During the Cultural Revolution, China's propaganda department often made hyperbolic charges against intellectuals -- capitalist roaders, enemies of the people -- accused of betraying Mao Zedong (
So when Jiao Guobiao (
The department is spiteful, like the Nazis, he wrote in a recent essay. It thinks itself infallible, like the pope. In the 1950s it covered up the starvation of millions of people. Today, he charged, it lies about SARS.
"Their censorship orders are totally groundless, absolutely arbitrary, at odds with the basic standards of civilization, and as counter to scientific common sense as witches and wizardry," he wrote in the article -- which has been widely circulated via the Internet in Beijing despite, not unpredictably, being banned by the Communist Party's propaganda department.
Such explicit outbursts of dissent are still rare in China. But Jiao is not alone in expressing frustration that, even after a long-awaited transition to a new generation of leaders some 18 months ago, China's political scene remains stultifying. Intellectuals, Jiao said, are "supposed to act like children who never talk back to their parents."
Many had hoped the leadership team headed by the party's chief, President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), would tolerate more open debate. But it has instead slapped new restrictions on free speech and the media that some say remind them of the repressive years after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
State security agents have been scouring the Internet and pressing charges against people who use it to distribute information or express opinions deemed unfavorable. The authorities harassed scholars who took part in a debate about constitutional changes, disappointing some who believed that Hu had once invited discussion about how to strengthen the rule of law.
Last month, Beijing decided against allowing full democracy in Hong Kong, even though many in the former British colony felt they were promised that right when China assumed sovereignty in 1997.
The political environment may reflect a seasonal shift to tight controls during the spring Communist Party meetings and a state of high alert ahead of the 15th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen massacre.
But some see worrying signs that the leadership remains instinctively hostile to political discussion and more independent news media. Scholars say they now suspect that Hu is not as forward-looking as they once hoped and at any rate must still defer to Jiang Zemin (江澤民), the military chief, who handed the formal reins of power to Hu in late 2002 but by many accounts remains a domineering influence.
"I don't think we had a real transfer of power or a turning point in leadership," said He Weifang (
The most conspicuous sign of that tension is in the news media. In recent years many newspapers, TV stations and Web-based media have flourished in a more market-driven environment. Diversity and competition seemed to foster more open discussion of sensitive topics, including corruption, legal reforms, foreign affairs, crime, business abuses and other matters that were once taboo.
But pressure to conform to political norms, which never went away, has been strongly reasserted in recent months, people in the industry say.
Propaganda officials have increased their presence inside news, culture and entertainment organizations, and have refined a system for pre-censorship that leaves less discretion in the hands of editors.
"It used to be that they would punish people who made too many mistakes," said the editor of a leading political magazine. "Now, you don't have the leeway to make mistakes."
Among topics now considered off-limits, the media are no longer permitted to investigate corruption without approval. That limits what many had seen as one of the few effective checks on official wrongdoing, reporters and editors said.
Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao (
But when two writers in Anhui Province wrote an in-depth critique of the handling of such problems, called An Investigative Report on Chinese Peasants, the book was banned and the publishing house that issued it came under pressure, possibly because the book argued that the most severe problems had been caused by officials.
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