The case of Chinese tennis champion Peng Shuai (彭帅) entered a bizarre new phase last week as the overseas accounts of Chinese state-media and associated media personalities made an apparently concerted effort to allay growing concerns internationally about the athlete’s wellbeing. But the extreme nature of the restraints on speech about Peng, and the appropriation of her voice by the organs of external propaganda, should be sufficient proof that she is now subject to serious restraints on her personal freedom.

“The Thing People Talked About”

On November 18, more than two weeks after Peng’s November 2 post accusing former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli (张高丽) of sexual assault, CGTN, the international arm of the state-run China Media Group, posted a letter to Twitter that Peng Shuai had reportedly sent to Steve Simon, the chairman of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA). In the letter, Peng seemed to claim that she was “not missing, nor am I unsafe.” “I’ve just been resting at home and everything is fine,” the letter said.

Far from easing growing concerns over the tennis star’s wellbeing, the letter ratcheted up suspicions.

The next day, as the CGTN letter became the focus of international speculation, the WTA having rejected it as credible proof that Peng was safe, Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin apparently sought to quell concerns by writing on Twitter that foreign media were engaging in senseless speculation. Hu seemed unable even to speak frankly about the case, however: “As a person who is familiar with Chinese system,” he wrote, “I don’t believe Peng Shuai has received retaliation and repression speculated by foreign media for the thing people talked about.”

The same day, Shen Shiwei (沈诗伟), a Paris-based reporter for Hu Xijin’s newspaper, shared photos on Twitter that she claimed were from Peng Shuai’s WeChat account. They showed Peng apparently playing happily with her pet cat, surrounded by a collection of plush toys. Replying to Shen’s Twitter post, Hu Xijin said he was “willing to believe the authenticity of these photos.”

Hu Xijin’s next attempt to leverage his overseas following on Twitter came late in the day on November 20, as he posted a pair of videos he had obtained from unidentified sources. “I acquired two video clips, which show Peng Shuai was having dinner with her coach and friends in a restaurant. The video content clearly shows they are shot on Saturday Beijing time,” Hu wrote.  

On Sunday, November 21, Hu posted a video of Peng attending the finals of a youth tennis competition and waving to unseen spectators. “Global Times photo reporter Cui Meng captured her at scene,” Hu wrote.

Hu attempted to turn the tables on the Western media who refused to accept at face value attempts to offer evidence of Peng Shuai’s wellbeing that seemed clearly staged. “Can any girl fake such [a] sunny smile under pressure?” he asked. “Those who suspect Peng Shuai is under duress, how dark they must be inside. There must be many forced political performances in their countries.”

Leaving aside the ugly fact that here is a privileged male within a closed media system dominated by the ruling political party speaking diminishingly of a professional woman, age 35, as a “girl,” how could Hu’s denials and counterattacks possibly convince journalists, politicians and audiences globally? After all, Peng Shuai had not yet spoken. She had nodded at a dinner table, in a carefully edited video in which another male had spoken, ludicrously, about what day it was. She had turned, masked, in another video from which the audio had been entirely removed (the camera lingering on a date posted on the door). The overriding fact here was that Peng’s voice could not be heard. She was unreachable, even though the letter to the WTA shared through the overseas social accounts of state media had quoted her as asking the organization to verify any future news with her first, and “release it with my consent.”

In the latest gambit to prove that everything is fine, and that the world can simply move on when it comes to Peng Shuai and her allegations on November 2, the International Olympic Committee revealed Monday that its president had spoken to Peng Shuai by video on Sunday and confirmed that the tennis star is “safe.” The IOC announcement prompted further skepticism outside China, the organization accused by some as having involved itself in a “publicity stunt.”

External Propaganda, Internal Darkness

The most damning fact in the Peng Shuai case is that all information about the tennis star, her allegations and her personal wellbeing has been completely expunged from media and the internet. The comments made by Hu Xijin and others associated with Chinese state media may seem like the advance front of a global narrative to counter the concerns of the world – Peng is fine, there is nothing to see (我很安全) – but there is in fact no core narrative at all, no real and convincing alternative explanation for what has unfolded this month.

Even the letter, the images and videos that Hu and CGTN have deployed in an attempt to convince the world do not exist in the alternate universe of Chinese information. They have been scrubbed from the internet. They have not been shared or referenced at all in mainstream media coverage.

One Weibo user said it well yesterday when they posted a message referring to Peng Shuai only as “PS,” because her name has become a blocked keyword: “Opening up Twitter today, I see that the first name in the headlines is [Peng Shuai]. The world is speaking for her, but we can’t even hear it.”

Surely, Hu Xijin must have posted something to Weibo, where he has more than 24 million fans? Since November 18, Hu has posted about US-China relations and the recent Biden-Xi video meet. He has posted about alleged bias in the Western media, focusing on a report by Reuters about a Chinese professor at a European university working with a Chinese military laboratory, which on Twitter was accompanied by an image of Chinese soldiers (prompting an apology from the news agency). He has written about Lithuania “undermining China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and violently interfering in China’s internal affairs.”

