Censorship China

The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday dismissed the flap over China's withdrawal of visas for three journalists scheduled to travel with President Clinton on his visit here this week, saying that it had acted according to its regulations governing foreign media. Ministry spokesman Tang Guoqiang declined to specify what rules the three representatives of Radio Free Asia might have violated to warrant the revocation, made just days before the president's departure.

On the eve of a major presidential trip, the Clinton administration on Monday officially protested to the Chinese for barring three journalists who were part of the White House press entourage from entering China. The three work for Radio Free Asia, the independent but U.S. government-funded network that broadcasts news and programs promoting the value of democracy into China and several other Asian countries where censorship is prevalent.

To prepare for President Clinton and his huge entourage's arrival here on their first stop in China, local police closed several big sidewalk markets where unemployed workers sold household supplies and food to earn money. Bicycle rickshaw drivers, evocative of China's impoverished past, also were banned from areas the president will visit.

In its latest move to control the flow of information, China on Wednesday ordered all those who use the Internet and other international computer networks to register with the police within 30 days. The order came in a circular issued by the Ministry of Public Security, the state-run New China News Agency reported. New China did not report a date by which current users must register.

A group of 41 film stars and directors--including Barbra Streisand, Paul Newman, Richard Gere and directors Sidney Pollack and Oliver Stone--released a public letter condemning China's recent efforts to hinder the release of an upcoming Martin Scorsese film about Tibet's Dalai Lama. Chinese officials recently expressed their displeasure that Walt Disney Co. is releasing the film about Tibet's exiled leader, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for drawing attention to China's occupation of his homeland.

China's decision to curb foreign financial news services may be as much an attempt to claim a chunk of a fast-growing business for itself as it is an effort to curtail the flow of free information, analysts said Wednesday. The move also may be intended partly to choke off market data to unscrupulous and fly-by-night financial operations that have proliferated in the free-market economy here.

In an attempt to regulate foreign news agencies that sell and distribute economic information on Chinese financial markets, the government on Tuesday issued a Cabinet edict requiring foreign agencies operating in China to come under the supervision of the official New China News Agency.