At 6 a.m. on July 28, a wall of water inundated the small town of Taishitun (太师屯), barely a two-hour drive from central Beijing. The floodwaters — flowing at 1,500 times the normal rate of the Qingshui River, which usually trickles slowly through town — burst the banks and surged through streets and alleyways. While many residents found shelter on rooftops, the 62 residents of a local elderly care home had few options: 80 percent were unable to walk. The waters moved so swiftly that rescue workers could not reach them for three hours. By 10 a.m., 31 residents were dead.

The Taishitun care home tragedy accounted for the majority of Beijing’s 44 flood casualties during torrential rainfall last month. Yet the story, typical of disaster coverage that China’s leadership has long feared could raise questions about readiness and responsibility, received cautious treatment from Chinese media. 

In Action, Never Inaction

From the outset, propaganda authorities sought to turn attention away from the death toll, and away from the more jarringly human aspects of the story. The focus was on the actions and declarations of central and local leaders, projecting an image of selfless leadership on the front lines. 

In Party and commercial newspapers alike, and in the news apps that mirrored their messaging, the focus was entirely on high-level statements urging rescue and relief efforts. On June 29, the day after the floods struck Tashitun, the Beijing Daily (北京日报), the official newspaper under the city leadership, included just one tiny image on its front page — of three digging machines at work, but no hint of the human cost. Leading were statements about Xi Jinping’s “important instructions” (重要指示) and their response across Beijing and Hebei. 

On the front page of the more commercial Beijing News, which is also under the Beijing city leadership, Xi Jinping’s words again had top billing. There was a large image. But again, it was a scene of rescue — all hope harnessed for impact, and not a whiff of despair. 

When emotion did enter the official narrative, media outlets again forefronted Party leaders. The story was about their empathy as they grappled with the immensity of the situation, or about their selfless dedication. 

The most direct expression of emotion came on August 1 from Yu Weiguo (余卫国), the top official in Beijing’s Miyun District, who made a rare admission during a press conference that they had been inadequately prepared. “For a long time, the nursing home’s location in the town center was considered safe, and our emergency plans did not include it in the evacuation range,” said Yu. “This shows our plans had loopholes, and our understanding of extreme weather was insufficient.”

Yu admitted to the inability of the emergency services to reach the home in time, and made a rare public apology that the care home had been overlooked in local government flooding plans. “These elderly people were about the same age as my parents,” said an emotional district Party secretary Yu Weiguo. The Beijing News ran an article on the press conference, as well as a piece with Party Secretary for Beijing Yin Li (尹力) visited the silted-up care home and relayed his plans for safety guarantees for the future.

During the first 24 hours, these remarks were widely reported by other outlets, including Shangguan News (上观新闻) and the state broadcaster China Central Television. News sources also more readily reported the death toll. 

This pattern is a familiar one when it comes to official treatment of disaster stories. In the initial phase, as the tragedy (a word the leadership will rarely ever use) is fresh, the authorities will struggle to balance the need to inform a concerned public, allow emotion to be directed then dissipated, and ensure that media are restrained. The situation can be complicated by the chaos of a fast-moving situation, and by bureaucratic wires that get crossed. 

For journalists and outlets that hope to push the bounds of reporting, this confusion can equal opportunity (借题发挥). Statements by officials, particularly from the scene, may be interpreted as a green light — or at least political cover — for reporting. The Beijing News (新京报), known in the past for its more freewheeling reporting, with hints of that old spirit re-emerging in recent months, sent a journalist to the scene and published a piece by close of business the same day the story emerged. 

But the window is often narrow. Just as outlets are scrambling to get reporters to the scene, propaganda authorities are working to wrestle back control. A typical missive that might come down from on high: “Do not look back” (不要回顾). The phrase is code for deep reporting, fact finding, and storytelling — those things that are likely to emotion, even anger, toward the more human dimensions of the tragedy, including human error. 

Moving On From the Loopholes 

One of the first signs that the flood story was pivoting away came as references to the death toll were suddenly taken down. In some cases, lingering references to Yu Weiguo’s press conference also focused on the recitation of statistical points, avoiding any mention of more sensitive admissions like “our plans had loopholes.” Significantly, the original report from the Beijing News mentioned above went dark. Multiple reports from the professional news outlet Caixin (财新) reporting the incident were also removed, including one claiming that local residents had not been given prior warning of the dangerous floodwaters.

But it was also at this point that the clearest hints of more assertive professionalism emerged from the first round of deeper reporting.

