CHINA, JOURNALISM: A Free Press and a Strong Government? Note From the Editors

In September 2004, Zhao Yan, a native Chinese journalist working for The New York Times, was arrested by the Beijing State Security Bureau and accused of "revealing state secrets." Since it is a journalism story that goes to the heart of the ages-old conundrum of how to balance the people's right to know with the sworn duty of a government to protect national interests, as English language journalism majors, Mr. Zhao's case and his continued detention became a part of our studies. And our writing. Consequently, a series of opinion and commentary essays representing a wide range of thoughts on the issue will follow in these pages. We believe you will find much food for thought on a complex dilemma.

To bring you up to date on the Zhao case, below are three articles published in the New York Times.

Thank you,

The editors

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The New York Times FOREIGN DESK | September 24, 2004, Friday

Researcher for The Times in China Is Detained

By ERIK ECKHOLM
Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 9 , Column 1

A Chinese research assistant in the Beijing bureau of The New York Times has been detained on suspicion of revealing state secrets.

The research assistant, Zhao Yan, was detained on Sept. 17 while in Shanghai on personal business. His family received formal notice on Sept. 21, from the Beijing State Security Bureau, that Mr. Zhao was "in criminal detention under suspicion of illegally providing state secrets to foreigners."

"We are deeply, deeply concerned about the detention of Zhao Yan," said Susan Chira, foreign editor of The Times. "We are doing everything we can to assure his safety and we are helping his family get legal assistance."

"We can state categorically that Mr. Zhao has not provided any state secrets to our newspaper," Ms. Chira said.

Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, has contacted the White House, the State Department and the Chinese government on Mr. Zhao's behalf.

Some Beijing journalists have speculated that the detention is linked to an article in The Times on Sept. 7 reporting the unexpected news that the former Communist Party chairman, Jiang Zemin, planned to resign his last position of power, as chairman of the Central Military Commission. The article cited unnamed sources with ties to the leadership.

Deliberations among party leaders are highly secretive in China, and leaks are considered a crime. In this case, the accuracy of the article was confirmed last Sunday, when Mr. Jiang relinquished his military post.

The Chinese authorities have not notified The Times about Mr. Zhao's detention and have not said what secret information he allegedly revealed, or to whom, Ms. Chira said.

Most foreign bureaus in China employ local people to help scour official sources, newspapers and the Internet for information, and to assist in translations. Some Chinese assistants have had trouble with the authorities over the years when the newspapers they worked for wrote on subjects considered politically sensitive.

But the criminal laws on leaking state secrets, while vague about the definition of a secret, are unusually severe, with lengthy prison terms possible for those convicted.

"We are eager to ensure that no local employee of The Times be held responsible for news coverage by our correspondents," Ms. Chira said.

Ms. Chira stressed that Mr. Zhao was employed as a researcher, to assist correspondents in gathering information, and that he had not functioned as a reporter or writer.

The Times's Beijing bureau hired Mr. Zhao in May of this year. He previously worked for China Reform, a magazine known for its articles on farmers' and labor rights, and he was known for aggressive reporting on government abuses of power.

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Next we have an excerpt from the article in question, written by Joseph Kahn:

China Ex-President May Be Set to Yield Last Powerful Post

BEIJING, Sept. 6 - Jiang Zemin, China's military chief and senior leader, has told Communist Party officials that he plans to resign, prompting an intense and so far inconclusive struggle for control of the armed forces, two people with leadership connections say.

Mr. Jiang's offer to relinquish authority as chairman of the Central Military Commission potentially gives Hu Jintao - who succeeded Mr. Jiang as head of the Communist Party and president of China in 2002 and is now vice chairman of the military commission - a chance to become the country's undisputed top leader, commanding the state, the army and the ruling party.

But people here who were informed about a bargaining session under way at a government compound in western Beijing said it remained unclear whether Mr. Jiang genuinely intended to step aside, or if he would do so on terms acceptable to Mr. Hu.

Chinese political battles are often waged by indirection, with senior officials rarely stating their bottom line and often relying on supporters to represent their interests. Thus, one official said, it is possible that Mr. Jiang, 78, has calculated that he will be called on to remain military chief or to hold another position of influence.

Still, Mr. Jiang's planned resignation, which he announced to a meeting of senior party officials late last week, is an indication that the horse-trading under way before the convening of a national party meeting this month is the most contentious since a partial transfer of power to younger leaders took place in 2002, the people who were told about the proceedings said.

