CNN: China gags media ahead of party gathering

BEIJING, China (Reuters) - The People's Daily, mouthpiece of a Chinese Communist Party now gearing up for a key November Congress, has warned cell-phone users they endanger society if they swap political rumors via text messages.

Television regulators have threatened to sack cadres at local stations should the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement take over their airwaves, fearing that broadcasts might be sabotaged during the gathering of the party elite.

And Beijing's Internet police are training Web firm employees to keep their sites clean of politically sensitive material. Soon these self-censors will carry revokable licenses and, like drivers, may lose points for violations.

From pinpoint blocks on foreign news coverage accessible to a privileged few to all-out bans on texts challenging party boss Jiang Zemin, who is due to retire, propaganda chiefs are urging whatever it takes ahead of the Congress to "create a favorable atmosphere of public opinion."

But for undermanned, outmoded censors in the media trenches, the five-yearly ritual is fraught with new obstacles.

A high-technology revolution and market dynamics have driven party propagandists to use guerrilla tactics and grass-roots pressure to infiltrate the burgeoning industry, at least until regulators figure out a better system, analysts say.

"They cannot control that effectively, because high technology has reduced the capacity to control mass communications," said Wu Guoguang, a professor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

"But even if they cannot do it, they will try," he added.

In an extreme step, the government has blocked Google and other search engines stacked with content it deems unsavory.

Personality cult

Media tensions have mounted amid Jiang's rumored struggle to cling to power in the run-up to the Congress, where his so- called third generation of Communist apparatchiks are expected to yield to the fourth.

Jiang also wants to have his "Three Represents" theory, which paves the way for capitalist entrepreneurs to enter the Party, enshrined in its constitution.

With his legacy at stake and political future contested -- and with all eyes watching -- state television has been exalting Jiang's theory in segments lasting half the nightly news.

The party's Central Publicity Department has muzzled even oblique criticism. It has stopped state presses from reprinting sold-out books about China's widening social inequities, although several had support from on high.

One was a contentious Chinese Academy of Social Sciences survey showing workers and peasants, the age-old party backbone, slumping to society's bottom rungs, above only the jobless.

Another new book addressing similar ills -- the rural-urban divide, the tax burden on farmers and official corruption -- was banned in August after selling out its first 10,000 copies.

The book passed the censors and won approval from high-ranking cadres who read it before publicity bureaucrats blacklisted it, said author Zhong Dajun.

"They said my book attacked China's constitution and the Party's four basic principles, alienated workers and farmers and advocated Western values of human rights," the Beijing-based journalist-turned-economist said.

China Workers Publishing House said the book was one of around a dozen of its titles banned in the recent sweep. "China doesn't have a strict publishing law, so censorship is at the whim of officials," said an official at the publishing house.

Beijing has renewed its three-year push to squash Falun Gong, spearheaded by Jiang, since its [practitioners] claimed to have hijacked cable and satellite TV airwaves this year to air broadcasts.

The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) issued a circular last month demanding broadcasters be on the alert or risk dismissal, said a central television source.

Western television channels, despite their limited viewing audience, are under heavier surveillance.

China has hired 2,000 to 3,000 people, mostly retirees, to watch foreign channels carried by satellite into hotels and luxury homes and phone authorities whenever topics like Taiwan or Falun Gong come up, an industry source said.

Press paranoia

Internet firms were ordered to keep their sites clean of politically sensitive material

State media had more leeway in 1987, the last time party top brass went through such sweeping generational change, despite explosive debate over political and market reforms and the purge of Party Secretary Hu Yaobang earlier that year.

"The leadership wanted to discuss political reform at that party congress," said Wu, a former People's Daily editor and speech writer for party chief Zhao Ziyang, also later purged.

"Even if they had such worries, I think the basic situation was to let those ideas get published," said Wu.

But Jiang has not wielded nearly as much power as his predecessor Deng Xiaoping, and tightened media controls reflect that, said People's University journalism professor Yu Guoming.

"The more unconfident and unsure of itself the government is, the more strictly it will control the media," said Yu.