According to a story from China’s Economic Observer, a reporter with the Chongqing Morning Post has been sentenced to labor re-education after posting “unacceptable speech” on the Tianya Forum in the wake of the recent raid on the Hilton Chongqing.
The Economic Observer also said two other reporters from Chongqing Morning Post, a commercial spin-off of the official Chongqing Daily, were taken in for questioning by police after sharing “unacceptable content” (不当内容) through the QQ instant messaging service.
The Chongqing Morning Post has reportedly requested that its employees keep quiet about the matter as they deal with the authorities.
The Economic Observer journalist reported learning from “several channels” that the two reporters taken in for questioning had returned to work. The reporter sentenced to labor re-education, however, would likely be formally charged “owing to the seriousness of the matter.”
Government authorities in Chongqing have made no formal announcement about the actions against these journalists.
The Economic Observer, with offices in Jinan, Shandong Province, and editorial operations in Beijing, is a nationally-circulated commercial newspaper published by the Sanlian Group, which also publishes Lifeweek magazine.
UPDATE: The Beijing News follows up on the Chongqing Morning Post reporters under pressure story today, June 25. The Beijing News has confirmed that Chongqing Morning Post reporters Chen Songbo (陈宋波) and Qiu Jinyi (裘晋奕), and an employee for the paper’s website, Liao Yi (廖异), have been investigated. Chen and Qiu have reportedly returned to work, while Liao is still being investigated.
Special thanks to orangeking for the valuable insight as we’ve followed this story. A portion of the story today from The Beijing News follows:

Yesterday evening at around 6pm, Deng Song (邓松), head of the publicity division of the Chongqing Municipal Public Security Bureau, said that some people at Chongqing Morning Post had posted rumors online that impacted the normal social order, and police are continuing their investigation. Deng Song also said that information online had said this person [in question] had been sent to labor re-education, but this is not true, and Chongqing Morning Post would soon issue a statement making this clear.
At around 7:30pm yesterday, the Chongqing Morning Post placed a statement in a prominent position on its website. The statement said: “On June 24, the news that ‘a reporter from Chongqing Morning Post has been sentenced to labor re-education for [sharing] unacceptable information’ traveled through the internet. This newspaper firmly states that: action has been taken by the police against no journalist or other employee of Chongqing Morning Post. In this statement, we clearly deny that any journalist from this newspaper has been punished by the police, but we do not deny that journalists from this newspaper have been investigated by the police.

It is certainly worth noting, as The Beijing News did, that police in Chongqing announced that a statement from the Chongqing Morning Post was forthcoming. That has to raise questions about how active the police have been in managing the fallout from this news.

At an “external propaganda work forum” for state-owned enterprises in Beijing yesterday, Wang Chen (王晨), head of the State Council Information Office (SCIO), said that as Chinese state-owned enterprises pursued a “going out” strategy, pushing more actively into global markets, “external propaganda work” concerned not only the development and reputation of China’s enterprises but also the shaping of the country’s international image and the enhancing of its cultural soft power.
“We must seize this historic opportunity,” said Wang, “applying ourselves diligently to innovation, giving full play to the role of enterprises, strengthening overall coordination, integrating the resources of our government, our enterprises and our media in a joint effort, pushing the external propaganda work of state-owned enterprises to a higher level.”
Representatives from China’s top state-owned enterprises gathered at the meeting, where they heard also from Liu Yunshan (刘云山), the chief of China’s Central Propaganda Department, and Li Rongrong (李荣融), head of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC).
Top brass from China’s state-run media were also reportedly in attendance.
Li Rongrong said during the forum that the “going out” of China’s state-owned enterprises had already in recent years been “a important force in our country’s massive external propaganda effort.” These experiences, he said, must be gathered, assessed and learned from. [Read more about SASAC at the China Leadership Monitor]
[Frontpage image by Toga Wanderings available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]

But for them to be this rebellious. This is certainly barbaric behavior to find in a civilized society.

