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CHINA MEDIA BULLETIN

Issue No. 181: June 2024

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A monthly update of media freedom news and analysis related to China

For daily updates in the Chinese language, follow FH_China

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on X.



Analysis: Censorship Is No Solution to China's Public Safety Problem

In the News:

Censorship

Regulatory updates

Harassment and detentions

Hong Kong

Beyond China

Read Online

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Analysis: Censorship Is No Solution to China's Public Safety Problem

Information about a recent spate of knife attacks has been suppressed, leading to anger and speculation. ​​​​​

By Yaqiu Wang

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“China is widely acknowledged as one of the safest countries in the world,” a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said

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 during a press conference on Tuesday, in response to an attack in which a Chinese man stabbed a Japanese woman and her child at a bus stop in southeastern Jiangsu Province. The official comment was identical

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 to one made earlier this month in response to another such attack, in which a Chinese man stabbed four Americans in northeastern Jilin Province. In each case, a Chinese passerby was injured while attempting to stop the assault.

On the one hand, the spate of knife attacks has exposed an unsettling reality: China might not be as safe as the Chinese government declares, and the ruling Chinese Communist Party may not be as capable of maintaining social stability as it claims. On the other hand, widespread international attention on these two incidents has obscured another reality: In most cases of random violence in China, the victims are Chinese citizens, not foreign nationals.

My quick search of the Chinese internet found that there have been at least several other incidents in the past month. On May 20, a man in Jiangxi

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 Province killed two elementary school students and injured 10 others using a knife. On May 24, a man in Hubei

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Province stabbed eight people, including his mother, to death. On June 1, a man in Hebei

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 Province killed three people with a dagger and a sickle on the street. On June 19, a man attacked passengers at a subway station in Shanghai

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 and injured three people.

These are just a few examples picked from China’s stringently censored online space. (In 2023, Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net 

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report gave China the world’s worst score for the ninth straight year.) The actual frequency of such random acts of violence could be much higher.

The Chinese government does not publish statistics on this category of crime specifically, but it claims that overall violent crimes have declined

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 significantly in the past decade. In 2023, the authorities prosecuted just 61,000 people for “serious violent crimes,” in a country of 1.4 billion people.

Some netizens complained

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 on Chinese social media that their posts about the aforementioned knife attacks were censored. “You control the media, nobody knows anything, as if things never happened. That Jilin incident and now this Suzhou one, if there were no foreign media reporting, there could have been absolutely no information within the [Great Fire] wall,” a netizen wrote.

Also left unclear are the identities and motivations of the attackers, since the government often does not release such information. In the Jilin incident, the opacity and stonewalling have been such that the U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, took the unusual step of complaining to the American press about it. “I’m not satisfied that we’ve been given sufficient information as to the motives of the assailant,” Burns told

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 the Wall Street Journal.

In a country where there is no free press and no space for civil society, an independent investigation is not possible. All that’s left is guesswork. In the attacks against American and Japanese citizens, many observers expressed suspicions that the Chinese government’s ever-intensifying anti-U.S. and anti-Japan propaganda had influenced the assailants. “The authorities have cultivated these nationalists for all these years, and they have now grown to be like this,” a netizen said on the social media platform Weibo.

Others have speculated that China’s economic woes are breeding social discontent. “The most direct societal reaction to economic downturn is the deterioration of public safety,” a netizen wrote. “The pressure of this economic environment is cascading down to everyone, who may be pushed to the brink by a slight change in circumstances,” wrote

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 another.

Freedom House’s China Dissent Monitor shows

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 that protests over the economy, especially the housing-market collapse, became more widespread in 2023, making up 80 percent of all recorded dissent events. In the first quarter of this year, 60 percent of dissent events were labor protests.

Whatever motives lie behind the stabbings, they point to real flaws in the Chinese government’s heavy-handed rule. Because while frustration, resentment, and anger can be temporarily suppressed using authoritarian methods, they will not stay hidden for long if the underlying grievances and social problems are not addressed. And lone-wolf violence is extremely hard to predict and prevent, even with the world’s most sophisticated system of censorship and surveillance. A truly safe society can only be created under a democratically elected government that is responsive to citizens’ needs and operates with transparency and respect for fundamental rights.

Yaqiu Wang is the research director for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at Freedom House. This article was also published by the Diplomat

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on June 28, 2024.





Censorship

June 4th censorship: On June 4, the British Embassy in China posted a video

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on Weibo

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in which text from a June 4, 1989, People’s Daily article on the Tiananmen Crackdown gradually fades away until it turns into a blank sheet of paper. The video, which also alludes to the 2022 White Paper protests, was deleted

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from Weibo within 20 minutes. Posts published by the Germany Embassy in commemoration of the massacre were reportedly also removed

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.

Foreigners attacked, censorship follows: On June 10, four American college instructors were stabbed

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at a park in Jilin Province. Online discussions about the attack were quickly censored

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, with hashtags including “Jilin, Beishan, Foreigners” blocked. Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Lin Jian labeled the incident a “random

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attack,” but some believe it reflected rising nationalism in the country, and dubbed it a contemporary “Boxer Rebellion

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,” referring to the violent uprising in the late 19th century in which mostly peasant participants tried to drive foreigners out of China. On June 11, a WeChat article

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titled “The love of the Boxers, I can’t bear it,” which prompts readers to question the patriotism of the Boxers, was deleted.

Report highlights app censorship in China: According to a June 20 report

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by Greatfire, a research group monitoring censorship in China, as of March 20, 2023, 11,026 out of 40,049 tested apps were unavailable in Apple’s China App Store. Categories such as news, books, and social networking were removed disproportionately. Notably, 72 apps related to Uyghur culture and 41 apps associated with Tibetan culture and Buddhism cannot be downloaded in China.

