Playing on the meme of 2012 as a year of pending apocalypse or Armageddon, and ongoing economic weakness in the Eurozone, the January 5, 2012, edition of the English-language China Daily ran this cartoon by Will Luo (罗杰), which was also posted to Luo’s comic blog at QQ.com. In late December, NASA scientists addressed the history and science of 2012 end-of-the-world scenarios on the organization’s website, saying that sound science dispelled all concern. All of these facts and ideas come together in the Will Luo cartoon, for which the accompanying text at QQ.com reads: “NASA announced that 2012 would not be the end of the world, that there would be no asteroid collisions with earth. As for the Euro, it’s hard to say.” At the left-hand side of the cartoon, a NASA official stands at a podium and says confidently, “Nothing will collide with the earth in 2012.” On the right, meanwhile, a meteor tipped with the symbol of the Euro currency blazes down down earth.

The following is a translation of an essay written by veteran Hong Kong journalist Luqiu Luwei (闾丘露薇) late last month for Southern Metropolis Weekly, a magazine published by Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily. The essay, framed as an end-of-year letter written to Luqiu’s teenage daughter, expresses the author’s hopes for her own child and all children in Hong Kong and mainland China.
The essay is indirectly critical of problems in Chinese society, including school bus safety (which has recently gotten more attention in the Chinese media), food safety and recent cases of sexual exploitation of children by government officials. The essay also makes indirect reference to the annual commemoration of June 4 at Hong Kong’s Victoria Park.
The following translation is based on the full version posted by Luqiu Luwei to her Tencent blog.