For government officials in China, these are perhaps the best and the worst of times. As economic development has surged ahead over the past two decades, and as substantive political reform has been stalled, the opportunities have been vast for those holding both the strings of power and the purse strings. In a society in which power is the most indispensable asset one can have, even a child can recognize the game for what it is. As one primary school student told Southern Metropolis Daily last year when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up:

Child: I want to be an official.
Reporter: What kind of official do you want to be?
Child: A corrupt official, because corrupt officials have lots of stuff.

But the times are changing, too. As tensions escalate between officials who have and citizens who have not, as people become more and more conscious and protective of their individual rights, and as new technologies like the internet (and simple digital recording technology) turn ordinary citizens into watchdogs, informants and even vigilantes, popular pressures are rising on government officials, particularly at the local level.
Tensions are running so hot, in fact, that the simple assertion of privilege by officials can set off public anger on a staggering scale.
The most recent case demonstrating this point was the June 11 mass incident in Ma’anshan, a prefectural-level city in China’s inland Anhui Province known as a center of China’s steel industry. According to mainland media reports, thousands of residents gathered round the scene of a traffic altercation in which a local official was said to have slapped a middle school student for bumping up against his sedan — or, as the opposite version went, slapped the student after he knocked him over with his car.
What angered the crowd that gathered around the incident in Ma’anshan was not the confrontation itself but the extreme arrogance of the sedan’s driver, Wang Guoqing (汪国庆), the head of the tourism bureau in the city’s Huashan District, and his wife, an employee in the district’s auditing department. According to eyewitnesses quoted in state media, Wang’s wife at one point shouted: “I am a government cadre. I know that you are from the Number Two Middle School. I can send people to cause you big trouble in school.”
The crowds clogged the street and brought traffic to a standstill. Ma’anshan’s top leader, party secretary Zheng Weiwen, went to the scene and announced to the crowd that he had dismissed Wang Guoqing from his post. The crowd did not disperse, however, until riot police employed force and fired canisters of tear gas.
The mass incident at Ma’anshan is a crystal clear reminder of why China’s party leadership has shifted emphasis in its news and propaganda policy to the active “channeling” of “hot issues.” The rising temperature of social tensions in China, and the absence of rational mechanisms to address festering grievances, means even the smallest injustice, real or perceived, can spark social unrest.
What observations have been made about the mass incident at Ma’anshan in China’s media? One of the most interesting editorials came earlier this week from Jing Kaixuan (景凯旋), a professor at Nanjing University, who explains how the general failure to put adequate checks and balances on power in China’s rapidly changing society is the leading cause of social instability and mass incidents like that at Ma’anshan.

