The Journalism and Media Studies Centre invites you to a public talk…
Reflections of a Mainland Publisher
By Cheng Yizhong
Former Chief Editor of Southern Metropolis Daily and The Beijing News
Date: 20 January, 2011 (Thursday)
Time: 5:30 to 7pm
Venue: T7, Meng Wah Complex, The University of Hong Kong
The lecture will be conducted in Putonghua.

About the Talk:
Outstanding publishers in contemporary China have long struggled for greater press freedom. Serving as the chief editor of Southern Metropolis Daily, Mr. Cheng Yizhong insisted on reporting the spread of SARS in 2003 despite government restrictions. He was punished after Southern Metropolis Daily broke the story in 2003 of the death of Sun Zhigang, a young migrant worker, a story that resulted in the repeal of China ’s law on detention and repatriation.
Where are the boundaries of free speech in mainland China ? Have Chinese journalists achieved the most they possibly can in terms of expression given the institutional limitations they face today? What is the first priority in running a newspaper? Mr. Cheng will address these and other issues in this JMSC public lecture, Reflections of a Mainland Publisher.
About the Speaker:
Mr. CHENG YIZHONG is the vice-president of the Modern Media Group and executive publisher of Asian Business Leaders. He was a founder and former chief editor of Southern Metropolis Daily and The Beijing News. Because of his dedication to journalistic professionalism and the pursuit of press freedom, he won the UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize in 2005.
Enquiries: [email protected] / All are welcome, no registration required.

Last week, Radio Free Asia and other media reported that Chinese media had received a propaganda directive instructing them not to use the term “civil society,” or gongmin shehui (公民社会), in news reports, or to build up stories around the topic. Our sources confirm the existence of a directive, but it remains to be seen just how effective such a ban might prove.
Beijing Film Academy professor Cui Weiping (崔卫平) told Deutsche Welle’s Chinese-language news service late last week that rumors of a possible ban on the term had been tossed about since last October, but added that it was impossible for the word to really disappear simply because of a ban. The service also quoted scholar Li Shun (李楯) as saying: “If indeed there is a ban, it will be impossible for the authorities to enforce. Among intellectuals in China today, the term ‘civil society’ is common coin, and this is not something that simply handing down a directive can change.”

It is true that banning a term such as “civil society” outright is a difficult proposition, and there are still plenty of examples to show that it is sticking around in China’s print media — even in those trouble-making Guangdong newspapers cited in a number of reports on the directive.
A search of the WiseNews database, which includes hundreds of mainland Chinese newspapers, returned 271 results for articles including the term “civil society” over the past month (since December 1, 2010). Since January 1, the term has been used in 50 articles in the mainstream print media. Of these 50 articles making reference to the term, 18 were from media in Guangdong province.

The term has appeared only once in a headline since the beginning of this year, however. That was in Wuhan Evening Post on January 2, and the editorial was called, “Equal Opportunity is the Foundation of Civil Society.” Interestingly, the body of the editorial, which urged against allowing local administrative bodies to set up their own official examinations for government jobs, did not include the term “civil society.”
And what about the Party’s flagship People’s Daily? No references have appeared this year. In fact, the last reference to the term in was on April 17, 2009. Several provincial-level party dailies, however, have made use of the term since December 1, including today’s edition of Gansu Daily:

The development process of modernization is a process of “familiarization,” and it is also a process of the building and maturation of civil society . . . .

As traditional media have pushed gingerly against the limits of this latest ban, the term “civil society” and the ban itself have been shared through domestic microblog services, demonstration again of the potential power of these new media.
On January 3, celebrity blogger Wu Yue San Ren (五岳散人) wrote through his microblog at QQ:

Around the time I’d been in this field of journalism for just a couple of years, you couldn’t raise the concept of the ‘taxpayer,’ and now we can’t say ‘civil society’ anymore. If we say ‘the ordinary people’ that seems like a term we shouldn’t be using in a modern society. And if we say ‘the masses’ instead, then it always has the words ‘who don’t know the truth’ tacked on to it [by government officials].