On August 3, Sanlian Life Weekly (三联生活周刊), a general affairs magazine, published a long-form article full of eyewitness accounts that gave life to the tragedy. Among those interviewed was Li Meihua (李梅花), whose sister was among the 31 victims who had been trapped inside the elderly care home. Her son, in fact, had until recently been cared for at the facility, and the story began a deeply human account of what might have been: 

When news broke on July 31st about 31 deaths at the Taishitun Town Elderly Care Center, Li Meihua shuddered. She felt fortunate. Just 20 days earlier, due to the scorching weather, she had brought home her son, who suffered a cerebral thrombosis and was partially paralyzed. She couldn’t bear to think about the “what ifs.”

The crucial difference in the case of the Sanlian Life Weekly was the way it combined on-the-ground reporting and gripping local accounts alongside official statements — including Yu Weiguo’s admission about lack of preparedness. Far from a report about swift and efficient action, it was a portrait of a community abandoned to the floodwaters. But it was clearly too much for the authorities, whose priorities had already shifted to preventing such acts of factual reflection. It was pulled from the internet within 24 hours.

Such signs of more probing coverage — even if faint and fleeting — are a welcome reminder that there is life beneath the ice. 

Sanlian Life Weekly is an outlet that produced quality in-depth reporting in the early 2000s, including a 2014 report on Bo Guagua, the son of the fallen official Bo Xilai. Like the Beijing News and Caixin, it is an outlet that has quietly endured a widespread contraction of space over the past 15 years, worsening considerably under the press policies of Xi Jinping, who has emphasized the principle that media must do the bidding of the Party, and must adhere strictly to “public opinion guidance,” a legacy of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre that links media control to social and political stability. In this environment, acts of resistance from the media have been exceptionally rare. When they do emerge, they should  at least be acknowledged, if not exactly celebrated. That outlets like Sanlian Life Weekly, which is helmed by the naughts-era investigative reporter Li Honggu, continue to seize space, even if they are forced back, is a welcome sign that Chinese journalism still has a pulse.

Remember that time the Chinese Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper sharply criticized chipmaker Nvidia over allegations that its H20 chip had “backdoor” vulnerabilities? Yeah, never happened. I’ll explain.

On July 31, the Cyberspace Administration of China summoned Nvidia to explain security concerns it had aired in a public release related to its concerns over its H20 chip. The CAC claimed that US lawmakers had previously called for exported advanced chips to be equipped with tracking and positioning functions, and that American AI experts had revealed that Nvidia’s tracking and positioning technologies were “already mature,” to use the CAC’s language.

Nvidia strenuously denied the allegations, saying that “Nvidia’s chips have no backdoors and do not allow anyone to remotely access or control them,” according to Taiwan’s United Daily News. The next day, headlines in Chinese and English around the world reported that the Chinese Communist Party’s official People’s Daily had published a commentary called “How Can I Trust You, Nvidia?” (英偉達讓我怎麼相信你), warning that cybersecurity breaches could trigger nightmare scenarios and declaring that “safeguarding cybersecurity is just as important as protecting national territory.”

When you understand the highly disciplined nature of the editorial process within the flagship newspaper of the CCP, which can be read as signal tower transmitting views from the top leadership, then you understand how serious the commentary in question would be. At just 20 pages on its fullest day, with anywhere from two to seven pages being ads, the People’s Daily is precious political real estate — and it is reserved for seriousness.

Make no mistake: a signal to Nvidia about its alleged security vulnerabilities on the commentary page of the People’s Daily would be serious. But that is not — not exactly — what this was.

“Your Party newspaper commentary guy here.”

In fact, the “How Can I Trust You, Nvidia?” commentary was not published in the print newspaper. It was posted to the “People’s Daily Commentary” (人民日报评论) account on the popular Chinese social media and messaging app WeChat.

Some of you are already saying: What difference does that make? A lot of difference. Sure, this commentary was also “official” in important ways. It was written by Meng Fanzhe (孟繁哲), a boy-faced commentator at the People’s Daily who has been cited jointly as an editor of the page-five commentary section of the paper.

But there are many layers of “official” in China, and these can be (and are) exploited by state media for varying strategies.

This was not a stern commentary of reprimand in the pages of the People’s Daily. It was an unmuzzled and more tonally personal rebuke that was tailor-made for viral dissemination on social media. If you look at the commentary in context — and how many media reporting the story actually did this, I wonder — it is clear that this is exactly how it was pitched. Meng was pushed out to center stage and his youthful face presented to the audience — something that the People’s Daily newspaper never does. His written commentary was accompanied by a video version for the chummy series “The Comment Guys Speak” (评论君开讲).

To see just how invisible Meng Fanzhe generally is at the People’s Daily, check out this in-site search at the People’s Daily Online portal (also, mind you, not the same thing as the newspaper), which yields exactly 0 results. At people.cn, which skews heavy toward content from the newspaper, he does appear, nearly always in his role as a joint editor on page five. He has also managed a handful of front-page commentaries like this earnest one on flood season vigilance from the “Today’s Talk” (今日谈) column.