“A Letter to My Daughter at the Close of 2011”
By Luqiu Luwei (闾丘露薇)
December 31, 2011
My beloved Fan Fan,
I’m sorry that this is the first time I’ve written you a letter. It’s true we have many opportunities to talk to each other. I listen to you talk about things at school. I listen to you talk about the music you like, and your favorite movie stars. From time to time I offer suggestions to you — most often, of course, reminding you to do your homework and push you to be more diligent in your studies.
But sometimes there are certain things I don’t know quite how to talk about with you, things I hope you’ll spend more time thinking about. Perhaps it’s because these things are too solemn, and because I don’t know quite how to begin. Of course, the chief reason is really that I don’t feel overly concerned. Just like I’m not too worried about it when I learn that your test results aren’t so great. I always feel the best way is to let you figure things out for yourself.
I think of the way you told me recently that you learned how to leap the Great Firewall (翻墙) — because you couldn’t stand it anymore, the way that as soon as you crossed over the river to Shenzhen you couldn’t watch your favorite online videos or chat with your friends. But you studied up and took matters into your own hands, doing your little bit to change the situation and live the kind of life you want.
During summertime last year we went to Victoria Park. And even though all along you kept your head down and buried in the mobile phone of yours, I knew that you actually did hear what my friends and I talked about. I know in fact that you patiently listened to me as I related in detail certain historical episodes [NOTE: The author is referring here to June 4, 1989. The event is the annual commemoration of June Fourth at Hong Kong’s Victoria Park]. I think that you and those other kids your age who were there with their moms and dads probably all understand quite well why we drag you there every year. You are fortunate, because you at least have the luxury of some impression and recollection [of this history], and you won’t remain utterly ignorant of our history.
Do you know how fortunate you are? When I was writing [recently] about what had to be done to ensure that school buses were safe, the thing I thought of in the very first instant was of course you. Because as a working mom I understand only too well how hard it is to care for a child and work at a career. If the society one lives in offers many conveniences and also helps keep us safe, our quality of life benefits substantially. But do you know that like school buses that in your eyes are never a problem are a big, big problem in many places in China? This problem has actually existed for a long time. The media have reported on it every year, and every year children are killed or injured because of school bus safety problems. But the government never paid any attention to this problem, up until a school bus tragedy in Gansu this year killed 21 people. Only after that did the government finally begin to recognize that the best way is to use the law to build the [right] system [to ensure safety]. This was of course progress, even if it came far too late. But then more problems have emerged in this process, like parents discovering that they no longer have access to school buses at all.
Every time we go to mainland China you hear me talk angrily with other adults about problems like food safety. We are always reminding you to be extremely careful with all of those mainland foods, worrying ourselves sick about your health and well-being. Do you realize again just how fortunate you are that we have the means to pay more for our food, buying a bit of piece of mind? But there are many more people who don’t have such a choice. A few days back I was reporting from the outskirts of Hangzhou. My colleagues and I were really hungry, but we didn’t dare buy breakfast at a street-side stall, no matter how steaming hot and fragrant it seemed. At the time in fact I was shaken with this feeling of guilt. While I chose to spurn these cheap foods, I knew that was what the vast majority of people ate every single day. When we enjoy such privileges, shouldn’t we think more about how we can ensure that these privileges become rights that every single person can enjoy?
You’re already a teenage girl, Fan Fan. And for this reason I know that every time you see news reports about girls about your age who have been raped or sexually exploited by officials or government functionaries in mainland China you feel a certain gloom you find it hard to talk about. The way I see it, there is nothing at all to discuss on this issue. The sexual exploitation of a minor is a criminal offense, and the issue of whether or not the child involved was a willing participant does not enter the equation — because kids as young as you don’t yet have the full capacity for independent decision-making, and the responsibility for looking after you lies with society and with your family. But unfortunately the real outcome [in China] of what I see as an issue not even admitting discussion was quite the opposite of what I would have expected. This caused me to feel that safety was lacking on yet another front in this society [in mainland China].
Every time I go to the mainland, people around me feel they must remind me to keep a careful eye on my things. And if you were to go over to Shenzhen on your own I would worry constantly about whether you might cross paths with some unsavory person. [This society], whether by design or by accident, gives rise to so many pressures and concerns in people’s hearts. I often ask myself how things could get this way. Actually, it’s not just that I lack trust in this society. It’s more that I worry law enforcement authorities aren’t reliable. I wouldn’t know where to turn for help, or whether if I sought help I would actually get it.
I know you don’t really take these concerns to heart, because you’re still young. That’s a good thing of course, because if you worry too much and are too much on your guard you’ll lose all innocence and belief in the goodness of human nature. It’s also for this reason that I’m often conflicted inside. I still remember that time we went to the World Expo in Shanghai. There were so many people queuing up for refreshments, and you and your friends kept getting pushed to the back. I had to teach you how to protect yourselves. At the same time, watching you with mainland friends of your age, who were so capable in certain areas of their studies and so ambitious, I even found myself worrying about your prospects. What if the society of the future was like that, naked competition trumping all else and no diversity of choices — would you be seen by society as a failure? I didn’t know whether you were prepared to deal with such a world.
Ultimately, though, you are very fortunate to have more choices than so many other people. I only hope that you have interests of your own, that you have the ability to make your own way. I hope that you’ll be a decent person, that if you see little Yue Yue lying on the street you’ll have the sense to notify the police immediately, that when you see an injustice or feel that you’ve been treated unjustly, you won’t be afraid to stand up and speak out.
In Hong Kong in the future, maintaining a life of simplicity and dignity won’t be a problem.
My expectations aren’t so high — for you, or for this society. I only hope that other children who are less fortunate than you will be able to grow up in a society that allows them to feel a sense of happiness. That’s all. I use this phrase ‘sense of happiness’ because the external world can only create the necessary conditions for happiness, but happiness is something that emerges from the heart of each person. If this society does not destroy the capacity for people to feel a sense of happiness, then there is still hope.
I’m always reminding myself that I shouldn’t underestimate kids. Recently, in particular, I’ve seen quite a few essays written by high school students that have reaffirmed this for me. We adults always make the mistake of thinking there are things you young people can’t understand. I know actually that in your hearts you and others your age understand very well.
I hope this letter is just a beginning.
Signed,
Your loving mother