But there is nothing, not a word about Peng Shuai.

A search in the Baidu search engine for “Hu Xijin” and “Peng Shuai,” selecting for web pages from the past week only, turns up just two pages. But these are not from the past week, nor do they have anything to do with Peng Shuai’s wellbeing. The first is a link to People.com.cn, the official website of the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily newspaper – not to any particular page, but rather to an archived homepage from January 2014.

The top headline on this archived homepage is for a featured profile, appearing at the time in the provincial-level Henan Daily, of Xi Jinping as a county-level leader in the 1980s.

The second search result generated through Baidu is an instance in which both “Hu Xijin” and “Peng Shuai” appear. But it is not recent news, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Peng’s recent whereabouts, or Hu Xijin’s remarks on the issue. Instead, it is a single inside page of the October 1, 2012, edition of the China Business Journal, a newspaper published under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The bottom half of the page is occupied by an article called, “Idle Talk of Traitors” (休话汉奸), that discusses, with a slightly admonishing tone, the flippant use by online nationalists of the label “traitor” against Chinese participating in various international events. They included Li Na (李娜), who in 2011 won the French Open, becoming the first Asian-born tennis player to win a Grand Slam singles title. Li Na was being branded a traitor online for taking part in a tournament in Japan in the midst of disputes over the Senkaku Islands. But Peng Shuai was spared similar treatment at the time. “Making the same remarks, how is it that Li Na is a traitor and Peng Shuai is not?” the article asked. “What logic is this?”

The superficial link with Hu Xijin comes as a “Sina Weibo” column on the right-hand side of the page highlights a number of recent Weibo posts that have drawn attention online. One of these is a post from the Global Times editor-in-chief urging Brazil to demolish its favellas ahead of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio – or at the very least to give them a new paint job.

Has the Global Times in fact reported anything about Peng Shuai as Hu Xijin has taken to Twitter to argue that everything is fine? No. Nothing. This is clear from a search of the paper’s website over the past week.

A search for “Peng Shuai” and “Global Times” in Baidu turns up plenty, but the coverage all dates from 2014 and 2015, as though six years have gone missing.

A search for just “Peng Shuai” in Baidu again turns up old coverage of Peng’s tournament play, headlines from 2010, 2012, 2013, and one from 2020.

Select for the past week and there is nothing at all.

What about China’s official Xinhua News Agency? It is generally meant to lead official coverage, along with the People’s Daily, setting the standard for “public opinion guidance” and offering news releases that other media can safely run. Any reporting about Peng Shuai over the past week?

No. Again, nothing.

And then we have CCTV.com, the official website of the state-run broadcaster, whose CGTN has posted actively on Twitter about Peng Shuai, suggesting there is no need at all to search for her. Surely, CCTV has made its position known to the domestic audience and to the world through its powerful platform.

Once again, a search of CCTV.com reveals no coverage whatsoever of Peng Shuai over the past week.

But perhaps this is the result of online content blocks? Perhaps there has been coverage offline, in Chinese newspapers? A search over the past week in the Wisers database for Chinese language media outside the PRC, in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, turns up more than 70 reports related to Peng Shuai.

So let’s select for mainland newspapers. What do we find? Once again, total silence. Not a single result is returned for the past week using the name “Peng Shuai” in the more than 300 papers available in the database.

The crucial point we can glean from this fruitless search for “Peng Shuai” in the Chinese information space is that the tennis star is really and truly missing, despite the assurances provided by state media and associated individuals through international social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Which is to say that there is no real way for Peng to speak openly about the accusations she made earlier this month against a powerful political figure, and there is no space for a broader conversation, or any conversation, within the Chinese media and information environment about the implications of her case.

Officials and representatives from China’s internet industry are gathering in Beijing today for the country’s first “Internet Civilization Conference.” The conference, hosted by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the Beijing Municipal CCP Committee and the Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization (中央文明办), a body directly under the Central Propaganda Department, addresses a single theme: “Gathering the power to move upward toward goodness, building an internet civilization together” (汇聚向上向善力量，携手建设网络文明).

The significance of this inaugural conference lies in the answer to a simple question: What do the authorities mean when they talk about “goodness” and “civilization” in cyberspace?

Announcing the conference on November 16, Sheng Ronghua (盛荣华), deputy head of the CAC, said the mission of the conference would be to “promote all sectors of society in unifying their thoughts and actions with the decisions and deployments of the Central Committee on the construction of online civilization.” The event would, he said, serve as a platform to promote the concept of “online civilization,” and ensure the “civilized” conduct of all parties, from internet platforms to users.

The impetus of the country’s first “Internet Civilization Conference,” said Sheng, was to build on the cleanup efforts undertaken in 2021. In particular, Sheng emphasized the advances he said had been made this year in “cleaning up chaos in fandom [culture]” online. He stressed that there was now much stricter and more regularized “strong oversight” of fandoms, and that online platforms had a much stronger sense of responsibility. To date, he said, the fandom cleanup campaign had resulted in the deletion of more than 400,000 pieces of “negative and harmful information.” Moreover, 20,000 illegal accounts and more than 6,500 group operators (群主) had been shut down.