When did “I’m an official” become a detonation fuse?
Jing Kaixuan (景凯旋)
June 20, 2010
Southern Metropolis Daily
A simple traffic accident, hardly worth a mention, creates a mass incident. On June 11, as the head of the tourism bureau in Ma’anshan’s Huashan District, Wang Guoqing (汪国庆), was driving his car, a middle school student passed by pushing his bicycle and accidently knocked the rearview mirror on Wang’s sedan. An argument ensued, and this official got out of his car and struck the student. Onlookers surrounded the sedan, snarling up traffic along the street. Only when the most senior local official went to the scene, having pledged to fire the local bureau chief on the spot did the situation calm down.
The reasons behind this mass incident were very simply. It was not because a grown up had struck a student, but because people on the scene heard a phrase that has become only too familiar: “Do you all know who I am? I am a leader!” Everyone will probably remember two years ago when the daughter of a deputy maritime affairs bureau chief in Shenzhen shouted: “Do you all know who I am? I was sent here by the Beijing Transportation Department, and my rank is just about as high as your mayor.” Not long after that, the woman who was later called the “toughest wife of a delegation head” struck out at someone and shouted: “I am a person of consequence!” When altercations occurred, they all played the power and position card (权力身份) in precisely the same way. And in each case this angered the ordinary citizens gathering around.
Are there perhaps officials who don’t understand why words like this set the people off and disgust them? . . . Of course, when the people are in terror of power . . . “I am a leader” may work as a talisman of protection. But when bureaucratic positions have become an ordinary line of work, and when people have a general sense of equality, then “I am a leader” only causes them to laugh. And when the old order of power is disintegrating, and a more equal and just order has not yet taken root — and particularly as social tensions are on the rise — shouting “I am a leader” becomes a dangerous detonation fuse. Not only does it not serve to protect, but quite the opposite, turns you into a public target.
This phenomenon should make us take note of the fact that a number of worrisome tendencies have already emerged in the character of social opposition [in our society]. While the reasons for this phenomenon are numerous, the biggest reason is the unbridled and unscrupulous nature of power, and the transformation of our society into a power society (权力社会), [in which power is the dominant currency]. This power society, put simply, means that so long as you hold the power, you can rise above and dominate the resources of society.
We should note that it is often in cases involving lower-level officials, when they assert their superiority in such an undisguised fashion, then sharp tensions between officials and the government emerge. The arrogance of officials toward the people perhaps has its reasons, taking into consideration the fact that power no longer depends upon an ideology of fate and service, and official appointments do not require authorization by the people — so that in a real and definite sense, they cannot control themselves.
Be that as it may, when “I am a leader” means facing real danger, some officials can simply . . . When officials are given priority in the use of social resources, this is power overdrawing on public authority, resulting in a loss of trust and confidence in public power among the people, and an unwillingness to obey.
Also, the rights consciousness of the people has been steadily awakened, and they already understand in a conceptual sense the notion that citizens are equal, and that every person has rights that cannot be infringed upon. When the distribution of rights and benefits has reached a point where it cannot satisfy the rights demands of the people, the normal act of the popular voicing of rights are pressured in the direction of the irrational and the emotional. Some time back, I received a letter from an old man in Kunming, Yunnan Province, whom I had never met. He said in the letter that he hoped someone would make an appeal for his family home that was slated for demolition, and protect his rights and benefits. But in reality, as I’ve seen many times, the rights defense actions of evictees are ultimately and inevitably pushed to extremes. Once they have become serious and extreme incidents, higher-ups in the government weigh their options and finally address the situation out of consideration for social stability. [NOTE: This is a phenomenon CMP fellow Yu Jianrong has noted in his research on “stability preservation” in China, in which petitioners understand the only way they can get action on their issues is to cause the biggest stink possible, which in turn makes local leaders even more nervous and heavy-handed in their stability preservation work.]
In facing the anger and emotions of the people, resorting to force to suppress them is of no use. Because in the vast majority of cases, the apathy and silence of the people does not mean that the pursuit of equality in our society has already be discounted. Quite the opposite, no one whatsoever can tell when pent-up social tensions and emotions will explode, and what impact they will have.
We should recognize that it is understandable and natural for various factors of instability to emerge in a society that is undergoing a transition from a power society (权力社会) to a rights society (权利社会). And the biggest factor of instability is the loss of checks and balances on power.
Bertrand Russell once said that the desire for power was one of the driving impulses of humanity. In traditional monarchies, limitations were placed on the number of people who could achieve power. But in modern societies in which power was opened to a greater number of people, “those who most desire power are those most likely to obtain power.” Therefore, positions of power are generally held by those who most covet power, who in this way satisfy their personal desires and their demand for social standing. This is not about the personal virtues of officials. It arises, rather, from the fact that power is inflated in power societies.
Therefore, it is pure fiction to believe that power that is not subject to checks can put a stop to the arrogance and abuse of power. The only real solution is clear, and that is effective checks on power. If we wish to ensure that power cannot harm, then we must remove power from benefit (让权力变得无利), so that officials cannot form cliques of special interest, and so that the phrase “I am a leader” does not imply special protections and advantages.