A look at the news in China today suggests that the ongoing standoff in the village of Wukan is being given a high level of priority by provincial leaders in Guangdong, who appear eager to demonstrate that they are on top of the incident and take the concerns of villagers seriously.
The constructive tone coming out of Guangdong’s upper echelons contrasts starkly with remarks made yesterday by the top leader of the city of Shanwei (汕尾), Zheng Yanxiong (郑雁雄), who acridly criticized villagers for “placing their hopes with rotten foreign media, rotten foreign newspapers and rotten foreign websites.”
Guangdong Satellite Television reported late yesterday that Guangdong’s top leader, Wang Yang (汪洋) — who has been tipped as a possible candidate to enter the Party’s powerful politburo standing committee late next year — has said the Wukan incident was the result of tensions that had been allowed to build up without being addressed and resolved.
The Guangdong Satellite Television report is based on an address given yesterday by Guangdong’s deputy party secretary, Zhu Mingguo (朱明国), to a gathering of Party leaders in the city of Lufeng. Zhu has been appointed to head up a provincial government working group to resolve the Wukan incident.

Wang Yang’s basic “direction” on the Wukan incident, as conveyed by Zhu Mingguo yesterday, is as follows:

The occurrence of the Wukan incident was accidental in nature, and at the same time it was inevitable. This is a result of the long-time ignoring, through the process of economic and social development, the build up of tensions occurring in the process of economic and social development. It is an inevitable result of our emphasis on ‘one hand tight and the other hand loose’ in the course of our work.

It is important to note that Wang Yang is most certainly not suggesting here a contrast between economic policy and political reform — i.e., that lax economic policies combined with tight political controls are behind crises like this one. He is not suggesting that more should have been done, or should now be done, on the political reform front.
Wang Yang’s remarks are reminiscent of those made earlier this month by security chief Zhou Yongkang (周永康), about the need to “improve social management.” The idea is that while Guangdong has taken an active approach (一手硬) to economic development, it can do more to improve “social construction,” or shehui jianshe (社会建设).
There are a total of 8 articles on the Wukan incident appearing today in 7 mainland media. There are two articles in Guangdong’s official Nanfang Daily as well as articles in Southern Metropolis Daily, Shenzhen’s Daily Sunshine, the Shanghai Morning Post, Guangzhou Daily (the official Party paper in Guangzhou) and China News Service.
The above articles are all based on today’s report from the Nanfang Daily concerning the work team in Lufeng led by Zhu Mingguo. There is virtually no variation in the reports, the only point of departure being the sourcing of the information in the Daily Sunshine, which says its report comes from the official website of the Shanwei party and government.
All of the reports convey the news that Zhu Mingguo addressed cadres in Lufeng as the head of the provincial working group, and said that “the provincial Party committee and the provincial government give a high level of priority and concern to the interest demands of the masses of Wukan village.”
The reports go on to outline the basic points of Zhu Mingguo’s speech, as follows:

1. The basic demands of the villagers are reasonable, and there are discipline issues among village leaders.
2. The extreme behavior of the villagers can be understood and forgiven, and the Party and government will not hold them responsible. For those who engaged in destructive activities and admission of wrongdoing will be sufficient to exonerate them.
3. Anything is on the table for discussion so long as villagers agree to sit down with the government to earnestly resolve issues. The government guarantees freedom of movement for those chosen to represent the villagers in negotiations.
4. The government pledges to refrain from entering the village to make arrests so long as illegal conduct does not continue and anti-government actions are not again organized.
5. Lin Zulian (林祖恋), Yang Semao (杨色茂) and other organizers and instigators know only too well that the government is already working to resolve the reasonable demands of the villagers. If they remain obstinate, continuing to stir up villagers in resistance to the government, irredeemably allowing themselves to be used by domestic and international hostile forces, they will be pursued.

The sternness of this last point recalls remarks made in a very different spirit at the Lufeng meeting yesterday by Zheng Yanxiong (郑雁雄), the top Party leader in the city of Shanwei (汕尾市), the prefectural-level city in Guangdong that administers Lufeng County where Wukan is located.
Zheng, who was sitting to the right of Zhu Mingguo during the meeting, seemed to be boiling over with anger at the recalcitrance of Wukan villagers and the (as he saw it) depravities of foreign media. A video of portions of Zheng’s address follows, but here are a few of his choicer remarks:

