China upgrades its legislation

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CHINA MULLS EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT LAW
June 24, 2006 (People's Daily Online)

China's top legislature on Saturday began its first hearing of the draft law on emergency management, aiming at upgrading the country's ability to cope with frequent outbreaks of industrial accidents, natural disasters, health and public security hazards.

The decision to introduce such a law was made in May 2003, as China was under the SARS threat, a time when the government's inexperience to handle sudden virus outbreak led to one of the country's most serious health hazard.

"It was drawn up after we studied emergency management experiences in a dozen of developed countries including the United States, Russia, Germany, Italy, and Japan, and conducted a series of field study around China," said Cao Kangtai, director of Legislative Affairs Office under the State Council, or China's cabinet.

Addressing lawmakers on the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on Saturday, Cao said the bill mainly regulates the government's acts in hazard preparation, emergency detection and declaration, emergency handling, and damage recovery.

Cao said introducing emergency management law will effectively curb hazard outbreak, prevent common emergency from turning into public crisis, and reduce the damages.

The bill stipulates penalties for local government officials over failure on handling emergencies. Officials who fail to take precaution measures, delay emergency declaration, or try to cover up will face penalties up to sacking, it says.

Cao said it was aimed at restricting the administrative power in unusual times, when the government can more easily abuse its power to violate rights of the common people and non-governmental organizations.

"China is a country frequently hit by natural disasters and industrial accidents, which have caused huge loss of people's lives and property," he said.

Police's record shows that the number of sudden natural and industrial mishaps reached 5.61 million in 2004, leaving 210,000 people dead and another 1.75 million injured. The direct economic loss topped 450 billion yuan (56.3 billion US dollars).

In 2005, bird flu broke out in several Chinese provinces leading to tens of millions of fowl culled and a economic loss over a hundred thousand. And late last year, a toxic spill in northeastern Songhua River forced 4 million residents in the nearby city of Harbin to live without tap water for four days.

Over the past three years, many officials have resigned or have been removed from the posts for their inability to put emergencies under control, including the former health minister Zhang Wenkang, being sacked for SARS cover-up in 2003, and the former environment minister Xie Zhenhua, who quitted the post in 2005 for the situation of Songhua River pollution running out of hands.

Source: Xinhua http://english.people.com.cn/200606/24/eng20060624_277002.html

 

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Re: Chine upgrades its legislation

Re: Chine upgrades its legislation

China Weighs Fines for Reports on 'Sudden Events'



By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: June 26, 2006
BEIJING, June 26 ? Chinese media outlets will be fined up to $12,500 each time they report on "sudden events" without prior authorization from government officials, according to a draft law under review by the Communist Party-controlled legislature.

The law, revealed today in most state-run newspapers, would give government officials a powerful new tool to restrict coverage of mass outbreaks of disease, riots, strikes, accidents and other events that the authorities prefer to keep secret. Officials in charge of propaganda already exercise considerable sway over the Chinese media, but their power tends to be informal, not codified in law.

Although more than 100 million Chinese have access to the Internet and hundreds of commercially driven newspapers, magazines and television stations provide a much wider selection of news and information than was available in the recent past. As a result, Chinese authorities have also sought fresh ways to curtail reporting on topics and events they consider harmful to social and political stability.

Editors and journalists say they receive constant bulletins from the Propaganda Department forbidding reporting on an ever-expanding list of taboo topics, including "sudden events." But a few leading newspapers and magazines occasionally defy such informal edicts. They may find it more costly to ignore the rules if they risked being assessed financial penalties.

The draft, under consideration by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, was described in outline by newspapers today.

It says that newspapers, magazines, news Web sites and television stations should face fines ranging from $6,250 to $12,500 each time they publish information about a sudden event "without authorization" or publish "fake news" about such events.

While state media did not offer a definition of "sudden events," in the past they have included natural disasters, major accidents, public health or social safety incidents.

Journalists say local authorities are likely to interpret broadly, giving officials leeway to restrict coverage of any social and political disturbance that they consider embarrassing, like demonstrations over land seizures, environmental pollution or corruption.

Last fall, the National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets removed some information about natural disasters, including the death toll, from a list of topics that government agencies had the power to treat as official secrets. The move was viewed positively at the time as an attempt to provide the public with more timely and accurate information about such disasters.

The declassification came after central and local government authorities initially covered up the SARS respiratory epidemic in 2003. Health authorities later acknowledged that the cover-up made the SARS outbreak more severe.

The new law would appear to undercut the spirit of that revision, forcing journalists and editors to seek prior approval before writing about disease outbreaks.

"The way the draft law stands now it could give too much power to local officials to determine that someone has violated the law," said Yu Guoming, a professor of journalism at People's University in Beijing.

Mr. Yu said he hoped the legislature would review the draft and make its terms "much more specific" to avoid heavy new restrictions on media freedom.

Others suggested that the impact on the press might be mixed.

The new law could make it easier to punish media outlets for even routine reporting. But it also sets a limit on the fine that can be accessed for each violation. Major media outlets could clearly afford to risk a fine if they felt the value of the news in question warranted coverage.

Moreover, the fines could presumably be challenged in court, making them a more active forum in the future for deciding the limits of media controls in the country, a legal expert said.

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