Constitutional scholar Chen Yongmiao (陈永苗), also an experienced journalist, wrote through his QQ microblog on January 5:

Recently, Southern Metropolis Daily, Southern Weekend and the 21st Century Business Herald, all of the Nanfang Group, received a notice from the propaganda department prohibiting media from mentioning ‘civil society’ in their reports, and from building up this issue. It is said that media all over the country have received this notice, and under pressure all media must carry it out.

Liao Baoping (廖保平), a columnist at Wuhan’s Changjiang Commercial Daily (长江商报), wrote on his microblog today: “Since ‘civil society’ is disallowed, some media have been using the term ‘public society’ instead. I think this is even stronger. The method of keyword banning cannot possibly eliminate ideas.”
Liao, of course, was addressing another low-tech way the directive against “civil society” will probably prove less effective than propaganda authorities hope. And journalists are in fact already blazing the way forward with other terms.
In one of the year’s first apparent circumventions of the ban, the main editorial in the 21st Century Business Herald on January 1 discussed the importance of civil society in reviving China socially and culturally. But through the slight of hand of replacing a single Chinese character, the article (just as Liao Baoping said today) replaced the term “civil society” with “public society,” or gonggong shehui (公共社会).
In the following passage the concept of civil society does but doesn’t quite appear exactly three times through the proxy “public society”:

If we can say that the principle achievement of thirty years of economic reform and opening is the development of market freedom and personal freedom, well then, right now the building of public society and the protection of freedoms are just as important. The development of public society is a supplement and support for market freedom and continued prosperity. If there is no way to build up public society, and no way to make space for the resolution and release of social tensions, there will be no way for individual demands to coalesce into any sort of public consensus . . .

Naturally, this most recent ban should be taken seriously as an indication of the prevailing mood of China’s propaganda leaders, and it could have some effect in turning bolder media away from deeper coverage of a whole range of issues that fall under the umbrella of “civil society.” But ideas about a more engaged and more connected public have, as Li Shun said, already taken root — and they will be difficult to turn back.

In December 2010, Qian Yunhui (钱云会), a local village chief in Yueqing (乐清市) in China’s Zhejiang province who had for five years been engaged in a dispute with the government over land acquisition, died under what many Chinese saw as suspicious circumstances, being crushed under the wheel of a transport truck. On December 27, police officials from the Public Security Bureau in the city of Wenzhou, which has jurisdiction over Yueqing, held a press conference at which they said Qian Yunhui, 53, had “died in a traffic accident.” At the same press conference, Yueqing authorities said five policemen had been injured by “people unaware of the truth,” or bu ming zhenxiang de qunzhong (不明真相的群众). The use of this familiar term, habitually dragged out by government leaders over the years to broad-brush people taking part in protests or mass incidents, drew anger from many Chinese. One Chinese editorial responded by asking: “Is it the people unclear of the truth, or the truth hidden from the people?” [English commentary from China’s Economic Observer here]. In this cartoon, posted by artist Xu Jun (徐骏) to his QQ blog, a furious government official (identified by his imperial-era officials cap) holds an unfortunate blindfolded citizen out by the collar and shouts: “[These are] people unclear about the truth!”

According to a January 2011 report on Rednet.cn, two groups of students from Number Five Secondary School in Changde’s Taoyuan County (桃源县) were forced to wait in the snow for an hour to welcome a visiting government leader, and then had to sit on ice-cold chairs outside the school as the leader delivered a speech. Local weather information indicated that the temperature in Taoyuan that day hovered between 1 and 3 degrees Celsius. In this cartoon, posted by the Kunming-based studio Yuan Jiao Man’s Space (圆觉漫时空) to QQ.com, a government leader dressed in a padded winter coat speaks grandiloquently, his hand slicing through the air, as a fawning assistant holds and umbrella to protect him from the snow. Meanwhile, students bearing red wreaths of welcome stand frozen in obsequious poses..

CMP fellow and award-winning news photographer He Yanguang (贺延光) has (at long last!) made a new post to his blog, including his favorite photos taken during the course of his reporting work in 2010. He concludes the collection with the photo he took of the tombstone of literary giant and former People’s Daily reporter Liu Binyan (刘宾雁) during the December funeral in which Liu’s ashes were buried in Beijing five years after his death in exile in the United States.

The post is a rare reference inside mainland China to Liu Binyan’s Beijing funeral, which has not been reported in China’s media.
Click here for MORE . . .

