Editor’s Note: Zhang and Nikolai are pseudonyms for Saratoga parents in this story. The parents did not feel comfortable sharing their names.
Most countries have a constitution — one that often promises free speech, among other rights. However, these documents aren’t always worth much, as authorities in authoritarian regimes often breach these constitutional rights to not only influence but also control the masses. The two biggest examples of governments that squelch free speech: China and Russia.
Chinese government censors media and threatens journalists
Chinese censorship is among the most restrictive in the world. Although its 1982 constitution promises freedom of speech and press, it is ineffective due to strict media regulations — ones that carelessly and spontaneously throw around accusations of leaking state documents and endangering the country to any party that is deemed harmful against the state’s political and economic prosperity.
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Senior Fellow Elizabeth Charissa Economy has written that the Chinese government “goes back and forth, knowing they need press freedom and the information it provides, but worried about opening the door to the type of freedoms that could lead to the regime’s downfall.”
These censorship efforts work in many ways. In China, a country of roughly 1.4 billion, the government employs 2 million people to sift through online messages and regulate internet access along with the so-called Great Firewall, a digital series of regulatory applications that monitor, filter and block information. This is all done in an effort by the Chinese Communist Party to control its citizens by limiting what information they receive.
Blanket censorship is accomplished in two ways — the heavy regulation of the media and the punishment of journalists and others who dare to criticize the government.
To fully understand the scope of these regulations, it is important to know what they entail. A white paper issued in 2010 with additions of a more recent “Public Pledge on Self-Regulation and Professional Ethics for the China Internet Industry” requires all internet users and companies in China, including foreign organizations and individuals, to comply with Chinese regulations that are extremely strict and biased in favor of the current regime.
In 2016, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that “all the work by the party’s media must reflect the party’s will, safeguard the party’s authority and safeguard the party’s unity. They must love the party, protect the party and closely align themselves with the party leadership in thought, politics and action.”
The group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has declared: “The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the world’s largest prison for journalists, and its regime conducts a campaign of repression against journalism and the right to information worldwide.”
As a result, the RSF has ranked China the 179th in 2023 and the 172nd in 2024 most restrictive country in the world in terms of media freedom and journalism. In addition, Freedom House scores China 9/100 when it comes to internet freedom, the lowest of any country on the list.
These regulations are largely controlled by the Central Propaganda Department (CPD), which is overseen by the most senior officials of leading Party and State institutions in the sphere. The function of the CPD is to control what the people see in mainland China. To achieve this, they give “guidance” to any and all party-related institutions, telling them what they can and should do.
For example, they have outlawed the usage of the terms Fourth Estate or the “theory of the Media as a Tool of the Public” in any publication or article. Now, with the growing Chinese population, the increase in internet usage and the proliferation of information, another 14 government organizations support the CPD in controlling the media and information.
A local resident who goes by Zhang told The Falcon, “China is in everything, [monitoring] WeChat and limiting access to other sites.”
This has led to China’s ban of websites such as Google, YouTube and Facebook, as well as the constant monitoring of online platforms. In the case of WeChat, the app has implemented real-time automatic image censorship, and when it flags an image, it restricts any user from sending it. Along with this image censorship, it also bans certain words. When any protest occurred over COVID-19, WeChat quickly restricted user content related to the topic.
Engaging in content related to a banned or restricted topic can lead to the so-called digital death of a person. After receiving a permanent ban on WeChat, not only are citizens’ online subscriptions cut off, but everything linked to their WeChat is also severed. This is detrimental because WeChat is one of two widely accepted payment methods and a login method for countless services like booking medical appointments and shopping online in the country.
Large protests garner internet presence and attention, and the Chinese government acts accordingly. In the greatest protest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, calling for the resignation of President Xi and the loosening of COVID restrictions after 10 people were killed in a fire, unable to escape because of COVID barriers, dozens of police officers came and dispersed crowds, dragging protesters into police vehicles. A BBC reporter covering the situation was even brought into the police station and beaten. Quickly after the protest ended, online censors wiped everything clean, making information on the event impossible to find inside the nation.