Yang Yanyin (杨衍银), executive deputy secretary of the Working Committee of Central and State Organs, delivered a speech via People’s Daily Online on June 12 in which she explained how the party-state must both embrace media change and strengthen media controls — a seeming contradiction that is now at the heart of media policy in China.
Yang’s speech again shows us the delicate balance China’s leadership is now striking between encouraging new media development and limited public participation, and maintaining strategic control over information and public opinion. Part of this changing approach to controls — what we have termed “Control 2.0” — is a new kind of reflexivity, what Rebecca MacKinnon has termed “networked authoritarianism.”
It is important to emphasize, however, that this reflexivity does not owe entirely to the growth of the internet and other new media — although these have been, and are increasingly, critical factors — but has traditionally been seen through such practices as “supervision by public opinion,” which has formed the policy basis for much investigative reporting in China since the late 1980s.
Readers should note in Yang’s speech the presence of two media control terms, the post-Tiananmen media control concept of “correct guidance of public opinion” and the relative newcomer, “channeling of public opinion,” which overtook “guidance” in March 2008 and came formally on the scene with Hu Jintao’s June 20, 2008, speech at People’s Daily.
The thrust of Yang Yanyin’s speech — and of President Hu Jintao’s media control approach — is that party-state leaders must “treat, use and control the media well” (善待, 善用, 善管). The responsiveness element can be glimpsed in the language about the need for leaders to use public opinion as it emerges on the internet to better understand the needs and demands of the people, and shape policy accordingly. There is also a mention of the “people’s right to know, right to participate, right to express and right to supervise,” the so-called “four rights” (四个权利) that Hu Jintao mentioned in his political report to the 17th National Party Congress in October 2007.
The “four rights” should not, of course, be taken at simple face value. So far, they have been realized predominantly through greater emphasis on the reporting of sudden-breaking news incidents in China, or tufa shijian (突发事件). While this in some sense represents greater openness, we should note that this “right” has so far been exercised mostly through state media, whose critical role in “channeling public opinion” President Hu emphasized in 2008. Meanwhile, there have been further moves to prevent in-depth reporting of news events, and investigative reporting has faced greater restrictions since 2004-2005.
Xinhua News Agency’s summary of Yang Yanyin’s remarks follow. Most of the direct control-related language can be found in the second report below, which is available in Chinese here.
The tension and contradiction between media control and the notion of factual reporting becomes clear in Yang’s statement that: “We must resolutely ensure the news principles of objectivity, impartiality, accuracy and timeliness, ensuring that new media uphold correct guidance of public opinion from start to finish.” News, in other words, must convey the facts — but those facts must be our facts.

