The announcement by the Sate Committee on Films and Broadcast Media saying that Chinese reporters will be banned from writing or working with foreign press has been criticized for being too vague and making individual reporters vulnerable to arbitrary interpretations, reports Radio Free Asia.

According to the ban, all Chinese news industry workers will be forced to sign contracts that forbid them from spreading information on social media networks.

Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) criticizes the ban for being vague on what constitutes a “state secret”. CHRD states:

“‘State secrets’ has long been an ill-defined concept under Chinese law… [that relies on]  a catch-all provision that allows authorities to arbitrarily and retroactively apply state secret laws.”

Hu Ping, editor of Beijing Spring, says that despite its outwards intentions as a formal attempt to organize state media, “the language isn’t specific enough.”

Hu goes on to say:

A lot of foreign news organizations publish classified official information and internal documents every day, and the Chinese government isn’t totally ignorant of where the leaks are coming from. But there’s very little they can do about it, because leaks get out because it’s in someone’s interest as part of some factional power struggle. They are always breaking their own rules.

China’s state secrets law covers data that ranges from industrial information to death penalty statistics. Any information can be designated a state secret retroactively.

Photo: BBC News