China’s State Internet Information Office (国家互联网信息办公室), also known as the “China Internet Information Office,” held a meeting in Beijing yesterday under the formal topic of “positively using microblogs to serve society” (积极运用微博客服务社会). The meeting signals again that China’s government is exploring measures to reign in domestic social media.
In recent months Chinese microblogs such as Sina Weibo and QQ Weibo have had a clear impact in shaping national news stories and gathering public interest and attention around sensitive social and political issues, from China’s high-speed rail collision to charity-related scandals and even recently the detention of blind activist Chen Guangcheng (陈光诚).
Established by the General Office of the State Council in May 2011, the State Internet Information Office is an attempt to centralize the management and control of internet content in China, a function that in the past was performed by an array of government offices — with, for example, the State Council Information Office handling text-based online news and video content remaining the responsibility of the State Administration of Radio Film and Television. The State Internet Information Office is run by Wang Chen (王晨), who concurrently serves as a deputy minister of the Central Propaganda Department.

At yesterday’s meeting, Wang Chen emphasized that “[we] must thoroughly apply a series of guiding spirits of the central Party in regards to internet construction, development and management, keeping to the guiding principle of ‘positive use, scientific development, management by rule of law and ensuring safety’ . . . ” Wang said the government must “thoroughly give play to the positive role of microblogs in serving society, taking concrete steps to develop and manage [them], working together to preserve a healthy and orderly online communication order, serving the overall work of the government and the Party, and serving the masses.”
According to a report from Xinhua News Agency, representatives from various companies and local government offices also spoke at the meeting yesterday to share their experiences using official and personal microblogs to promote their own messages, making them “new channels for serving the people.” Guo Mingyi (郭明义), a manager at a mining company, reportedly told the audience how he had used his personal microblog account “as a new platform to promote and praise the spirit of [nationwide propaganda exemplar] Lei Feng (雷锋).”

NOTE: The following editorial published in today’s edition of Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post is translated an re-posted here with the permission of the author, Guo Yukuan (郭宇宽), a former professional journalist who is currently doing post-doctorate studies at Tsinghua University’s Research Center for Theoretical Economics. The Oriental Morning Post version is available here.
Recently I posted something online that was a bit at odds with the views of some internet users. Of course, it’s quite normal to find different views about a particular topic or issue, and I’m perfectly happy to exchange views with those who don’t see eye to eye with me.
But many web users have a very interesting way of “conversing.” Not bothering to listen to specific points I make, they pipe right up with things like: “Guo Yukuan, what do you know about logic! You with your PhD! Has your conscience been eaten by dogs?” That kind of thing. It’s as though they feel an unrestrained hatred towards me.

