On the day that three Chinese citizens in the county of Yihuang (宜黄) in Jiangxi province set fire to themselves to protest the forced demolition of their home, I was attending a forum on news design in Shanghai. At the meeting, one of the Chinese editors kept checking his mobile phone to monitor the situation in Yihuang. Thanks to the power of Twitter-like microblog services, he was tracking live a fast-breaking news story 800 kilometers away.
The Yihuang self-immolation story was a landmark in the contemporary history of Chinese media and a bitter victory for the microblog, a new communication technology known in Chinese as the weibo (微博). It has also offered sobering lessons for both the Chinese government and the public.
In recent years, the forced requisition of land and the destruction of homes to make room for development has pitted Chinese citizens against local authorities. While the central government have issued repeated orders to ban such forced demolitions actions, local governments have continued to act recklessly. The Yihuang affair was a particularly egregious example of this.
The ordeal began on the morning of September 10, as the three members of the Zhong family sought to defend their home against forced demolition. They included 59 year-old Zhong Zhifeng (罗志凤), her daughter Zhong Ruqin (钟如琴), 31, and Ruqin’s uncle, Ye Zhongcheng (叶忠诚), 79. In the course of their protest, all three set fire to themselves. Ye eventually died from the burns. The local officials insisted that the eviction was legal and that the victims had been “burned while carelessly handling gasoline.”
For an entire week there was no mainstream media coverage of the story. Online, however, video taken by local residents from the scene of the tragedy started trickling out.
On September 16, as the three victims remained in hospital, Zhong Rucui (钟如翠) and Zhong Rujiu (钟如九), daughters of Zhong Zhifeng, went to the local airport. Their plan was to take a flight to Beijing to petition for central government attention to the family’s case. Local officials responded by dispatching scores of police to the airport to stop them from traveling.
This time they were not alone. Holed up in the women’s restroom at the airport, they used their mobile phones to call a journalist who then posted the news about their plight and the actions of local officials on a popular microblog service. Over the next three hours, Deng Fei (邓飞), a reporter for the Beijing-based Phoenix Weekly, sent out more than 20 microblog posts with the help of a reporter on the ground in Jiangxi. In this way, they were able to report live the situation facing the sisters: ” With the help of internet users who responded to the call, the sisters fled from the airport but have to abort the trip to Beijing.
On September 18, the uncle, Ye Zhongcheng, died of his injuries. By this time, Zhong Rujiu had opened her own microblog account. She wrote shortly after: “Now 70 or 80 people from the government have come and surrounded me, taking away Uncle’s body. After the government took my uncle’s body away, I tried to stop the car of the county head Su Jianguo (苏建国), who was leading the caravan with the body, but Su Jianguo sat totally indifferent. After that, around 40 government cadres from Yihuang dragged me aside.”
Thanks to mobile phones, everyone can now become a news broadcast station in the event of a breaking story. By the following Friday, September 24, Zhong Rujiu had made 253 posts to her microblog, updating the world on the conditions of her family members in the hospital. Her posts drew at least 60,000 followers, with each entry re-posted by an average of a thousand others.
As information sped through microblogs, drawing popular attention to the forced demolition case, the Zhong family’s tragedy reached the ears of high-level government officials. On September 17, the day after the airport fiasco, the government announced that local officials implicated in the self-immolation case in Yihuang were being formally punished. Qiu Jianguo (邱建国), the Party secretary and top leader in Yihuang, and the county’s governor, Su Jianguo, were under formal investigation. The county’s deputy governor, Li Minjun (李敏军), was also removed from his post and subjected to investigation. The next day, the sacked officials make news all over the media. Some newspapers even defied bans by promoting the story to the front-page banner.
Microblogs, which are limited to 140 characters in length, can be sent from mobile phones or computers. Twitter, the original microblog service, has been blocked in China, but major websites have launched their own Twitter clones, and these have become an important alternative channel for information. It is interesting to note as well that 140 characters in Chinese actually makes for much richer content than the same in English.
As a new communications tool, microblogs are real-time, high-speed, fragmented and highly difficult to censor. Chinese journalists are now universally aware of the unique power of the microblog. Chinese new media expert Bei Feng (北风) has described the medium as “fragmented and decentralized communications.” Journalist and blogger Xiao Shu (笑蜀) has said that “observation is a power unto itself, capable of changing China through all-encompassing attention.”