In fact, the notion of “online civilization,” or wangluo wenmin (网络文明), first emerged in the late Jiang Zemin era, around 2001, associated closely with familiar concepts having less to do with moral consensus and more to do with political control. Looking back on that language, we can note that ideological control was generally in close company with moral justifications, the CCP being the ultimate arbiter of the good and the bad.

Moral Imperatives, Political Ends

In the 2001 Outline on the Establishment and Implementation of Citizen Morality, the CCP emphasized that the media had an obligation to adhere to “positive propaganda” and to “firmly grasp correct public opinion guidance” in order to advance “civilization construction” (文明建设). At this point, the internet was still a relatively new medium, but the same passage of the document noted that “[we must] lead online institutions and the web population in strengthening consciousness of online morality, building online civilization together.”

On the opposite side of “online civilization” were arrayed “certain people with ulterior motives” (一些别有用心者), those who spread “harmful information” (不良信息), a trend that necessitated the general education of the people in the “building of online civilization” (SEE:  共同建设网络文明).

In 2006, the notion of “online civilization” became closely tied to Hu Jintao’s laundry list of moral instructions for China, known as the “Eight Honors and Eight Disgraces” (八荣八耻), which was also closely connected with the application of online censorship around Hu’s concept of “civilized operation of the internet, civilized use of the internet” (文明办网, 文明上网). By 2007, these ideas about the political control of online speech as a broader social imperative had coalesced into the idea that China was creating, under the CCP, an “online culture with Chinese characteristics” (中国特色网络文化). The idea, as laid out by then propaganda chief Liu Yunshan (刘云山), was that the construction and control of cyberspace should proceed in tandem – “one hand grasping construction, the other hand grasping management,” as he said.

This model of internet development, said the propaganda chief, would ensure the “strengthening of online public opinion guidance, and the consolidation and development of positive, healthy and improved mainstream public opinion.” Combined here with the idea of “mainstream” public opinion, which is synonymous in CCP discourse with the Party-state line, the notion of “improved,” or xiangshang (向上), is the same language we see in the theme of today’s “Internet Civilization Conference.”

A Strong (and Moral) Internet Power

The talk of “online civilization” today, just as in the Hu era, is fundamentally about the political imperative of “public opinion guidance” cloaked in the language of moral goodness. The difference in the Xi era is that “online civilization” is now part of the broader idea of China as a “strong internet power” (网络强国), subsumed within the idea of creating a “modern socialist nation.” An article on page four of today’s People’s Daily, “Building a Better Spiritual Home Online,” mentions “Xi Jinping’s important thoughts on [building China as] a strong internet power,” and says that “strengthening the building of an online civilization has become an important task in accelerating the building of a strong internet power, and fully building a modern socialist nation.”

Xi’s focus is on leveraging “rule of law” related to online civilization (such as the 2017 Cybersecurity Law) in order to achieve a vibrant cyberspace – for so the thinking goes – that maintains the political discipline that the CCP demands. This is not so different at all from Liu Yunshan’s talk back in 2007 of two hands grasping, construction proceeding along with management. And in fact, old and familiar CCP discourse about speech control imperatives is as plain as day in the present-day talk of “online civilization.”

In discussing the concept today, the People’s Daily lifts a quote from Xi Jinping’s speech back in April 2016 to the Work Conference for Cybersecurity and Informatization:

Cyberspace is a common spiritual garden for hundreds of millions of people. Having a clear sky and crisp air, having a good ecology in cyberspace conforms to the people’s interests. A pestilent atmosphere and a deteriorating ecology in cyberspace do not conform to the people’s interest [China Copyright and Media].

As much as Party-state media would like to trumpet Xi Jinping’s theoretical innovativeness as a kind of philosopher-in-chief, this is classic Jiang Zemin, polished up for the era of cyberspace primacy, with environmental language thrown in for the sake of currency.

It was back on September 26, 1996, while  visiting the People’s Daily, that Jiang, the same leader who originated the concept of “public opinion guidance” in the wake of the June 4 crackdown, elaborated the concept in terms of its benefit to the regime and to the people: “Correct guidance of public opinion benefits the Party and the people,” said Jiang. “Incorrect guidance of public opinion means calamity for the Party and the people.”

As officials, academics and internet representatives meet today at the “Internet Civilization Conference,” the essence of their discussions can still be summarized best by Jiang’s so-called “theory of weal and woe” (福祸论), which has only been re-animated by Xi Jinping’s words and their claim to moral rightness.

It has long been a basic maxim of public opinion control under the Chinese Communist Party that one of the chief means of restricting information is to limit those outlets having the right to report the news. The state-granted privileges allowing media to conduct news reporting have been referred to as “news gathering rights,” or xinwen caifangquan (新闻采访权), and these rights have been vested with trusted media that are in various ways tethered to official institutions.

