China's censorship machine endures

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 (毛澤東).

So when Jiao Guobiao (焦國標), a journalism professor at Beijing University, was searching for words to describe China's still all-powerful department of censors and standard-setters more than 30 years later, he borrowed from its lexicon of vitriol.

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 (賀衛方), a law professor at Beijing University. "There was a moment after Mr. Hu took control when people were optimistic, but now things are even tighter than before."

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.