The recent earthquake in Sichuan has re-ignited the debate inside China over the misuse of charity donations in the country. Much of that debate has focused on the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC), which was shaken by a scandal in 2011 that has still not subsided.
Chinese on social media have been merciless in their attacks on the RCSC. One of the most frequent criticisms is that the charity uses its official status to force rather than solicit donations [Here, and in comments Here].
But an article on the front page of the Party’s official People’s Daily today emphasizes that “online public opinion” is not real public opinion. What is the evidence for that statement? The fact that despite recent online criticisms, the RCSC still managed to draw in 53 percent of the 10 billion yuan donated for the recent earthquake relief effort.

The People’s Daily article was shared this morning through the official Sina Weibo account of the China Red Cross Society.
Weibo comments under the China Red Cross Society post about the People’s Daily piece were generally not kind.
“I’m a civilized person,” said one user, “but about a report like this I have to say ##$%#$%. Have you no shame?!”
“In this day and age this sort of thing is called forced donation!” another user wrote.
A few other remarks:

“And People’s Daily does not equal the people.”
“Get lost right along with the People’s Daily!”
“We were forced to donate to you, just like feeding a dog!”
“Get lost! No shame at all.”
“We want our money back.”

Obviously, the People’s Daily article fails to take into account a whole range of factors — not least the problem of pressured donations and the relatively weak role of non-government charities owing to restrictions on civil society.
A translation of the People’s Daily article follows:

“Online Public Opinion Doesn’t Entirely Equal Actual Public Opinion” (网络舆情并不完全等同现实民意)
People’s Daily
April 30, 2013, PG 01
By Chen Shu (陈述)
After the Lushan Earthquake (芦山地震) occurred, the China Red Cross Society immediately moved to solicit donations for disaster relief, and online it faced a tide of criticism.
However, according to information from the China Foundation Center, as of April 27 some 115 funds had taken part in the disaster relief donation effort for the Lushan Earthquake, with donations totalling 1.04 billion yuan. Of this, the China Red Cross Society received 566 million yuan, more than 53 percent of the total.
This shows that while the China Red Cross Society continues to face a credibility crisis, it still has a rather strong degree of trust. [We] hope the China Red Cross treats this trust well, rapidly creating open, transparent and honest operating mechanisms — raising credibility and eliminating stains on its reputation.
These facts also show that there is a massive gap between online public opinion and actual public opinion. The reasons for this deserve careful consideration from society.

Since coming to power in November last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping (习近平) has vowed to deal aggressively with corruption. During a meeting of top discipline inspection officials in January 2013, Xi said power must be “restricted by the cage of regulations.” He vowed to “strike tigers as well as flies,” meaning high officials as well as low. The results have been mixed, as the leadership continues to repress public calls for greater openness and transparency. In this cartoon, posted to Sina Weibo by artist Kuang Biao (邝飚) and called “Strike Them Together?”, an unwieldy life raft (the uneasy Chinese state) has three passengers: a spartanly dressed discipline inspection official bearing a club and a fly swatter, a hulking tiger (the Party), and a fly. The discipline inspection official holds a club and a fly swatter as he tries to row the raft in one direction. The tiger and the fly, who is sitting on the tiger’s lap, try to row the raft in another direction. Like a number of Chinese cartoons recently, this one makes visual reference to the book and film Life of Pi.

Chinese economist Mao Yushi (茅于轼), a public intellectual known as a strong proponent of political reform and a vocal critic of the legacy of Maoism, has become the latest liberal figure this year to be heckled by leftists during a public appearance.
Mao Yushi was delivering a talk in Shenyang Thursday at the invitation of the Liaoning Association of Industry and Commerce when two scholars objected to statements they felt were slights against Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. According to a post by Peking University professor Kong Qingdong (孔庆东), the scholars included Wang Xinnian (王新年), the deputy secretary of the provincial-level Party Historical Society (辽宁省党史学会).