Last month, the ashes of Liu Binyan (刘宾雁), the fearless investigative journalist and literary giant once dubbed “China’s conscience,” were quietly transported to China, where they were laid to rest in Tianshan Cemetery on the outskirts of Beijing, five years after the writer’s death in exile in the United States.
Liu Binyan, who is remembered for his hard-hitting exposes of government corruption in the official People’s Daily newspaper, is still seen by many journalists and intellectuals in China as an enduring symbol of untiring conscience and opposition to abuse of power. In a visible reminder of the legacy Liu left behind, a number of present-day press crusaders, including CMP fellows Hu Shuli (胡舒立) and Lu Yuegang (卢跃刚), can be glimpsed among those who attended the funeral ceremony on December 22.

Chinese authorities apparently disallowed the engraving of Liu Binyan’s memorial stone at Tianshan Cemetery with the epitaph he had chosen for himself shortly before his death: “The Chinese man who rests here did what he should have done and said what he should have said.” The stone appears with only the three characters for his name and the dates “1925-2005.”
In a further reminder of just how sensitive Liu Binyan, his words and his work remain in China, there has been no mainstream press coverage inside China of the return of Liu’s ashes or the funeral ceremony in Beijing. A search for “Liu Binyan” in a database of more than two-hundred mainland newspapers over the past three years (to today) returns only 21 articles mentioning Liu Binyan. All are passing references to the writer, most mentioning him in conjunction with other writers of reportage.
For more on Liu Binyan, his personality and his career, we recommend reading Perry Link on the subject, beginning with this piece for TIME magazine in 2003 and this obituary written for The New York Review of Books.
Below is our translation of the remarks made by Liu Binyan’s son, Liu Dahong (刘大洪), during the December 22 ceremony.

Liu Dahong’s Remarks at His Father’s Burial
My dear predecessors, friends and family:
I thank you all for coming out on such a cold day to be a part of my father’s funeral, sending my father off on this the last stage of his journey.
My father was born in 1925, and he passed away through illness in the United States in 2005. Today, five years later, my father has finally returned for burial in the soil of his homeland. My father returns to this land of his, but the social justice for which he struggled throughout his life has yet to be manifested in this land. More than 30 years ago, my father sounded an alarm to the whole nation about the dangers of corruption. More than ten years ago, far away across the ocean [in America], he issued many warnings from exile about the dangers of China taking the path of Latin America. All that he warned us against has come true, and is demonstrated again and again in the facts and fabric of life in our country.
My father said before he passed away that he hoped the following words could be engraved on his tombstone: “The Chinese man who rests here did what he should have done and said what he should have said.” But the memorial stone standing before us today bears no words at all. And this stone without words makes a measure here and now of the distance that still separates us from a modern civilized society. I am confident that those who come after will some day be able to read these words of my father’s, and that they will hear the stories that lie behind this stone.
Today is the winter solstice. The winter solstice is a day when the Chinese bury their dead, tend to their graves, offer sacrifices to their ancestors, and remember those who came before. Let us remember him. Let us remember the way he spurned the banquets of the rich and powerful and chose to stand on the side of conscience and the people. Let us remember the rough path that his life took, and how he fought unremittingly against the darkness, raising his voice for those who were oppressed and disgraced.
Today is the winter solstice. The winter solstice is the longest day of winter. Let us remember him, and let his convictions add to the warmth of our own.

Chutian Metropolis Daily, a commercial spin-off of Hubei’s official Hubei Daily, reported in January 2010 that Internet users had exposed the use of two public vehicles during a Chinese wedding in the city of Tianmen (天门市) over the New Year holiday. Videos released online showed the sedans, bearing official license plates, being used to pick up the bride and her entourage and escort her back to the wedding (a tradition during Chinese wedding ceremonies). In this cartoon, posted by the Kunming-based studio Yuan Jiao Man’s Space (圆觉漫时空) to QQ.com, a white luxury sedan with official red stamps in the place of its wheels (an obvious reference to its official purpose) is decorated with wedding messages. The characters for “double happiness” grace the windshield, and a plaque over a symbolic red heart on the front bumper reads “one hundred years of harmony.”