As the internet became increasingly central in the distribution and consumption of information in China, the authorities maintained strict limitations on “news gathering rights.” For example, when the Regulations on the Administration of Internet News Information Services (互联网新闻信息服务管理规定) were promulgated in 2005, they stipulated clearly that commercial news portals (such as Sina, Sohu and QQ) did not have “news interview rights” and therefore could not directly produce original news content. What properly licensed websites could do, however, was to repost, or zhuanzai (转载), news on current affairs.

In the chaotic world of the rapidly developing internet, now supercharged by social media and big data, it has been crucial for China’s leadership to maintain control over the process of zhuanzai. The hope, with the goal of ensuring CCP “guidance of public opinion,” is that news content remains clear at the source, produced by politically trusted sources, and that it does not become murky, or politically toxic, as it makes its way downstream through the expanding digital media terrain. One important means of mastering zhuanzai has been to clearly demarcate the sources of reposted news content that can be safely used.

The release yesterday by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) of a new and updated version of its Internet News Information Source List (互联网新闻信息稿源单位名单) has precisely this goal in mind. The CAC document, an update of the first version released in July 2016, about five months after Xi Jinping’s speech urging a re-consolidation of CCP media controls, provides a comprehensive list of the news “units” – 1,356 in all – that are approved as “report sources,” or gaoyuan (稿源).

What does this mean? Essentially, the existence and enforcement of the list means that digital media of all stripes are prohibited from reposting current affairs and breaking news stories originating with sources other than those appearing on the “Source List,” including international media as well as public accounts on major platforms like WeChat and Weibo. Website and portals that do not keep strictly to the “Source List” in republishing news “will be punished according to law and regulations,” according to the CAC, which also said that it would closely watch “source units” (稿源单位), ensuring that they did not have “information security liability incidents and other issues.”

Why is the list being updated and released now? This is perhaps the more interesting question, given that these restrictions on sourcing of news stories are not particularly new. The CAC release, and coverage by the Party-state media, explains that the new “Source List” is about “adapting to the new situation, new changes and new demands of internet communication, further consolidating the foundation of internet communication management, and enriching the supply of internet news information.”

The “new situation” and “new changes” are really about the proliferation of digital media since the introduction of the last list in 2016, including the transformation of the Party-state led digital media infrastructure. One of the most noticeable differences between the two lists, in fact, is the addition today of many hundreds of official public accounts, or gongzhong zhanghao (公众账号), these being accounts operated by licensed and politically trusted media at the national, provincial and prefectural levels on China’s most crucial social media platforms, WeChat and Weibo.

The addition of public accounts is the primary reason why the sheer number of “units” on the updated “Source List” has expanded so notably since 2016. So what we can see here is an effort to maintain and reinforce the Party’s control over news at the source on the one hand, and to expand sourcing on the other hand in a way that befits broader changes to the country’s information landscape. So much activity in terms of official reporting and commentary – in other words, CCP and government messaging at all levels – is now happening through public accounts. Therefore, the scope of official sourcing must be expanded in order to authorize these “units” while also amplifying them, maintaining strict propaganda controls throughout.

Among the three notable priorities on the CAC list, named by the CAC itself and by Party-state media in their reporting today, control is not surprisingly at the top. The CAC notes, first and foremost, that the list “adds a group” (新增一批) of trusted sources, the goal having been to ensure that sources on the list “adhere to a correct political orientation, [adhere to] public opinion guidance, [adhere to the correct] value orientation.” Secondly, the CAC notes that the list “verifies a group” (核校一批), meaning simply that the list needed to be updated to reflect closures, name changes, changes to “sponsoring institutions” (official sponsors, essentially) and so on, resulting in some cases from institutional reform over the past five years.

Finally, the CAC notes that the new list “eliminates a group” (剔除一批). Listen in as it explains this key priority:

Units from the 2016 version of the source list that are no longer eligible, have poor regular performance, or lack influence have been removed from the list to effectively maintain its seriousness and credibility.

Define “seriousness” and “credibility.”

In fact, the absences themselves offer the best explanation of how the CAC has applied its standard of credibility and seriousness. Scrolling down past the expanded list of “central news websites” and “central news units,” past the likes of the People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency, and their various websites and public accounts, then past the list for CCP and government organs and other official organizations, we come at last to the group from Beijing – the first of a long string of listings categorized by province and municipality.

On the 2021 “Source List” for Beijing, there are a total of 15 media units, including seven websites and eight other news organizations. The list of websites include those for the official Beijing Daily (北京日报网), The Beijing News (新京报网), the website of the Beijing chapter of the Chinese Communist Youth League (北青网), and so on.

These websites are all to be expected, and we can note that all but two (The Beijing News and Beijing News Radio) now have official WeChat public accounts that are also authorized sources for zhuanzai.