[ABOVE: Economist Mao Yushi often speaks his mind on the legacy of Mao Zedong and the problems of China’s current political system. That makes him unpopular with those at the far-left end of the political spectrum.]
The spat (or interruption?) apparently escalated to the point that the hosts of the event called the police. Exactly what happened after is still not entirely clear. In a Weibo post at 11:23am, Kong Qingdong, a critic known for his nationalist and anti-Western remarks, alleged that the two dissenting scholars had been “forced into a police vehicle and taken away.”
But police in Shenyang, who confirmed that they had been called to deal with a disturbance at the conference hall in the Liaoning Building, said the incident ended with “those involved leaving of their own accord.”
Here is the post made at 4:48pm yesterday from the official Sina Weibo account of the Shenyang Public Security Bureau, “Shenyang City PSB” (沈阳市公安局):

At around 9am on April 25, our bureau received a report that some persons at the conference hall in the Liaoning Building were making a fuss (闹事) and disturbing the public order. On the scene, police ascertained that due to problems stemming from an academic [dispute], a certain Mr. Mou (牟某) and a certain Mr. Wang (王某) were engaged in an intense dispute with [invited] speaker Mr. Mao and related employees. In order to mitigate tensions and preserve order, the police made repeated and unsuccessful attempts to persuade [the parties]. Finally, at the suggestion that the parties head to the police substation for further mediation, the two sides finally eased off their tensions, and those involved later left of their own accord.

In a post made to Sina Weibo at around 1pm, Ma Jiming (马霁明微博), a self-described “defender of Mao Zedong Thought,” wrote angrily:

On April 25, Mao Yushi publicly carried out anti-CCP propaganda in Shenyang. When scholars on the scene called him to task, Mao used law enforcement organs to have the dissenting scholars seized. They were later let go, but this kind of conduct is worthy of reflection by the entire Party and the whole of society. What organization invited Mao Yushi and prepared his anti-Party speech? Who orchestrated this and supported it behind the scenes? Do they dare to use the mechanisms of the state to violently protect the anti-Party scholar Mao Yushi? Government organs in Shenyang should explain themselves to the Central Party and to our society!

This isn’t the first time Mao Yushi has provoked the ire of the leftist camp. In May 2011, leftists in Shanxi province gathered to denounce him following his open criticism of Mao Zedong’s legacy in an article run on the website of Caixin.
During his book signing tour in January this year, celebrity blogger and writer Li Chengpeng was was repeatedly heckled by leftists objecting to his ideas.

On April 24, 2013, members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council expressed opposition to a plan for the Hong Kong government to donate 100 million Hong Kong dollars to the Sichuan provincial government to help with quake relief, citing concerns about mainland corruption. A powerful earthquake struck Sichuan on April 20, killing 192 people and injuring at least 11,000. Hong Kong donated more than 9 billion Hong Kong dollars following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, only to learn later that much of the money was misappropriated. “What China lacks is not money but rather clean government,” Hong Kong Legislative Council member Claudia Mo told the Associated Press. “Our trust in those provincial governments has gone bankrupt.” China’s Red Cross has also fought to regain trust in the wake of several scandals in recent years. In the above cartoon, posted by artist Kuang Biao (邝飚) to Sina Weibo, a large figure with a red cross on his shoulder carrying a red donation box runs away from a camera-headed paparazzi labeled “Hong Kong.” The figure with the donation box says, “Hey, don’t you think it’s ridiculous for you to chase me around like this?” To which the Hong Kong figure behind replies: “You definitely need to tell me exactly how you’re going to spend that money.”

For China’s Communist Party leaders, political catchphrases, or tifa (提法), are an important means of communicating general political ideas, moods and orientations. They are the way new leaders, like current president Xi Jinping (习近平), try to articulate and imprint their leadership values.
But in this era of information chaos, when the Party can no longer hold all of the puppet strings of public opinion at once, the meaning of the political catchphrase can slip in interesting and even fatal ways.
When Hu Jintao introduced his political vision of the “harmonious society” (和谐社会) at the National People’s Congress in 2005, his stated objective was to build a “well-off society,” one “that puts people first.” The idea of “harmony” rapidly became synonymous, however, with rigorous censorship and violent “stability preservation.” [SEE ALSO “Hu’s Decade of ‘Failed Power’“].

