中国媒体博克

With the Olympics barely seven weeks off, China is apparently hoping that no one will notice it isn’t fully keeping its pledge to open up the country to the foreign media during the Games.

Wednesday offered a good example of the kind of controls China still places on reporters.

The Olympic torch made its tour during the morning through Kashgar, the Silk Road outpost in the troubled Xinjiang region of far west China. Minders kept foreign reporters away from most of the relay route and barred them from speaking to ordinary citizens.

Here’s a tidbit from the Reuters story datelined from Kashgar:

Foreign reporters have been banned from talking to anyone watching the torch along its route, despite China pledging complete media freedom when it applied to host the Olympics, and are limited to a few stage-managed events.

"Anybody can watch the torch, but if you come on your own or with your family, you'll have to watch it from afar and can't get up close," one sullen government official said.

The Associated Press story also made mention of the restrictions on foreign media:

Black-gloved security agents jogged alongside the torch as it wound through the streets of Kashgar, an ancient Silk Road city near the borders with Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Foreign journalists were not allowed along the route, where cheering bystanders shouted "Go China!" under sunny skies.

Later in the same story, the AP journalist noted the following:

Xinjiang officials accompanied foreign journalists on a bus to the relay and did not allow them to wander from the group. After the start of the event, the journalists were taken to the finish point _ a square dominated by a giant statue of Mao Zedong, a reminder of heavy-handed Communist Party rule over the region since People's Liberation Army forces entered in 1949.

A day earlier in Urumqi, Xinjiang residents were told to stay home and watch the torch relay on TV. That’s probably what Chinese authorities also wish foreign reporters would do.