Not content with overseeing some of the most tightly censored media outlets in the world, the Chinese Government has drafted a Bill which enables fines for newspapers that publish news about emergencies without official approval.

Under the draft law being reviewed by China’s top law-making body, the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, media outlets could face fines ranging from £3,500 to £7,000 if they do not seek permission from local authorities before reporting riots, disasters, strikes or outbreaks of disease.

Local governments will be required to disseminate information on emergencies in a timely manner, but not if the reports would affect the handling of a crisis. The Beijing News quoted the law as reading: “It is an exception if the release of information may jeopardise the handling of emergencies.”

The official Xinhua news agency said the decision to introduce the law was made because of errors in handling the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in 2003. It said: “The Government’s inexperience in dealing with the emerging crisis led to one of the country’s most serious health hazards.”

Sars originated in China and the nation was widely condemned for covering up the disease initially, enabling the virus to spread more easily. It had been expected that China’s censors would relax their controls to prevent a recurrence of that embarrassing incident.

On the contrary, officials charged with vetting information available to the public have tightened their grip in recent months.

China has a long history of covering up emergency incidents, and news blackouts are regularly imposed because of official nervousness that bad news could harm the image of the ruling Communist Party. For example, the deaths of 85,000 people in the central province of Henan in 1975, when dams burst during a typhoon, were revealed only in a book on China’s worst 20th-century disasters in 1998.

Last November officials in northeastern Jilin province failed to report a toxic spill in the Songhua river for several days. Harbin, a city of nine million in Heilongjiang province, had to shut off public water supplies for nearly a week as the poisoned water flowed through the town.

Chinese journalists voiced dismay but no surprise at the planned law. One reporter, who declined to be identified, said: “China always does things this way. Policies change and it’s usually one step forward, two steps back.”

Chinese newspapers, broadcasters and other media are all owned by the state. They have been given greater editorial freedom in recent years in an effort to make them financially self-supporting, but several more outspoken publications have been closed or had their editors removed in recent months.

One Beijing newspaper editor said: “Chairman Mao is the Sun, wherever he goes there is light; the Communist Party is the moon, it changes every month.”

The tightening of the rules comes against a sustained media crackdown, which has included efforts to control information available on the internet to China’s estimated 100 million users.

An article on rednet.cn, a website based in central Hunan province, called on the legislature to “cautiously consider” the Bill, arguing that ensuring transparency of information was in the public interest.

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