China in process to ban private investment in media outlets

Beijing: China in the process of tightening the media laws in the country has not introduced a bill which will ban the private investment in the media outlets.

Experts in the field say the proposals show Beijing’s ongoing efforts to silence opposition voices.

“The Communist Party is trying to put all news and commentary shows under its own control. All different voices have been eliminated,” Wu Zuolai, a Chinese political commentator, told VOA.

“Limiting the role of the media will distort public opinions, and local governments might enforce the rule with extremely strict measures,” one poster on Zhihu said.

This latest proposal to ban private investment in Chinese news outlets has sparked discussion on Chinese online and many experts believe the regulation would lead to a further decline of media freedom.

Traditionally, media such as newspapers are funded largely through the public sector while other online news relies more on private or foreign investment.

Cheng Yizhong, who runs a news website for the Chinese diaspora in the US, said government funding has been the main source of income for media outlets in China since the 1990s.

China continues to take internet censorship, surveillance, and propaganda to unprecedented levels making it one of the world’s worst countries for journalists and the “biggest jailer” of scribes, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

The report published in March this year also noted that President Xi Jinping has taken online censorship, surveillance, and propaganda to unprecedented levels since he became China’s leader in 2013.

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), an agency personally supervised by Xi, has deployed a wide range of measures aimed at controlling the information accessible to China’s 989 million Internet users.