This sort of thing really gets me down. Here I am trying to talk things out and these people harass me endlessly. Where exactly does this anger that they’re venting on me come from? What is it, I wonder, that has made us lose all capacity for rational discussion?
Not long ago, I went back to my native Nanjing for a visit. I hailed a cab to the airport, and as we were trying to leave the city the traffic was a bit backed up. As we approached an intersection and the light was about to turn red, the sedan in front of us suddenly stopped dead rather than accelerating through the light. It was maybe two seconds before the light actually turned red, so we had to wait through the light, costing us probably twenty seconds in all.
I noticed that the sedan in front of us was a nice one, worth perhaps three- to four-hundred thousand yuan, and the tags were brand new. Clearly, the owner was from a well-to-do family.
My taxi driver swelled with anger, curses tumbling right out of his mouth. When the light finally changed, he furiously drove out in front of the sedan. Was the little bit we had to wait worth all this, I thought? If your emotions are that out of check isn’t it dangerous to take the highway?
I tried to reason with the driver. He spouted on about corrupt officials and how they were all a bunch of nothings with no sense of shame. In their corrupt way they finagled themselves into nice cars like that, but they didn’t know the first thing about driving them. If he had a tank, he said, he’d shell the dogs into oblivion.
Actually, I’d noticed when we passed the sedan that the driver was a woman. She was wearing a very fashionable hairdo, and seemed to be new to driving, but there was nothing to suggest that she was indeed a corrupt official. But in any case this was what Brother Taxi Driver believed, and he spat out his litany of curses.
I changed tack and asked the driver about his own family situation. When he talked about his child he was quite energetic. His child was in primary school right now, and he talked about all the expenses this involved, how if they were to go to a decent middle school he would have to slide 20,000 yuan into the school’s hand. And all the time he had to send his kid to this or that extra tutorial class, for which fees were high.
Then he started in on how ridiculous it was that teachers at the school didn’t always do a proper job of it, and they had to pay extra for tutors. Seeing that his anger was ebbing up again, I piped up saying that it was only right to spend a bit of money for the sake of one’s children. I asked him how his child’s studies were going. He said they were doing very well, that their test scores were always close to the top. Well at least his kid was doing well, I suggested, and at that he finally calmed down a bit.
I was taken aback when the driver was again whipped into a fury as we reached the airport, saying that to get a passenger at the airport he would have to wait in line for more than two hours, but that going back to the city empty was a waste, so he wasn’t sure what to do. He said some people didn’t have to wait though, they knew the airport security people and just slipped them cash so security would just look the other way.
I asked why they didn’t set up a professional association to regulated such behavior. In China right now, no-one can set up an association, he said, and whoever tries will be arrested just like that. Well then, I asked, had they tried reasoning with airport management? And what would he say, he asked. These people don’t understand reason, he said. Reason with them and they’ll beat you up.
By this time it was much clearer to me why he was so angry. In his world going through the backdoor and relying on connections was just the way of it, and he despised this kind of corruption. But he had no choice but the play by these rules, all the while feeling deeply wronged. The emotions he built up were under a state of high pressure, with no release valve, and every time he came up against some small thing his emotions exploded. Even something like waiting an extra 20 seconds could set him off on a half-day rant.
This made me think of an experience I had several years back. I was at a dinner party and someone who knew a friend of mine at the table came in and joined us partway through. My friend made introductions, saying that this guy was an urban management officer (城管). My first thought was, geez, can’t you find respectable work to do? But this guy was quite upfront about it, saying right out that being an urban management officer wasn’t work for human beings, and that they were all quite conflicted about it.
Conflicted how? He said that these small-time hawkers didn’t have a basic sense of order, and if it weren’t for urban management the streets would be chock full of them — and what would happen if the roads were all jammed? The police couldn’t deal with it, so the urban management officers had to. Well, I asked can’t you guys deal with the problem a bit more tactfully? Come and try it for a couple of days, he said. Try saying politely to these folk, I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t put your stand up here because it blocks traffic. They’ll give you the cold shoulder, hem and haw, and as soon as you’ve turned your back they’re right back out there.
I remember back to my youth when I lived on a college campus, and in that oasis of culture there was quite a palpable atmosphere of reason. I grew up learning to cherish reason as a matter of habit, and I’ve never felt the poorer for it.
But China today has a massive social subclass (底层社会) that moves and operates on the principle of might makes right (强权规则), by which the largest fist holds sway and has the say, and reason is unwelcome. These brutal emotions feed off of one another, so that to a large extent they distort the character of the masses, to the point that they no longer believe that reason is the way forward.
When I put all of these experiences together and look back on those people who have attacked me on the internet, I can understand where they’re coming from. And given the chance I’d love to sit down and talk with them, so long as we can look into each others’ eyes. Might they not feel a touch of shame in noting that this Guo Yukuan isn’t such a terrible guy after all? Have I done anything so offensive that I should deserve your hatred and such poisonous words?
Some people have asked me where I find the patience to speak reason with those who have no sense of it. In fact, when I come across these irrational sorts of internet users I don’t feel angry at all. Quite the opposite, I feel a kind of sympathy.
I can’t blame them any longer for being unreasonable. Rather, I have to ask, what sort of social environments, institutions and formative experiences is it that have molded their characters, world views and values in this way?

Today marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the start of the Xinhai Revolution in China, which overthrew the country’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing, and eventually led to the founding of the Republic of China in 1912. Not surprisingly, China’s newspaper pages today are filled with news of this important anniversary.
But as a major political movement calling for freedom and democracy, and an end to authoritarianism, the Xinhai Revolution is also a highly sensitive issue for the ruling Chinese Communist Party. It is not surprising, therefore, that most of the coverage today sticks quite closely to the official story from Xinhua News Agency. Below the fold are other local stories, such as local commemorations of the Xinhai anniversary, and about a former chief engineer from Boeing making a visit to Wuhan.
We can see the basic Party treatment best by looking at the front page of the Party’s official People’s Daily, where a photo of the standing committee + 1 (former President Jiang Zemin), with Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin right smack in the middle, accompanies a dry report on the commemoration and the full official text of Hu Jintao’s “important speech.”

Typical of boilerplate Party coverage of official activities, and basically identical to the Xinhua version, the People’s Daily report begins:

Beijing, October 9 — A major conference to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution was held ceremoniously in the Great Hall of the People this morning. General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, National President and Chairman of the Central Military Commission Hu Jintao (胡锦涛) made an important speech. He emphasized that 100 years ago, revolutionary Party members represented by Sun Yat-sen (孙中山) launched the Xinhai Revolution, which shook the world, beginning a social transformation such as China had never before seen. Today, we solemnly commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution . . .

The report notes, of course, that the rest of China’s powerful politburo standing committee were also in attendance: Wu Banguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin, Li Changchun, Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, He Guoqiang, Zhou Yongkang. But again, Jiang Zemin (江泽民), Hu Jintao’s predecessor as President, and still a powerful political player, is added to the beginning of the name list, given place of pride right after Hu Jintao and before the other 8.
In the People’s Daily, the underlined portion above (and some text immediately following) is emphasized in a bold pull-quote at the top right of the page, a place usually occupied in the newspaper by another major policy announcement.
We’ll avoid the temptation of parsing Hu Jintao’s speech in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution. In our view, this speech has little political significance in and of itself, the only substantial sign emerging from the commemoration ceremony being the appearance and prominent positioning of former President Jiang Zemin.
Coverage of the Xinhai Revolution anniversary in today’s mainland newspapers seems to follow two basic lines. First, there are the People’s Daily copycats, running coverage and framing coverage in exactly the same way as the chief Party newspaper. This is actually quite typical of what we generally see nationwide, across the board, in the official Party newspapers whenever a single story — such as a national conference or other major national or international event — dominates.
Here is a composite of four major Party newspapers — the People’s Daily, the Liberation Army Daily, Guangming Daily and Economic Daily — made by media microblogger Old Media Wang (传媒老王) today. The affinities should be clear to all.

