China has so far failed to live up to its pledge to ensure full media freedom ahead of the Beijing Olympics, with harassment of foreign reporters still common, a survey showed.
But despite the problems, the situation is better than when before the government relaxed reporting regulations on Jan. 1, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China said.
Of the 163 respondents to the survey, 95 percent said they did not think reporting conditions in China met what they considered international standards.
Forty-three percent of respondents also said there had been an improvement in China's reporting environment since the government moved to relax decades-old foreign press restrictions before the Games.
The survey gathered written responses from reporters with media organizations from more than 24 countries. The majority of respondents, 133, were based in Beijing with the remaining working in Shanghai and four other Chinese cities not specified.
China now allows foreign reporters to travel and report more freely across most of the country in the run-up to next August's Games, but the relaxed rules will expire on Oct. 17 next year.
Foreign journalists had required government permission to report outside their home base -- usually Beijing or Shanghai -- but under the new rules they need only the agreement of the person they are interviewing.
"We welcome the progress that has been made," the group's president, Melinda Liu (
"However we urge the Chinese government to accelerate efforts to eliminate all media restrictions and to ensure appropriate implementation of policies. We're especially concerned by many reports of intimidation of sources.
"A nation where citizens who speak to foreign correspondents face threats, reprisals and even bodily harm does not live up to the world's expectations of an Olympic host," she said.
Problems include violence against foreign reporters covering protests, detention for unauthorized filming and being called into the Foreign Ministry for "criticism" of stories, the group said.
China's own tightly controlled domestic media is not covered by the new rules.
Restrictions on travel to Tibet and the far western region of Xinjiang, where restless minority peoples chaff under Beijing's choke, remain in place too.
"Among the problems they cited was insufficient access to government officials,particularly the nation's top leadership," the group said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS