Minneapolis Star Tribune
Published: September 22, 2006
In making its bid to host the 2008 Olympics, the Chinese government dismissed worries about its record of repression. When Beijing's red carpet is rolled out for the games, Chinese leaders promised, visitors would see a thoroughly modern China -- a nation moving to promote free enterprise, broaden freedom and expand openness.
But as Beijing's Olympic moment draws near, that assurance has all the credibility of a snake-oil sales pitch.
China is indeed modernizing like mad. But enterprise remains only as free as the government will forbear. And China now seems set on snatching back virtually every vestige of liberty its people have tasted.
Typically only the nation's boldest dissenters are the chief targets of the arbitrary arrests, detention and torture used to enforce China's party line. Yet the definition of "dissenter" has come to include the tens of thousands of Chinese Falun Gong practitioners who now endure the government's most oppressive tactics. A new report from an esteemed Canadian human-rights lawyer suggests these victims have lately suffered something more: The report claims to corroborate reports that China has put to death "a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience" since 1999 and sold their organs at high prices to foreigners.
These grim details may very well explain why China is feeling touchy about foreign news coverage. Whether or not this horrific story holds up under further scrutiny, China has reasons aplenty to keep a chokehold on information flowing in and out of the country. Over the last year or so it has sought to clear the country's Internet traffic of scores of forbidden topics -- from the Falun Gong and the Tiananmen Square uprising to any mention of the words "freedom" and "democracy."
Last week, the censorship campaign picked up further speed with an order granting Xinhua, China's state-owned news outfit, exclusive control over reports distributed in China. The scheme is clearly meant to help squelch the flow of "controversial" news to Chinese readers, and could very well hinder foreign reporters' service to readers beyond China.
Mikhail Gorbachev learned a hard lesson when he sought to allow greater economic and intellectual freedom in the Soviet Union, but only within carefully prescribed limits: It doesn't work. Sooner or later, China must confront the same reality. Sooner would be better, for China and the world.