This “mainstream” treatment of today’s big story seems to have been adopted uniformly across Party newspapers today. The treatment is also used by some commercial metro newspapers. Here for example is Changjiang Daily, the official Party newspaper in the city of Wuhan, followed by the front page of Wuhan Morning Post, a commercial spin-off of Changjiang Daily:

Both of the newspapers above differ from the People’s Daily in the way they have given the Xinhai Revolution commemoration story prominent position, but have offered only brief front page coverage, instead referring readers to the inside pages.
The upper right-hand corner of the Changjiang Daily front page has a story about cultural sector reforms in Wuhan. Below the fold are other local stories, including local coverage of the anniversary commemoration, and a story about a visit to Wuhan by a former chief engineer for Boeing.
But a handful of newspapers in China decided to pull their own news angles out of the Xinhai Revolution commemoration story. This was the case with major newspapers in southern Guangdong province, which has a reputation for slightly bolder media.
Nanfang Daily, the province’s official Party newspaper, opted for the same photograph of Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin that was used by many foreign and Hong Kong media in their reports on internal Party power plays and Jiang’s role.
The large headline at Nanfang Daily draws from Hu Jintao’s remarks on cross-straits relations between mainland China and Taiwan: “Increasing a national spirit of sticking together through thick and thin; with one heart, realizing the rejuvenation of our people.”

The front page of Southern Metropolis Daily, a commercial spin-off of Nanfang Daily regarded as one of China’s top professional publications, is much the same as that of its “mother paper” (母报). The main photo is of Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin smiling and shaking hands. The headline again is about cross-straits relations, this time the portion about “one heart” quoting directly from Hu instead of paraphrasing: “With one heart, realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people; this should become the common goal to work toward on both sides of the straits.”

The headline at Southern Metropolis Daily in particular has a strange ring as it is juxtaposed with the photo of Hu and Jiang shaking hands. This is nothing more than the editor’s personal feeling here, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the newspaper wasn’t trying to slip in a bit of commentary about reaching across divides within the Party as well. (I welcome thoughts from native news junkies.)
But the starkest and most telling of contrasts may be offered by newspapers in Shanghai, China’s financial center, and of course the city from which Jiang Zemin emerged political in the aftermath of June 4, 1989. Here is the front page of Wen Hui Bao, the official newspaper of the Shanghai committee of the Chinese Communist Party — in other words, the “mouthpiece” of the city’s top Party leaders.

Wen Hui Bao is virtually a mirror image of the People’s Daily, austere and packed with official content. But here is today’s Oriental Morning Post, one of Shanghai’s leading commercial newspapers, which in recent years has also distinguished itself somewhat with its stronger investigative coverage and editorial page.

The headline is a tribute to the anniversary, not so different from the paper’s Party counterparts. It reads: “.” But the entire space below is swallowed by a brilliant advertisement for the luxury watch brand Rolex.
And in many ways, that says it all.

Today marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the start of the Xinhai Revolution in China, which overthrew the country’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing, and eventually led to the founding of the Republic of China in 1912. It was on October 10, 1911, that revolutionary leaders in Hubei staged an rebellion against local Qing authorities in what is known as the Wuchang Uprising.
While the anniversary is of great historical, cultural and political significance to China (and of course to Taiwan), the main political messages of the revolution — democracy and equality — make treatment of the anniversary on the mainland a delicate matter for Chinese leaders.
To commemorate the anniversary, we have translated an interview that QQ History, the history-related section of the major Chinese web portal QQ.com, did earlier this month with Guangzhou historian Yuan Weishi (袁伟时). Some readers may remember Yuan as the writer of an article on the Boxer Rebellion that in early 2006 was one reason cited by propaganda officials for the suspension of the Freezing Point supplement of China Youth Daily.

