【10.03.09 纽约时报】Editor Is Fired After Criticizing Chinese Registration System

青蛙小王子

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/world/asia/10china.html?ref=asia

BEIJING — A top editor of a weekly newspaper who recently called for the reform of China’s onerous household registration system, which restricts where people can live, has been forced out of his job in a fresh warning that journalists who boldly challenge government policy face retribution.  


The dismissed journalist, Zhang Hong, had been deputy editor in chief of the Web site of the Economic Observer, which is based in Beijing. Two Chinese media sources reached by telephone said he was fired because of his efforts to unite a group of journalists to criticize the registration system, which ties Chinese to their parents’ hometown if they want government services.
Reached by telephone Tuesday night, Mr. Zhang would not comment on the details of his dismissal.
But in a letter leaked to selected Chinese and foreign journalists on Tuesday, Mr. Zhang wrote that after the editorial was published, “I was punished accordingly; other colleagues and media partners also felt repercussions.”
He also wrote in the letter that his editorial had been “the product of a few editors working behind closed doors, only the impact it stirred up went beyond our first expectation.”
On March 1, just days before China’s annual legislative sessions, Mr. Zhang’s newspaper and a dozen other Chinese publications published his editorial, asserting that the registration system unfairly restricts the right of Chinese citizens to seek a better life outside their hometowns. “We believe in people born to be free and people possessing the right to migrate freely,” the editorial proclaimed.
The editorial vanished from the Internet within hours, the victim of China’s censors, but not before it was picked up by foreign news outlets.
The struggle between China’s censorship system and the country’s more independent-minded media outlets is a constant theme as the government tries to steer public opinion in its favor while presenting itself as open — even eager — for criticism.
The publication of the editorial by 13 big-city newspapers, financial publications and regional dailies effectively served as a test of where the government draws the line. It was especially provocative because it was an organized effort, not an individual’s complaint.
Propaganda authorities reacted by launching an investigation and issuing an official warning to the Economic Observer.
The editorial was timed to appear just before the biggest political event of the year in China, the annual meetings of more than 5,000 legislators and representatives of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. While their roles are largely ceremonial and their election is far from democratic, the representatives sometimes highlight issues of concern to ordinary Chinese.
In his letter, Mr. Zhang, 36, wrote that like many Chinese he does not know which delegates supposedly represent him. But he wrote, “As media, we hope that the people’s voice can be heard by the representatives who ‘represent public opinion.’ ”
He wrote that he was now an “independent commentator.” One of his colleagues said Mr. Zhang had expressed hope that he might be able to rejoin the paper later.
Many government services, including schooling, are tied to the household registration system, and the rules for changing the locale are frustratingly bureaucratic. Nonetheless, hundreds of millions of rural Chinese have migrated to the cities in search of jobs and opportunities, sacrificing rights and benefits they would be entitled to in their hometowns.
Defenders of the 50-year-old system say that without it Chinese cities would be overwhelmed by migrants and ringed by slums.