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Backlash grows in China over closure of `Freezing Point'

A former secretary to Mao Zedong (毛澤東) and a dozen other senior Chinese academics and former officials have denounced the shutdown of an investigative weekly in a spreading battle over censorship.

They said the closing of the Freezing Point section of the China Youth Daily was an "historic incident" in a struggle between Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controls and calls for media freedom.

"History demonstrates that only a totalitarian system needs news censorship, out of the delusion that it can keep the public locked in ignorance," they said in a public letter signed Feb. 2 but issued yesterday.

Many of the signatories were officials under Zhao Ziyang (趙紫陽) and Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦), the relatively liberal party chiefs ousted in the 1980s, and they reflected growing discontent about censorship even among party veterans, Freezing Point editor Li Datong (李大同) said.

The signatories include Mao's secretary and biographer, Li Rui (李銳); a former editor-in-chief of the CCP's own mouthpiece, the People's Daily, Hu Jiwei (胡績偉); and a former propaganda boss, Zhu Houze (朱厚澤).

They said China's elaborate restrictions on information could have dire consequences for China's political evolution.

"Depriving the public of freedom of expression so nobody dares speak out will sow the seeds of disaster for political and transition [sic]," they said.

The CCP's Propaganda Department ordered the indefinite suspension of Freezing Point on Jan. 24 after it published an essay by a Chinese historian, Yuan Weishi (袁偉時), criticizing what he said were long-standing nationalist distortions in Chinese history textbooks.

The weekly section of the China Youth Daily sometimes published investigative reports on corruption and abuses of official power, and commentaries critical of official thinking.

Since late last year, Chinese censors have dismissed editors of three sometimes adventurous newspapers, the Beijing News, the Southern Metropolitan Daily and the Public Welfare Times. They have also increased surveillance and control of the Internet.

But Li said the crackdown on the China Youth Daily -- the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party's youth wing -- hit a raw nerve even among people inured to censorship.

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