Tencent History: We have a traditional saying that goes: The Xinhai Revolution overthrew a corrupt authoritarian Qing government, and toppled the system of feudalist authoritarian monarchy. But some scholars (such as Feng Tianyu) have pointed out that no such feudal system (封建制) existed from the Qin and Han dynasties on down. And other scholars (such as Hou Xudong) point out that ancient China was not an authoritarian society. The idea among people today that ancient China was a feudal system comes principally from language about China from the modern Western world. How do you see this? What the Xinhai Revolution overturned, was that a feudal authoritarian system?
Yuan Weishi: What kind of society was traditional Chinese society? This was debated fiercely in the 1930s. Among scholars, most believe that the Western Zhou (西周) was a feudal society. Relatively few people believe that society after the Western Zhou was feudal. Fan Wenlan (范文澜) and others propose this view. Feng Tianyu and others have restated some things from the 1930s. Of course they have new arguments, but already before this there were few scholars who believed this [that society was feudal]. Traditional Chinese society was an authoritarian society based on the patriarchal clan system (宗法专制社会), and not a feudal society. The Western Zhou was a feudal society, but the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods were a period of transition, so that by the Qin an authoritarian society based on the patriarchal clan system (宗法专制社会) had already been established.
Tencent History: But now we talk about how it was a “feudal society,” and that’s still what we say.
Yuan Weishi: Yes. But to say it was not an authoritarian society, this view I’m afraid is a bit far-fetched, and not the conclusion made by historical scholars. I don’t know who has proposed this reading, but my impression is that they are not real historical scholars. As to true historical scholars who hold that view, I’m afraid there aren’t any. There is a trend of Confucian revivalism right now that wants to deny that political power [in China] over 2,000 years was authoritarian.
Tencent History: There are contemporary advocates of Confucianism who say traditional Chinese society was not an authoritarian society.
Yuan Weishi: This view is there simply to bolster their goal of advocating and beautifying Confucianism. I don’t think this is right. Because it falls so far short of the reality of Chinese society. Those who advocate Confucianism, including some historians, really want to cast about within traditional Chinese culture looking for something legitimate, and they believe that calling it authoritarian means negating it entirely. And so there are those who research the powers of the [ancient] chancellors (宰相权), believing that chancellors could check the power of the emperor, that ministers could check the emperor’s power. Huang Renyu (黄仁宇) is also of this view.
Tencent History: Huang Renyu (黄仁宇) has said that the emperor was just something symbolic and abstract.
Yuan Weishi: I’m afraid that’s just not how it was. This is really taking it too extremes. I’m afraid this is because Mr. Huang Renyu focuses his research on the 48 years of the Wanli Emperor’s reign, during which time imperial power was for a long time disregarded. But as he has said himself: “The Wanli Emperor is an exception in history not equalled before or after.” Not long after the death of Zhang Juzheng (张居正), [the 47th chancellor of the Ming Dynasty], as the family’s property was ransacked, some of its elders committed suicide and other family members were starved to death, the power of the emperor was demonstrated once again. And there’s another saying, that China has a “system of orthodox [Confucian] teachings,” that it has a spiritual [or moral] system outside the orthodoxy of imperial power.
Tencent History: A political orthodoxy and a moral orthodoxy?
Yuan Weishi: That’s right. Which is to say that in the past intellectual elites could check imperial power, which was called “doing the bidding of morals, not of monarchs” (从道不从君), there was a saying like that. But there is a problem it’s quite difficult for this idea of “moral authority” (道统说) to deal with. In imperial times there were a small number of intellectual elites who dared to uphold certain principles and oppose imperial power, what might more politely be called laying down one’s life for a just cause (舍生取义). Any society will have a handful of such people. But they did not constitute a power network (权力系统). They had no way of providing real opposition to the emperor, and with a word the emperor could end their lives. This so-called moral “moral authority” is more imaginative than anything else. Some people say that the system of moral authority began as early as King Wen of Zhou (文武周公), and was passed on through Confucius, Mencius, Zhu Xi and right on down to Sun Yat-sen (孙中山). Some people have even now added Dong Zhongshu (董仲舒) into the mix. But one such man comes along every few hundred years or every thousand years — could their influence really check that of the emperor?
Tencent History: So we could say that the phenomenon of so-called “moral authority” checking “imperial authority” isn’t something systematized, but maybe just about a number of strong personalities.
Yuan Weishi: Really, it’s about the influence of Confucian thoughts. But from the Qin and Han dynasties on, China has been an authoritarian society based on the patriarchal clan system (宗法专制社会). What Confucianism sustained, whether we’re talking about institutional or cultural influence, was a governing system in which the ruler governed his subjects (君为臣纲). Economically, it was an agricultural natural economy (自然经济式的农业经济).
Tencent History: An economy based on small-time farming.
Yuan Weishi: In any case, the pre-modern agricultural economy, and the pre-modern natural economy, relied on an authoritarian imperial system. Of course, the degree of authoritarianism in any dynasty or rule differed. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the authoritarianism of imperial power reached new heights. In the Qing dynasty there weren’t even chancellors, and the emperor directly dealt with political affairs, both big and small. And so, what they wanted to overturn [during the Xinhai Revolution] was this sort of authoritarian political power. Another question involved here is: What was the objective of the revolution? We couldn’t say that previous over-turnings of dynasties or rules brought the building of any new social systems. Previous instances were resoundingly things like . . .
Tencent History: Hong Xiuquan (洪秀全) and the Taiping Rebellion.
Yuan Weishi: That was fundamentally not any sort of revolution, but it was a peasant war (农民战争) of the kind we had seen throughout the past. It didn’t seek revolution, but rather the rebuilding of the system on the old pattern. Hong Xiuquan‘s so-called “land system of the heavenly kingdom” (天朝田亩制度) was quite a reactionary program, a program of extreme authoritarianism. He called for the abolishment of private property, and the building of an authoritarian political system based on religious authority.
Tencent History: Politics and religion as one.
Yuan Weishi: Politics and religions as one, a system of religious authoritarianism. Later on, through the self-strengthening movement (洋务运动) [or “Westernization movement”], the fostering of new economic forms in China was encouraged. Naturally, this economic activity was run by the government, and later morphed into a system whereby the government supervised the actions of merchants, so that the role of merchants grew, then some private capital was invited in and at the same time the door to China was opened, allowing for foreign investment.
Many factors working all together encouraged the development of a capitalist economy in our country. In some areas, particularly along rivers and coastal areas, along the Yangtze River and in the Pearl River Delta, places with convenience of transport, a capitalist economy developed quite strongly. So-called foreign-invested enterprises in some areas were actually in many cases Chinese investments happening under the auspices of foreign investment, fake foreign devils, if you will, that were posing as foreign investment or cozying up to it. By doing this they could enjoy tax benefits. Foreign-invested enterprises could pay less tax by paying a 50 percent duty, in which case there were exempted from paying taxes [NOTE: The terms in Chinese here are 厘金 and 子口税. Those interested are encouraged to check our translation with the original, as our knowledge of 19th century Chinese trade policies is insufficient].
Domestic enterprises could not enjoy these favorable policies. So called “lijin” (厘金), [or ‘tax levies’], referred to the various tolls and taxes set up by various local authorities in China, which severely inhibited the development of a capitalist economy in China. But nevertheless new economic sectors and a free economy continued to develop, and a new class of urban residents emerged. This was similar to what has been seen in other countries. As for the Xinhai Revolution, it was mostly not about resolving economic issues, but about solving the authoritarian system in politics, about demanding democracy, about protecting the freedom and equality of citizens. These were at the heart of modern revolutions, and they were the most basic demands voiced during the Xinhai Revolution.

