Futile Chinese information controls, con't

The New China News Agency (新華社) made a rare appearance in the New York Times today, not as a source of news, but as a subject of the news. China is further restricting the distribution of foreign wire service reports and photographs in China, by making NCNA (the official state news organ) the gatekeeper for news feeds from abroad:

Under new rules that were said to take effect immediately, the state-run New China News Agency said it would become the de facto gatekeeper for foreign news reports, photographs and graphics entering China. The agency announced in its own dispatch that it would censor content that endangers “national security.

The Times reporter, Joseph Kahn, ties the NCNA's expanded role into a general crackdown on news distribution in China:

President Hu Jintao has intensified a crackdown on all kinds of news media in recent months, arresting and harassing journalists, tightening regulation of Web sites and online forums, hiring tens of thousands of people to screen and block Web content deemed offensive and firing editors of state-run publications that resist official controls.

-sigh- I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the state no longer has effective control of information in China. Heavy-handed regulations, prosecution of journalists, and other traditional totalitatarian mass media controls will not turn the clock back. The electronic exchange of information -- via the Web, email, SMS, etc. -- cannot be stopped, short of pulling the plug on electronic communications.

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