Censorship in Chinese Media
By Hung Huang
Hung HuangEditor’s Note: Hung Huang, chief executive of a Chinese publishing empire, writes us from Beijing. For her first post we asked her to talk about how censorship affects the economic development of businesses like hers; below, she describes how government censors are paying less attention to material that was once considered too sexy for Chinese audiences, but still seem very concerned about politically sensitive information.
I always used to hate it when foreigners focused on censorship of the media in China. I think foreigners have this image of a Fu Manchu-like Chinaman, sitting in a dark corner trying to censor everything. I often wanted to say: “It is not like that. We don’t really feel that much censorship.”
Take my job as a lifestyle magazine editor and publisher. We have not been censored for the last four years, and we have had pretty aggressive (i.e., very sexy) fashion shoots, etc. I mean, FHM is the most popular men’s magazine here.
Clearly we have liberalized.
However, during the current milk powder crisis, I realized censorship is actually pretty strong. Yes, Fu Manchu as Big Brother is among us. There is a lot of open debate about the milk powder crisis on the Internet. People are questioning the news, and everyone suspects a massive government cover-up job. However, all this debate is banned on state-owned media, particularly television.
Another prime example of censorship during the Olympics happened when the Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang dropped out of the race. There was a lot of speculation as to how long his coach, the government, his sponsors and even Liu himself had known that he could not compete. The public felt that they were given a song and dance at the last minute. Again, state-owned traditional media were not allowed to talk about it.
What was really funny was that last December, at a CCTV news conference, the wife of the director of the Olympics channel jumped on stage and declared to the world that her husband was having an extramarital affair (see the video below). Now, CCTV is known as the tongue of the Communist Party. They are supposed to be above reproach; it is their job to censor everyone else. Of course, not a single TV station dared to report on this very juicy piece of news. Instead it was on www.tudou.com, the Chinese version of YouTube. The tape of the hysterical wife was up for about a day or so, and then it was taken down by the censors.
So censorship does exist, although the Chinese censors have decided that half-naked women are O.K. for the public, and the Dalai Lama — or, for that matter, the love life of a sportscaster on state-run TV — certainly isn’t.
