ajfortin.com

The China Development Brief (CDB) was shut down today (July 12, 2007) by the Chinese government. The website was a source of information on the impact of international and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in China in health care and other areas of public welfare. I’ve used information from the CDB in a previous WHCB post on health care development in China. So I’ve taken the liberty to reprint below the message from the editor, Nick Young, about what has happened.

Message from the editor

July 12, 2007

Yesterday morning news of our current difficulties was injudiciously leaked to international media by a former associate. We had hoped to keep the wraps on this for some time while we tried to mobilize support with the Communist Party and Government of China; but now, alas the news is out, and we are not sure what the result will be.

For those not aware of the basics:-

On July 4 our Beijing office was visited by a joint delegation of a dozen officials from the Beijing Municipality Public Security Bureau, the Beijing Municipality Statistical Bureau, and the Beijing Municipality Cultural Marketing General Legal Implementation Team.

After investigations and interviews lasting around three hours, they ordered the Chinese edition of China Development Brief to cease publication forthwith. The authorities are now deciding what punishment to apply. It appears that initially they were considering a relatively modest fine.

I, as editor of the English language edition of China Development Brief, am deemed guilty of conducting “unauthorized surveys” in contravention of the 1983 Statistics Law, and have been ordered to desist. It was made perfectly clear to me that any report posted on this website (which is run off a UK server) would count as the output of an unauthorized survey.

I have since been interviewed by the police section responsible for supervising foreigners in China, and have sent them a personal statement explaining my situation.

This timing of this is unfortunate. I had decided a year ago that the time had come for me to leave China Development Brief, and we had worked out an ambitious localisation strategy for the English language publishing. I have always argued that it is important to get coherent, informed and independent Chinese voices into international debates about China—rather than those debates being dominated by Western voices that are often ill-informed and unsympathetic to the real difficulties of governing this huge and complicated country—and I hoped that China Development Brief could come to offer the world at large “the best in Chinese thinking on social development, in plain English.” We were about to appoint an expatriate transition Managing Editor with a mandate to develop a high-calibre team of Chinese writers who, at the end of two years, would assume formal ownership and editorial control. On July 3, the day before the police came, we received the last of the donor funding pledges that we needed, and were all set to proceed.

That project is now in grave peril, but I remain open to negotiation and discussion with the Chinese authorities.

Meanwhile, we have removed the subscription form from this site, as we are no longer in a position to guarantee that we will continue for another year. I am afraid that there is no possibility of returning subscription payments, as we have been living a hand to mouth existence for many months, with staff having to take on consultancy work on top of their normal duties in order to pay their own wages, and we have absolutely no reserves.

However, we do have a backlog of unfinished work and, if all else fails, in the coming months I will complete and post at least some of it.

Finally I would like to pay a warm tribute to my Chinese colleagues who have reacted to this series of unfortunate events calmly and courageously.

We remain hopeful that the authorities will recognize the value of their work, and find some way of allowing it to continue.

Nick Young