But if we refer to the 2016 “Source List,” we immediately find our first instance of a media unit that seems to belong to the “elimination” group. The website in question is Caixin Online (财新网), regarded by many readers outside China, and certainly inside too, as one of the country’s most credible and serious sources of news reporting.

In fact, Caixin, which was founded in 2009 by the highly-respected editor Hu Shuli (胡舒立), has itself sought to prevent the zhuanzai of its content without permission, and much the outlet’s coverage is paywalled. Nevertheless, the outlet’s absence from the 2021 “Source List” effectively means that its news content cannot be shared by other outlets even if permission has been secured from Caixin.

Bloomberg has reported this morning, just as this short analysis was wrapping up, that the Caixin exclusion amounts to an “ouster,” and that the move “means its articles cannot appear on the internet platforms such as Sina.com that are popular ways for the Chinese public to consume news.” This may risk an overstatement of the significance of the exclusion for Caixin, for the reasons I just mentioned. This “Source List” has little to do with curbs the outlet might face as it attempts to report breaking news stories, or to carry out in-depth investigative reporting.

But whatever the case, the exclusion is certainly indicative of the Party’s continued consolidation of control over the upstream and downstream distribution of news and information in China.

Last month, a blog article declaring China to be in the midst of a “profound revolution” fueled speculation online after it was republished by several Party-state media outlets. In the comparatively moderate intellectual climate of the 1990s or early 2000s, such a leftist screed, with its talk of a “red return,” would have been beneath the notice of the majority of news media and readers in China, suited only to fringe online forums like Utopia (乌有之乡). But the high-profile official treatment of the post, written by a virtually unknown blogger named Li Guangman (李光满), seemed to signal a more profound leftward slide in China’s politics at the top.

In a post to his WeChat public account on October 9, Li Guangman doubled-down on his September thesis, citing two recent media-related cases to support his conviction that a “profound transformation” is underway in China, with deep implications for politics, business, culture and the media.

The first of these cases was the release by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top macroeconomic management agency, of new draft rules unambiguously prohibiting the involvement of all “non-public capital” (非公有资本) – meaning private capital of any kind, domestic or foreign – in news gathering, production and dissemination. While restrictions on news content and its production are of course not news in China, these new rules are so salient and broad in their prohibitions that they seem to remove all strategic ambiguity.

The second media case cited by Li Guangman was the detention on October 7 in Hainan of well-known entrepreneur and former professional journalist Luo Changping (罗昌平), who was charged with insulting and defaming the martyrs of Chinese history by criticizing a new film about China’s involvement in the Korean War. Luo’s detention, widely reported by state-run media, underscores the resolve of the Chinese Communist Party leadership in policing the bounds of the CCP’s official narratives, the stories and mythologies that undergird its power and legitimacy.

Goodbye, Private Capital?

In his October 9 post, Li Guangman in fact reviewed four major events he claimed had “symbolic significance” (标志性意义). In addition to the new NDRC rule and Luo Changping’s detention, these included the recent antitrust fine against the shopping platform Meituan, the second major penalty so far this year against a Chinese internet firm, and the withdrawal of plans for a 1.6 billion dollar listing by Lenovo Group on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Li Guangman begins his post by repeating the line for which he has become so well known: “We are right now going through a profound transformation!” This ecstatic declaration is followed immediately by his rundown of the NDRC draft rules on media investment. After reviewing the language of the NDRC release, he summarizes:

We can note first of all that non-public capital here should include all domestic and foreign non-public capital. Second, news collection, editing, broadcasting and distribution businesses here cover all aspects of the news, including print news media, television news media, and internet platform news media, including traditional news media and new media. In summation, the entire news sector will be closed to non-public capital, and only public capital will be permitted to participate in related operations, without exceptions. I would also like to emphasize that there are no exceptions in the formulation here — the entire news sector is to be brought under the operation of public capital.

Li’s reading of the letter of the NDRC draft rules is certainly not wrong. The release tells us clearly that the rules “raise prohibitions on the illegal (违规) development of business related to the news media.” And the language is actually quite expansive in defining the relevant areas of media activity – the clear point being that “non-public capital may not invest in the establishment and operation” (非公有资本不得投资设立和经营) of such entities. This includes traditional and new media, so that the rules would seem to prohibit outright, for example, a Tencent investment in Caixin Media, the professional outlet founded by veteran editor Hu Shuli (胡舒立), as much as an investment from a smaller online gaming company in a youth-oriented history or sports news product distributed through an app or WeChat public account. In terms of media type, the rules would seem to prohibit private capital across the spectrum — if they were implemented to the letter.

And what about content? Li Guangman revels in the expansiveness of the rules in terms of content coverage as well, and his glee is not misplaced. The rules include a laundry list of activities, checking all the boxes for content in key areas, including politics and current affairs, culture, science and technology, military affairs, foreign affairs, health, education and sports. And the draft adds to the concrete areas of content prohibition for “non-public capital” the dragnet language “and other activities that concern political orientation, guidance of public opinion and value orientations.”