ARTICLE ONE: 3 Aspects of New Media Use
Yang said that new media had become an important channel influencing the social lives and thought terns of the people, and that new media are also important resources and methods for “our party” to maintain its governance and leadership. As the most representative form of new media, [Yang said], the internet is rapidly becoming the means by which the CCP exercises scientific rule (科学执政), democratic rule (民主执政) and rule according to the law (依法执政). Party leaders must therefore work to accommodate these changes, recognizing the importance of new media and making the best possible use of its advantages.
The use of new media by party leaders can be summed up in three aspects, Yang said:
1. Treating the media well. The party must be tactful with interactions and contacts with the media. Leaders must not hide away [from the media] or spurn them. They must have an open attitude and treat the media as friends. They must listen to both positive and the negative views in the media, accepting supervision by the media and the public.
2. Using the media well. Using the media well encompasses many aspects. The internet has already become the largest-scale mass media, and much of the feelings and thoughts of the people are voiced online. Leaders can thoroughly utilize this far-reaching and rapid interactive platform to enable interactive conversations with netizens, actively responding to issues that concern them, explaining in real time things that trouble and confuse them, and helping them out of their difficulties. In the process of policy making, leaders can also use the internet to listen to citizens’ perspectives, and can work to strengthen citizen participation through such means as [online] public opinion polls, in this way gathering the knowledge and views of the people and ensuring democratic decision making.
At the same time, we can use the internet to obtain feedback in the process of policy implementation, thereby steadily improving our work. Leaders can also use the media to mobilize action and organize the people, particularly in the handling of certain sudden-breaking incidents, such as the earthquakes in Wenchuan and Yushu, during which our party and government successfully used the media to disseminate information, quickly rallying public sympathy and uniting the people in the disaster relief effort.
3. Controlling the media well. We must energetically support the development of new media, and also strengthen their management, ensuring management according to rule of law, scientific, regulated and effective management. We must resolutely ensure the news principles of objectivity, impartiality, accuracy and timeliness, ensuring that new media uphold correct guidance of public opinion from start to finish. This is extremely important. We must channel online public opinion in a timely manner, actively, quickly and effectively responding to the reasonable demands of the people, and avoiding online sensationalism.
ARTICLE TWO: 3 Aspects of Channeling
1. The CCP must use the internet to gather the knowledge of the people, raising the party’s capacity for scientific and democratic governance. The party must, by means of the internet, involve the people in politics, involve the people in [policy] planning, and learn the people’s demands (问政于民、问需于民、问计于民). Before making major policy decisions, the party and the government should seek the opinions of China’s internet masses, seriously dealing with the issues raised by internet users, keeping an open mind to the reasonable views of internet users, and actively guaranteeing the people’s right to know, right to participate, right to express and right to supervise . . .
2. Keeping a grasp on guidance of public opinion. This is also extremely important. [The party] must actively foster and develop new media. [It must] seek the principles of new media development. [It must] give full scope to the advantages of mainstream media. [It must] propagate the correct line, principles and policies of the party. [It must] grasp the discourse power in online public opinion. [It must] utilize the mainstream [party] media to capture the [strategic] position on the Web. [All of these will serve to] uphold and develop a correct, healthy and positive guidance of public opinion.
3. [The party must] channel hot points in society and dissolve social tensions. A number of hot topics are generally what internet users focus on and emphasize. Undeniably, hostile forces use the internet as a tool of infiltration, incitement and destruction against us, as was the case with the Urumqi riots of July 5 [2009], which were directed by Rebiya Kadeer‘s network by means of SMS messaging. Therefore, the party and government must deal sensitively with hot social topics, quickly grasping trends in society, issuing authoritative information, and explaining the truth and facts to the people, understanding public opinion, providing an outlet for popular feeling, and dissolving social tensions. This is also an important aspect of strengthening the party’s capacity for public opinion channeling.