CMP director Qian Gang (钱钢), who launched his QQ Microblog only five months ago, now has a following of 1.7 million. That means that each time he makes a post, he reaches 1.7 million readers who might share his post with still more. His broadcast power has surpassed that of many newspapers.
Microblogs have grown in influence in China. In the past two months, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (温家宝) has called for political reform on seven different occasions — in Shenzhen and Beijing, at the United Nations, and while on a state visit to Europe. Wen’s remarks have been handled cooly in China’s traditional media. Then last week, Wen Jiabao restated his support of political reform in an interview with CNN. “I will not fall in spite of a strong wind and harsh rain and I will not yield till the last day of my life,” he said. Savyy Chinese journalists and web users shared his remarks enthusiastically through the microblogs.
Active and vibrant communication online now stands in stark contrast to the strict, deadening controls offline.
In its “Hot Topics” section on the Yihuang tragedy, QQ.com concluded that “rights were fought and won through each microblog post.” In the push to defend the rights of citizens, microblogs have offered a ray of hope, helping to promote civil society in China.
As Qian Gang has said: “So long as we all involve ourselves, no information can be concealed.”

In the early moments following the announcement that Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波) had won the Nobel Peace Prize, information was shared energetically through Twitter-like microblog platforms in China. Posts were swiftly removed, however, and many Chinese microblog users who had passed along information found their accounts disabled. One employee I know at Sina.com, who ordinarily is not involved on the censorship side, was borrowed for microblog censorship duty as the workload mounted. Said one website employee tasked with deleting comments to a friend: “I’ve deleted so much my hands are sore.”
The Twitter user “freemoren,” who often exposes official censorship directives, reported on Twitter at around 5:30 p.m., shortly after Liu Xiaobo was announced as this year’s Peace Prize laureate: “The Information Office [of the State Council] has issued its latest instructions on Liu Xiaobo’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize — microblog services across the country are to set [‘Liu Xiaobo’ and ‘Peace Prize’] as prohibited keywords, and forums, blogs and other interactive media are not, without exception, to release any [related] information. Xinhua News Agency will come out with an official news release momentarily.” About 15 minutes later, a statement called “Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mao Chaoxu Answers Reporters’ Questions” appeared on the official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Shortly after that, the official Xinhua release came out, parroting the words of the foreign ministry spokesman. The Chinese news website Netease initially posted the piece on the foreign ministry response, but this was quickly removed.
At 6 p.m., just on the heels of all of this activity, “freemoren” reported again on Twitter: “Here is the latest order from the Central Propaganda Department: the official news release (concerning Liu Xiaobo receiving the Nobel Peace Prize) has been released, but media are not to publish it. This includes all print media and Internet media.” After this, major domestic news sites in China did post the Xinhua News Agency release, but tucked it away in inconspicuous inside pages. That night, no mention of the Nobel Peace Prize was made at all on China Central Television’s main newscast, Xinwen Lianbo. After this, Chinese websites were subjected to even tighter controls, and all news of the prize seemed to disappear.
On October 9, the day after the prize was awarded, only a handful of official newspapers ran the Xinhua News Agency release. These included Guangming Daily, Economic Daily, Beijing Daily and Shanghai’s Wenhui Bao. The only commercial newspaper to run the official release was The Beijing News.
From domestic news sites there was scarcely a peep. Not from official news sites like People’s Daily Online and Xinhuanet, and not from commercial news sites such as Sina, Netease and Sohu. The only exception was Tencent’s QQ.com, which included a link under the “hot links” column of its inside news section about China’s opposition to awarding the prize to Liu Xiaobo.
On October 8th, the evening the prize was awarded, Twitter and domestic microblogs were abuzz with plans for celebrations by Chinese internet users across the country. In Beijing and Shanghai, however, some Twitter users reported being taken away by police before they had a chance to come together. Among them, Shi Feike (石扉客), a prominent journalist, planned to meet with others at the fountain on Shanghai’s People’s Square before they all went off to have dinner. But Shi Feike was unreachable after 6:30 p.m., and didn’t reemerge until police released him around midnight, by which time he and other Web users confirmed that police had been waiting at the gathering point. Only celebrations in Guangzhou were not harassed in this way. In the city of Hangzhou, a group of celebrants reported online that they had been trailed by police, but had not been otherwise harassed.