EDITOR’S NOTE: On September 30, Chen Weihua, the deputy editor of China Daily in the United States, wrote an editorial in which he sharply criticized American “mainstream media” for their “shameful” “blackout” on the Wall Street protests. In fact, while many Americans had voiced anger over meager coverage by major media groups, reports had already been on a four-day upswing by the time Chen’s editorial appeared. On September 26, America’s National Public Radio publicly explained the network’s initial decision not to cover the protest. And in The Cutline, a media-related blog at Yahoo!, Brian Stableford wrote on September 27 about how media coverage of the protests had ramped up on September 26 after major media outlets were criticized. At The New York Times Online yesterday, Brian Stelter wrote about a further uptick in media coverage of the protests as they have spread to other cities. The following is a response to the China Daily editorial by CMP fellow and Chinese “super-blogger” Yang Hengjun.
I was still in bed today when a had a phone call from [a journalist in] Hong Kong asking whether or not I had seen a certain editorial in China Daily. I said I hadn’t seen it, and she said she would send it to my inbox. No big deal, I thought. These people in the media often take small things and build them up into big stories. And anyhow, China Daily is an English-language newspaper, read by foreigners and by Chinese who want to improve their English.
I got up and opened my inbox, and the first thing I saw was a message from another internet user in the United States, talking about exactly the same editorial. He said that he had discussed the editorial with some American friends and they found it incredible that an editorial like this could actually make it into official Chinese media. There were a lot of places to find fault with America, they said, but to accuse American media of a “media blackout”? That was simply incredible!
So I made a point of locating the editorial they were talking about, which bore the headline, “US media blackout of protest is shameful“. The writer is the deputy editor of China Daily in the United States. I honestly hadn’t seen the editorial and knew nothing about it. But as soon as I read it I was jumping out of my chair. The author asked why mainstream American media weren’t reporting on how one percent of Americans control 25 percent of America’s wealth, and why most mainstream media had “chosen to ignore” the Wall Street protests over the past two weeks. He even suggested “a blackout [had been] imposed by the major news media outlets.”
These Wall Street protests have been organized by young people, who say they are the “99 percent” [who are not super-rich], and several thousand have participated so far. Protests have spread to other places, such as Washington D.C., but gatherings in the US capital have so far drawn less than a hundred people. These sorts of protests are quite common in the United States, and at any given place on any given day you might see a protest of some sort. But this protest is larger in scale. And consider that in the wake of the jasmine revolution in the Middle East people are calling it “America’s jasmine [protests].”
While there are points of similarity [with events in the Middle East] in the sense that both movements are driven by young people who feel marginalized, want justice and fairness, and oppose corruption (political corruption in the case of the Middle East, and Wall Street corruption in the case of America), the biggest difference is that these American jasmine protests are directed at the greed of Wall Street. No one is talking about overthrowing the American government, or about switching out signs on the American political system.
American media are all held in private hands. Moreover, pretty much anyone at the helm in the media business is a major corporate boss, belonging to that one percent [of Americans holding 25 percent of the wealth]. So you can imagine the possibility that they might control the media in their hands so that they report lightly or not at all on these demonstrations. If China Daily took that approach to the story they might convince some readers. The problem is that this curious editorial criticizes the “fact” that there is a media blackout on this story among American mainstream media without making any concrete mention of who is responsible.
The writer is also in America. So has he really not seen any reports on television or in the newspapers? A friend of mine in America did a search and found that over the past two weeks, all mainstream US media (his search covered perhaps around 100 media, including television) reported this story, and most New York media reported on this story a minimum of four times! Over the past two weeks the Wall Street protests have become the story most reported by American mainstream media. But in terms of the number of people participating it shouldn’t be given such prominence of position.
This is the internet age, and many American media can be seen even in China. For a paper like China Daily, supported by taxpayers, to publish such an irresponsible editorial — well, drawing the scorn of others is one thing, but if you blatantly lie and deceive to this degree, that reflects badly on China’s government! It reflects badly on the Chinese people! It is completely shameful!
After living for so many years in the US, we of course know that Western media, politics and economics all have their problems, and most of these have come out in the wash. For example, I once wrote a piece called, “Why is CNN patriotic?” which talked about how American media actively took sides in the so-called war on terror. But in exposing such things we have to maintain a rational state of mind, otherwise we’ll have the exact opposite of our intended effect. If this was in so local Chinese newspaper, you might expect it to fool the old woman who sells the goose eggs. But this appears in an English-language newspaper circulated all over the world.
We all know that after the jasmine revolution erupted in the Middle East various governments offered different responses. Dictatorships in North Africa and the Middle East immediately moved to restrict the media, restricting news on the jasmine protests. The result was the in some countries where there are thousands of media, a protest with tens of thousands of people participating didn’t even make the news.
But here in this China Daily editorial the author willfully disregards these facts, instead launching an attack against mainstream media in the U.S. for restricting information. Isn’t this removing the kettle before it’s boiling? [NOTE: The implication here is that China falls far shorter on the count American media are being criticized for.] Or perhaps the author harbors ulterior motives (别有用心), wanting his false news to turn the attention of all Chinese who know how to conduct a basic online search to real news about non-democratic countries — real news that has never been reported! [NOTE: Yang is poking fun at the author, suggesting his piece reveals more about information controls in China than it says about media in the U.S., and in that sense could be considered a veiled attack on China’s government.]
Taxpayers in China support so many media that have to do propaganda, that go and try to channel public opinion, and there’s not a lot we can say about this. But you need at least have a modicum of sense and technique in going about it, you need to have a basic bottom line standards. You can’t shame the face of China’s government and harm the people of China!

