Reporters Without Borders (RSF) regrets that the World Economic Forum, which brings government leaders and big businessmen together in the Swiss resort of Davos, is lending itself as a platform to Chinese President Xi Jinping without any heed to the human rights situation in his country.<\/p>\n
January 17, 2017<\/p>\n
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) regrets that the World Economic Forum, which brings government leaders and big businessmen together in the Swiss resort of Davos, is lending itself as a platform to Chinese President Xi Jinping without any heed to the human rights situation in his country.<\/p>\n
Xi\u2019s participation in the four-day forum, which begins today, is unprecedented. As well as being the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s general secretary, he also heads the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), which is in charge of censoring the Internet and preparing the propaganda that is distributed online.<\/p>\n
He is accompanied by such Internet giants as Jack Ma, the executive chairman of the Alibaba Group, who recently acquired Hong Kong\u2019s leading English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, and Zhang Yaqing, the CEO of the Chinese search engine Baidu, Beijing\u2019s leading censorship tool. Li Ruigang, the chairman of Media Capital and owner of other Hong Kong media outlets, is also among the media and communication leaders accompanying him.<\/p>\n
Forum organizer Klaus Schwab said \u201cdialogue<\/em>\u201d is to be one of the watchwords of this year\u2019s event and Swiss Confederation President Doris Leuthard described China as a \u201cmodel of development\u201d while refering to the importance of \u201ceducation\u201d and stressing that \u201cdigitalization must be democratized like knowledge was democratized through the printing press.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is regrettable that the Davos forum is providing a platform to a dictator in such a laudatory manner when human rights are being suppressed more in China now than they have for the past two decades,<\/em>\u201d said Benjamin Isma\u00efl, the head of RSF\u2019s Asia-Pacific desk.<\/p>\n \u201cHow can these comments be regarded as sincere when freedom of the press, information and expression are missing from any dialogue with China? How can China be regarded as a development model when its censors permit no public debate about its environmental problems, and when the Chinese education system, the state media and Internet companies erase events such as the Tiananmen Square massacre from Chinese history, thereby keeping most of the public in ignorance?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n In his opening address, President Xi warned against the \u201cexcessive chase of profit<\/em>\u201d and the dangers of a globalization that did not try to benefit all countries. He also told political leaders that it was pointless to fear problems and that they should \u201cface<\/em>\u201d them instead.<\/p>\n RSF\u2019s Isma\u00efl added: \u201cXi\u2019s address unintentionally told the international community what attitude it should adopt toward China in the absence of any improvement in its respect for fundamental freedoms. Political and business leaders must end their long silence about Chinese censorship, which affects economic development in both China and the rest of the world.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n What won\u2019t be discussed in Davos:<\/strong><\/p>\n Added to RSF\u2019s list of press freedom predators<\/a> as soon as he became president, Xi is the world\u2019s leading censor in terms of the number of Internet users denied access to information that is freely and independently reported and critical of the government.<\/p>\n He is also the initiator of a policy aimed at securing hegemonic control over news and information and establishing a world media order heavily influenced by China. Last April, an RSF report entitled \u201cBeijing\u2019s invisible hand on Hong Kong\u2019s media<\/a>\u201d described the threats to media freedom in the \u201cSpecial Administrative Region.\u201d<\/p>\n The Chinese authorities implement press censorship by issuing very strict directives to media outlets and by keeping tight control on coverage of pro-democracy movements. Reprisals against information activists, journalists and bloggers are currently being intensified and have turned China into the world\u2019s biggest prison for news and information providers, with more than 100 journalists and cyber-dissidents currently detained. They include the well-known journalist Gao Yu<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Three citizen journalists and RSF Press Freedom Prize winners \u2013 Lu Yuyu<\/strong><\/a>, Li Tingyu<\/a><\/strong> and Huang Qi<\/a><\/strong> (the editor of the human rights information website 64Tianwang<\/em>) \u2013 were jailed in 2016 just for covering events that were thought to reflect badly on the Communist Party.<\/p>\n China has devised one of the world\u2019s most sophisticated systems of online censorship and surveillance and continues to be on RSF\u2019s list of \u201cenemies of the Internet.\u201d Cut off from the rest of the world, Xinjiang and Tibet continue to be information \u201cblack holes\u201d where Internet access is highly controlled or non-existent. The authorities also keep the foreign press under close watch.<\/p>\n RSF urged leaders attending the G20 summit<\/a> in the southeastern city of Hangzhou last September to end their silence about the decline in justice in China, which is increasingly using forced confessions<\/a> to justify the imprisonment of information activists and all those who criticize Xi and the Communist Party.<\/p>\n