BBC Reports China Jams Broadcasts

The British Broadcasting Corp. said today its Mandarin-language broadcasts to China are being jammed for the first time.

“There is no possible justification for this deliberate and systematic interference with our broadcasts, although it clearly indicates the impact the World Service is having inside China as far as the authorities are concerned,” said John Tusa, managing director of the BBC World Service.

The BBC said the interference typically starts a few minutes before the Mandarin transmissions begin and stops shortly after they end. It takes the form of a steady, low-frequency noise about 25% as strong as the program signal itself.

The BBC said it did not know exactly how long the interference had been taking place. There has been evidence of it since June, but it was only positively identified this week by a BBC engineer in Beijing, it said.

“Jamming is a practice which violates established broadcasting relations,” Tusa said. “This latest instance is particularly regrettable at a time when jamming from all other Communist countries has ceased.”

The Soviet Union stopped jamming BBC Russian service broadcasts in 1987 and lifted its interference with BBC Polish broadcasts a year later.

The BBC said World Service broadcasts in English are not being jammed by the Chinese, but it is still unclear whether Cantonese language broadcasts are affected.

The BBC said it stepped up its Mandarin broadcasts by half an hour in early June to a total of three hours daily in response to demands for coverage of the student-led demonstrations in China and the government’s crackdown.