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Mao Aide Joins Battle Against China Censors
By Chris Buckley
Tue Feb 14, 12:53 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - A former secretary to Chairman Mao Zedong and a dozen other senior Chinese scholars and ex-officials have denounced the shutdown of an investigative weekly in a spreading battle over censorship.



They said the closing of the Freezing Point section of the China Youth Daily was an "historic incident" in a struggle between Communist Party controls and calls for media freedom.

"History demonstrates that only a totalitarian system needs news censorship, out of the delusion that it can keep the public locked in ignorance," they said in a public letter signed February 2 but issued on Tuesday.

Many of the signatories were officials under Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang, the relatively liberal party chiefs ousted in the 1980s, and they reflected growing discontent about censorship even among party veterans, Li Datong, the editor of Freezing Point, told Reuters.

The signatories include Mao's secretary and biographer, Li Rui; an ex-editor-in-chief of the Communist Party's own mouthpiece, the People's Daily, Hu Jiwei; and a former propaganda boss, Zhu Houze.

They said China's elaborate restrictions on information could have dire consequences for China's political evolution.

"Depriving the public of freedom of expression so nobody dares speak out will sow the seeds of disaster for political and transition."

The Communist Party Propaganda Department ordered the indefinite suspension of Freezing Point on January 24, after it published an essay by a Chinese historian, Yuan Weishi, criticizing what he said were long-standing nationalist distortions in Chinese history textbooks.

The weekly section of the China Youth Daily sometimes published investigative reports on corruption and abuses of official power, and commentaries critical of official thinking.

Since late last year, Chinese censors have dismissed editors of three sometimes adventurous newspapers, the Beijing News, Southern Metropolitan Daily and the Public Welfare Times.

They have also increased surveillance and control of the Internet.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/media_china_dc;_ylt=AvSJZwBJ6SQNWiPGrHHtkwVhr7sF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl