China Media Project’s David Bandurski rounds up online reactions to the suspension of Party journal editor Deng Yuwen. Deng says that his employer, the Central Party School, had received complaints from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs over an op-ed he wrote for The Financial Times urging Beijing to abandon North Korea. Bandurski writes that the level of subsequent discussion demonstrates the increased scrutiny under which Chinese media control now exists.
Chang Ping, a former CMP fellow and a prominent editor at the Southern Daily Group, came under fire in 2008 after he published an editorial on FT Chinese about unrest in Tibet. That editorial, “Where does the truth about Lhasa come from?“, was the beginning of the end for Chang Ping’s long career with Southern Weekly. He was finally forced out in January 2011.
But one of the most interesting differences between Chang Ping’s case and that of Deng Yuwen is how much the latter has been talked about inside China. And one important reason for this is the rise of the microblog.
[…] It’s difficult to quantify the discussion over Deng Yuwen’s suspension and China’s policy toward North Korea, but there definitely is plenty of discussion out there. Once again, this raises the broader issue of how media control itself is being subjected to a greater degree of exposure than we’ve seen in the past, thanks in large part to the development of social media and other internet tools.
