The crackdown on media by the Chinese police has crossed all limits. Even the lapdog official Chinese media has started protesting.

The latest such incident took place on March 14, 2024, as the police tried to obstruct the media from the coverage of a suspected gas leak explosion in an eatery at Yanjiao town in north China, killing seven people and injuring 27 others.

Among those forcibly prevented from carrying out the coverage of the event were foreign journalists as well as the Chinese official media. Policemen blocked the cameras of journalists and pushed them away from the site.

“The Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party sends a detailed notice to all media every day that includes editorial guidelines and censored topics,” it said.

State-owned China Central Television reporters were heard shouting in the camera that they were being pushed away from the scene of the blast.

The State-run All China Journalists Association said in a statement that journalists were “simply and brutally” obstructed in the normal performance of their duties “for the sake of controlling public opinion.”

The crackdown on journalists is believed to be an attempt by local officials to downplay the incident following a diktat by President of China Xi Jinping that recurring incidents of building fire should be prevented.

The recurrence of fire and gas explosions seems to be turning out to be a source of embarrassment for the ruling Communist Party of China. A total of 54 people were killed and 53 others were injured in two incidents of building fire in China in January and February 2024, one at Nanning and the other at Xinyu.

Events in the past have demonstrated that the Chinese police couldn’t care less for the lives of common Chinese people when it would come to obeying the orders of President Xi and the mandarins of the Communist Party of China.

A glaring incident was that of the Urumqi fire in November 2022 when 10 people lost their lives as fire broke out in a residential building in the capital of the Xinjiang region of China.

Residents were not allowed to escape from the building as the draconian lockdown rules during the Covid-19 pandemic in China would not allow anyone to step out of one’s residence.

There is nothing called Press freedom in China. “The People’s Republic of China is the world’s largest prison for journalists,” ‘Reporters Without Borders’ has commented.

“The Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party sends a detailed notice to all media every day that includes editorial guidelines and censored topics,” it said.

“In the eyes of the regime, the media’s function is to be the party’s mouthpiece. Independent journalists and bloggers are often placed under surveillance, harassed, detained and tortured. To receive and renew their Press cards, journalists must download the ‘Study Xi, Strengthen the Country’ propaganda application that can collect their personal data.”