“If you can trust in outside media, then pigs can climb trees.”
“If you don’t make any more trouble, if you don’t break the law, the government will say, look, they can be relied upon, it looks like they won’t stir up chaos again — then there’s no need to have the armed police come. Do you think the armed police don’t cost money? Hundreds and hundreds of armed police are here now, and this comes every day out of the purse of our Mayor Qiu.”
“There’s only one group of people who really experiences added hardships year after year. Who are they? Cadres, that’s who. Me included. Did party secretaries before ever feel as tired as this? You have to handle everything. Your powers decline every day, and you have fewer and fewer methods at your disposal — but your responsibility grows bigger and bigger every day. Ordinary people have bigger and bigger appetites every day. They grow smarter every day, and they are harder and harder to control.”
“A responsible government like this, and you don’t look to us. You look to a few rotten foreign media, and rotten foreign media, foreign newspapers and foreign websites! You confuse good and bad entirely! What responsibility can they take? They can’t accomplish anything! If you can’t come together and socialism falls into chaos then they’ll be happy!”

The following report, printed on page 16 of today’s Nanfang Daily, the official newspaper of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the CCP, is the only news report in China’s press today on the ongoing stand-off between villagers and authorities in Wukan Village.
The report is essentially an announcement by the top Party leader in the prefectural-level city of Shanwei that the negotiations for an end to tensions will now be principally the business of Shanwei, not of Lufeng, the county in which Wukan Village is located. The bottom line: this hot potato has been bumped up a level on the Party power ladder.

[ABOVE: A report on the Wukan incident appears on page 16 of Guangdong’s official Nanfang Daily newspaper. The report is in the middle, under the uppermost photo.]
The appearance of the article in Nanfang Daily is most likely meant to reflect to leaders around the country that Guangdong is prioritizing the handling of this crisis.

Nanfang Daily
December 20, 2011
A16
By Xin Junqing (辛均庆), Hong Jiyu (洪继宇)
Shanwei Party Secretary Zheng Yanxiong Makes a Bulletin on Decisions Relating to the Wukan Incident: Government Will Return and Compensate for 269,000 Square Meters of Land
Nanfang Daily reporting — Yesterday, the Shanwei (汕尾) Party Committee and Shanwei Government held a press conference concerning the Wukan incident (乌坎事件). Shanwei Party Secretary Zheng Yanxiong (郑雁雄) said at the meeting that the [Shanwei] party committee and [Shanwei] government had decided to elevate the pledges and commitments of the Lufeng [county-level] party committee and government concerning the demands of the villagers and solutions to the issue, and implement these at the Shanwei [prefectural] Party and government level. Moreover, the original land for use by Country Garden (Holdings) Limited, which is already frozen, will be negotiated by the [Shanwei] government, compensation will be made for those who lost out in the land requisition, the 404 mu [269,000 square meters] of land involved in this incident will be returned, and new developments will be carried out in consideration of the views of planning departments and villagers, fully protecting the interests of villagers.
It is reported that on December 18, principal leaders from the Party and government of Shanwei city held a face-to-face meeting with more than 500 cadres, masses, teachers, student representatives and others from Wukan Village and surrounding areas. Additionally, Wukan Village party branch leader Xue Chang (薛昌) and village committee director Chen Shunyi (陈舜意) were detained and interrogated (双规) on December 16 by discipline inspection authorities. [NOTE: Detention and interrogation by discipline inspectors, known as shuang’gui, is a disciplinary measure for Party officials that lies outside the normal legal system.]
Zheng Yanxiong pointed out that the incident in Wukan village emerged from the masses being unhappy with the party branch chief and principle responsible persons in the village party committee who had remained in their posts too long, [and the villagers] out of concern for a change in their interests, demanding the protection of their own legal rights and interests in the management of village affairs, and in the transfer of land-use rights and the rise in value of land whose use had already been transfered. The nature of the incident, [Zheng said], is that of an internal interest dispute within the village, and [Zheng remains] confident that it will be handled as it should (相信一定会处理好).

The most recent edition of Caixin Century magazine, part of the line-up at Caixin Media — the group headed up by former Caijing editor-in-chief Hu Shuli (胡舒立) — offers a series of reports on high-speed rail in China. The series includes an in-depth look at the corruption case against Zhang Shuguang (张曙光), the engineer once dubbed “the grand designer of China’s high-speed rail.”
The Caixin Century issue, which bears the headline “The Secrets of Zhang Shuguang,” includes photographs of Zhang’s Los Angeles home and calculates the home’s value on the basis of documentary transfer tax paid back in 2002 by Zhang and his wife, Wang Xing.