This time last year, Chinese media were dubbing 2010 the “inaugural year” of the microblog in China. Platforms like Sina Weibo and QQ Weibo, which enabled real-time sharing of text, links, images and video, were already impacting the news agenda in China. In an October 2010 post, CMP Director Ying Chan (陈婉莹) wrote about how she witnessed Chinese editors at a forum in Shanghai busily checking their mobiles for the latest microblog updates on a forced demolition case in Jiangxi province that was grabbing headlines at the time.
But if social media were “inaugural” last year, they have at times seemed unstoppable this year, and that has led to growing speculation that tighter controls are in the offing.
Microblogs have defined many of the top news stories in 2011. From the charity scandal surrounding the socialite Guo Meimei (郭美美) and the Red Cross Society of China to relentless attention to the issue of high-speed rail safety, cost and corruption before and after the July 23 collision in Wenzhou.

[ABOVE: This microblog maintained by user “Ji Fashi” (季法师) was the first to break news of last week’s subway collision in Shanghai.]
The changes brought about by platforms like Sina Weibo have tempted some to a cowboy-Western reading of the landscape, in which they imagine social media socking it to those in power. While this oppositional view is somewhat supported by the antagonistic tone of the internet, and the way it can fuel as well as reflect public anger over specific stories and issues, it fails to take into account the way Chinese institutions are adjusting (however ploddingly and reluctantly) to a new era of rapid information sharing.
The push for greater openness over so-called sudden-breaking incidents (突发事件) has been a clear trend in China for almost a decade — broadly speaking ever since the SARS epidemic in 2003. Policy steps on the Party and government side can be seen in China’s law on the handling of sudden-breaking incidents, passed in August 2007, and Hu Jintao’s policy statements in 2008 on the need for more rapid reporting of breaking incidents.
Article 53 of China’s law on the handling of sudden-breaking incidents states: “People’s governments taking on a unified leadership role or organizing the handling of sudden-breaking incidents should according to relevant regulations release information concerning the development of sudden-breaking incidents and response work in a unified, accurate and timely manner.”
On August 2 this year, right on the heels of the railway ministry’s catastrophic handling of the July 23 high-speed train collision in Wenzhou, the General Office of the Central Committee of the CCP released a “notice” on the need to deepen openness of government affairs (深化政务公开). This document was apparently in the works for a number of years, but the timing of its release seemed to suggest that those in support saw the public relations bungle of the train collision as a painful reminder of how important it is to stay on top of sudden-breaking incidents and satisfy the public demand for information.
Of course, it is worth bearing in mind the obvious — that the need for greater openness as a tool of social management is balanced at every turn in China against the unflagging priority of controlling information, or “guidance of public opinion.” This is plainly apparent in the text of the August 2 “Notice” itself, which states under item 7 in the only direct reference to sudden-breaking incidents: “[We] must have a firm grasp of openness on major sudden-breaking incidents and hot issues of concern to the masses, objectively releasing the state and process of events, government actions, response measures to be taken by the public, and the findings of official investigations [into incidents], responding in a timely manner to concerns in society, and correctly channeling public opinion (正确引导社会舆论).”
The term (underlined) that concludes this portion, while not exactly signifying media control as blankly as its precursor, “correct guidance of public opinion” (正确舆论导向), was formally ushered into media policy with President Hu Jintao’s June 2008 address at People’s Daily. It is an ambiguous term implying a level of control, but combining it with the idea that the Party should more actively “use” media, including the internet and quasi-independent commercial newspapers, to influence agendas. In the past, we have used the term Control 2.0 to talk about this later development in news and propaganda policy in China.
Given the emphasis on using media more proactively, and on “channeling public opinion,” particularly for sudden-breaking incidents, it’s not surprising to find that microblogs are themselves becoming an increasingly important tool for the government and other institutions in China.
Back in March, the People’s Daily Online Public Opinion Monitoring Center (人民网舆情监测室) listed the use of microblogs to interact with the public as number five on a list of seven suggestions for dealing with sudden-breaking incidents. The center wrote: “Microblogs have shown most vividly the speed and breadth of information transmission on the internet, and they rapidly transmit information on the internet with a means of high efficiency. In sudden-breaking incidents, microblogs are already gradually becoming the core of public opinion propagation . . . ”
