In February 2020, journalist Jane Tang received alarming texts from a source in Wuhan amidst her investigation into China's handling of Covid-19. This coincided with the arrest of fellow journalist Li Zehua, highlighting the risks faced by independent reporters in China. Established in 1996, Radio Free Asia (RFA) serves as a crucial outlet for uncensored information, operating where independent journalism is suppressed. In the face of intense monitoring and censorship by the Chinese Communist Party, RFA has managed to reach millions of users seeking truth about various societal issues.
In contacting RFA, Mr. Li turned to one of the last reliable channels for on-the-ground, uncensored news in China. Since it was established in 1996 by the U.S. government in response to China's massacre of pro-democracy student protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, RFA has reported from regions in Asia hostile to independent journalism, filling an important gap where free press outlets cannot exist.
Despite the roadblocks and intimidation, a national survey by Ipsos found that at least 44.1 million users managed to break through China's Great Firewall weekly to read and listen to RFA's reports in Mandarin, Cantonese, Uyghur and Tibetan.
The party, which leads the world in imprisoning journalists, relentlessly monitors and surveils social media and punishes people for online comments that run afoul of Beijing's official narrative. Its advanced censorship and surveillance technologies are constantly upgraded to block unsanctioned news from reaching ordinary Chinese people.
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