(TibetanReview.net, May04’25) – Press freedom is at its lowest ebb globally in more than two decades and China, which ranks among the least free, is the biggest jailer of journalists, according to the latest annual report of Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières or RSF) released May 2.
China has dropped six places from the previous year to 178th in a worsening of an already dire picture. The Index ranks Eritrea at the bottom-most, and North Korea at 179th, out of the total of 180 countries and regions surveyed.
“China right now is the biggest jailor of journalists in the world,” rfa.org May 2 quoted Aleksandra Bielakowska, RSF’s Asia Pacific advocacy manager, as saying.
“They really managed to arrest all the people that were courageous enough and who still wanted to report on issues in the ground,” she has said.
According to her, the erosion of what was limited press freedom in China began more than a decade ago and accelerated under President Xi Jinping, as he and loyalists concentrated state power in his person.
The media freedom situation in China is now almost akin to the total control over information exercised by North Korea’s dynastic government, she has said.
The ability of foreign media to operate in China is also stated to have become heavily circumscribed.
Bielakowska has also pointed out that some 15 years ago, foreign reporters could go to regions that chafed against Beijing’s rule such as East Turkestan (Xinjiang) and Tibet, but it is now impossible unless as part of a government-supervised propaganda trip.
“Not just an authoritarian country, but a really totalitarian system where nobody can speak up, nobody can report on any issues,” she has said. “And reporters can only work as the party’s propaganda.”
What is more, China’s aggressive suppression of independent media is increasingly emulated in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, with Cambodia, a Beijing ally in Southeast Asia, dropping 10 places in the index to 161st, for example.