A Stitch in Haste

Two hasty stitches in our ongoing series:

ITEM: China's Communists are considering outlawing anonymous blogging —

Advocates of the idea argue that blog anonymity has encouraged widespread libel and slander.

Of course, in a civilized (oh, and free) society (China is neither), "libel and slander" can be redressed when they actually happen, via civil lawsuits. Proactive censorship (and a ban on anonymity is indeed censorship) is simply not required to combat defamation.

It is, however, required to combat this:

Their identity would remain protected as long as they did "nothing illegal or harmful to the public", officials said.

There's a slight difference between defamation and "illegal or harmful to the public." Remind me again who gets to decide what is "illegal or harmful to the public" in China?

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ITEM: The only thing worse than unauthorized blogging in China is unauthorized journalism —

A Chinese court on Friday rejected the appeal of a Chinese researcher for the New York Times and upheld a three-year prison sentence handed down for fraud, his lawyer said.
...
[The lawyer] said the defense had been denied the right to subpoena key witnesses in both the first and the second trial. "Even though the existing Chinese criminal procedures already fall short of international standards, they are not seriously honored by the authorities," [he] said.
...
China is the world's leading jailer of journalists, with at least 32 in custody, according to the Paris-based advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.

Journalists can of course commit crimes just like anyone else. But in China journalism can actually become the crime. Apparently freedom of the press is a small price to pay for maintaining "public order." Go figure.