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 "Under the Dome", a film by journalist Chai Jing that explains air
pollution in straightforward terms, spurred a national debate after
its release last weekend and quickly garnered hundreds of millions
of views on streaming video sites.
Its removal will likely be seen as underscoring the government's
prime focus on maintaining social stability. The ruling Communist
Party has previously described tackling pollution as a top priority
and promised greater transparency on the subject.
Just on Thursday, at the opening of the annual session of
parliament, Premier Li Keqiang called pollution a blight on people's
lives and vowed to step up efforts to combat it.
In a sign of the sensitivity around the issue, no reporters from
major foreign news outlets were called on to ask a question at a
news conference held by the environment minister on Saturday. The
issue of Chai's film being pulled from the Internet did not come up
in the questions that were asked.
The film started becoming inaccessible on the country's biggest
online video sharing websites late on Friday.
By Saturday morning, it was inaccessible on all the major video
sites, as well as a number of smaller video sites, with users
getting error messages when they tried to play it.
Neither internet regulator the Cyberspace Administration of China,
nor the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and
Television responded to requests for comment.
Youku Tudou Inc, Tencent Holdings Ltd, Sohu.com Inc and iQiyi, the
online video service of Baidu Inc, which operate video streaming
services, also did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did Chai,
the filmmaker.
The website of Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily, which
had originally posted the video on its site, did not answer repeated
calls requesting comment.
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China operates one of the world's most sophisticated online
censorship mechanisms, known as the Great Firewall. Censors keep a
grip on what can be published online, particularly content seen as
potentially undermining the Communist Party.
Chai was a well-known journalist on state-run television before
making the film, which was released just as China's leaders prepared
to hold the annual meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC)
this week.
The disappearance of the video was met with anger from many Internet
users.
"Some people have the power to completely smother Chai Jing's 'Under
the Dome' on the Internet, but don't have the power to smother haze
in this country," one Internet user said on the Twitter-like site,
Weibo.
(Reporting by Michael Martina, David Stanway and Paul Carsten in
BEIJING and Engen Tham in SHANGHAI; Writing by Jason Subler; Editing
by Robert Birsel and Mark Potter)
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