Then, importantly, look at how Meng identifies himself in his post. He finishes with the buddy-buddy line: “Your Party newspaper commentary guy here. I welcome everyone to leave comments and share your views and opinions.” But he never identifies himself as “a People’s Daily commentator” (人民日报评论员). Why? Because that is the ultra-serious suit-and-tie designation for official commentaries that speak clearly to the consensus views of the leadership. Here, instead, we have the suits nudging a youthful voice out into the open, as if to say: “Fanzhe, go toy with Jensen Huang and the Nvidia people. Let’s make them squirm a bit.”

This is the important distinction that perhaps every media outlet reporting on this story missed. And how, in fact, they all collectively became part of the viral wall of intimidation facing Nvidia in China. This was not a statement from the Party’s lectern. It was an attack-dog tactic, not unlike the way the Global Times, a pugnacious spin-off of the People’s Daily, is often used to gnash its teeth, even when the flagship newspaper keeps its rhetorical cool.

Speaking of the Global Times, we can also note in this case how its former editor-in-chief Hu Xijin (胡锡进), a Party media guy through and through, referred to Meng’s commentary. Writing on Weibo about the WeChat post — it was never anything more — he pushed the piece as a “Party newspaper blockbuster commentary” (党报重磅评论). Hu’s “blockbuster” language perfectly encapsulates the nature and intent of Meng Fanzhe’s viral commentary, which was meant to kick up a storm because a storm might be useful. Hu did not call it a People’s Daily commentary.

On July 15, journalists investigating consumer reports of substandard electrical cable products at an industrial park complex in the southern Chinese province of Hunan were attacked by the executive of a cable company during a reporting visit to the firm’s offices. In an altercation that was caught on video and took social media by storm, the man was shown smashing a reporter’s filming equipment to pieces.

As the story turned on the perpetrator of the violent act, a 42-year old boss at Hunan Fengxu Cable Company (湖南豐旭線纜有限公司) identified only as Mr. Xie, the All-China Journalists Association (ACJA) — an ostensible professional association for the media that more fully represents the interests of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — spoke out in support of the reporters. In a sanctimonious missive, the association declared that “interviewing is a journalist’s right” (采访是记者的权利).

It was a welcome idea, certainly. But it was also deeply hypocritical coming from a Party-run association the puts politics and news control at the forefront of its work, perpetuating and defending Xi Jinping’s vision of the press as a tool for the Party’s interest and for “positive propaganda.”

Since Xi’s press policy took full shape in February 2016, it has revolved around the notion of the “Four Firm Adherences” (四个牢牢坚持), which uphold 1) the CCP nature of the media (essentially, serving the Party); 2) the Marxist View of Journalism (which again puts the Party at the center); 3) “correct guidance of public opinion,” a buzzword for media control to maintain social and political stability dating back to the political turmoil of 1989; and 4) “emphasizing positive propaganda” (正面宣传为主), the principle that media should generally avoid critical reporting in favor of the uplifting and constructive.

Needless to say, these four interlocking concepts — which the ACJA has dutifully upheld — are a recipe for compliance and lack of agency. To the extent that Chinese media have turned their CCP-given powers to playing a monitoring role, this has happened through what is generally known as “supervision by public opinion” (舆论监督), a concept unique to China’s highly controlled press environment. This form of supervision generally entails press reporting of small-time abuses that do not touch directly on the interests of the Party-state. And more recently, in a further reigning in of journalists in which the ACJA has played an active role, Xi Jinping has emphasized the unity of “supervision” and “positive propaganda” — meaning that coverage should direct through positivity and praise, rather than correct.

It was around this much mythologized notion of supervision that the ACJA and state media shaped their outrage over the destruction of the reporter’s filming equipment in Hunan. In its high-minded statement, the association affirmed that “legitimate supervision by public opinion is protected by law” (正当舆论监督受法律保护). Who gets to decide what types of probing coverage are “legitimate”? The answer, again, is the Party, as the “Four Firm Adherences” make clear.

Despite his emphasis on anti-corruption, Xi Jinping has severely constrained the already limited supervisory role of China’s press, viewing the war against corruption as a matter of internal CCP “discipline” rather than outside supervision.

In fact, despite his reputation for centralizing and consolidating political control, Xi has actually empowered leadership at every level of China’s vast bureaucracy to determine news coverage and its constraints. Local authorities now exercise more control over media than at any previous point in the reform era. News feeds at major online outlets like Shanghai’s The Paper (澎湃) are filled with news and promotional releases from government-run social accounts, a vast web of self-promotion. Crime and legal news? Don’t look to your local journalism team. The story has been covered by a ”police incident report” (警情通报) directly from a district or city police precinct.