Although Article 35 of China’s constitution allows citizens “assembly, association, procession and demonstration,” in recent years the regime has chosen to expand the use of surveillance, dismantle civil society groups and make large-scale protests almost impossible to stage and dangerous for participants.
Limiting and controlling information is not enough for the Chinese government when it comes to censorship, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also mistreats and jails journalists for exposing and writing about illegal, underhanded Chinese government practices and promoting pro-democracy agendas. With over a 100 people in prison for writing articles and publications China doesn’t approve of, the government now holds a third of the world’s jailed journalists, according to The Guardian.
The most infamous incident of jailed writers is the case of Liu Xiaobo, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. He was imprisoned for 11 years and ended up dying in jail for writing and supporting Charter 08, a manifesto for achieving political reform in China. Charter 08 proposed that China should develop as a society based on democracy and freedom, with a government truly accountable under the law.
“China’s censoring is all so a ‘single voice is more dominant,’” Zhang told The Falcon.
Russian censorship aims to mirror China’s
Like China, the 1993 Russian constitution promises freedom of speech, but it is not an actual right in president Vladimir Putin’s autocratic country. Although slightly better than China, Russia still ranks fifth to last on the Freedom House list with a score of 21/100. In 2024, the RSF ranked Russia the 162nd most restrictive country, noting that “Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, almost all independent media have been banned, blocked and/or declared ‘foreign agents’ or ‘undesirable organizations.’ All others are subject to military censorship.”
Much of current Russian censorship stems from the Russia-Ukraine war that began in 2022. At the start of the conflict, the Russian parliament hastily added an amendment stating that spreading “false information” about the Russian armed forces and any other state institution is punishable by 15 years in prison, a commonly seen practice for countries attempting to silence its citizens and reporters.
Russian officials are draconian when it comes to censorship as they resort to long jail sentences and even torture to silence journalists and whistleblowers like former opposition candidate Alexei Navalny, who died in February 2024 of poisoning by Novichok, a nerve poision, in a Siberian prison. Due to this repressive climate, hundreds of Russian reporters have chosen to go into exile.
To illustrate the effect of the war on censorship, Russian authorities blocked or completely removed over 610,000 web pages in 2022 — the highest annual total in 15 years — while simultaneously prosecuting 779 people over online posts, according to Net Freedoms. Authorities banned several notable sites that were previously available to the public, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Telegram.
“Until the war in Ukraine, there were some somewhat independent media, but they were all shut down, and the staff had to leave the country,” Saratoga parent Nikolai told The Falcon.
And, as the head of Net Freedoms puts it, “Users of any social media platform shouldn’t feel safe.”
As the war has progressed, Russia also decided to follow the path of China. The Kremlin planned to set up bots to track its citizens’ digital footprint and to enlist more people into the army. Tatyana Stanovaya told AP News that Russia now collects “outpatient clinics to courts to tax offices and election commissions.” By collecting these records, they then force the able-bodied to fight in their wars and do their bidding. In the future, the Kremlin appears to plan on harsher and more severe privacy breaching programs in order to fully control its citizens.
Although not as restrictive as China, Russia is gradually gaining ground. The regime’s censorship policies have already killed or imprisoned many and affected all citizens, ensuring the people remain under the Kremlin’s control.
“Freedom of speech is crucial to democracy, and an enemy of authoritarian governments,” Nikolai said. “It’s not just censorship but a combination of censorship, propaganda and corrupt legal systems that allow dictators to keep control of the population and mold popular opinion in a way that keeps them in power. Step one is to convince people that they don’t need democracy.”
Is there any hope for change?
Censorship is prevalent in countless countries, but looking at China and Russia, it is exemplified. Putin’s cronies use censorship to control what the press sees and control what their citizens do. There is no free speech. It doesn’t just stop there, it eventually turned into corrupt systems to preserve power and other such organizations.
Are there any signs of change on the horizon for these two countries? Maybe. Most likely not for Putin’s strictly controlled Russia, but China is a different story. Some citizens are fighting back against censorship, with some even saving media of protests to spread when they get taken down. If such efforts continue in the decades ahead, and as members of the current regime die or otherwise leave office, it’s possible to envision a gradual thawing of restrictions, and Chinese citizens might be able to express their opinions more freely than they can under president Xi’s leadership today.