Restriction during Pride month: On June 5, the US Embassy in China posted a statement

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on Weibo commemorating LGBT+ Pride month and advocating for global equality. The hashtag "LGBTQI+," used in the post was later found to be blocked.





Regulatory updates

New rule penalizing Taiwan independence activism: In a joint announcement

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on June 21 by China’s top judicial, prosecutorial, and security organs, authorities vowed to “severely punish Taiwan-independence die-hards that split or incite to split the country.” A series of actions is now deemed a crime of secession, including “tampering with the fact that Taiwan is a part of China” and “suppressing entities or individuals supportive of the country’s reunification.” Individuals convicted of this crime can face harsh sentences, including the death penalty.





Harassment and detentions

June 4th harassment: In the lead-up to the Tiananmen Massacre anniversary, Chinese human rights advocates were reportedly

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monitored or forced to go on "tours." Beijing-based Human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang was escorted to Shanxi Province, while independent journalist Gao Yu was confined

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to remote residences outside of Beijing for eight days. Over 10 dissidents associated with a human rights group in Guizhou faced home confinement and surveillance.

#MeToo journalist and labor activist sentenced: On June 14, a court in Guangzhou sentenced

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women’s rights advocate Huang Xueqin and workers' rights activist Wang Jianbing to five years and three and a half years in prison, respectively, on charges of "inciting subversion of state power." The two activists were tried

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behind closed doors last September. Prior to the verdict, they had been in detention for nearly 1,000 days, and were reportedly subject to mistreatment

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.

Daughters of vaccine safety activists missing; family threatened by police: According to a report

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by Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch (CRLW), daughters of activist He Fangmei have been missing since April. He and her husband Li Xin were arrested

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in 2020 in connection with their advocacy for vaccine safety. Li is currently serving a five-year sentence and He still awaiting trial. Their son was placed in foster care by the government. Two daughters were confined in a hospital and were denied access to education and family visits. The authorities reportedly transferred two girls to another location in April, without informing the family of their whereabouts.

Activist disappeared after release: Yin Xuan, a human rights activist sentenced to four and a half years’ imprisonment in 2019 for sharing an image alluding to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, has been missing since December, human rights group Weiquanwang

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reported on June 5. Yin suffers from chronic health conditions, including high blood pressure and heart disease, and his family is concerned that he is being denied necessary medical treatment.

Nanjing Police detains Taiwanese photographer for promoting LGBT+ photo books: In late May, Taiwanese photographer Lin Jiahang, known for his documentation of LGBT+ people’s lives through his photo collections, was detained

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by Nanjing police for 24 hours on charges of "distributing obscene images" while attending an art fair. In a June 5 Threads post

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, Lin said he was forcibly stripped, his blood sampled, and his saliva swabbed during the detention, and that he was interrogated six times by different officers.





Hong Kong

First sedition charges under Article 23: On June 12, Hong Kong resident Chu Kai-Pong was charged

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with sedition for wearing a shirt and a yellow mask with banned protest slogans calling for Hong Kong's liberation. Chu had previously been arrested

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in November for wearing the same attire, resulting in a three-month sentence under the city’s Crimes Ordinance. On June 21, another resident, Au Kin-wai, was charged

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with sedition for disseminating videos stating "Revolution is not a crime, rebellion is justified." These cases mark the first sedition charges under Article 23 since its enactment in March. Both trials are expected to commence in August.

Eighth sedition arrest in case linked to jailed activist: On June 3, an eighth individual was arrested

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in Hong Kong for social media posts about the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. This followed the late May arrests of seven others

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, including Hong Kong lawyer Chow Hang-tung, for allegedly posting seditious content against Beijing and Hong Kong authorities.

Hong Kong artist detained over June 4 commemoration: On June 3, ahead of the 35th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, performance artist Sanmu Chen was arrested

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by the Hong Kong police after tracing the number "8964" in the air with his hand. He had then mimicked the act of pouring liquid and taking a sip—a gesture interpreted as a nod to the Chinese ritual of ancestor worship. Chen was later released without charge.

Hong Kong revokes passports of UK-based prodemocracy activists: On June 12, the Hong Kong government revoked

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passports of six UK-based prodemocracy activists, including former legislator Nathan Law, accusing them of colluding

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with external forces and defaming the Hong Kong government. Authorities also prohibited Hong Kong residents from supporting the six individuals with funds and properties, punishable by seven years in prison. These individuals, accused of violating the National Security Law during the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, were among

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13 people wanted by the Hong Kong government since last year on a bounty of 1 million Hong Kong dollars ($128,000).

Beyond China

Journalist blocked at Canberra press conference: In June, Chinese Premier Li Qiang made a four-day visit to Australia. At a press conference in Canberra on June 17, where Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese and Li were set

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to sign bilateral

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agreements, two Chinese Embassy staffer physically blocked

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Australian journalist Cheng Lei from being filmed. Footage

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shows Australian officials repeatedly asking Chinese staffers to move, but their attempts were dismissed. Albanese later called it a “clumsy

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” act. Cheng had previously been detained in China for three years over espionage

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accusations.





Take Action

Access uncensored content: Find an overview comparing popular circumvention tools and information on how to access them via GreatFire.org, here

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or here

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. Learn more about how to reach uncensored content and enhance digital security here

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.

Support a prisoner: Learn how to take action to help journalists and free expression activists, including those featured in past issues of the China Media Bulletin here

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.

Visit the China Media Bulletin Resources section: Learn more about how policymakers, media outlets, educators, and donors can help advance free expression in China and beyond via a new resource section

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on the Freedom House website.





Copyright 2024 Freedom House

All rights reserved.

Freedom House

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Washington, DC 20036



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