Editorial excerpts | The New York Times on Chinese media restrictions

The Chinese media have never had much freedom to pursue muckraking stories, or even to dutifully report the facts. Now, President Xi Jinping is going to extraordinary lengths to rein the press in even further.
Mr Xi recently visited the three main newsrooms in the country to convey in unmistakable terms that journalists are expected to behave like apparatchiks. That message, which predictably received fawning coverage, came a few days after the government announced it would further restrict foreign media, too.
Under rules Beijing says it will start enforcing next month, foreign companies will be barred from publishing online content — including text, videos, maps and games — in China without prior approval from the government. The regulations, which could affect major American companies including Amazon, Microsoft and Apple, are intended to “promote core socialist values.”
Those stifling steps will add to the information barriers Chinese people already face. Major sites, including Google, Facebook and Twitter, which hundreds of millions of people around the globe use, are already blocked in China. The Chinese government began blocking access to the English and Chinese websites of The New York Times in 2012, in retaliation for an article that exposed the hidden wealth of relatives of Wen Jiabao, who was then prime minister.
Mr Xi may feel pressure to restrict the worldview of his citizens at a time when the Chinese economy is under strain. An article on Monday in the country’s official English-language newspaper, China Daily, said news organizations were “essential to political stability.”
“It is necessary for the media to restore people’s trust in the party, especially as the economy has entered a new normal and suggestions that it is declining and dragging down the global economy have emerged,” the article said.
It is during trying times, of course, that societies benefit most from a press that is free to scrutinize questionable policies and expose ineffective leaders.
Mr Xi’s new guidance is likely to make the official press even more docile than it traditionally has been. But the approach will be self-defeating for the government in the long run. In an increasingly interconnected world, it is harder to control the flow of information across borders and within countries. New mechanisms of Internet censorship are typically met with creative tools to bypass them. And each new effort to keep Chinese people ignorant about their government and the outside world will make them only more determined to learn.
The New York Times, Feb 24
(via AP)