The language here about “guidance of public opinion” will be familiar to seasoned observers of China’s press policy. It is the concept, underpinning press controls since the beginning of the 1990s, that the CCP’s concerted control of all media is essential to the maintenance of regime stability. The term dates back to June 1989 and the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators,  and came from the consensus after the crackdown, as Jiang Zemin took on the top leadership position, that Premier Zhao Ziyang had “guided matters in the direction of chaos” by urging propaganda leaders in May 1989 to “open things up a bit” (China Comment, June 1989).

“Political orientation,” another important catchphrase here, is more squarely about obedience to the political line of the CCP Central Committee, but especially to the leadership of Xi Jinping. If “guidance” is about ensuring that public ideas and sentiment are managed through control and direction of the media , “political orientation” is more about enforcing the political and ideological dominance of Xi and his CCP, of his rebranding of the Party for the 21st century. Think of his overarching banner term, the ponderous “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era,” which could in due course be distilled into the potent “Xi Jinping Thought.” But think also of the populist notion of “common prosperity” (共同富裕), which turned heads (with concern) in early August this year, coming months into a broad crackdown on the tech sector that has shamed the scions of Chinese entrepreneurialism and innovation into pledging allegiance to Xi’s project of red revival.

Here too is where the talk of “value orientations” comes in. Along with the crackdown on the internet sector and tech sectors – here, Li Guangman’s mention of the recent Meituan fine is apropos – the use of big data and so on, have come restraints on many aspects of internet culture that have been regarded of late as effete, excessively materialistic, even morally objectionable. With volleys against “fandom culture” and online gaming, and moralistic attacks on online influencers such as “Buddhist beauties,” China seems to be sliding into an era of rule by shame when it comes to social values. The right values combinea kind of stiff-faced adherence to CCP political values (manly and heroic) with a healthy attitude toward consumerism that eschews excess materialism and its effeminacy. Tech gurus are the first and obvious casualties of this “profound revolution” (to borrow again Li Guangman’s words) because they have profited from and super-fueled a tech-driven consumer and lifestyle revolution that has placed in their grasp the data of a billion lives. They epitomize commercial and technological power, and they impel the social and cultural transformations that could undermine the Party’s position at the center.

In a nutshell, these rules are abominable. But still, one crucial question remains: Will they be implemented according to their letter, or will they simply be applied in an ad hoc manner? In fact, similar rules regarding private capital involvement in traditional publishing have been around since 2005, and in 2017 the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the country’s top internet control body, also issued prohibitions on private capital involvement in news reporting. Given the focus in the past on traditional publishing, and given a history of selective enforcement, the feeling at media outlets with financing from private companies may be that strategic relationships remain most critical, and that the most important factor will be ensuring no red lines are crossed (or crossed egregiously) in terms of coverage.

This is cold comfort against the backdrop of recent actions against internet platforms in China. Sure, it is likely that a chill will run first through those media products on platforms like WeChat, including those with financing from internet firms like Tencent and Alibaba, before the temperature drops for legacy media. But the rules are explicit, and at the very least they are likely to drive private capital further away from media ventures and promote the continued consolidation of Party control over information products across the board.

In his latest gleeful declaration of “profound revolution,” Li Guangman also finds encouragement in the fact that these rules come from the NDRC, and not from the CAC or other propaganda agencies. “There is definite wisdom in the fact that this time public capital is taking back the right to news and public opinion not through departments in charge of news, public opinion and propaganda, but through the DRC’s ‘Negative List of Market Access,'” he writes. “As soon as this “negative list” is released and implemented, a profound transformation will occur in our country’s news sector.”

Policing the Faith

Will Li Guangman’s “profound transformation” in the Chinese media come to pass? Right now, it is impossible to say with certainty. But we should also view the NDRC rules in the light of how “political orientations” and “value orientations” are being policed in China. When we consider how the media atmosphere lately has been electrified with “red gene” jingoism and demands for fealty to the ideals of the CCP, the medium-term outlook does not give cause for optimism. Arriving at Shenzhen’s Bao’an Airport wearing her bright red dress last month, Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟) epitomized this prevailing ethos as she delivered her speech on the tarmac, amid the fluttering of bright red national flags: “If faith has a color,” she said, “it must be Chinese red” (如果信念有颜色，那一定是中国红). Or think of the way that Wang Xing (王兴), the billionaire CEO of the Chinese shopping giant Meituan (美团) said during his group’s second-quarter earnings call in September that “common prosperity is rooted in Meituan’s genes.”

Woe be to those who lack the faith. And the fate last week of Luo Changping is an egregious case in point. Luo’s alleged crime is “infringing the reputation and honor of national martyrs” in violation of a 2018 law that criminalized criticism of “heroes and martyrs” with the stated goal of “cultivating and practicing core socialist values, and inspiring the glorious spiritual force of the realization of the China dream of the great renewal of the Chinese nation.”