We can see from this passage that microblogs, and social media generally, are already pressuring the government and other institutions to respond more quickly and transparently to sudden-breaking incidents and other issues of public concern. The flip side is that social media are also increasingly providing one of the chief means by which the government and other institutions respond and reach the public.
By the beginning of this year, the opening of “official microblogs” had already become a noticeable and growing trend in China. In a report issued in April this year, the Public Opinion Monitoring Center noted that “microblogs for Party and government institutions and officials already cover many administrative levels, from central to local, and many functional departments.” As of March, the center calculated “more than 400 official microblogs [for Party or administrative offices] and more than 200 microblogs maintained by [individual] officials.” While specific numbers are hard to come by, that number has no doubt grown substantially over the past six months. [Click HERE for a list in Chinese of top-ten “official microblogs” recommended by People’s Daily Online in March this year].
Back in early 2010, the Public Opinion Monitoring Center suggested that the government follow a rule of “four golden hours” (黄金4小时) in dealing with sudden-breaking incidents — meaning that the government should actively share information within that time frame. Chinese new media expert and CMP fellow Hu Yong (胡泳) wrote in response to this idea that “increasing the speed of government [information] response to crises is a basic demand of the new media age.”
But within a short 20 months, the rapid development of social media in China has made these “golden hours” seem an eternity. These days, a story can spread across the country in four golden minutes. Even with real-time tools at their fingertips, sluggish and bureaucratic institutions with a deeply-ingrained culture of holding back on information find themselves playing catch-up.
For a prime example of this, we need look no further than last week’s subway collision in Shanghai, which injured more than 280 people.
By the standard of the Public Opinion Monitoring Center’s “four golden hours,” subway authorities in Shanghai responded with lightning speed.
In this post at 3:33pm, made just over 40 minutes after the subway collision, the official microblog of the Shanghai Metro made the following announcement: “Today at 2:10 pm the Shanghai No. 10 Line experienced equipment failure at the Xintiandi Station, and the entire line from Jiaotong University to Nanjing East Road employed a telephone block system, and trains went under slow restricted speed. During this time, at 2:51 pm, two trains collided between Yu Garden and Old West Gate. At 2:51 pm a section including 9 stations from the Hongqiao Road Station to the Tiantong Road Station was temporarily closed . . . ”
By the time this post was made, however, the first mainstream media report of the crash had been out for almost 15 minutes. That report was filed by a reporter for Shanghai’s commercial Xinmin Evening News who happened to be on one of the subway trains involved in the collision.
But the very first report of the crash had come through social media within seconds of the crash. A Shanghai web user on Sina Microblog with the name “Ji Fashi” (季法师) was the first to make a post with a photograph form the scene. Li Fashi’s post read: “Just now two trains on the Shanghai No. 10 Subway have collided. Everybody bless and protect us!” The post included a now famous photo of a female passenger covered with blood being attended to by another passenger.

[ABOVE: This photo of an injured woman on Shanghai’s No. 10 line was the first to be posted to Chinese social media on September 27, breaking news of the collision of two trains on the line. According to Sina Weibo, the post was made at 2:49 pm. According to the official version of the story, the crash occurred at 2:51 pm.]
So in the 44 minutes between the original Ji Fashi post and the first post from Shanghai subway authorities mentioning the collision, photos and eyewitness accounts were shared across thousands of microblog posts, and reports from the Xinmin Evening News were already being shared across major internet news portals.
During this period, the official microblog of the Shanghai Metro made four separate posts mentioning malfunctions but saying nothing about the collision. In a post at 3:03, almost 15 minutes after the collision, the official microblog said: “Owing to an equipment malfunction on Shanghai Metro Line No. 10, service between the Yili Road Station and Sichuan North Road Station has been suspended, all exchanges to the No. 10 line have been stopped. Will passengers please adjust their travel plans accordingly.”
A full 9 minutes later, another post read: “Owing to an equipment malfunction on Shanghai Metro Line No. 10, service between the Yili Road Station and Sichuan North Road Station has been suspended. The Yu Garden Road station has already been closed. Will passengers please avoid the above-mentioned malfunctioning section . . . ”
Posts at 3:17 pm and 3:23 pm made similar announcements of delays without making any mention of the collision.
Microblogs are not magic bullets. But even as the government tries to reign in their influence, they will likely continue to exert immense pressure on China’s institutions, forcing them to grapple with a public that is more engaged and hungry for information.

