(LibertySociety.com) – When a country accepts a communist government, it agrees to a specific set of rules that give the regime sole power to disseminate goods and services. Private companies investing in news organizations cause a direct conflict in places like China that run on communist principles. On October 8, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) proposed a law to ban privately-held companies from investing in news agencies on and off-line. That means China intends to stop all speech that doesn’t run through a government filter, affecting all media and newspapers like the South China Morning Post.
China’s ruling Communist Party has set out to ban private investment in the media, amid an ongoing program of regulatory changes aimed at tightening state control over the private sector. https://t.co/JlklATyt9M
— Radio Free Asia (@RadioFreeAsia) October 12, 2021
Although laws regarding funding for newsgathering and reporting stem back to 2005 in China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has not only been slow to enforce them, the old rules only applied to physical papers. In a world where most information is online, they felt the policies regarding private investments needed an update.
But the new proposal doesn’t just affect who invests in the Chinese news media; it also stops private companies from broadcasting anything related to the country’s affairs. The CCP would essentially control every bit of media about China, including politics, military matters, economics, culture, and health.
A retired lecturer from the Shanxi University in Taiyuan, China, stated the government wants to “control its message,” ensuring the communist party dominates every word to its people and the world. And with no independent check of the news, the CCP can put its own spin on whatever story it chooses to tell going forward.
Copyright 2021, LibertySociety.com