Luo’s crime, specifically, was to question the authenticity of the story of Chinese soldiers during the Korean War as portrayed in the new blockbuster film “The Battle at Lake Changjin” (长津湖), released in theaters last month. A notice from police in Hainan on Friday said that Luo’s comments on the Weibo platform had slandered China’s volunteer soldiers and had “serious negative consequences.” The internet, it said, was not a “land outside the law,” and it hoped that “the majority of Chinese internet users would consciously follow laws and regulations.”  

The fact that Luo’s case has been widely reported by Party-state media suggests he is being pursued in order to set an example to others – not least to online influencers (Luo has more than two million followers) who have the potential to impact public opinion.

For Li Guangman, who cites Luo Changping’s detention as further evidence of the “profound transformation” underway in China, action against public intellectuals is long overdue. For too long, he says, the country’s martyrs have been neglected. The situation has improved since the implementation of the 2018 law, but still “people like Luo Changping have not hesitated to test the law.” Li quotes from Jun Zhengping (钧正平), a writer at the People’s Liberation Army Daily, who said in a recent commentary venting outrage at Luo Changping’s remarks that, “We must not let those who malign the martyrs do whatever they want with impunity.”

Concluding his recent post, Li Guangman rails against private capital, which he says has “monopolized public opinion on China’s internet.” But the transformation now underway, he says, is “changing our society, our ideas, our concepts and our lives,” and is “destroying certain people and forces, and healing Chinese society.”

“What we are seeing and feeling now is the tremendous power brought by this change,” he writes. “Although it is one event after another in different arenas, the changes brought by these events to our society are comprehensive, profound and long-term, and each of us should face this profound change, be awake to change, and have the courage to accept change.”

It is likely that for months if not years to come, observers of Chinese history and current affairs will weigh the significance of an article making the rounds on China’s internet this past Sunday. Appearing on scores of official Party-state media websites and commercial internet portals, the article is penned by a virtually unknown blogger named Li Guangman (李光满), who claims that revolution is in the air in China, with profound transformations to be felt by all.

“This change will wash away all the dust, and the capital market will no longer be a paradise for capitalists to grow rich overnight,” he writes. “The cultural market will no longer be a paradise for effeminate stars, and the press will no longer be a place for the worship of Western culture.” The author’s next line reeks of Maoist nostalgia: “The red has returned, the heroes have returned, and the grit and valor have returned.”

The article opens with a summary of recent moves by the Chinese authorities to bring the entertainment industry in check and curb the influence of celebrities, coming on top of the suspension last year of the blockbuster IPO of China’s Ant Group, the fining of Alibaba, and the crackdown on “fandom culture” (饭圈文化). All of these moves have come amid intensified calls by Xi Jinping, and in the state media, for the country to pursue a renewed form of “common prosperity,” or gongtong fuyu (共同富裕).

Li also mentions recent actions taken directly against music composer Gao Xiaosong (高晓松) and the actress Zhao Wei (赵薇), noting with seeming glee that both have been yanked from major internet portal sites, and that “Zhao Wei’s name has been expunged from the [online video platform] iQiyi.”

Such punitive actions, which have now set the internet and entertainment industries trembling, are apparently what Li means by “grit and valor,” or xuexing (血性), a term that references an attitude of toughness and combativeness that has been actively encouraged within the People’s Liberation Army since 2013. “[All] of this tells us,” Li says, summing up the zeitgeist, “that China is undergoing a major change. From the economic sphere to the financial sphere, from the cultural sphere to the political sphere, a profound transformation is underway – or, one might say, a profound revolution.”

This talk of “revolution” quickly dominated discussion on many chatrooms and social media threads through Monday. Such language, appearing on the odd social media account, might ordinarily be dismissed as the ravings of a Maoist outlier. But this post, though attributed to Li’s own public account, “Li Guangman Freezing Point Commentary” (李光满冰点时评), was shared on the websites of eight major Party-state media on August 29, and on scores of commercial sites, all with the same headline: “Everyone Can Sense That a Profound Change is Underway!” (每个人都能感受到, 一场深刻的变革正在进行!)

The re-publishing by Party-state media of an article from so-called “self-media” or “We media” (自媒体), a term referring to digital social media platforms such as WeChat that integrate self-publishing with chat and other services, is a very rare occurrence. The assumption many observers have naturally made, therefore, is that the joint posting of this WeChat article across Party-state media websites must have been coordinated by the Central Propaganda Department and other relevant offices.

In the social media comment sections this week, the concern has been palpable. “A movement has begun,” one user commented underneath a Weibo post on the Li Guangman article. “They’re blowing a wind to see what fish they can stir up,” said another. A third comment was more portentous: “History is being repeated,” it said.  

No one need ask what history we are talking about here. The fear is that the central leadership has effectively green-lit a “Cultural Revolution-style” article, as one user on the Zhihu question-and-answer platform wrote, and that China might be sliding inexorably toward another political movement that would be destructive to the relative openness of the past four decades. Another user on Zhihu wrote of Li Guangman: “This is extreme rhetoric, murderous in tone. To hear him is to return again to that catastrophe of 50 years ago. Any country that wants long-term peace and stability must be moderate internally. And moderation does not mean permissiveness, but rather the resolution of problems in a reasonable and practical manner.”