In recent weeks — as we’ve seen many reports of attacks on schools in China, of suicides, and even more recently controversies over television marriage shows many have seen as inappropriate — a wave of criticism has turned on the mass media and there have been moves to clamp down. I think we should take a hard look at media transmission capacity in China, which is stronger now than it has been ever before, and that we should work in particular to avoid the negative effects media can have. But if tensions that have built up in China over many years are heaped all at once on the media’s head, that is plainly unfair.
When it is our society that is sick, should we really expect the media alone to drink the bitter medicine?
We all know that since economic reforms, the rapid development of China’s economy has created miracles that have drawn the gaze of the whole world. We also know that economic development has resulted in other things that we are now much clearer about (for example, the gap between rich and poor and conflicts between governments and populations at the local level) and still others that we are unclear about (where, for example, we should draw the lines in a world of changing morals).
It is only natural that the public should have their own views on the media. And without criticism from various corners of society, we might see more negative behavior in our media. But only criticism with basis is helpful and convincing. If we lose sight of the rational spirit and let our feelings and emotions be driven by those with ulterior motives, or those who mean well but have a superficial view, and if we do not have a media governed principally by rule of law, then the instances of disorder we see in our media and our society will only multiply.
Dealing first with the issue of school attacks in China, it seems that all at once attacks on the media have been everywhere. It’s as though we believe the godforsaken media have become coffin sellers, every day looking forward to the dead.
Academics inside and outside China have spoken before of the media as coffin sellers, saying that the market has pushed media to report more actively on natural disasters and other tragedies in order to grab attention. This, of course, is something media should be on guard against, avoiding the unnecessary inflation and coloring of stories, avoiding sensationalism and yellow journalism. But the first duty of the media is to observe our natural and social environment and to report on tragedy as quickly as possible. It is not their job to sing praises.
In fact, greater attention to sudden-breaking news incidents has been an important change in Chinese media [under the policies of President Hu Jintao since 2008]. Which is to say that even if media are in fact coffin sellers, the deaths of those inside the coffins were caused by other people and other factors.
Even as many, including a number of experts, were voicing alarm at how media had become accomplices in recent cases of violence, Premier Wen Jiabao stepped out and spoke against popular sentiment by pointing out that much deeper social causes lay behind these incidents.
Look at the perpetrators in these cases. Though there is a lot we still do not know, we do know they are all around 45 years old. They have all suffered job layoffs, broken families, terminal illness and other devastating setbacks. In a period of transition, as the economy is developing quickly, we should expect to see a rise in crime. But if these suffering groups were covered by employment, pension, healthcare and housing systems, their sense of disappointment towards society would only rarely boil over into hatred.
We must be on guard against those who want to use the charge of “sensationalism” against the media to put obstacles in the way of our hard-won concessions on openness of government information. International experience tells us that information openness should include information about various cases of violence, and if we cannot pass this test then there can be no basis for information openness and social transparency.
We have seen no cases in modern nations under rule of law in which such reports in the media have been prevented and attacked. There is some price to pay, of course, for openly reporting on such incidents, but this price is small compared to the relative benefits that come with increased social attention to the causes of these incidents and the strengthening of preventive measures to deal with them.
As the 19th century French sociologist Tocqueville said that the basic contribution of the newspaper was that “the evil which they produce is . . . much less than that which they cure.” If we do not have a clear view of this issue, then we will provide ammunition to those who have been opposed all along to openness of government information.
The controversy over news reports on suicides has still not settled down, and new attacks on suicide reports crop up all the time. The media has been accused of being infectious and an accomplice. These criticisms have been further supported by a 2008 report from the World Health Organization and the International Suicide Prevention Association.
This report points out that suicide is an important public safety issue having a profound and lasting impact on public sentiment and the economy. Approximately one million people worldwide commit suicide each year, and each case of suicide potentially impacts at least six others. The factors influencing suicide and its prevention are extremely complex, and they have still not been researched fully and extensively. However, evidence does suggest that the media does play an important role. On the one hand, vulnerable people will be affected by reports of suicide and may imitate the act. This is particularly true when reports are widespread, prominent and sensational, or when they describe the act of suicide in great detail. On the other hand, news reports on suicide that are handled responsibly can help to educate the public, and can encourage those at risk to seek help.
Naturally, media who report on suicides cannot entirely overlook self-discipline, but rather should as far as possible respect the advice given by the WHO — to avoid language that sensationalized or normalizes suicide, in order to avoid the suggestion that suicide is in any way a solution; to avoid placing news about suicides in a prominent position, and avoid repeating suicide stories inaccurately; to avoid mentioning the specific places where acts of suicide took place; to take care in the writing of headlines; to take special care in the reporting of suicide by famous persons; to be mindful of the impact reports have on family members of the suicide victims; to provide helpful information; to be mindful of the effect suicide cases might have on media personnel themselves.
China’s government has made progress in the area of governance by rule of law, but there are still a number of departments that wield the club of punishment. They seem not to understand the principal of governance that says, “that which is not authorized by the law cannot be done.” There is plenty of decent content on China Central Television, which is directly under the thumb of the State Administration of Radio Film and Television. But there are still many problem, for example the use of fake interviews in the news, the posing of sources by directors, disguised tobacco advertising, the parading of officials who are also business people in such programs as the Spring Festival Gala. But when have we ever seen CCTV punished for problems in its programming?
This editorial was excerpted from a Chinese article appearing in Time Weekly.

