Chinese Bureaucrat Imprisoned for Satirical Poem on Government Corruption
Washington Post, “As Grip of Censors Endures in China, A Satirical Poem Leads to Jail Time”
Edward Cody
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January 8, 2007

Washington Post correspondent Edward Cody reports that a Chinese local education bureaucrat, Qin Zhongfei, was recently jailed because “of a poem he wrote satirizing local officials accused of corruption.”  Qin’s poem was in mocking reference to the “half-finished” local bridge, appropriations for the construction of a new school in which “construction never started,” and the local Tiger’s Mouth hotel which “was an incomplete shell with no sign it would ever be competed.” 

The poem reached government officials as it was spread through cell phone communication.  Two weeks later after the interrogation of many of Qin’s friends, the message was traced to him and he was arrested and charged with “criminal libel, which carries a penalty of up to three year sin prison.”  Qin’s story reached Hong Kong and other areas outside of China where information could not be controlled, and eventual pressure from the outside led to his release from prison and the charges were dropped.  On most of mainland China the television press was banned from reporting on Qin’s story.

The case of Qin’s imprisonment demonstrates the strict control of information by the government that continues to exist in modern China, according to Cody.  According to the report the Chinese government enlists “roomfuls of technicians… (that) monitor millions of computer” and censor the Internet.   

Cody says that there were hopes that President Hu Jintao’s rise to power three years ago would loosen restrictions on the control of information, they have actually tightened.  Freedom House rates freedom of the press in China as “not free,” with political rights and civil liberties ratings of “7” and “6” respectively. 

References

Freedom House, Freedom in the Press 2006
Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2006
Washington Post: As Grip of Censors Endures in China, A Satirical Poem Leads to Jail Time