Swatting at Flies

Against this backdrop of strict press control and local information empowerment, the ACJA’s talk of journalist’s rights does not accord with political realities. The true right to report is vested in those who wield political power, which is why only protected state media outlets can pursue “supervision” in China today against small-time consumer concerns, or malfeasance by small companies and individuals. This is sometimes referred to critically in Chinese as “swatting flies and letting tigers run free.”

Even these state media journalists are not safe from harassment when reporting local stories. In one recent case in March 2024, a filming crew from the Party-run China Media Group (CMG), reporting for the state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), was hustled away from the scene of a deadly gas explosion in Henan province during a live broadcast. How could that happen? Because the real media policy at the state-level, and therefore at every level beneath, is information suppression. What really unfolded on live television last year was not about journalists exposing the truth to the public. Rather, it was about who would exercise what level of control over the story. It goes without saying that CMG and CCTV, which are directly under the Central Propaganda Department, have their own “discipline” to enforce.

Nevertheless, as the ACJA spoke up over the Hunan incident this month, CCTV was quick to amplify the language about journalists’ rights. Provincial-level state outlets followed suit. Jilin province’s state-run news site declared in a commentary that it was nonplussed by the events at the industrial park complex in Hunan. “It is hard to believe that such violations of journalists’ legitimate rights could occur in broad daylight in a society governed by law,” it wrote.

In what might be regarded as a blatant violation of Party orthodoxy outside this moment of state media outrage, the Jilin commentary ventured even to say that legal protections for journalists are necessary because “only then can the news media properly serve as the sentries of society.” We should remember that the CCP’s Document 9, released in 2013, explicitly attacks the notion of the press as “society’s public instrument.”

As a matter of policy, China’s media are most definitely not “sentries of society.” As the “Four Firm Adherences” make clear, they are to do the CCP’s bidding, and to defend its interests — even if that means crushing a story, pulverizing facts, or smashing cameras.

As shocking as the scene outside the Hunan Fengxu Cable Company might have been, nothing whatsoever about it is difficult to believe. China’s constitutional right to freedom of expression is routinely trampled by a system that pulls journalists back from breaking stories, directs them to avoid sensitivities, and obliterates online posts in the millions.

Mr. Xie is not a monstrous outlier. He is a raw and rough allegory for the system as it was designed.

In a story that topped headlines and internet chatter in China last week, Dalian Polytechnic University in China’s northern Liaoning province sparked outrage by expelling a 21-year-old female student for appearing in videos posted nearly seven months ago to the Telegram account of a visiting Ukrainian esports player. Videos of the student in the visitor’s hotel room showed nothing sexually explicit, and it was unclear why the videos had become an issue now, but the university responded vehemently with a public statement naming the student and accusing her of “improper association with foreigners” (与外国人不当交往) that had “damaged national dignity and the school’s reputation” (有损国格、校誉). 

The story ignited a fierce debate across Chinese social media over institutional overreach and gender double standards, trending on Weibo on July 13.

Media commentator Zhang Feng (张丰) criticized “sexual nationalism,” arguing that while Chinese men dating foreign women might be seen as acceptable or even deserving praise, the opposite invites fury among sexist males who see Chinese women as property of men and the state. Xiaoxi Cicero (小西cicero), a writer who posts on WeChat, asked whether the same nationalist uproar and expulsion would have followed had a young Chinese man been shown on video with a visiting foreign woman.

One Chinese Substacker summed up the toxic combination of sexism and state-driven nationalism with the pithy post headline: “National Dignity is Not a Penis You Can Brandish at Will.” 

The esports player, Danylo Teslenko, also known as “Zeus,” removed the videos within several days, and apologized publicly for sharing what he called “too personal” content. By that point, however, the story had already grabbed headlines in China and around the world — revealing stark contrasts in ethical journalism standards.

While major international media outlets like The New York Times and the Associated Press withheld the victim’s name citing privacy concerns, Chinese domestic media extensively published her full name after the university included it in their official expulsion notice.

As the backlash grew, however, there was a clear effort across the media to scrub her name and replace it with references to her surname or general phrases such as “female student.” At Shanghai’s The Paper, original reports mentioned the student’s full name, which was later substituted for “Li XX.” Readers noticed the change. “So, you’ve swapped out ____ for ‘Li XX,'” said one.” Even posts on public accounts like this one that purported to come to the victim’s defense shamelessly named her, and continued to circulate prurient images from Teslenko’s Telegram channel.

As Chinese-language media in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia reported the story, they generally avoided naming the victim. This did not stop some, however, from squeezing the story for its sensational impact. At Taiwan’s Liberty Times (自由時報) on July 13, the victim was referenced only as “a Chinese female student (中國女大生), but the outlet played up the sexual element of the story by prominently featuring a blurred image of the student playfully sticking her tongue out. A report by Hong Kong’s HK01 similarly avoided mentioning the victim by name, but included a photo gallery of images previously on Teslenko’s account.