[ABOVE: This cartoon by artist Kuang Biao speaks perhaps most emotively and directly to the slippage experienced by Hu Jintao’s 2005 political buzzword “harmonious society.” Two “river crabs,” or hexie, a common web slang playing on Hu’s notion of “harmony” and synonymous with censorship and repression, joust for dominance, one representing money the other power: Background from CMP here.]
Over the next few years, as President Xi Jinping’s own political catchphrases are defined, elaborated and disseminated, what kind of slippages of meaning will we witness?
At a forum held in Beijing on April 16, the All-China Journalists Association and representatives from 25 official state media did their best to infuse Xi Jinping’s notion of the “China Dream” (中国梦) with the imperative of press control. The ACJA and the Party press are reminding us all that Xi’s vision of prosperity and “national rejuvenation” can only come through the continued restriction of information freedoms. (The English release, for foreign audiences, emphasises “truth” and “credibility”).
At the April 16 meeting, state media and the ACJA issued a formal pledge, or changyishu (倡议书), called “Applying Positive Energy with a Fierce Sense of Social Responsibility to Realize the China Dream” (以强烈社会责任感为实现中国梦传递正能量). The document makes it clear that “social responsibility” equals the media’s responsibility to the Chinese Communist Party.
The document emphasizes, for example, the need for state media to sing the “main theme,” or zhuxuanlu (主旋律), a term referring to the Party line. It speaks of “strengthening the mainstream public opinion field” (主流舆论场), in a political culture where “mainstream” refers explicitly to alignment with Party interests (“mainstream media” = Party media).
Can we look forward, in the months ahead, to interesting new slips of meaning whereby the “China Dream” becomes synonymous with censorship?
Alas, I’m too late it seems. The process has already begun.
In the following post, one user asks if another post has just been “harmonized,” to which someone responds: “This doesn’t suit the times. Shouldn’t it be ‘done away with by a dream’ (被梦做掉了) or ‘to be dreamed’ (被做梦了)?”
No, a third user says, providing the definitive solution: “It was dreamed away!” (被梦掉).
That’s it. The time may come when we are all “dreamed away.” 我们都被梦掉了.

A partial translation of the pledge by state media follows, including a list of the media who signed up on April 16. Items 1 and 2 are followed by two further items emphasizing the need for “truth and impartiality” (which is trumped by item 2 about the “Party nature of the news”) and for “social efficacy” (社会效果).

Applying Positive Energy with a Fierce Sense of Social Responsibility to Realize the China Dream: A Pledge
Bearing the social responsibility of drumming and shouting for the realization of the China Dream is the great trust placed on the news media by the Party and the people, it is the noble pursuit of news workers, and it offers key support for the Chinese people in building the China Dream. The great masses of news workers must conscientiously carry out this mission, in order to provide the spiritual motivation and ideological assurance needed to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people. To this end, we propose the following:
1. [That we will] sing loudly the China Dream as the strongest voice of the era. [That we will] sing loudly the main theme (主旋律) of the era, and pass on positive social energy, strengthening the mainstream public opinion field (主流舆论场). . .
2. [We will be] faithful to the role and mission of the news worker. We will conscientiously accept the leadership of the Party, adhere to [notion that] the interests of the motherland and the people are higher than all else, thoroughly upholding the Party nature of news work (新闻工作的党性原则), abiding by the Constitution and the law, and fully adhering to correct guidance of public opinion . . .
Units Jointly Issuing the Pledge (26 in all):
The All-China Journalists Association (中华全国新闻工作者协会), the People’s Daily (人民日报), Xinhua News Agency, Seeking Truth (求是), People’s Liberation Army Daily (解放军报), Guangming Daily (光明日报), Economic Daily (经济日报), China National Radio (中央人民广播电台), China Central Television (中央电视台), China Radio International (中国国际广播电台), China Daily (中国日报), Science & Technology Daily (科技日报), Zhongguo Jijian Jiancha Bao (中国纪检监察报), Worker’s Daily (工人日报), China Youth Daily (中国青年报), China Womens Daily (中国妇女报), Farmer’s Daily (农民日报), Legal Daily (法制日报), China News Service (中国新闻社), People’s Daily Online (人民网), Xinhua Online (新华网), CNTV (中国网络电视台), Beijing TV (北京电视台), Beijing Evening News (北京晚报), Beijing Youth Daily (北京青年报), the Beijing Times (京华时报).

