China Detains Journalist Amid Corona Crackdown
By Stefan J. Bos, Special Correspondent Worthy News
(Worthy News) – China has detained a prominent journalist amid an intensified clampdown by the ruling Communist authorities on independent reporting.
Du Bin, 48, was detained on Wednesday by police officers in Beijing, said his sister, Du Jirong. Police officers reportedly told her on Thursday that her brother had been placed under administrative detention for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”
The vaguely worded offense is one that the government often uses to quell activism and discussion of social and political issues, reported The New York Times newspaper.
Friends of Du, who worked as a freelance photographer for The New York Times, say they believe his detention may have been connected to several of his recent book projects.
One book, published in Taiwan in 2017, was a historical account of what is known as the “siege of Changchun,” when Communist troops blockaded the northeastern Chinese city in 1948 to starve out their rival Nationalist soldiers, leading to the deaths of at least 160,000 civilians.
LENIN EXPERIMENTS
Another book by Du, about the more nefarious aspects of Lenin’s experiments with Communism, was scheduled to be published in Taiwan on Jan. 1, 2021.
“Du Bin represented the best kind of journalism, “ noted Nicholas Kristof, opinion columnist of The New York Times, in comments obtained by Worthy News. He was “shining a light on those who needed attention as a step toward better policies. And I hope that China someday soon will honor him rather than imprison him,” Kristof added.
Du is among at least nearly 50 journalists known to be detained in China, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Many of them serve long sentences or are jailed in especially the Xinjiang region without any charges disclosed, the group added.
News of the detention underscored concerns that China’s government seeks to suppress dissent as it deals with the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.
U.S. President Donald Trump has called it the “China Virus” as it reportedly originated from the Chinese city of Wuhan, news that Chinese censors tried to suppress.
SECRET DOCUMENTS
On Saturday The New York Times and non-profit newsroom ProPublica said they had reviewed thousands of secret government directives and other documents. They lay bare in extraordinary detail the systems that helped the Chinese authorities shape online opinion during the pandemic.
In the early hours of February 7, China’s powerful internet censors experienced an unfamiliar and deeply unsettling sensation.
“They felt they were losing control. The news was spreading quickly that Li Wenliang, a doctor who had warned about a strange new viral outbreak only to be threatened by the police and accused of peddling rumors, had died of COVID-19,” The New York Times said.
Grief and fury coursed through social media. To people at home and abroad, Dr. Li’s death showed the terrible cost of the Chinese government’s instinct to suppress inconvenient information.
Yet China’s censors decided to double down. Warning of the “unprecedented challenge” Dr. Li’s passing had posed and the “butterfly effect” it may have set off, officials got to work. They were suppressing the inconvenient news and reclaiming the narrative, according to confidential directives sent to local propaganda workers and news outlets.
CONTROLLING SITES
They ordered news websites not to issue push notifications alerting readers to his death. They told social platforms to gradually remove his name from trending topics pages.
And the censors activated legions of fake online commenters to flood social sites with distracting chatter, stressing the need for discretion: “As commenters fight to guide public opinion, they must conceal their identity, avoid crude patriotism and sarcastic praise, and be sleek and silent in achieving results.”
China’s censors issued special instructions to manage anger over Dr. Li’s death.
Critics wonder how long authorities will be able to fully censor online expressions. But for now, the Chinese Communist Party seems determined to control the narrative.
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