In Beijing, web users had arranged a time and place for celebrations ahead of the Nobel Committee’s announcement. The first two places they arranged for were closed for business under official orders, and the celebrants had to change venues three times. Around 6 p.m. on the evening of the 8th, ten or more web users arrived at a hot-pot restaurant near Beijing’s Ditan Park. At 6:22 p.m., rights defender Wang Lihong (王荔蕻), who was present at the gathering, made a quick post on Twitter: “The police have come,” he wrote. There was a burst of protest, but all those present were carted off by police. Reporters from both the Associated Press and Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post were there on the scene.
The web users were separated and taken to several different police stations. The next afternoon, 14 web users who had met the night before were formally arrested and likely faced administrative detention. That same day, Sun-Yatsen University professor Ai Xiaoming (艾晓明) circulated a petition calling on Beijing police to release all those who had met for the dinner celebration.
Prominent intellectuals were not spared harassment. On the afternoon of October 8, Peking University professor Xia Yaliang (夏业良) went to a tea shop near the home of Liu Xia, the wife of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo. Xia’s only intention was to mark this historic moment. But that night at 9:30 p.m. he reported on Twitter: “At around 6:20 tonight, university officials sent a car over to spirit me away from [Liu Xia’s] compound at Number 9 South Yuyuantan Street, where many were gathering. The leaders said they had come to get me in order to offer their protection.”
On the morning of October 9, quite a few Beijing activists were either placed under police observation or house arrest. Political scientist Liu Junning (刘军宁) wrote on Twitter that morning: “I woke up this morning and discovered I couldn’t go out. The drive was blocked by a white car with emergency signals.” Well-known rights defense lawyer Li Xiongbing (黎雄兵) similarly revealed on Twitter: “Early this morning Wang Haiwang (王海旺), head of the State Security division of Tongzhou District, came to my house with police officers from the [nearby] Liyuan police substation to inform me that I was under house arrest.” Fan Yafeng (范亚峰), a former associate researcher at the Legal Studies Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, reported: “The internet connection in my house has been cut, and a car has been placed on guard downstairs.”
The response to Liu Xiaobo’s Peace Prize in China has been very two-sided. The vast majority of Chinese, numbed to the whole nature of politics in our country, have not responded at all, or perhaps don’t even realize Liu Xiaobo was given the prize. Among those Chinese who actively promote the democratization process, most are convinced that awarding the prize to Liu Xiaobo is a show of support and validation of China’s democracy movement. They believe the prize provides new strength to the process of democratization in China, and hope it will push the process forward.
Some scholars have voiced the hope that the Nobel Peace Prize for Liu Xiaobo will encourage the government toward a more open and enlightened approach. Beijing Film Academy professor Cui Weiping (崔卫平) said during an interview with Norway’s TV 2 channel: “I hope the Chinese government sees Liu Xiaobo’s Peace Prize as a friendly reminder, as an amicable call, as a new impetus for change in our society — and not as pure pressure.”
I spoke to one scholar, however — who wished to remain anonymous — who said that given two decades of suppression and amnesia, there are few Chinese who understand Liu Xiaobo, and his work is not widely recognized. Even awarding Liu Xiaobo with the Nobel Peace Prize, the scholar said, will do little to address the deep apathy most Chinese feel for politics.
As for the immediate effect of the Nobel Committee’s decision, Chinese columnist Mo Zhixu (莫之许) has written on Twitter: “For those who [oppose China’s present system], they will in the short term fall under immense pressure as the authorities resort to active suppression to deal with further acts of defiance that might arise from Liu Xiaobo receiving the prize.”
This is a translation of a Chinese version that appeared in yesterday’s edition of Hong Kong’s Ming Pao Daily. CMP conducted an additional search to confirm which Chinese newspapers did run the official Xinhua News Agency release on Saturday, October 9.

Known more commonly by his online alias “Bei Feng” (北风), Wen Yunchao (温云超) is one of China’s best-known bloggers and experts on new media. After graduating from Harbin Engineering University in 1993, Wen worked as a news reporter at Guangdong Economic TV, the precursor to the present-day Nanfang Television, and later as an editor for the website of Guangzhou’s Yangcheng Evening News and as manager of the blogging platform at Netease. In March 2009, Wen left Netease to independently research the Internet censorship system and the development of Twitter and other social media in China.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Chaoxu (马朝旭) said in a press conference late today that the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to dissident Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波) goes against the aims of the prize and profanes its meaning.
Responding to questions from reporters, Ma said that the prize should “go to people who promote peaceful relations among different peoples, who enhance friendship among nations, who promote disarmament and who work for and publicize conferences of peace.”
Ma also said the awarding of the prize to Liu Xiaobo would “do harm to Sino-Norwegian relations.” Even the Xinhua news agency story on the Foreign Ministry response was kept from the front page at Xinhuanet, the news agency’s official website, and the news appeared at none of China’s major commercial internet news portals.
Chinese economist and scholar Feng Zhenghu (冯正虎), also a well-known rights defender in China, said on Twitter: “I’ve done interviews with BBC, Voice of America, Asahi Shinbun, South China Morning Post and others [about Liu Xiaobo winning the prize]. I’ve not been contacted by a single domestic media.”

A two-part film aimed at polishing China’s global image is now due for international release. Production of the film, a project by China’s State Council Information Office, was entrusted to the advertising company Shanghai Lowe & Partners, which has in the past worked with international commercial brands in China. The film features a 30-second commercial, People – due to be shown on CNN and other prominent international media – and a 15-minute feature, Perspectives. People features several Chinese celebrities, including tycoon Li Ka-shing, basketball star Yao Ming, astronaut Yang Liwei, Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma Yun and actress Zhang Ziyi.
Ahead of its international release, People has been robustly promoted by the media in China. Shanghai Lowe has been singled out for praise for its positive portrayal of China. But some questions are in order. First, how much did this advertisement cost? And, second, what does China hope to gain by spending this money?
For many Chinese, our “national image” is something sacred. But once sanctified, a concept hardens and become abstract. People start believing it can be created independent of all other factors, and they ignore larger social and political issues. So what if there are problems with China’s legal environment and its financial system? So what if authors are persecuted for their writing, citizens set fire to themselves to protest at the forced destruction of their homes, or rights petitioners are tossed into extralegal “black jails” simply for seeking justice? None of these things represent our national image. We suppose we can simply manufacture a “national image” independent of these facts, burying our heads in the sand and saying, “Look over here, everyone. This is the image approved by our government.”
It’s fine to film nice things and share them with people. You can film beautiful scenery to promote tourism. You can film life in the city and give people a taste of local culture. But these films convey only what you’ve chosen to film. They can’t possibly be representative.
The producer of the State Council publicity spots, Zhu Youguang, said recently that while “not every country has ‘national image publicity films’, all countries promote themselves in different ways”. The United States does not produce publicity films to promote its image, Zhu said, but this was simply because all of America’s feature films, animations and musical productions promoted its national image. It’s true that the so-called “American spirit” is constantly being promoted through popular culture. But Zhu has confused “image” and “concept”. American films are not produced with funding from the US government, and they are not in the business of manufacturing an American image. What they do is express ideas and concepts, which are intellectual and cultural aspirations. An image, by contrast, is something preconceived, a foregone conclusion.
Then there is the question of what image of China we are trying to portray through this publicity film. Zhu’s argument is that China and the US are in very different positions, that China does not yet have the cultural means to get its messages out. Therefore, he says, “[we] must resort to publicity films like this in order to achieve results in a short time”. This is naked opportunism, and that’s probably the first impression people seeing the publicity film are going to have. What makes us think we can simply take some pretty footage, purchase some air time, and raise our international prestige right away? We’re imagining that foreigners are just like Chinese.
What are foreigners supposed to glean from this publicity film? According to Chinese media reports, the idea is for foreigners to recognise the faces of these Chinese celebrities and see them as representative of China. Yet, in one interview, executive producer Su Mingxia said the 30-second film “shows the situation of ordinary Chinese, and how they live and work”.
You can see just how ambivalent the production team is. On the one hand, they concentrate on filming celebrities, and on the other they emphasise the importance of the hoi polloi. The producers even include a not-so-famous policeman at the end of the film, voicing the hope that “the film begins with the people and returns to the people”.
