''Freezing Point'' (Chinese: 冰点, Bīngdiǎn) was a news journal in the
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, sli ...
which was the subject of controversy over its criticism of Communist Party officials and the sympathetic ear it lent to a Chinese historian who had criticized official history textbooks.
History and profile
''Freezing Point'' was started in 1995 as a one-page publication and was expanded into a weekly magazine in 2004.
A weekly supplement to ''
China Youth Daily
The ''China Youth Daily'' () is the newspaper of the Communist Youth League of China since 1951 with editorial and financial independence in the People's Republic of China.
In the 1980s, it was regarded as the best newspaper in mainland China wi ...
'', it was temporarily closed down by officials 24 January 2006,
but was allowed to reopen in March that year, though without its former editor
Li Datong
Li Datong (李大同, born 1952) was the Managing Editor of '' Freezing Point'', a section of '' China Youth Daily''. He now writes for openDemocracy, which is based in London.
Datong was openly critical of China's 2018 constitutional change tha ...
and without
Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northe ...
-based columnist
Lung Yingtai
Lung Ying-tai (; born 13 February 1952 in Kaohsiung) is a Taiwanese essayist and cultural critic. She occasionally writes under the pen name 'Hu Meili' (). Lung's poignant and critical essays contributed to the democratization of Taiwan and as t ...
.
[Isabel Hilton, "Surfing the Dragon", Index on Censorship, Volume 35, Number 4, 2006, pp. 33–42. 42.]
The official reason for the January 2006 shutdown of ''Freezing Point'' was an article by history professor Yuan Weishi
Yuan Weishi (; born December 15, 1931) is a Chinese historian and philosopher.
Biography
Yuan was born in Xingning, Guangdong. He was admitted to Zhongshan University Department of Economics in 1950, and then went to a master program in polit ...
of Sun Yat-sen University
Sun Yat-sen University (, abbreviated SYSU and colloquially known in Chinese as Zhongda), also known as Zhongshan University, is a national key public research university located in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China. It was founded in 1924 by and nam ...
(Zhongshan University).[ The article dissented from the official view of the ]Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, b ...
.[
]
See also
* List of magazines in China
* Censorship in the People's Republic of China
Censorship in the People's Republic of China (PRC) is implemented or mandated by the PRC's ruling party, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It is one of strictest censorship regimes in the world. The government censors content for mainly polit ...
Notes
{{Reflist
External links
Freezing Point on China Digital Times
The New York Times, 16 February 2006.
* "History Textbooks in China," by Yuan Weishi, and translations of articles on the closing of Bingdian, Feb. 200
1995 establishments in China
News magazines published in Asia
Chinese-language magazines (Simplified Chinese)
Political magazines published in China
Weekly magazines published in China
Magazines established in 1995
Newspaper supplements