions, they don’t want to sabotage the Olympics, though they might use the chance of the media watching as some kind of reason to speak out about their issues.
I really think the CCP is going all out on security measures is because it does NOT want a breach in the fake opinions it has cultivated in the Chinese peoples minds. It fears Falun Gong cause they tell a different story than the one the party tells, the same goes for Tibet, I think the party is really most afraid of banners, words, t-shirts and flyers that might speak the truth about the CCP’s horrible crimes and rights violations. They say they are looking out for terrorism, but they are actually 100% intent on upholding their own terrorist system.
BEIJING (Reuters) – Homegrown threats top China’s security worries for the Beijing Olympic Games, an
official overseeing security said, warning that airborne threats to Games venues will be shot down if they come too close.
Tian Yixiang, head of the Beijing Olympic Games Security Protection Coordinating Group, said the top “terror” threats to the August Games come from Uighur militants campaigning for independence for Xinjiang in China’s far northwest, from Tibetan independence groups, and from followers of the banned Falun Gong sect.
“The security situation facing the Beijing Olympic Games is stable overall, but there remain threats in the traditional and non-traditional security spheres,” Tian told the official magazine Outlook Weekly.
“Terror attacks are the principal threat to Olympic Games Security,” he said, according to the report, which was circulated on the Xinhua news agency’s website (www.xinhuanet.com).
So much resources, all to keep this freedom of speech repressed, with the excuse of battling terrorists!? Is this a joke?
European satellite operator Eutelsat suppresses independent Chinese-language TV station NTDTV to satisfy Beijing
Reporters Without Borders calls on Giuliano Berretta, the CEO of the European satellite company Eutelsat, to quickly reverse its decision to suspend independent Chinese-language broadcaster NTDTV’s use of Eutelsat’s W5 satellite to broadcast to Asia.
Eutelsat claims it was forced to suspend NTDTV (New Tang Dynasty Television) on 16 June because of a technical problem but a recorded conversation with an employee of Eutelsat show it was a premeditated, politically-motivated decision violating the free flow of information and the convention under which Eutelsat operates.
NTDTV reports positively on Falun Gong and objectively on the persecution in China of those people. Of course the CCP is terrified of Chinese people finding out the CCP has been blatantly lying about this and many other important issues, so it is no surprise that people in China are blocked from this TV station. Thanks to Eutelsat, this station was actually broadcast IN CHINA! But the CCP finally managed to bribe them off get get NTDTV cut out of Chinese peoples lives. It’s great that we have access to this evidence of anti human rights corruption, this type of info in China is considered state secrets and if you talk this kind of stuff you will be charged with scaring the poor CCP or some crazy non crime like that.
No More Chinese Communist Party 