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Urgent Business: Hong Kong, Freedom of Expression and 1997
The most important laws affecting freedom of expression come under the criminal law and concern such offences as counter-revolutionary incitement and propaganda, and subversion.* An act of counter-revolution is one "committed with the goal of overthrowing the political power of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist system". It was under these provisions that students and others were convicted following the suppression of the democracy movement in 1989. Crimes such as "counter-revolutionary subversion of the People's Government" and the lesser offence of "counter-revolutionary incitement and propaganda" were prominent in their prosecution. In a speech to martial law officers on 9 June, Deng characterized the "counter-revolutionary rebellion" as a conspiracy designed to "overthrow the Communist Party and topple the socialist system. Their goal was to replace the People's Republic with a bourgeois republic"5
6.1.1 The media in China
Freedom of expression in the media is tightly controlled by party and state regulations. Almost the entire spectrum of China's huge and unwieldy media - from national television to obscure book publishers is managed by the State; there are only a very few nominally private enterprises which have recently emerged outside this structure, though they are still subject to state controls. The media's function is to serve the interests of the people and socialism and, by extension, those of the party which embodies these interests as the guardian of the people's democratic dictatorship. Its primary task is to uphold the authority and legitimacy of the party and to promote its policies through propaganda; carrying news and information is subordinate.
From the earliest days of the People's Republic, strict control of the media has been perceived by China's leaders as central to building and retaining party legitimacy and its monopoly on authority and power. This historical legacy is particularly influential among the present leadership, a dwindling number of whom experienced the early revolutionary struggles of the CCP. Since the 1950s, under the powerful Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the CCP, the media has been subject to a highly systematic policy of control. This control involves the placement of party cells in all media organizations, and the direct participation
Articles 90-104 of the Criminal Law cover the definition and range of counter-revolutionary offences. See Albert Chen, supra note 1, at 191. In addition to the Criminal Law, the Law of the PRC on Guarding State Secrets and The Decision of the State Council on Rehabilitation through Labour Camps both have implications for freedom of speech, The former, enacted in 1988, retains broad and ambiguous prohibitions on disclosure of official information: the four-year jail term handed to former Beijing Daily editor Qi Lin in early 1992 for allegedly "leaking state secrets" demonstrates well its use as a political weapon. The latter permits that anti-social elements and counter-revolutionaries be sent to labour camps for a period of up to four years without trial. Constitutional rights to assembly, procession and demonstration -sitting side by side with the right to freedom of speech under Article 35 - are similarly limited by the Law of the PRC on Assemblies, Processions and Demonstrations, passed in Oct. 1989 to prevent a recurrence of the Spring protests.
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The Year of the Lie: Censorship and Disinformation in the People's Republic of China 1989, (London: ARTICLE 19, 1989), 35.
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