The following post by a user with the alias Tianyuan Difang 3511E (天圆地方3511E), was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 8:39am today, April 24, 2013. The post is a repost of an original post showing victims of the Ya’an Earthquake in Sichuan holding up signs saying, “We are cold and hungry.” Tianyuan Difang 3511E currently has just over 2,600 followers, according to Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre]

The text accompanying the original post reads:

[Photo from the disaster area]: At 8:30am on April 23, in Lingguan Township in Sichuan’s Baoxing County, disaster victims hold up banners that read, “I am cold and hungry,” calling on others to pay attention to and support them. Because transportation has been cut off, many relief supplies have not reached Lingguan Township in the disaster area in a timely manner. Right now, as there are shortages of water, grain and shelters, the people have become agitated.
[灾区现场照片]: 4月23日上午8点30分, 四川省宝兴县灵关镇, 受灾民众举着“我冷饿”的横幅, 呼吸各方支持和关注因交通阻断，许多救援物资及时运送到震区灵关镇。目前，震区缺水缺粮和帐篷，民众情绪激动.

NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.

One female journalist was killed and a second seriously injured on April 18 after they were struck by a tractor shovel on the worksite of a high-profile infrastructure project in Urumqi, the capital of China’s Xinjiang autonomous region. The tragedy seems to have been an accident, but there are lingering questions about how local media and authorities in Urumqi have handled the story.
The two journalists were reportedly interns for the Urumqi Evening Post, a leading commercial newspaper in the regional capital. They were struck by the tractor shovel shortly after 11am on April 18 while on the worksite of the Tianzi Road Project (田字路工程), an important infrastructure project in Urumqi designed to alleviate serious traffic congestion in the city.

[ABOVE: Urumqi Evening Post intern Bailu was struck and killed by a tractor shovel when reporting on a major construction project on April 18.]
The project’s design is in the shape of the Chinese character “tian” (田), meaning “field,” hence the name “Tianzi Road” (or “field character road”). Phase one of the project has already been completed, and phase two is now underway.
The Tianzi Road Project is an important source of political capital for local Party leaders in Xinjiang and there has been pressure in recent months to complete phase two. On April 16, just two days before the on-site accident, local media reported that work on the project had been accelerated.
One source in Xinjiang, who requested anonymity given the local sensitivity of this story, said many problems had been exposed at the Tianzi Road Project and that the local government had violated normal construction procedures for the sake of “political point scoring” (政府为了政绩违背建设规律一味最求速度). The source also alleged that the Urumqi Evening Post had sent two inexperienced interns to the Tianzi Road Project worksite because it believed they would be more amenable to the propaganda goals of the local leadership.
According to the Xinjiang source, the accident on April 18 happened on a section of the project directly across from Urumqi’s famous bazaar, the “Dabazha.” The source also told CMP that the reporting intern killed in the accident, Bailu (拜璐), belongs to China’s muslim Hui minority.
The priority nature of the infrastructure project and the ethnicity of the intern who was killed both make this a potentially sensitive story for the local leadership.
On the day of the accident the Urumqi Evening Post initially issued a post from its official Weibo account that included the name of the project worksite and the term “tractor shovel.” That post was quickly deleted and replaced with a second post in which both were removed. The omission was spotted by eagle-eyed users on Sina Weibo, who re-posted images of both posts:

[I’d like to ask: Why did the Urumqi Evening Post delete the location, and the word “tractor shovel”?] On the morning of April 18, 2 female journalists from the Urumqi Evening Post were reporting on the Tianzi Road Project when they were accidentally struck by a tractor shovel. One died and the other was injured. What is unforeseen is that the first Weibo sent out by the Urumqi Evening Post was quickly deleted, and the words “tractor shovel” and “Tianzi Road” were removed from a follow-up post. A tractor shovel was the cause of the accident, and the place where it happened was Tianzilu — so why were these most crucial aspects of the news story removed? Look at the following image.

[ABOVE: A composite image showing two posts on the April 18 accident at the Tianzi Road Project, the first mentioning the location and the second removing it.]
Users speculated that the newspaper had removed the reference to the Tianzi Road Project because local leaders did not want to be held liable or have the project tainted by tragedy. The reference to “tractor shovel” might have been removed to avoid associations with forced demolition. In a number of cases across China, villagers have been crushed by machines while trying to defend their homes from forced demolition by the authorities. Social media users did make this association in the comments sections of some posts on the Tianzi Road Project accident.
The August 19 edition of the Urumqi Evening Post also deflected the story of the intern’s death away from the Tianzi Road Project. The paper’s front page carried the story with a photograph of a candlelight vigil held for the victim the night before [A slideshow of the vigil is also available on the paper’s website. But the story’s headline read: “Bailu: Youth Cut Short On The Way To An Interview.” The story suggests that Bailu was killed not at the worksite but on the way to report on the story.

