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Editorial: Power stems from a muzzled press

To understand the stark differences between China and Taiwan, you need look no further than the nearest newsstand.

In Taiwan's young democracy, you will find newspapers with an array of editorial positions covering the political spectrum. You will see articles accusing the nation's highest officials and most powerful magnates of corruption, lechery, vice and incompetence. You will see energetic and unruly activity that may be undisciplined and unprofessional, but nevertheless has all the hallmarks of a free press.

Go now to a newsstand in China.

You will find articles lauding the accomplishments of unelected bureaucrats. You will find pieces extolling the intricacies of official policies. You will find xenophobic rants aimed at inflaming nationalist sentiment. In short, you will find evidence of all that is frightening and detestable in a totalitarian regime.

Yesterday, that detestable regime sentenced a journalist to five years in prison for allegedly spying for Taiwan. His real crime, as everyone knows, was trying to write accurately about China.

Ching Cheong (程翔) is a resident of Hong Kong and a veteran journalist working for Singapore's Straits Times. His wife has said that he was detained last year after attempting to gather documents on the one communist leader who had the decency to oppose the use of force against students in Tiananmen Square in 1989: Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽).

Since Ching was tried in secret, and no one knows what "evidence" was used to convict him, it is difficult to contest the case against him. But it is not difficult to see that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had an urgent and unambiguous reason to try to discredit Ching and stop his activities.

According to the CCP's mouthpiece news agency, Xinhua, China largely based its claim that Ching was a spy on "evidence" that he had met with members of a think tank -- which the reports described as a front for espionage -- when he was a reporter in Taiwan. Xinhua says that Ching took money from the think tank in exchange for providing "state secrets." There is no way to check the veracity of these claims, and it is unlikely that more details will be forthcoming.

Given the nature of the Chinese regime, it is irrelevant if Ching violated the law. The laws that Beijing applies to such matters are so sweeping that they could be applied to any journalist who writes about anything at any time.

Every so often, commentators and pundits will wax eloquent and talk about the "inevitable" slow shift toward an open, democratic society that they claim China is beginning to undergo. They point to critical blogs or articles that appear from time to time as evidence of this shift.

This ignores reality. Such criticisms appear because technology has changed, not because the nature of the Chinese regime has changed. A journalist in China can write honestly and critically for a short time, and these words will spread like wildfire on the Internet. But in the end, the plodding government goons will show up at the door, shut it all down and whisk the writer away.

Reporters Without Borders says that China has 32 journalists and 50 "Internet campaigners" in jail. Ching is just the latest in a long series of persecuted journalists. The CCP isn't changing.

Singapore Press Holdings Ltd, the firm that owns the Straits Times, has called for Beijing to release Ching because he has chronic health problems.

It isn't likely that support from the Taipei Times would add value to this effort in China's eyes, but we do call on the international community -- especially the US and the EU -- to increase pressure on China for its oppression of journalists and to push for Ching's release.
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