China To Netizens: Shut Up

The disappearance of the online edition of Yanhuang Chunqiu is thought to be related to a series of articles published since last year to commemorate Zhao Ziyang, the late former Chinese premier who had advocated constitutional democracy and opposed Beijing's decision to send tanks to suppress the student movement in 1989 (See "Zhao Ziyang Haunts Beijing, Again").

For nearly two weeks, ychqw.com has been barred on mainland China. Readers in Hong Kong can open the web site, but are not able to click through to its archives to retrieve historical articles. Inserting key words like "Zhao Ziyang" in the search box of the website leads to a blank page which says "Connection Interrupted."

Du Daozheng, the 86 year-old publisher of the magazine, revealed last week to local media that he was one of the four Communist Party veterans who helped Zhao Ziyang to write his secret memoirs published last month.

Banned in China, the 306-page book was based on tapes recorded in secret by Zhao during his 15-year of house arrest. He died in 2005.

Meanwhile, Beijing has been warning local Chinese government officials to watch out for netizens attempting to stir up public protest.

In its latest issue published Monday, state-controlled magazine "Outlook Weekly" (or "Liao Wang" in Mandarin) strongly criticized local comrades for their ignorance of the latest development in the virtual world and their inability to control local netizens. The magazine blamed local authorities for not taking online discussions seriously enough, saying they are not just "ordinary chit chat in free time," but could have negative political impact.

Citing officials from the propaganda department and the Internet watchdog, the Communist Party mouthpiece story said the Internet has become a major mobilization tool and advocacy channel for "mass incidents" in China.

It warned officials that Chinese netizens are the driving force behind a string of social disorders, including a series of taxi drivers' strikes across the country at the end of last year. The strike originated from a group of cabbies in Chongqing, a city in Sichuan province, where drivers protested high rental fees and unlicensed cabs. Their discontent soon spread, and taxi drivers in Gansu and Sanya rallied on the streets with similar grievances.

The explicit administrative direction conveyed by the article just three days before the 20th Anniversary of the June fourth movement aroused suspicion that Beijing's Internet crackdown this week is perhaps its tightest yet.

With the number of new web sites increasing at a rate of 3,000 per day in China, the magazine pressed local governments to step up their technological development and training to suppress anti-government online conversation, and not to depend on "net police and propaganda watchdog to fight alone on the internet."

China's online population is growing fast. Figures from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed there were 316 million netizens in China at the end of first quarter this year, while the number of web sites reached 2.9 million at the end of 2008.

Some in the West hope the expansion of Internet access will help ordinary Chinese achieve freedom of expression. But the Communist Party, which fears instability, is muzzling Chinese netizens as the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre approaches.

Thomson Reuters contributed to this article.

© 2009