[ABOVE: The August 19 edition of the Urumqi Evening Post runs a front-page story on the death of the paper’s intern, Bailu.]
Social media have played an important role in the unfolding of this story.
One of the first reports on the incident came from Zhou Peng (周鹏), a journalist for the Xinjiang Legal News, who wrote at 1:11pm on April 18: “There’s been an accident on the Dabazha (大巴扎) section of the Tianzilu Project (田字路工程). Two journalists, one dead and one injured.”
A few minutes later he added: “On April 18 at 11:05am, two journalists from the Urumqi Evening Post were struck by a tractor shovel when covering the Dabazha section of the Tianzilu regeneration project. One journalist died on the scene and the other was injured.”
At 2:18pm Zhou Peng further updated the story, encouraging users not to invent conspiracies about the reporter’s death (for example, the suggestion that this was related to forced demolition): “While working the driver of the tractor shovel had line of sight problems and didn’t notice the two reporters, and this resulted in the accident. I ask that everyone not come to careless conclusions.”
Social media have also provided a platform for other journalists to make their feelings known about the case. Mou Min (牟敏), a reporter at Urumqi Evening Post, wrote on Sina Weibo:

If one day something happens to me in the course of reporting a story, the rest of you won’t know where exactly it happened, and how it happened, because you wouldn’t be allowed to know. But there would be people calling on all of you to follow my example, to contribute to the cause of journalism. This is our sorrow. I love doing journalism, but I am filled with sorrow.

Another Urumqi Evening Post reporter, Gao Ting (高婷), wrote:

Working the past three years as a journalist, I’ve put up with curses and hardship and these have toughened me up. But when heard that my colleague was run over by a shovel tractor, I felt the lightness of life for the first time and didn’t know how to calm myself down. After that, when I saw things being done that didn’t have the slightest shred of humanity to them, I could only think about how I hoped my own child would never become a journalist.

April 15, 2013, marked the 24th anniversary of the death of Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦), a pro-reform political figure who served as the CCP’s General Secretary from 1982 to 1987. Hu’s death in 1989 was an important catalyst for student protests in China that year. In 2013, many users on Weibo commemorated the anniversary of Hu’s death, offering words of praise and lighting virtual candles. The above cartoon, posted to Sina Weibo by artist Jiao Yantian (矫艳田), depicts Hu Yaobang raising his hand in greeting. The message reads simply: “Speak the truth and you earn the friendship of the people, do real things and you are great for a generation.”

The following post by Chen Huhua (陈沪华), a Shanghai-based Sina Weibo user with just under 5,000 fans, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 7:45pm on April 14, 2013. The post deals with a hunger strike held by a lawyer outside the gates of the Hupo School in the city of Hefei protesting the school’s refusal to allow Zhang Anni, the daughter of political activist Zhang Lin, to attend school. Zhang Lin was actively involved in the 1989 pro-democracy movement in Anhui. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre]
The deleted post reads:

A lawyer goes on hunger strike to voice his opposition, all for the sake of Anni!
律师绝食抗议，一切皆为安妮！

NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.

In April 2013 many Chinese took to social media to mock the excessiveness of anti-Japanese war dramas on Chinese television. Anyone who channel surfs inside China knows that anti-Japanese dramas are staple programming. The programs, which whip up hatred of the Japanese, have in recent years gotten the green light because 1) they serve the political objectives of China’s leaders by polishing up the liberation credentials of the CCP, 2) portray the CCP as China’s protector against outside aggressors, 3) distract Chinese from internal woes, 4) are an easy sell to Chinese audiences who have been reared on anti-Japanese sentiments and 5) are easy to make in a heavily restricted media environment where most contemporary issues are impossible to explore. But the flood of anti-Japanese programming has also resulted in extreme competition in a production environment that encourages low-budget fare. As a result, these programs have raced to the bottom, resorting to ever more extreme violence and sexual content to lure audiences. One recent example cited by fed-up web users was a scene in one program in which a naked young woman salutes Red Army soldiers who have just rescued her from rape as the hands of brutal Japanese soldiers. In another program a Japanese soldier is sliced in half by a heroic peasant warrior capable of ridiculous feats of violence. In the above cartoon, posted to Sina Weibo by artist Johnny Won (原子漫画), Chinese television viewers, grey and faceless, sit on a grey sofa and watch a pastiche of tasteless anti-Japanese programming. They throw their hands up with joy as a Japanese soldier is split in two.