If Mr. Hu, who is 62, were to gain control of the armed forces, he could potentially carry out an agenda that some analysts say is more open to change at home and possibly less truculent in managing local hot spots like Hong Kong and Taiwan.

China's party-controlled news media have not reported on the secretive meetings. People who described the proceedings on condition of anonymity probably have only a partial understanding of what happened and have received their information from other individuals who have a vested interest in the outcome.

There are signs, though, that the jockeying goes beyond the closed-door deliberations that precede any major party meeting. A party official said he had been notified that the formal agenda for the coming meeting of the party's 198-member Central Committee - a discussion of how to improve party governance - had been scrapped, an indication that it had been overtaken by the broader power struggle. ...

For a fuller understanding of the issue, you should read the complete article at The New York Times.

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Next comes a column written by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times. Kristof, a former Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, returns frequently to China, and writes frequently about China. In the American spectrum of political thought, he is considered solidly in the pro China camp. Notwithstanding the provocative title; and it did indeed provoke.

The New York Times EDITORIAL DESK | December 1, 2004, Wednesday

China's Donkey Droppings

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Late Edition - Final , Section A , Page 31 , Column 6

For the last century, the title of "most important place in the world" has belonged to the United States, but that role seems likely to shift in this century to China.

So what are China's new leaders, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, really like? Are they visionaries who are presiding over the greatest explosion of wealth the world has ever known? Or are they ruthless thugs who persecute Christians, Falun Gong adherents, labor leaders and journalists in a desperate attempt to maintain their dictatorship?

There's some evidence for both propositions, and they are probably both true to some degree.

When Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen rose to the helm of the Communist Party two years ago, many Chinese hoped they would bring a new openness to a nation that is dynamic economically but stagnant intellectually. Instead, China has become more repressive.

The repression has now engulfed a member of The New York Times's family. Zhao Yan, a researcher for the Beijing bureau of The Times, has been detained by the authorities since September and is not allowed to communicate with his family or lawyers.

Mr. Zhao is accused of leaking state secrets, a very serious charge that could lead to a decade in prison. China's government may believe that he was behind the September scoop by The Times's Beijing bureau chief, Joseph Kahn, that China's former leader, Jiang Zemin, was about to retire from his last formal position.

While The Times's policy is, wisely, never to comment on the sources of articles, my own private digging indicates that Mr. Zhao was not the source for that scoop. He is innocent of everything except being a fine journalist who, before joining The Times, wrote important articles in the Chinese press about corruption.

(In fairness, sending journalists to prison for doing their job is not an exclusively Chinese phenomenon. Several American journalists - Jim Taricani of NBC, Judith Miller of this newspaper and Matthew Cooper of Time - may be sent to U.S. prisons in the next month or two for refusing to reveal their sources.)

Mr. Zhao's case is depressingly similar to that of another Chinese journalist, Jiang Weiping. He is serving a six-year sentence for "revealing state secrets," even though his real crime was exposing corruption.

"China has changed so much economically, but not politically," Jiang Weiping's wife, Li Yanling, told me. "It's a puzzle to me."

The authorities ordered Ms. Li to keep quiet about her husband's arrest, and detained her when she didn't. The couple's daughter, now 15, was traumatized at losing first her father and then her mother to the Chinese prison system. When Ms. Li was finally released, the daughter called her constantly from school to make sure that she had not been arrested again.

Mr. Zhao's arrest is just the latest in a broad crackdown in China. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 42 journalists are now in prison in China, more than in any other country.

"There was a period of openness, a period of hope, when the new leaders first came to power," said Jiao Guobiao, a journalism professor at Beijing University. "But now they've consolidated power, and everything has closed up again."

Mr. Jiao should know. He wrote an essay this year denouncing censorship, and it was immediately censored. Now the government has banned Mr. Jiao from teaching.

I've felt this cooling as well. I was planning to visit China this month, but the government has declined to give me a visa. It's the first time I've been refused, and the State Security Ministry may have worried that I would write a column about its unjust imprisonment of Mr. Zhao.

I love China, and I share its officials' distaste for those who harm it. That's why I'm angry that hard-liners in Beijing are presenting China to the world as repressive, fragile, tyrannical and backward. They are also undermining China's long-term prospects by gagging its people.

China now dazzles visitors with luxury skyscrapers, five-star hotels and modern freeways. This boom is real and spectacular, but for China to be an advanced nation it needs not only spaceships, but also freedom.

Otherwise, all that dazzle is just a mirage. The Chinese leaders might recall an old peasant expression, "Lu fen dan'r, biaomian'r guang." It means, "On the outside, even donkey droppings gleam."

The New York Times