TAIPEI, Taiwan — When former lawyer Zhang Zhan posted hundreds of videos from Wuhan during the chaotic early months of the COVID-19 outbreak, she became one of China's most prominent citizen journalists. Jailed in 2020 for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" — a charge Chinese authorities often use against journalists and activists — she was sentenced recently to another four years for the same offense. Aleksandra Bielakowska of rights group Reporters Without Borders (known by its French initials, RSF) called the decision fresh evidence of how far Beijing has gone to silence independent reporting.
Rights groups say Zhang's case is part of a broader regional trend. Detentions of journalists and media workers across the Asia-Pacific region climbed steadily from a total of 69 in 2010 to 229 in 2020 (the year of Zhang's first arrest amid the COVID pandemic), spiking to an all-time high of 334 in 2022 before tapering slightly to 300 last year, an analysis of RSF data shows. Leading countries driving that trend were China, Afghanistan, Vietnam and Myanmar. It's happening as the U.S. cancels funding for independent media across the region, and China exports surveillance techniques beyond its borders.
Press freedom groups rank China as the world's top jailer of journalists, with 112 journalists and media workers currently behind bars, alongside another eight in Hong Kong in the wake of Beijing's imposition of a national security law there in 2020.
Myanmar emerged as another prominent jailer following its 2021 coup and civil war, with 51 journalists currently in detention.
Ross Tapsell, an associate professor at Australian National University who researches media and culture in Southeast Asia, says the crisis isn't limited to the headline-grabbing crackdowns. "There is no one cause behind the region's decline in press freedom," he says. "It correlates with what we're seeing with democracy in the region, and indeed globally — you're seeing a slow decay, like ice melting."
Philippines: When talking the talk isn't enough
Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who now faces charges of crimes against humanity in the Hague, came into office in 2016 labeling the media as enemies. Violence against journalists rose sharply under his administration, which continued until 2022. Data from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism shows that, in the first 28 months of Duterte's presidency, there were 99 recorded attacks and threats on media workers. By May 2021, that figure reached 223 — with state agents linked to roughly half of those cases. The center counted a total of 22 media workers killed from 2016 to 2022.
Tensions escalated in 2020 when Duterte's administration forced ABS-CBN, one of the nation's most prominent cable news networks, off the air.
President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. took a softer tone when he assumed power in 2022, but journalists say underlying violence has intensified. Just halfway through Marcos' term, documented attacks and threats against journalists have risen by 44% compared with Duterte's entire term, according to the investigative journalism center.
"What tops the list is intimidation," says Rhea Padilla, the news director of AlterMidya, a nationwide network of local media outlets in the Philippines.
"Journalists are often labeled as communists or terrorists," Padilla says. "It's not just name-calling. It really puts lives at risk. It justifies surveillance, it justifies arrest."
Jonathan de Santos, a deputy editor at ABS-CBN (which has gone fully online since its broadcast suspension) and chair of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, says if Marcos wanted to prove he would treat the media differently from Duterte, he could start by restoring ABS-CBN's license. He could also reexamine the case of community journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio, who remains jailed after five years on charges that rights groups say are fabricated. The country also still lacks a freedom of information act, and libel remains a criminal offense.
Still, de Santos says journalists are fighting back.
"We have seen that an attack on one of our colleagues is an attack on everyone," he says. Journalists have begun filing defamation or administrative cases against those who "red-tag" them as communist rebel supporters, with high-profile recent wins.
The Marcos administration has also replaced leadership at the presidential task force on media security and barred police from red-tagging journalists — though whether that ban will be enforced remains unclear.
Indonesia: More overt pressure
In Indonesia, the Alliance of Independent Journalists, one of country's most prominent press freedom organizations, has recorded a steadily increasing trend in physical violence towards journalists since 2020 — with 2023, the last full year of Widodo's administration, being the highest year in a decade.
Bagja Hidayat, an editor at the Jakarta-based magazine Tempo, says although former President Joko Widodo was nicer to the media in person, harassment began intensifying under his term and has worsened considerably under the current President Prabowo Subianto, who took power last year.
Tempo has long faced cyberattacks and doxxing, but earlier this year the intimidation turned grisly: a decapitated pig's head was delivered to its office, addressed to investigative reporter Francisca Christy Rosana. Bagja says that in Muslim-majority Indonesia, a decapitated pig carries the connotation that killing Tempo's journalists is permissible.
When asked to respond to the incident, presidential spokesperson Hasan Nasbi suggested the staff "just cook" the head, according to news reports in March.
"The government has so many influencers aligned with their narrative," Hidayat says. "Any time we publish a critical story, these people spring into action, buzzing us with videos discrediting us." Government ministries have also sued the magazine for defamation, he says.
Media scholar Tapsell notes that even in countries without mass jailing, "a big part of the problem is just the threat" — of jailing, of advertising being pulled, of newsroom closures. Advertising revenue plunged during COVID-19, and as audiences migrated to social media, "government advertising is now a larger chunk of the pie," he says. That reliance leaves outlets vulnerable to state pressure.
During the recent protests across Indonesia, Tapsell says the broadcasting commission issued a directive discouraging media outlets from covering the protests live. Viewers turned to TikTok for live footage, only to see the app temporarily pause its "Live" feature. He points to a pattern of internet slowdowns during protests and predicts "more pressure on tech platforms … to reduce the capacity for ordinary citizens to film protests."
Hong Kong and beyond
Rights advocates say although Hong Kong's press environment used to be a bright spot in China, media freedoms have deteriorated sharply since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law in 2020. RSF data shows eleven journalists detained there this year. Several media outlets have closed and hundreds of journalists have left the territory.
Shirley Leung, a journalist who relocated to Taiwan, founded Photon Media, one of many media platforms that reports on Hong Kong from afar. "We try our best to report on Hong Kong in a way that doesn't endanger our sources," she says.
Leung says on top of the high-profile arrests, the territory's remaining journalists face less visible pressure like tax probes, anonymous threats and pressure on landlords not to rent to reporters. Many journalists who left the territory found work with U.S.-funded outlets like Radio Free Asia — but Leung says these outlets' collapse has pushed those reporters back into a difficult situation.
Meanwhile, China's information-control model is spreading. Rights groups have documented harassment, interrogations and even kidnappings of exiled Chinese journalists, sometimes with Southeast Asian governments' cooperation. Recent leaks from a Chinese tech company show surveillance tools similar to the country's "Great Firewall" being exported to Pakistan, Myanmar and other nations.
Aleksandra Bielakowska of RSF says in recent years, Chinese leader Xi Jinping's administration "introduced sweeping restrictions to make sure media outlets will not be allowed to report freely about what's going on."
She herself was detained and deported from Hong Kong in April 2024 while trying to observe media executive Jimmy Lai's trial. The only unredacted detail in the documents she later received from Hong Kong authorities was her home address in Taiwan — "another sign of intimidation," she says.
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