The report dealing with Zhang’s US home purchase, “American Mansion of ‘China High-Speed Rail Grand Designer’ Zhang Shuguang Revealed,” says Zhang’s property is located at 688 Pierre Road in Walnut, California, a community about 20 miles east of Los Angeles.
Assuming this information is accurate, here is an aerial close-up of Zhang Shuguang’s Walnut property courtesy of Google Maps.

View Larger Map
Here is the photo of Zhang Shuguang’s Walnut home Caixin posted online yesterday along with its series, which was promoted to the front page of the group’s website.

The following is a partial translation of the Caixin report on Zhang Shuguang’s California home.

“American Mansion of ‘China High-Speed Rail Grand Designer’ Zhang Shuguang Revealed”
December 19, 2011 (posted to website)
The mansion is located in Walnut, USA, covering an area of 30,000 square feet, with a floor area of 4,100 square feet. There are five bedrooms, and the price is 860,000 US dollars.
Not long after Ding Shumiao (丁书苗), a businesswoman from the [prefectural level] city of Jincheng in Shanxi province, was arrested, Zhang Shuguang hurried off to the United States, taking this mansion that had originally been registered jointly in the name of himself and [his wife] Wang Xing (王兴) and putting it entirely under Wang Xing’s name.
Reporters Gu Yongqiang (谷永强), Wang Chen (王晨), Zhang Tao (章涛) and Li Yongchun (李永春)
In recent days, the U.S. mansion of Zhang Shuguang, the former deputy engineer [of China’s Ministry of Railways] and director of the National Transport Administration (运输局局长) who was suspended pending [a corruption] investigation, and who has been called “the grand designer of China’s high-speed rail,” has been revealed.
According to reports by Caixin Century, Zhang Shuguang’s mansion is located at 688 Pierre Road in Walnut, [California].
It’s total area is 4,100 square feet (about 381 square meters), with five bedrooms.
In November 2002 Zhang Shuguang and his wife Wang Xin paid in full for the property. At the time, they paid 946 dollars in documentary transfer tax. Calculating on this basis, we can estimate that Zhang and Wang paid about 860,000 US dollars for the property (the rate of documentary transfer tax in Los Angeles is 1.1 US dollars for every 1,000 US dollars).
In 2002, 860,000 dollars was no paltry sum, and according to the exchange rate at the time (1:8.28), the Renminbi equivalent at the time was 7.12 million yuan. It is difficult to imagine that Zhang Shuguang, who at the time was serving as the head of the passenger car division at the Ministry of Railways, was making a monthly salary of just around 2,200 yuan.

The ongoing standoff between villagers and local authorities in Wukan, Guangdong province, has received big play today in Chinese-language newspapers outside the mainland. The bulk of the reporting is from Hong Kong media, and most of that is from two newspapers, Ming Pao and Apple Daily. The story continues to receive strong coverage by foreign media, including the Financial Times, Reuters, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and others.
There seems to be no coverage at all today in mainland Chinese media, which must lead us to ask: What next? How do China’s leaders plan to respond to this developing crisis?
A news search for “Wukan” on Baidu.com (4pm, Hong Kong, December 19, 2011) turns up only one result for December 19, which is from the Chinese-language edition of the Wall Street Journal Online.
A search for “Wukan” in the WiseNews Chinese-language newspapers database for today, December 19, 2011, returns 0 articles for mainland newspapers. That means no coverage among the 200+ mainland newspapers archived by the service. A search for all regions, including the mainland (0), Hong Kong and Taiwan, returns 58 articles in total — 37 from Hong Kong, 6 from Taiwan, 0 from Macau, 14 from Malaysia and 1 from Singapore.

