Censorship in China: How Western Journalists Censor …

Theres no way to know precisely where the line is, much less when you might go over it, except by means of delicately tuned antennae, said Orville Schell, who has written many books on China and is the director of Asia Societys Center on U.S.-China Relations (where I was formerly a fellow). But onceyouve crossed over into the observation zone of the Party, you know it, and the question of denied access cannot help but come into your calculations about what you say and what you write.

Paul Mooney, the journalist who recently was denied a visa for Reuters, doesnt know when he crossed the line. It could have been his reporting on AIDS or Tibet, or the fact that he worked on the dissident Chen Guangchengs English-language memoir. He told me that he didnt pull his punches in China, simply because he didnt see the point of being there if he couldnt write what he wanted. Other Americans advised him to be more pragmatic. Even over the past year, waiting for my visa to come through, journalist friends, academics and China watchers said to me, stop posting critical things on Facebook, he said. Many foreign journalists do their Chinese visa applications in December, to get them in before the end of the year. Mooney told me that a European journalist approached him for an interview recently but did not plan to write a story until after his own visa had been renewed. How many foreign journalists are doing the same thing every year at this time, or are now doing this throughout the year? Mooney wondered.

Countless Chinese journalists do this all the time. Of course, for them the stakes are much higher: They could end up behind bars. Self-censorship is in my blood, an outspoken Chinese Internet dissident once proudly told me. His years of carefully dancing around political land mines kept him out of exile or jail. Murong Xuecun, a writer and an increasingly bold critic, recently admitted: I often remind myself: Don't engage in self-censorship, and I was confident I had succeeded in this, but so far I have not yet written a single article about Tibet issues, even though I lived in Llasa for three years; nor have I openly discussed Xinjiang issues, even though they are of great concern to me.

This is not to say that all Western reporters censor themselves in China. Over the past year or so, there has been startlingly bold reporting. Oft-cited examples include David Barbozas Pulitzer Prize winning reporting on the riches acquired by the family of Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, and somewhat ironically, Bloombergs own investigation into the wealth of the relatives of President Xi Jinping. Those news organizations paid a price for their reporting, but others write on sensitive topics and emerge unscathed. In 2010, Evan Osnos, former Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, did a profile of the Dalai Lama, and he didnt get the boot.Some writers are less fearful of expulsion because they are not career China hands, or perhaps because theyareChina hands who have just had enough.Jeremy Goldkorn, a Beijing-based blogger and the director of the research firm Danwei, told me, Every time I apply for a visa or leave the country and come back in, the thought always passes through my mind that maybe this time its not going to work. But I've been in China for so long, that Im thinking it would be a good thing if they kicked me out.

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Censorship in China: How Western Journalists Censor ...