Massacre in Tiananmen Square, war in Ukraine, struggle for power within the Communist Party: despite censorship and repression, some Chinese journalists continue to deal with taboo subjects from the point of view of those in power in Beijing.
This content was published on January 10, 2023 – 14:00
Catherine Waker
The People’s Republic of China is the largest media market in the world. More than a billion people have access to the Internet. This corresponds to more than 70% of the total population of the country. More than half of these people use the Chinese social network Weibo. On this platform, investigative journalist Wang Zhian, now 54, had more than 6 million “followers”.
But on June 3, 2019, the 30th anniversary of the brutal crackdown on China’s democracy movement in Tiananmen Square, Wang Zhian’s Weibo account, along with the other channels he used at the time, was shut down. suppressed by the authorities.
“(President) Xi does not believe the media should be watchdogs of democracy. He thinks that they should simply be propaganda organs”, underlines Wang Zhian in the new episode of “Voices of freedom” of swissinfo.ch. Fearing for his safety and that of his family, he recently left China to settle in Japan.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which in the more than 70-year history of the People’s Republic of China have never been considered a prized possession by the communist rulers, have once more experienced significant deterioration in recent years. The journalistic career of Wang Zhian – one of the last democratic voices in China – shows this very clearly.
In 1998, he was hired as an investigative journalist by the Chinese public broadcaster CCTV. And when he left the broadcaster in 2015, he landed a job as chief reporter for the party newspaper, The Beijing News. In both roles, he uncovered corruption, reported on illegal land grabs, and exposed abuses of the health care system.
Despite constant warnings from censorship, many of his stories were published and helped establish the truth in the one-party state. But that era is over. “Tens of thousands of journalists have turned their backs on their profession in recent years,” said Wang Zhian, noting that “in China, journalism is dead.”
And blatantly: at the end of 2022, 127 journalists were in Chinese prisons because of their work, according to the freedom of expression organization Reporters Without Borders. But Zhian and others continue to work from overseas and report on what’s happening in the world for Chinese audiences. For example on Ukraine, where Russia, an ally of China, has been waging a brutal war of aggression for more than ten months. One of the many taboo subjects in China.
Translated from English by Emilie Ridard
