About 34 Journalists Now in Jail in China....

More journalists are in jail in China than in any other country in the world. But I suppose that there may be more dangerous places to be a journalist like Iraq. Despite the hysterical claims by Eason Jordan and Linda Foley that US troops have targeted journalists, there is relative freedom to pursue and print stories there.

"The new Hu Jintao regime has by no means relaxed as outsiders once hoped it would," argues Mr. Link in a recent essay on former Chinese journalist He Qinglian's study of Chinese media. About 34 journalists now reside in Chinese jails - making China the largest incarcerator of media in the world, according to Human Rights Watch.

Most recent abuses by China are highlighted with the detention of Ching Cheong of the Singapore Straits Times that was seeking out a copy of a manuscript reportly with interviews from the late Zhao Ziyang, who was considered sympathetic to the students protesting prior to the June 4, 1989 massacre. There must be some interesting information in the material that he was seeking and maybe there are a few names mentioned that could end of few careers in Beijing.

The contents of Mr. Zong's "Conversations" are unknown. But a central point of Zong's recently published memoir of Mr. Zhao, a purged former premier, was that in the run-up to the June 4, 1989, massacre around Tiananmen, the demand by students for greater openness and democracy was the same demand being made by wide swaths of mid-level and high-ranking party members in Beijing.

More details on the Ching Cheong case and other abuse metted out by China in this Christian Science Monitor piece.