LOCATION: Hebei Province, town and village near Baoding TYPE OF INCIDENT: Foreign journalist, local hire and source followed and filmed by authorities. TOPIC: Rural spending on health care and household appliances. NATIONALITY: Spanish and Dutch Description: Local authorities took longer than 15 minutes to record the reporting team’s information, interfered with an interview with hospital [...]

LOCATION: Hebei Province, Shijizhuang TYPE OF INCIDENT: Intimidation of source REPORTING TOPIC: Sanlu baby formula scandal DESCRIPTION: The parents of a child affected by contaminated Sanlu milk powder canceled a scheduled interview at the last minute. QUOTE: “They canceled the interview the night before. They gave no explanation, and turned off their phone. This was [...]

Officials interrupted filming of a corn farmer in Mancheng, Hebei province by a Sky TV crew that was working on a story about the drought in northern China. Holly Williams said the officials very aggressively told the woman farmer to halt what she was doing and then demanded to see the IDs of the film [...]

Plainclothes officials intimidated sources while two Scandinavian journalists attempted to interview peach farmers in Sanhe Town, Hebei Province about how Olympics transport regulations are hurting their livelihood. Beijing-based Sami Sillanpaa of Helsingin Sanomat and Philip Lote, a visiting colleague from Norwegian television NRK, were interviewing farmers when three carloads of people arrived and refused to [...]

Katri Makkonen of Finnish Broadcasting Company was followed and her sources harassed in Handan, Hebei province while trying to do a story on a steel factory. The factory had refused requests for two weeks for a visit, but she wanted to talk to locals outside. Soon after she arrived, the head of the local propaganda [...]