Crackdown on illegal magazines

Officials ban 60 unregistered foreign publications and promise they will track down other offenders

Mainland authorities are cracking down on fly-by-night magazines registered abroad and published illegally inside the country.

The General Administration of Press and Publishing recently issued a list of 60 unregistered publications banned from circulation on the mainland and has vowed to chase down other offenders.

But magazine publishers said that far from being an assault on press freedom, the ruling was an attempt to rein in shoddy publishers who tried to avoid proper licensing procedures or took advantage of overseas registration to steal money from unsuspecting advertisers and subscribers.

'The Administration of Press and Publishing had its headcount chopped dramatically a few years back and yet they are under pressure to clean up an industry which needs some serious cleaning up,' said the publisher for a western magazine distributed in China.

The banned publications include People Rights, China Legal News, China Mold News, China Education Magazine (and nine others with similar education titles), Modern Chinese Medicine and China Medicine and Health. The administration said it would ban publications without proper documentation and hunt down the work units or individuals responsible for illegal publications.

Telephone calls to 13 of the publications listed, almost all registered in Hong Kong, found that half were no longer connected and the other half were home numbers of Beijing residents.