It's been a bad week for Chinese journalism. No sooner do we start processing yesterday's news of the arrest of Hong Kong-based journalist Ching Cheong, than we learn that the Beijing Public Security Bureau has hung the additional, quite ambiguous, charge of "Fraud" on Zhao Yan, the Chinese journalist who was working as a researcher for The New York Times when he was first "detained" last September and "arrested" last October and held incommunicado since the former. It would be surprising if he even knows he has a defense attorney, one Mr. Mo Shaoping. After all, attorney Mo has yet to lay eyes on his client.
And to top it off? Today we also learned, via Reuters, that two sociologists at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences have also been "detained on suspicion of leaking state secrets." Criminy, that's perhaps China's most prestigious, official and oldest "think tanks."
Important information on these matters can be found at the links below:
