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.”

Freedom of speech is indispensable for any country . . . But I don’t think you understand the full situation in China.

One month ago, veteran journalist and CMP fellow Zhang Ping (张平), who writes under the penname Chang Ping (长平), was visited at the offices of Guangdong’s official Nanfang Daily by state security police who wished to have a “chat.” At roughly the same time, propaganda authorities issued an order preventing Zhang from writing editorials for Southern Weekly and Southern Metropolis Daily, both respected commercial spin-offs of Nanfang Daily where his writings have appeared for years.
Now a researcher at the Nanfang Daily Newspapers Communications Research Institute (南都传播研究院), Zhang was formerly director of the news desk at Southern Weekend and a deputy editor at Southern Metropolis Weekly.
In a recent interview with Taiwan’s Want Daily (旺报) Zhang speaks about the current state of media in China and the prospects for change. A portion of the interview follows:

Want: In recent years, we’ve seen quite a number of editorials talking about how controls on the media have tightened in China. Some people have even talked about the rise of a “new nationalism” in China [as something contributing to curbs on the press]. How do you view these trends?
Chang Ping: On the issue of press controls, you can say that things have become more technical in recent years. Media control is now more concrete (更具体) and more focused (更到位) than it once was. A decade ago, during the Jiang Zemin era, the authorities lacked robust technical controls on the Internet side, so print media would often receive orders [from propaganda authorities] saying things like: “Do not re-print such-and-such information from the web, or such-and-such information is rumor.” These days, we don’t often see bans of this kind. Rather, it’s the Internet [sites] receiving bans like, “Do not re-post news from Southern Metropolis Daily.” This is because web controls have now become more systematized (有序了) and effective. If there is something problematic at a website, it can now be deleted directly. There’s no need to send an order down to the newspapers [about Internet content]. Quite the contrary, it’s often the newspapers that are often now the problem. This is an interesting shift.
The Battle of Darkness and Light
About your other question, there have been developments in terms of statism (国家主义) and nationalism (民族主义) over the past few years. This is a result, in fact, of national education and propaganda since 1989. [After the crackdown on June 4, 1989] there was a backlash against bourgeois liberalization (资产阶级自由化) in China. Many liberal intellectuals either left [China], or could no longer voice the ideas they had originally. Everyone started heading in the direction of National Studies (国学). The famous historian Li Zehou (李泽厚) has described the situation by saying that “thinkers have faded out and scholars risen to prominence,” [meaning there was less emphasis on originating ideas and more emphasis on resurrecting old ideas.]
This change was not a natural progression of any kind. It was just that thinkers had no choice but to fade into the background, because the atmosphere of political pressure was not conducive to their work. So everyone returned to the dusty classics. At the same time, the authorities also wanted to use National Studies to harp on the idea of the national spirit (民族精神). Over time an entire generation was educated this way. Add to this China’s historical sense of anger and victimization over the past century and you have a recipe for rising nationalism.
When you add more robust technical controls on the Internet to this social equation, control of the media becomes a much easier matter.
But the situation is actually quite complex. On the one hand, you have continued breakthroughs in communications technology. Services like Twitter are in some ways very difficult to control. On the other hand, younger Chinese who have been reared on the idea of nationalism will slowly mature and begin their own process of self-examination — their ideas will no longer be so “pure.” These changes will heap new trouble on the authorities [in terms of information control]. So compared to the past, you can say that controls are tighter now, but it’s also true that new cracks are emerging all the time, and new threads of light creeping in. It’s difficult for anyone to say which of these forces is stronger. We are still in the midst of change.
When Party Papers Must Face the Market
Want: Many things have happened in China’s media this year. During the National People’s Congress, for example, 13 newspapers signed a joint editorial calling for an end to China’s household registration system. Then we had Hubei Party Secretary Li Hongzhong (李鸿忠) grabbing a digital recorder from a news reporter and being widely criticized. We had Chinese media professionals signing a petition against the Chongqing Morning Post for its handling of police detentions of three of its reporters. And we have many journalists being issued with arrest warrants or otherwise threatened. Chinese journalists have shown a strong sense of idealism and have opposed suppression [of news and ideas]. Could you share your own observations on this?
Chang Ping: First of all, we can see that the very nature and role of the media is changing in China. Look for example at the Li Hongzhong case. In the past, only party media would have been able to gain access to the National People’s Congress. In the past, journalists generally couldn’t get access. If they did get access, they wouldn’t dare ask the kind of questions [that were asked of Li Hongzhong]. And if, by chance, they did ask those kinds of questions they couldn’t count on support from their newspapers. The interests of the top leaders running China’s newspapers lie with officialdom, [not with journalism or media per se].
Now, even the [official] People’s Daily must face up to the realities of the market, so it launches [the commercially-operated] Beijing Times. The journalist Li Hongzhong so rudely berated was from the Beijing Times. The interests of the leaders at the Beijing Times newspaper lie with the market. They have to run a newspaper that people will read, with advertisements. So from this standpoint they also have to support their journalists in sticking out their necks and asking different sorts of questions.
This is an unavoidable trend, because media are peeling away from their [traditional] propaganda role and heading in the direction of the market, so it’s no longer “media first, market second.” New media like Netease and Tencent have now pushed into other business areas, like online games, looking to turn a profit first and serve as media second.
We also see more idealistic journalists feeling constrained and frustrated by media controls, and when the opportunity arises, the animus of the market and the animus of professionalism can combine to make for opposition [to media controls through harder hitting coverage]. Many of these professionals are those who were influenced by events of the 1980s, and they hope for more open media policies. With the development of media in recent years, ideas like professionalism and independence have become more deeply rooted in the media.
We Often Band Together
Another issue is the growing pluralism of media platforms [in China]. Traditionally, joint efforts at resistance were quite risky, but now there are so many online tools that can be used. We can step out quickly and safely, and these factors can come together in a gesture of defiance.
The Li Hongzhong case resulted in some compromise, of course . . . And in the Chongqing Morning Post case, the signers [of the petition] did not target the authorities, and this was a strategic form of opposition . . . Besides, there are just too many things the authorities have to handle, and relatively speaking, journalists are quite cautious in their approach, so they don’t want to prompt harsh action from the authorities.
The household registration system is a pretty safe topic about which there is a lot of discussion. There is a consensus both outside and inside the system that it needs to be reformed, and everyone knows it’s difficult to sustain. So the organizers of the joint editorial wanted to push on this issue, and it was probably the method they chose, of “uniting together,” that most angered propaganda organs. They wanted to put a stop to this trend. In fact, we often unite together in the media — it’s just that usually these are [united efforts] orchestrated by the propaganda organs themselves. . .
Want: Lately, a number of mainland leaders have experimented with online democracy and online political debate, and we’ve seen the emergence of Wu Hao (伍皓), [a top propaganda official in Yunnan province], a more enlightened sort of propaganda official. How do you see this?
Chang Ping: This is a form of control, a way of using “closeness to the people” (亲民) to make them feel that you’re standing on the same side. In a truly democratic society there is no need for an official to say you can do this, or you can do that, so this is somewhat absurd.
Should Leaders Top the Headlines?
It’s just like [Guangdong Party Secretary] Wang Yang (汪洋) saying to the media that they shouldn’t put him in the banner headlines. Seen from another perspective that’s just another form of intrusion on the media. In the past, visits by officials and such things were always put in the banner headlines, and no one cared to read this stuff. But as a top local leader, it’s only natural that you should become a focus of the news, because you have so much power vested in you and so many resources at your disposal. So the media should monitor you. In fact, you should be in the headlines. Why are you suggesting media shouldn’t report about you?

They were equipped with police truncheons, attack dogs, private jails and special armored vehicles. The whole escort organization, for so it was called, was staffed much like a military outfit: one political commissar, one battalion chief, three captains, a central battalion made up of two to three companies, and seven or eight men to a company. They were outfitted just like riot police, with the same uniforms and helmets. On their left and right shoulders were dark patches emblazoned with white characters: “Special Service.”
And this entire apparatus of violence was operated as a private enterprise. Put another way, this was the private militia of legend. And the fact that this private militia could operate for so many years is something that leaves us all staring speechlessly.
Hired By Local Governments
If this was a private enterprise, it of course had to have clients. And who were their clients? Media reports have revealed that the clients of this private enterprise were a number of local governments, and particularly the Beijing representative offices of these local governments. The objective in hiring their services was to utilize their strength to round up petitioners in Beijing, a systematic extralegal application of force of the kind that could not be wielded by local governments themselves as they were subject to legal restrictions.
This private contingent is a joint stock company publicly registered with the Beijing Municipal Industrial and Commercial Administration, and its name is Anyuanding (安元鼎).
This is truly a strange creature: an entity spawned by modern market mechanisms involving the privatization, profit-ization and commercialization of every stage of the administrative work of “stability preservation,” from arrest and detention to physical violence and dispatching petitioners home by force — all of these tasks have become modes of profit-making, translatable into maximum profits.
This remarkable phenomenon has no precedent in China or anywhere else. Put plainly, Anyuanding, this contingent with Chinese characteristics, was essentially a kidnapping company with rights of special license, and its core business was sanguine violence.
Any age might have its reactionaries. Even well-governed America became home to Jim Jones’ quasi-religious organization People’s Temple. So the chief problem here is not the existence of Anyuanding per se. The real issue is: how was it that the reactionary group Anyuanding was able to obtain these special permissions, and how was it able to sign contracts with so many local governments, building up its business? If they had not been favored with these contracts, Anyuanding would not have survived a single day.
Actually, saying they were favored [with these contracts] is not entirely accurate. Because this was not a one-directional bestowal of favors, but rather a mutually beneficial commercial exchange. Anyuanding was able to make money hand over fist, and these local governments benefitted even more richly — they were relieved of a great deal of trouble that had heretofore vexed them, and their political performance and future positions were insured as a result. What great satisfaction to everyone concerned!
Of course, their mutual satisfaction has been purchased at the grave cost of the sacrifice of rights petitioners traveling to Beijing, and at the cost too of our national system of laws. The latter, alas, is the gravest of dangers. The harm done by Anyuanding is about not just naked violence — rather, it is about local governments and their utter desolation of human rights and rule of law. It is about their total dependence upon extralegal violence.
It was the vast market opportunity presented by extralegal violence that spawned the strange phenomenon that is Anyuanding. What we are witnessing at work here is the objective incompetence and recklessness of local governments, whether it’s about government sending their own people to intercept petitioners, or whether it’s about the marketization of this process whereby private companies are entrusted with the task.
We see now that not only are local governments incapable of attaining to the ideal plain of rule of law, but they in fact find it nearly impossible to sustain even the autocratic status quo of the past. All they can manage is the control of people. They’ll take care of those they see as troublemakers first and then look to other things. If they can use money to take care of it, so much the better. If money is of no avail, well, I’m sorry, but they’ll just have to apply their own force directly to handle it. The business has nothing whatsoever to do with sympathies, reason or the law — if the situation is desperate enough, none of that matters.
The recent incident in Yihuang (宜黄), in which several people set fire to themselves to protest eviction from their home, is the perfect footnote to this problem.
After the tragedy of the self-immolation, two female family members of the victims tried to travel to Beijing at the invitation of a Phoenix TV program, but local authorities, who thought they were heading to the capital to petition for official action, conducted a hair-raising mission to intercept them and prevent their departure. Just picture how a handful of women were under siege by scores of riot police, requiring no legal procedures whatsoever, until the women were forced to take refuge in the women’s restroom at an airport. As cruel and brutal as Anyuanding is, the local government of Yihuang is no more gentle or honorable.
All of these outrageous and illegal acts are masked by a high-sounding abstract noun — the so-called “stability preservation” practiced by these local governments. So long as it’s done in the name of stability preservation, any extreme measures can be employed. So long as it’s in the name of stability preservation, there is no need whatsoever for legal restrictions. So long as it’s in the name of stability preservation, anything goes, fair or foul. Neither the Constitution nor any of the rest of our laws have the power to control this so-called “stability preservation” practiced by local governments. Every ugly deed outside the law, every ugly deed undertaken in the name of personal power, is whitewashed as politically correct.
The most pressing question of local governance now facing us is about how we can use the Constitution and the law to bring the “stability preservation” actions of these local governments under control, how we can effectively check these actions within the framework of our Constitution and laws, so we can fundamentally put a stop to this battle being waged by local governments against the people.
Fundamentally A Question of Development Modes
In fact, these petitioners flocking to Beijing with their grievances are perhaps all, without exception, the creation of the local governments themselves. They are fish who have escaped the encircling nets of their local government. Fundamentally, then, this is not a question of how to stop petitioners, and it is not a question, as local governments suggest, of “stability preservation.” These are all derivatives of the core issue, and that is the question of the present nature of development in our country.
It is generally believed that our current mode of development in China is traditional in nature. Traditional in what way? It is traditional in the sense that its nucleus is the same system we had in the past. Development of our economy requires the government’s hand of guidance, and creating dividends requires the government’s protection. No other powers can contend with the government, and so regardless of whether it’s about economic development or the distribution of dividends, the government has pride of place, and it cannot be resisted or hindered in its forward progress.
This is precisely why these local governments have the unbridled audacity to fight their own people, puffed up as they are with a pluck and nerve reminiscent of the age of the Great Leap Forward.
The self-immolation case of Tang Fuzhen in Chongqing, the self-immolation case of the Zhong family in Yihuang — in the minds of local governments cases like these are incidental exceptions. They believe their machine of tyranny can move mountains, and apart from surrender and capitulation what choice do those who face them really have? Clearly, they have underestimated the spirit of resistance. They never supposed that after these people had been deprived of every legal avenue of recourse, that once the iron walls of helplessness closed in, they would take up the only and final weapon left to them.
Who would dare trifle with their own life? That is the basis on which these local government leaders make their decisions. They are brimming with confidence, ready to exert force and psychological pressure to the last in a no-holds-barred struggle. They never consider the extremes those they stand against might go to. Once things actually do backfire, only then are they stricken dumb, at a loss as to how to respond. That’s when they move like madmen to contain the truth, because the truth is something they cannot withstand.
This is the operating logic of our traditional mode of development.
This mode is still capable yet of producing sustained economic growth within a limited period of time, but it is also constantly creating new social problems, and its price is the constant of social conflict. The sustained emergence of these problems and conflicts has at last outpaced the capacity of our current system to deal with them. It has reached such a point that so-called normal channels are utterly powerless to resolve them.
No Time to Be Lost for Political Reforms
Why do we need political reform? The reason is right here before us.
The crux of this development mode is our traditional political system. The stability preservation mechanisms of many of these local governments today are merely adaptations of the traditional political system to suit the age of the market economy.
Against this backdrop, these recent revelations about the private security firm Anyuanding are timely. They can rouse us to a realization of the evils of our traditional system as it has become inbred with the market, and show us the extremes to which these evils can reach.
For this reason, political reforms cannot wait. We can glimpse from this the importance of the fact that Premier Wen Jiabao, at a recent national meeting on lawful administration, and as he emphasized the need for political reform, particularly stressed the importance of building a law-based government, and the need for all offices and agencies to conduct themselves in accord with the law and the Constitution.
What this means is that building a law-based government (法治政府) is at the core of political reform, and a law-based government is as much at odds with our traditional system, which is subjected to no legal checks, as fire is to water.
The chief goal of political reform is to completely clear away the unreasonable aspects of our traditional political system, and this is just a matter of course. To wrestle political power into the cage of law, we must use rule of law to place checks on the government, and not allow local governments to bypass our national laws as suits their needs. If we hope to avoid cancers like Anyuanding, we must start by reaching a consensus on this question so that we can begin the work of political reform.
This editorial originally appeared in Chinese at Time Weekly.