China is a vast market for American Internet, technology and information companies, a major but troubling economic opportunity for companies such as AOL, which announced yesterday a deal with China’s number two media company, Shanghai Media Group, to produce a Chinese language version of AOL.
While the new AOL service will be aimed at Chinese language speakers in the U.S., no doubt AOL is eyeing the vast and lucrative market in China. Both companies say the partnership is just a beginning.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Chinese government isn’t relenting at all in its persecution of journalists, bloggers and online commenters deemed to be violating the country’s strict censorship laws.
The New York Times’ Jim Yardley reports today that Chinese authorities may revive a case against a jailed researcher for the Times. Zhao Yan has been jailed for 19 months on charges of revealing state secrets to the New York Times, which both Mr. Zhao and the Times disavow.
In March, prosecutors dropped the charges against Mr. Zhao, but he remains in jail nonetheless. Now, word comes that prosecutors are beginning a new investigation against the researcher.
Instead, Mr. Zhao, an employee of the Beijing office of The Times, remained in jail even though there no longer were any charges against him. Now, one question is whether prosecutors used the withdrawal as a procedural maneuver to delay a trial, which had been scheduled for late March. Legal experts say Mr. Zhao should have been released after the withdrawal, regardless of any intention to reopen the case. “This is a man who has been held for a long time after the indictment was withdrawn,” said John Kamm, a human rights campaigner, whose Dui Hua Foundation, based in San Francisco, works to free political prisoners in China. “I think it is a terrible black eye for the Chinese justice system. It’s a terrible black eye because there is no transparency, there is no accountability.”
Another Chinese journalist, Shi Tao, was charged with leaking state secrets and has been imprisoned for ten years. A documentary filmmaker named Hao Wu is also in jail, and hasn’t been charged, for filming a Christian group that is not recognized by the Chinese government.
Let’s hope that AOL doesn’t push into the Chinese market under the same rationalization that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have offered — namely, that China’s censorship policies are merely a price to pay for tapping into the booming market and that it’s better to be there under those conditions than not be there at all.
Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that blogger Zhao Jing was imprisoned. In fact, Mr. Zhao’s blog was shut-down through the action of MSN, but he was not imprisoned.
Cynthia Brumfield at 8:11 AM|Comments(1)
Sorry, but Zhao Jing hasn't been jailed or imprisoned. Reread your Jan. 6 blog post.
Posted by: lzh at April 19, 2006 11:48 PM
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