Asia times just published an article written by James Borton, on the subject of newly gained press freedoms in China due to the economic reform. “China’s free-market economy is generating unprecedented but not unlimited press freedoms, and there’s momentum. As Beijing embraces a market economy, its proliferating news media too are becoming privatized, more commercial, combative and fiercely competitive. This gives rise to some of the best investigative journalism that truly sheds light and serves the people, and some of the worst sensationalism.”
The article quoted Caijing editor Hu Shuli, one of China’s leading journalists saying: “What is unique in China is that the news Internet websites have become primary sources of news, If we want to find out what happened recently in China, we would log on to news websites such as Sina. The major websites such as Sina, Sohu, Netease, especially Sina, own almost all the copyrights for traditional media news broadcasting, and have thus become the leading news websites with an extremely large news platform.”
