China Is Number 1: For Jailing Journalists

You'll recall a few weeks ago China was declared to have the worlds largest economy. Yet the economic output of the United States is still twice as large.  China can claim a number 1, for jailing journalists.  If your going to be top of the pops why not do it with repression.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says in its annual report that 44 reporters languish in Chinese prisons. Second-placed Iranhas locked up 30 journalists, according to the report.

The list of imprisoned Chinese journalists is longer than it has ever been since CPJ began keeping records in 1990. That reflects “the increasingly repressive media and general political atmosphere that has evolved” sincePresident Xi Jinping took power two years ago, writes Bob Dietz, coordinator of the CPJ’s Asia program, in a commentary published alongside the report.

Nearly half the journalists held in Chinese jails are Tibetan or belong to the Uighur ethnic minority – a predominantly Muslim people from the far Western province of Xinjiang, where the authorities have responded harshly to a rising tide of separatist and religiously inspired violence.

But there has also been an increase this year “in the number of more mainstream, non-minority journalists who found themselves behind bars,” Mr. Dietz says.

They include 80-year-old Huang Zerong, who writes under the pen name of Tie Lu. He was arrested in September, not long after he had written an article criticizing the government’s propaganda tsar Liu Yunshan that was published on the Internet and in Chinese overseas media. He was later charged with “creating a disturbance” and is in custody awaiting trial.