[GRAPH: Share of Chinese-language coverage of the Wukan story by number of articles, December 19, 2011.]
While there seems to be no mainstream media coverage inside China today of the Wukan story, news is flittering across domestic microblogs. Searches for “Wukan” remain blocked on Sina Weibo, bringing up a notice that results cannot be shown “according to Chinese laws and regulations”:

[ABOVE: Screenshot of search for “Wukan”, December 19, 2011, 5:15pm Hong Kong.]
However, searches for “Shanwei,” which were blocked late last week, are now freed up and reveal plenty of chatter about the situation in Wukan Village, for which a number of new keywords have cropped up, including “W-kan” (W坎), which uses the English letter “W” with the second character in the village’s name, and “Wu-K” (乌K), which combines the character for “wu” with the English letter “K.” Another term being used is the simple “WK.”
Plenty of microblog posts have shared Chinese-language coverage today from Hong Kong. Here, for example, is a post in which the original poster writes: “The whole world is watching Wukan Village, except for us fools!” The re-poster seen here responds: “Please spread this. A harmonious society. This has been going on so long and we just find out. Reports overseas have been all over the place.” The image accompanying the post is the frontpage of today’s Ming Pao.

In this post, the user again shares an image of the frontpage of today’s Ming Pao. The original post is titled: “Concerning Hong Kong media reports of the latest information on grain shortages in W-Village.” A news brief style summary follows, and the re-poster remarks: “Pay attention to W-kan!” (关注W坎!).

Several images of Hong Kong newspapers reporting the Wukan story today follow, including the Ming Pao frontpage being shared on Sina Weibo and other microblog platforms.

[ABOVE: The frontpage of Hong Kong’s Ming Pao on December 19, 2011.]

[ABOVE: Page four of Hong Kong’s Ming Pao on December 19, 2011.]

[ABOVE: Page five of Hong Kong’s Ming Pao on December 19, 2011.]

[ABOVE: Page two of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily on December 19, 2011.]

[ABOVE: Page two of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily on December 19, 2011.]

Capping weeks of government grumbling in China over “healthy internet culture,” the need to trumpet “social core values” online and combat “poisonous rumors,” China has today announced new regulations — taking effect immediately — to control the country’s rapidly-growing Twitter-like micro-blogosphere. Among other stipulations, the regulations require all users to register with their real names in order to use microblog services, and those who fail to register within three months will be unable to make posts (if we take these regulations at face value).
While the regulations nominally come from the Beijing municipal government, they will no doubt impact users across the country, as the vast majority of services are based in the city. It is not immediately clear whether QQ Weibo, a leading microblogging platform operated by Shenzhen-based Tencent Holdings, would be subject to these regulations.
There is, in short, a great deal left to clarify about these regulations. We’ll keep our eyes glued to them in coming days and weeks to work out as best we can what exactly they mean for internet companies and users in China.
The following is a video of CCTV coverage today of the new regulations, followed by our translation of some of today’s coverage in Chinese summarizing the regulations.

“Beijing Introduces Weibo Development and Control [Management] Regulation”
Sina.com (via Qianlong)
December 16, 2011
In recent years, new internet technologies, of which microblog services are the most representative, have developed rapidly [in China]. Microblogs have served a positive role in reflecting public opinion, assembling popular knowledge, disseminating information, serving society and other areas. However, in the process of microblog development, the dissemination of rumors and fake information has also emerged, along with other salient problems such as the sale of “fans” and the use of the web to deceive others, damaging the public interest and harming the people generally. This has met with the objection of websites, users and the public, and various parts of society have called fiercely for the regulation of microblog services.
Beijing is a priority area for the development of microblogs, and in order to further regulate the orderly transmission of microblogs and promote the healthy development of the internet and new media — on the basis of broad investigation and research, listening to opinions from various sides, and according to relevant national laws, regulations and statutes — the municipal office of the people’s city government, the municipal public security bureau, the Beijing Communications Administration and the Beijing Internet Information Office have jointly studied and formulated “Beijing Municipal Regulations Concerning the Development and Control of Microblogs” (《北京市微博客发展管理若干规定》), for release and to formally take effect on December 16, 2011.
The “Regulation,” made under the general principles of “scientific development, positive use, enhanced management [or control] and ensured security,” accords with the “Telecommunications Statute of the People’s Republic of China” and the “Administration of Internet Information Services Measures” and other laws, regulations and statutes. [The “Regulation”] accords with concrete conditions in Beijing, and makes 16 stipulations concerning the set-up, use and management of microblogs, including objectives, scope of application, principles of development, a program for examination and approval, standards for conduct, microblog user account registration, the examination and verification of content, the responsibilities of government agencies, industry self-discipline, social supervision (社会监督), legal obligations and other content. The “Decision” clearly states the need to strengthen the construction and application of microblogs, ensuring that microblogs exert a positive effect in serving society. In providing microblog services, websites must adhere to honesty (诚信办网) and decency (文明办网) in providing web services, actively disseminating the socialist core value system, disseminating advanced socialist culture, and serve the building of a harmonious socialist society.
The “Regulation” makes clear stipulations concerning registration procedures and admittance requirements for websites within the jurisdiction of this municipality carrying out microblog services, establishing that they must, on the basis of raising the need to create an adequate and comprehensive information security management system (信息安全管理制度), clarifying the personnel and supervisory institutions responsible for information security, implementing technical measures for security and control (技术安全防控措施), establishing a system for the securing of user information, and establishing a system for exposing fake information and other requirements, make application and go through examination and approval with municipal internet and information authorities in accordance with the law.