A New Resolution on History?

In fact, the exact nature of this apparent joint release of the Li Guangman commentary remains a matter of speculation – even for the author himself. On Monday, in the wake of the widespread posting of his article, Li commented on the phenomenon, giving his post the giddy headline: “People’s Daily Online, Xinhua Online, CCTV.com, China Military Online, Guangming Online and Other Central Media As Well as Scores of Provincial, Regional and Municipal Media All Place A ‘Li Guangman Freezing Point Commentary’ Article in a Prominent Position!” (人民网, 新华网, 央视网, 中国军网, 光明网等央媒及数十家省区市媒体集中在重要位置转发”李光满冰点时评”文章!). Li’s apparent surprise and speculation about the attention given to his article suggests he was unaware of any broader propaganda strategy around the piece. “Obviously, this was a unified arrangement by the news and propaganda departments and the Cyberspace Administration of China, generating an extremely strong propaganda outcome,” he wrote.

But is it really so obvious? “It’s hard to imagine,” one media analyst in Beijing said in an exchange over e-mail, “that propaganda departments and the CAC would demand that websites run this piece.”

The fact remains, however, that the Li Guangman article has been widely promoted. There can be little doubt of the article’s importance as a harbinger of something. But of what, exactly? Why would such an article be encouraged and supported at this time?

One possible explanation concerns the possibility that we are about to witness the release of a new “resolution,” or jueyi (决议), on the history of the CCP. Given practices within the Party in the past, such a step would seem necessary if Xi Jinping is serious about defining the current period as a “new era” (新时代), which would go further in making the case for his leadership beyond the 20^th National Congress of the CCP in 2022.

A Xi Jinping resolution on history would be the third in a century for the CCP. In 1945, at the 6th Plenary Session of the 7^th CCP Central Committee, Mao Zedong issued the “Resolution on Certain Historical Issues of the CCP” (关于党的若干历史问题的决议), the CCP’s first historical resolution, which established and consolidated Mao’s ideology and position. Nearly four decades later, in June 1981, Deng Xiaoping led the passage at the 6^th Plenary Session of the 11^th CCP Central Committee of the “Resolution on Certain Historical Questions Since the Founding of the Nation” (关于建国以来党的若干历史问题的决议), which established Deng Xiaoping as the “core” of the second leadership generation and defined his opening and reform policies as the direction of the era.

A number of scholars and observers in recent years have predicted the release of just such a resolution. Analyst Gao Xin (高新) wrote in 2018 that Xi Jinping’s release of a third resolution on history was “simply a question of time.” The same year, Deng Yuwen (邓聿文), the Chinese journalist and former Study Times editor, wrote in the New York Times that if Xi wished to “truly open a ‘new era’ belonging to himself,” then “he must carry out a ‘correct’ summarization of the historical experiences of the past 40 years of reform and opening.”

“The current state of affairs is again a delicate one,” Deng wrote at the time, amidst the elevation of Xi Jinping’s banner term. “While the 19th National Congress of the CCP proclaimed a new era, it is not altogether clear what the essential characteristics of this new era are.”

This week, in light of the Li Guangman article, Deng has again suggested that a new resolution from the Party on its history is imminent, and could be unveiled at the 6^th Plenum of the 19^th Central Committee in November this year. In fact, there may be some clues in the language emerging from yesterday’s Politburo session.

It was pointed out at the meeting that, by learning from history, we can understand [the laws] of rise and decline. Summarizing the major achievements and historical experiences of the Party in its century-long struggle to build a modern socialist nation century of struggle is necessary to persist in the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, is necessary to enhancing a political mindset, a macro-mindset, a ‘core’ mindset, and a mindset of compliance, to maintaining confidence in the path, confidence in [the Party’s] theories, confidence in the system, confidence in our culture, and to firmly maintaining General Secretary Xi Jinping’s status as the core of the party center and the entire party . . . .

In this passage we can clearly see, despite the thickness of the rhetoric, the link between the protection of Xi Jinping’s “core” status and the reading and summarizing of the Party’s “century-long struggle.” It may be difficult to see what social and political changes lie ahead for China. But a new resolution re-framing the Party’s history is not difficult to foresee – and history has certainly shown that such political acts can have profound implications.

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Who is Li Guangman?

Li Guangman has described himself as a columnist for CWZG.cn (察网) – which describes itself on its  Weibo account as“the most influential patriotic portal in the country,” despite the fact that its URL seems inactive – and as an editor and freelance journalist. He also claims to be involved with the Kunlunce Research Center (昆仑策研究院), an online platform that claims association with the likes of political scientist Zhang Weiwei (张为为), who led the June collective study session of China’s Politburo, and Guo Songmin (郭松民), a leftist commentator and former air force pilot who has repeatedly raged against “historical nihilists.”