Why should we deceive ourselves and others like this? The production team knows only too well that it is we Chinese, and not foreigners, who really care about these celebrities. Making a show of these success stories and imagining they represent China – this is just another form of success worship and the adulation of the rich and famous.
This film is not likely to improve China’s image in the eyes of foreigners; it might actually have the opposite effect. We are the ones who are obsessed with wealth and fame; faced with the difficult question of whether to make a film for Chinese people or for foreigners, the production team decided to satisfy China’s own cravings first.
Ultimately, all of these efforts to promote China’s image will become “export commodities consumed domestically”. This is how they will fulfil the hopes of the producers, and the film “returns to the people”.
After the film’s release, our media in China will certainly conclude that the film is highly effective in raising our country’s image globally, and that foreigners who watched it are filled with admiration for us. But the real result will be to demonstrate to our own people that the worship of success brings instant reward, and is indeed a shortcut to success.
This editorial is a translated and edited version of the Chinese original appearing at Time Weekly.

The International Press Institute, the world’s oldest global press freedom organisation, has published a report about the future of journalism and the implications on press freedom.
Brave News Worlds features the contributions of 42 editors, reporters, bloggers, consultants and media academics from round the globe and looks at how the media landscape is likely to change over the next decade. One of those contributors is Professor Ying Chan, Director of the JMSC.
The report was produced in collaboration with the Poynter Institute, a leading journalism centre based in Florida, USA. The report’s editor, Bill Mitchell, is head of the Poynter Institute’s Entrepreneurial Journalism and International Programmes.
“What’s emerging is a much sharper focus on how news can survive and even thrive going forward,” said Mitchell. “The report provides a special emphasis on the relationship between journalism and civic life, with specific, useful examples of who’s doing what around the world to sustain the critical linkage between the two.”
The report looks at different aspects of the press: the evolution of news; the role of journalists; the state of law, regulation and media freedom; the power of the people; emerging forms of journalism; traditional concepts re-framed and ownership. It also contains a series of ‘reports from the road’ which look at the state of journalism in countries round the globe.
Professor Ying Chan has contributed a paper to this series entitled ‘Competition Over News Intensifies in China, as Internet Offers Alternative Coverage’ (p. 112-115).
Chan wrote that while Western media is bemoaning the fact it’s shrinking, the media in China is growing thanks to a healthy economy, technological opportunities and state investment. When faced with restrictions imposed by the Communist state, many media organisations and individuals use the internet to circumvent or resist such censorship.
“Caught in the intricate media landscape, Chinese journalists, managers, producers and frontline reporters are working under intense pressure to perform,” wrote Chan in her essay. “Yet they enjoy little institutional support or clear career paths. Even CEOs at state-directed market enterprises serve at the pleasure of the Communist Party.”
“In the newsrooms, editors are torn between conflicting demands from two new masters, the party censors and news consumers who increasingly thirst for the truth.”
Chan looked at the ways in which China’s media has become both more open over the last ten years, but also how state control has become stronger and more sophisticated in order to try to deal with this openness. One of the ways in which the media in China has become more open is the proliferation of commercial internet companies which have emerged as an alternative to state controlled news sources, Chan wrote. In order to get around a ban by the state from reporting current events, these companies aggregate news from other sources that they are allowed to report. They also use formats such as discussions and debates which are not considered to be direct reportage.
In her paper, Chan stated that technology is driving China’s media growth. By June 2010, China was the largest online community anywhere in the world, with 420 million internet users. “While the Chinese Internet is one of the most controlled, it is also one of the most active community of writers, bloggers and citizen advocates,” wrote Chan. “The internet has offered journalists a venue to post articles when they are censored by the printed media.”
As more and more people use micro blogging and social media sites such as Twitter to get round the Great Fire Wall for the transfer of information and news quickly and freely, Chinese officials block the sites.
“For now, the future for Chinese journalists remains both promising and perilous,” wrote Chan in conclusion. “The Chinese Communist Party has made clear that it will not relinquish control of the news media. But both commercialisation and the empowering forces of technology demand greater openness. Somehow, the government will have to resolve the contradictions inherent in its grand strategy of gaining credibility worldwide while suppressing dissent and critical thinking at home.”