Chinese President Hu Jintao’s speech to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party on July 1 this year was mostly self-congratulatory, a grocery list of everything the Party professes to have done right. But Hu did pause for a stern moment in which he enumerated what he called the “four dangers”: loss of vitality (精神懈怠), insufficient capacity (能力不足), alienation from the people (脱离群众) and rampant corruption (消极腐败). These internal challenges, said Hu, are now “more strenuous and pressing than at any point in the past.”
The third of these challenges, alienation from the public, can be glimpsed daily on China’s internet, as users fume over myriad injustices and the government’s often cruel and cockeyed way of dealing with them (like burying train cars within 24 hours of a major railway disaster). The credibility of China’s institutions is often questioned so routinely that leaders need only issue a denial of an accusation for internet users to be certain of its truth.
But it’s number four on Hu Jintao’s list, corruption, that arguably presents the most immediate threat to the Party’s standing, and to social and political stability in China. Corruption, particularly at the local level — but surely at every level — is behind most of the social ills and animosities that boil over daily in China into “sudden-breaking incidents” officials do their utmost to crisis-manage.
The emphasis on “channeling public opinion” so prevalent in media policy these last few years — what we have at CMP termed “Control 2.0” — essentially comes down to finding more effective ways of spinning these public opinion crises, managing dangerous stories in the era of real-time interactive information.
But as Zhu Huaxin (祝华新) of the People’s Daily Online Public Opinion Monitoring Center wrote recently, these public opinion crises are backgrounded by very real “social sicknesses” and “resolving real [underlying] issues is the first order of business, while channeling public opinion on the internet (网上舆论引导) must be secondary.”
In recent weeks, intensifying in recent days, we have another clear example of just how volatile the situation can be in local areas across the country, where citizen’s interests are often threatened by corrupt or unresponsive local leaders not subjected to real checks on their power. And this example also shows us how leaders are trying to grapple with the fallout from this corruption, though not unfortunately the root causes.
The story is about how thousands of residents in Wukan village outside the city of Shanwei in Guangdong province have organized protests against local officials they allege sold off village land in a dirty development deal.
Here is a visual illustration of corruption as the core originating grievance, photos from Wukan shared on social media in which the banner at the top reads: “Does the land belong to corrupt officials?”

The situation escalated over the weekend as villagers learned that Xue Jinbo (薛锦波), a village representative, had died while in police custody. Police said Xue’s death was due to a heart attack, but family members insist he was badly beaten.
For the fuller story, we refer you to Malcolm Moore’s reporting at The Telegraph [Today’s story is here]. But this photo by Moore gives you a good sense of what’s happening in Wukan.

