For the final exam of last semester's "American Journalism" class at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, I asked my 60 students to write an Op-Ed piece on the detention last September of Zhao Yan, a native Chinese journalist working as a researcher for the Beijing bureau of The New York Times. Mr. Yan was arrested by the State Security Bureau September 17, and was charged with "revealing state secrets."
The case is of course fraught with controversy and passion from any number of positions. It is a more complex issue than those viewing it only from a western perspective might think at first blush. It certainly is to dozens of young Chinese journalists-to-be.
You can see for yourself what 20 year-old Chinese college students really think about "democracy" and a "free press" at WOW: We Observe the World, the blog and online news magazine written and produced by students of the Journalism Department at BFSU.
It's best to start with the Series Introductionand then scroll up to read the series of individual pieces--which will be added to on a daily basis.