Two years ago I wrote about the inaugural session of the World Media Summit, a gathering of world media “leaders” conceived, planned and by all accounts funded by China’s official Xinhua News Agency, which falls under China’s State Council and is subject to the public opinion controls of the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party. The biennial event, which China’s state media touted in 2009 as “the media Olympics,” kicked off again in Beijing yesterday.
Strangely, for an event that we are told is attended by representatives from hundreds of media from all over the world, there is precious little information out there about the summit. Let’s take a look at the whole universe of information available in English about what we are being told is a global media event attended by the executives at the center of global news creation. Here is an image of a portion of the Google News search results:

As of midday today there were 14 news articles shown for “World Media Summit”. In the order listed on the Google search page, each linking to the relevant article, here is a list of the news organizations responsible for the reports:
1. Xinhua
2. Xinhua
3. China National Radio
4. Xinhua
5. Xinhua
6. Xinhua
7. Xinhua
8. People’s Daily Online
9. Xinhua
10. Xinhua
11. The Voice of Russia
12. Shanghai Daily
13. Shanghai Daily
14. China National Radio
These news stories, all from central state media with the exception of Shanghai Daily and Voice of Russia, offer an interesting picture of China’s state agenda behind the World Media Summit. This September 26 report from Xinhua talks about the need to create a new world order for media. The report reads:

Currently, as the world situation is changing greatly, the reform of world media order is inevitable. Through the impact of the political, economic and technical developments, the world media are calling for the establishment of a fairer, all-win, inclusive and responsible international media order.

So this summit, apparently, is about the global power structure of media in the 21st century. The current “international media order” is unfair, Xinhua suggests, and we must “get all media from different countries and regions involved in news reporting in an equal way.” We need to have “comprehensive, objective and accurate news reporting,” but one goal of such coverage should be “eradicating the chasms between different civilizations and cultures.”

[ABOVE: Global news executives meet in Beijing to decide the future of the “international media order,” according to Xinhua News Agency reports.]
The underlying assumption here is of course that Western coverage of China (and of other countries too) is prejudicial, unfair and unequal — a theme we see again and again in the Party’s official discourse on the need to enhance China’s soft power and grab a greater share of “global public opinion.”
In my 2009 post, I documented the history of the summit’s creation, linking it to a specific central Party directive that became part of Xinhua’s “core work” plan. As Xinhua chief and World Media Summit President Li Congjun (who served for six years as a deputy chief of the propaganda department before taking his Xinhua post) wrote in the Party’s official Seeking Truth journal in February 2009:

[We must] actively seek out new horizons, new mechanisms, new channels and new methods in the area of outside dialogue and cooperation, particularly, as by the demands of central party leaders, successfully organizing the first meeting of the World Media Summit, building a platform for dialogue among first-rate international media (国际一流媒体), further raising the capacity of Xinhua News Agency to make its voice heard in the international news and information sector.

By the Party’s own reckoning, then, this global summit is really all about Xinhua — and more to the point, it is all about the media and propaganda ambitions of the Chinese state.
The bottom line for China is that news should be, well, more diplomatic.
Who, then, are the diplomats at the center of this new “world media order”? They are the news executive-packed “presidium” of the World Media Summit, a group essentially appointed by Xinhua ahead of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. As the governing body of the Summit, these executives are to determine the agendas of the various summits and handle “administrative matters” through “collective consultation.”
The “presidium” is made up of executives from the following news organizations. As a courtesy, I add the nations where they are headquartered:
1. Xinhua (China)
2. The Associated Press (United States)
3. The British Broadcasting Corporation (Britain)
4. The New York Times (United States)
5. Itar-Tass (Russia)
6. Kyodo News (Japan)
7. News Corporation (United States)
8. Thomson-Reuters (United States)
9. Al Jazeera Network (Qatar)
10. Google (United States)
11. Time-Warner’s Turner Broadcasting System (United States)
Al Jazeera and The New York Times were apparently added to the presidium more recently, and Li Congjun told state media this week that with their respective additions in 2010 and 2011 the World Media Summit was now “more representative in terms of cultural backgrounds, media forms and authoritative perspectives.'”
So, people of the world, here are your representatives. Here are the business executives who are tasked (according to Xinhua) with refashioning the “international media order.”

For pictures, names and titles of World Media Summit Presidium Members, see this page on the official website of the World Media Summit. The website also provides an introduction to the Summit and its objectives.
There is of course nothing wrong with global news executives meeting with their Beijing counterparts to discuss business cooperation and exchange.
The problem here is that news executives are being duped into participating in an institutional framework that is ostensibly “non-governmental [and] non-profit” but which is backed and funded by the Chinese state via its official news agency, and which clearly has agendas beyond simple business exchange that overlap with those of the Chinese leadership.
These media executives are representing themselves — or allowing themselves to be represented — as governing members of an organization that states publicly on an official website apparently managed by Xinhua News Agency itself, bearing an all-rights-reserved Xinhua copyright, that it plans to “set a code of conduct binding for all” in order to “tackle challenges and problems confronting all.” Li Congjun, the former deputy propaganda chief who runs Xinhua and is now the Summit’s president apparently proposed “establishing a WMS [World Media Summit] mechanism outlining a common code of conduct.”
Gentlemen, I think everyone understands why you have agreed to sit at the table. But is this really an agenda you have all signed up for? How much do you really understand about this institution? And what right do you have, however powerful your news organizations, to speak for the rest of the world’s media in setting any agendas beyond those of your corporations?
It is possible, of course, that I have entirely misunderstood this institution and your participation. Perhaps, then, your own news organizations can elaborate on the coverage provided by Xinhua. Perhaps they can explain to us what this institution means and why you have agreed to become its “co-chairmen.”
Tell us, please. What exactly is the World Media Summit?