So we have a case here of alleged official corruption — the “fourth danger,” if you will — that has escalated into a crisis situation over (possibly) another grave issue of injustice as leaders in Guangdong have applied heavy-fisted tactics to deal with it. So far, the government response has been to close Wukan off both in terms of security (“stability preservation”) and propaganda policy (“public opinion channeling”).
Finally late yesterday, just minutes before midnight and after a uniform blackout in Chinese media through the day, we had two news stories on Wukan from China News Service, China’s number-two official newswire. The first reported that Shanwei city authorities revealed at a press conference on the Wukan incident (乌坎事件) yesterday that “preliminary investigations have ruled out external force as the cause of death” in Xue’s case. The news story also said that the city’s medical expert shared photos of Xue’s body during the press conference.
The second China News Service report, also based on the press conference, said that “various village officials” from Wukan had been detained for discipline violations.
Curiously, though, there seems to be no coverage of the press conference from other media. That suggests that these stories can be taken as an illustration of “public opinion channeling” tactics at work. The authorities, in other words, are selectively releasing partial information from an official perspective in an attempt to frame and re-direct public attention. Message 1: Xue Jinbo was not killed by police, an assertion that removes the immediate reason for escalated tensions in Wukan. Message 2: local Wukan leaders have been detained for suspected discipline problems, an action that (leaders undoubtedly hope) will remove the initial underlying cause of tensions, alleged dirty land deals.
A search in Baidu News for “Wukan incident” comes up with a number of other news reports, like this one, making use of the China News Service release. But other suggested links for coverage after December 9 are not available, most notably a report on 21cn.com provocatively headlined “Wukan: The Awakening of a Village” (乌坎:一个村庄的觉醒), which now returns only a “page cannot be found” message:

Stranger still, another link on the Baidu News search results is an article posted yesterday at Phoenix Online with the headline: “Four Villagers from Wukan in Guangdong’s Lufeng City are Locked Up in Three Locations, Allowed to Meet with Relatives” ( 广东陆丰乌坎4村民被分3处关押 获准与亲人见面). The video embedded with the Phoenix Online article says it all, I think, and I encourage readers to look at it carefully. Nanfang Daily, the official mouthpiece of Guangdong Party leaders, is given as the source of the video.

In the video, a policeman brings a prisoner (we are to suppose he is one of the Wukan villagers detained) outside to where several three chairs sit. As the prisoner walks in wearing his orange vest, two people (we are to suppose these are two of the prisoner’s relatives) sit in two of the chairs. The time on the video says, “December 13, 2011, 15:00.” There is a brief, awkward embrace of sorts. Then, before anything meaningful whatsoever is spoken, the video cuts to a scene in which two different people (again, we are to suppose these are relatives of the prisoner) walk very casually toward the two empty chairs across from the prisoner, who is already seated. There is a cut once again, and then the two women are already seated. One says, “So, have they beaten you at all?” To which the prisoner responds, “No, they haven’t beaten me.” Then comes the kicker from the prisoner’s relative: “Thanks to the government!”
The time on the video still reads: “December 13, 2011, 15:00.”
As a “channeling” mechanism, of course, this video establishes a third assertion, that the village leaders detained in the Wukan incident have not been mistreated by the authorities.
Images were also posted on Chinese social media yesterday, but control of this story has been very robust. When I posted a Chinese-language summary of Moore’s story and the above photo to Sina Weibo yesterday morning, it was quarantined in under a minute. That is to say, the post was not deleted, but it was hidden from all Sina Weibo users but myself — without any notice for Sina. If I hadn’t been on my toes and ready to watch the post with the help of colleagues I might have assumed simply that no-one was interested in commenting or re-posting the item.
All searches for “Wukan” and “Shanwei” on Sina Weibo yield messages that read: “According to relevant laws and regulations, search results for ‘Wukan’ can not be shown.” Estimates put Shanwei’s population at around 700,000 — so imagine a major internet platform in the United States blocking searches for “Detroit.”
Clearly Wukan is an object lesson in the dangers of runaway corruption at the local level in China. But it is also, unfortunately, shaping up as a test case in how the government is experimenting with new strategies to shape news coverage on sensitive incidents and issues.
Let’s keep watching.
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UPDATE:
(For the benefit of commenter Itlee and all, we provide three screenshots of Sina Weibo searches conducted at 5:38pm Hong Kong, December 15, 2011]