How exactly can and should the rich and poor learn to live together? This is a tense and intractable global issue, and it is an even tougher problem for China under its current social conditions. Tensions can be glimpsed in particular over the issue of affordable housing in China. China’s government has recently moved to control the housing market, partly out of economic concerns and partly because sky-high housing prices have generated widespread anger.
Now the city of Wuhan is turning heads with its own somewhat unorthodox answer to closing the housing gap between rich and poor — let rich and poor live together, they say.
According to a policy recently announced by Wuhan’s government, the city will no longer open up areas for the exclusive development of affordable housing. Instead, development projects from now on, whatever their nature, will be required to dedicate a specified proportion of their total development area to affordable and low-rent housing.
The government explained this policy as a way of encouraging rich and poor to live together and benefit equally from public services, including transportation. At the same time, they said, this could help minimize misunderstanding between rich people and poor people.
We can’t say for certain whether this is just an idea right now, or whether there are plans in motion to formalize this policy in actual regulations. In any case, if it is only an idea with nothing concrete behind it, people are likely to shrug it off as lovely but empty rhetoric. However, if it is moving in the direction of actual policy, I hope Wuhan moves quickly to explain the nitty gritty of how it intends to accomplish this.
As an idea, this measure in Wuhan deserves affirmation. It accords nicely with one of the United Nations’ key agendas, which has been to address severe gaps between rich and poor. A number of countries have come out with policies encouraging rich and the poor to live together. In most cases, however, these are just trial programs, and the response of the public on the internet has been of two minds — one dismissing such projects as utopian dreams, the other suspecting they are just acts of public deception.
Many people in China have pointed out that Wuhan’s vision could be achieved only in Switzerland or a few other countries in northern Europe, where general wealth is already a reality and nearly everyone can live in spacious homes. But isn’t it possible that mixing up the rich and the poor in China will result in even greater pressure for the poor?
In the very capitalistic city of Hong Kong, I understand things have been mixed up with some success. I have visited Deep Water Bay area on the west side of Hong Kong Island, where you can find luxurious homes with stunning views of the sea. But I was told there is also affordable public housing in the area. As I understand it, these public estates were constructed because people said: Look, if rich people get to enjoy sea views, why can’t the poor enjoy them too?
A few years back, a well-known real estate developer, Ren Zhiqiang (任志强), said: “It’s quite a normal thing for us to have ‘poor areas’ and ‘rich areas’ right now. Just as we let a few people get rich first,” he said, referring to Deng Xiaoping’s words at the outset of economic reforms three decades ago, “we need to let a few people live in luxury districts first. Only later can we make all places luxury districts.”
Ren’s words prompted a lot of criticism, but this sentiment was echoed by other developers. That’s not surprising. One important strategy of consumerism is to create of a sense of social hierarchy. Once a sense of social hierarchy exists, business people can target the rich with luxury goods at higher prices. This is a logic those who are rich enough to consume luxury products already understand. To their mind, it’s only natural that there should be luxury areas and poor areas. In fact, more distant that poor are, the richer one feels.
This idea in Wuhan is something bright and interesting. But what people are most eager to know is how the government expects to convince real estate developers and the rich of its wisdom. Or, seen the other way around, what concessions will the city of Wuhan have to make to developers and the rich in order to ensure smooth sailing for this policy? As real estate developers are already so mixed up with policy makers in China, there is a very real fear that a fair-looking policy might just open up more and wider loopholes for developers to take advantage of.
We can only wait for the appropriate answers to these questions from the government of Wuhan.
This article appeared originally in China at The Beijing News.

If you woke up in the morning and discovered you’d lost a few hairs, would you be alarmed about that? It’s only when hundreds of hairs fall out at once that you have cause to notice.