In China You Don't Write About Stock Market Crash

A Chinese journalist who wrote an article about China's response to the stock market crash was arrested and jailed for "spreading false information." Well, the Chinese government could make an attempt to hide the truth from their people but they had to learn the truth sooner or later so why arrest journalists who are merely doing their jobs?

 

I'm guessing this article was a bit more than simply "stock market fell X percentages yesterday". China is still quite infamous for censorship so if this article was somehow blaming it all on the government etc. or trying to cause fear or something similar then it's not a big surprise that he got arrested.

 

It's a communist country that's very tight about 'freedom of speech'. They still use propaganda to promote the current ruling party and praise President Xi Jin Ping into what is called the cult of personality. To think Mao has passed for a very long time already but they still hold on to some extremist communist practices like that is quite frightening. There are stories about journalists getting picked up from the street, tortured and kept in prison for life for just one article going against the party. We don't hear a lot about that in the West because information is strictly regulated. They don't even have facebook.

 

I think from an information standpoint, the official channels aren't talking that much about the stock market. Even the main English-speaking TV news channel CCTV isn't talking about it. But the masses are still able to access information through a variety of formats. Weibo, the Chinese Twitter of sorts, has a lot of people chattering about it and so people do know about it.

Also, you can access Facebook there, albeit you have to do it via indirect means. So information is still getting into the country, regardless of what the authorities do.