Why President Xi thinks Charlie Hebdo had it coming

Why President Xi thinks Charlie Hebdo had it coming

 By Jonathan Manthorpe | Jan 16, 2015 4:27 pm

 

China’s President Xi Jinping was not among the world leaders who linked arms in Paris for their photo op to show solidarity with the victims of the Charlie Hebdo shootings.

Small wonder. When it comes to accepting the concept of freedom of expression, President Xi is very much on the Islamic State’s end of the spectrum. Indeed, as the leaders posed for the camera, China’s state-controlled news agency, Xinhua, was running an editorial saying that the slaughter of the Charlie Hebdo staff was an excellent example of why government-imposed limits on freedom of expression is a good thing.

The editorial noted that Charlie Hebdo has been criticized for being “both crude and heartless. What they (supporters of the magazine) seem not to realise is that the world is diverse, and there should be limits on press freedom. Unfettered and unprincipled satire, humiliation and free speech are not acceptable.”

Censorship in China has racked up several notches since Xi came to power late in 2012. This followed two decades of relative liberalization during a time when state-controlled media was expected to make a profit — and so was also expected to provide news coverage that people wanted to read and hear. The same period saw a rise in corruption in Chinese journalism. Reporters and editors frequently demand money to report stories — or (and this is even more profitable) in return for not running stories embarrassing to those wealthy enough to pay the fine.

This culture of corruption has left reporters and editors especially vulnerable if they stray over the boundaries of what the Communist Party will accept. For example, Shen Hao, one of the fathers of Chinese investigative journalism in the 1990s, has been charged with extortion for demanding money in return for news coverage, and was forced to make two televised confessions late last year. Shen is not alone. Beijing’s censors pay particular attention to microbloggers with large followings. Several have had their sites shut down, and a few have been paraded in handcuffs and charged with various crimes.

Sometimes the approach to censorship is much more brutal — especially in Hong Kong. In the early hours of last Monday morning, just as the Xinhua editorial was hitting the wires, men threw firebombs at the home of dissident Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai. Five minutes later, more incendiaries were thrown at the gates of Lai’s Next Media offices, which publishes Hong Kong’s most popular newspaper, Apple Daily.

The attacks on Lai, whose newspaper has echoed his own strong support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, have the hallmarks of triad criminal gangs, which Beijing calls “patriotic organizations.” Indeed, there is a long record of triads in Hong Kong attacking troublesome journalists, including an assassination attempt on Lai himself. What’s not clear is whether the triad gangsters act on direct orders from Beijing or — perhaps more likely — on behalf of people who want to curry favour with the Chinese Communist Party.

The threat of violence has had some success in encouraging self-censorship in Hong Kong. More successful yet has been the fear among Hong Kong media owners and publishers that their business interests in mainland China will suffer if they publish material Beijing won’t like.

Efforts to curb freedom of speech and expression in Hong Kong tend to be violent because there are few other options. These freedoms have been part of Hong Kong’s heritage as a British colony for a century and a half. When China regained sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, it vowed to preserve these rights for 50 years.

Last year, 2014, was a particularly grim one for violent attacks on journalists in Hong Kong, all of them bearing the trademarks of the triads. During the two-month-long occupation of three commercial and business districts by pro-democracy demonstrators, at least 24 journalists were attacked and injured by club-wielding gangs. Earlier in the year there was a similar attack on two founders of a new online news outlet.

The most serious incident last year was on February 26, when newspaper editor Kevin Lau Chun-to —known for his critical reporting on Hong Kong and mainland Chinese politicians — was attacked as he left a restaurant. In classic triad style, Lau was slashed across his back and the back of his legs with the intent of crippling him for life. Nine men have been arrested for this attack, several of them with known triad connections.

There was an almost identical attack in 1998 on Hong Kong’s most popular radio host, Albert Cheng. He was assaulted in the car park of his radio station, and he too was slashed six times across his back and legs with meat cleavers.

The threat of violence has had some success in encouraging self-censorship in Hong Kong. But more successful yet has been the fear among Hong Kong media owners and publishers that their business interests in mainland China will suffer if they publish material Beijing won’t like.

Kevin Lau, for example, was attacked just after he had been fired from his post as editor-in-chief of Ming Pao, Hong Kong’s most trusted Chinese-language newspaper. Lau was fired after his newspaper reported on the use of Hong Kong and other tax havens by wealthy mainland Chinese, including government officials and the “princeling” children of senior Communist Party members. The newspaper is owned by billionaire businessman Tiong Hiew King, who has global investments in oil, gas and timber, including in China.

Jimmy Lai has also experienced Beijing’s pressure on his commercial interests. Lai, a refugee in Hong Kong from just across the border in southern China, had built a hugely successful chain of clothing stores, Giordano, at the time of the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. Repulsed by the actions of the Communist Party, Lai decided to branch out into the media and in 1990 founded Next Magazine. This swiftly became the most outspoken Chinese-language forum for criticism of the Beijing regime.

In revenge, the authorities started using any pretext to close down Lai’s Giordano stores in mainland China. Feeling the hot breath of the hounds on his neck, Lai sold Giordano, using the money to found Apple Daily in 1995. Within a year it was the most popular newspaper in Hong Kong’s crowded media market. Lai offered a diet of serious commentary and investigative journalism, leavened with unabashed tabloid coverage of celebrities and crime.

Lai has also been an open supporter of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. He now faces charges for instigating the protests and helping finance the two-month “Occupy” demonstrations in September and October.

Jonathan Manthorpe is the author of “Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan,” published by Palgrave-Macmillan. He has been a foreign correspondent and international affairs columnist for nearly 40 years. He was European bureau chief for the Toronto Star and then Southam News in the late 1970s and the 1980s. In 1989 he was appointed Africa correspondent by Southam News and in 1993 was posted to Hong Kong to cover Asia. For the last few years he has been based in Vancouver, writing international affairs columns for what is now the Postmedia Group. He left the group last year and now writes for a range of newspapers and websites. jonathan.manthorpe@gmail.com