On February 12, on the occasion of Spring Festival — a time of thanks and plenty — CMP fellow Yan Lieshan reflected on some of the stark contradictions and injustices in Chinese culture and society today.
CMP fellow Hu Yong (胡泳) argues in an editorial in today’s Southern Metropolis Daily that the government should speed-up its response to public crises and sudden-breaking incidents.
The editorial begins:
Public crises, or sudden-breaking social incidents, are common rather than rare occurrences in a China fraught with tensions and contradictions. We have seen far too many examples in recent years, and these were not so much cases in which the situation itself was explosive, but rather cases where slowness of government response created substantial problems and difficulties.
Not long ago, People’s Daily Online’s Public Opinion Testing Center (人民网舆情监测室) raised the principal of a “golden four hours” (黄金4小时) in dealing with sudden-breaking events, and this was clear-sighted in terms of time frames in dealing with crisis management . . .
A whole new set of terms is emerging in China to describe the country’s growing national power. Taken together, these form what might be called a “discourse of greatness,” or shengshi huayu (盛世话语). China’s discourse of greatness includes such terms as “China in ascendance” (盛世中国), “the China path” (中国道路), “the China experience” (中国经验), “the China pace” (中国速度), “the China miracle” (中国奇迹), “the rise of China” (中国崛起) and, last but not least, the “China Model” (中国模式).
Using China’s domestic Baidu search engine to track use of the term “China Model” over the past few years, we can clearly see the upward trend.
In the past, China and the CCP have suffered bitterly at the hands of their own “models.”
As economic reforms were just starting out in the early 1980s, economist Xue Muqiao (薛暮桥) wrote in the official People’s Daily newspaper that China’s planned economy, the “iron rice bowl,” had been fashioned on the Soviet Model (People’s Daily, October 13, 1980, p. 5).
In 1988, then People’s Daily editor-in-chief and reformer Hu Jiwei (胡绩伟) and Chang Dalin (常大林) again emphasized the roots of the old CCP model as they urged political reforms in People’s Daily: “In terms of its system, [reforms mean] carrying out necessary reforms and improvements to the socialist system built by the Chinese Communist Party on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and the Soviet Model” (People’s Daily, December 30, 1988).
In 1982, Deng Xiaoping (邓小平) raised the concept of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (中国特色的社会主义) at the 12th National Party Congress. This term, which has been used ever since, was originally employed by reformist CCP leaders as a term of compromise to contend with more conservative, leftist elements in the party. It essentially took the bottle of “socialism,” which conservatives in the party still staunchly defended, with the new wine of reform.
The characteristics of this reform became gradually clearer through the 1980s. Economic reforms meant progress toward a market economy. Political reforms meant progress toward democratic politics (民主政治).
After the June 4th crackdown of 1989, as Deng Xiaoping strove to protect and uphold the banner of reform, the slogan “socialism with Chinese characteristics” was sustained, but its meaning underwent a mutation.
In 1991, the term “China Model” appeared for the first time in People’s Daily. It had its origins, apparently, in praise of China from some unspecified commentators in Romania (People’s Daily, October 29, 1991). The Berlin wall had fallen. The Soviet Union and socialism in Eastern Europe had all but disintegrated. And yet, China avoided the collapse many Westerners had supposed would come. China took another path, promoting capitalism on the economic front while maintaining a tight CCP monopoly on power.
This path of political tightening and economic opening became the “Chinese characteristics” that many people spoke about — and it was, some said, the envy of the Third World. Those who voiced praise for China and its “China Model” included Benin parliamentary member Adrien Houngbedji (1994) and former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda (1997).
Commemorating the twentieth anniversary of economic reforms in 1998, People’s Daily wrote that “when you search the four corners of the earth, you find that the prospects here [in China] are particularly fine. International public opinion has accoladed China’s development path, and the fruitfulness and effectiveness of the ‘China model'” (People’s Daily, November 22, 1998).
After President Hu Jintao took office in 2002, the term “China’s rise” swept China. If “China’s rise” is a verdict on China’s accomplishments, the “China model” is a summary and description of China’s experiences and their supposed applicability outside China.
In 2004, American Joshua Cooper Ramo http://joshuaramo.com/ promoted the idea of the “Beijing Consensus” in a pamphlet (download here) first written for the Foreign Policy Centre in London.
In his paper, Ramo postulated a “Beijing Consensus” against what he called the “widely-discredited” Washington Consensus, “made famous in the 1990s for its prescriptive, Washington-knows-best approach to telling other nations how to run themselves.” Ramo also referred to the “China model,” or “Beijing model,” of development, and argued for its attractiveness to the rest of the world.
Chatter about the “China Model” really took off in China in 2008 and 2009. We started seeing headlines like these in the Chinese media. “It is the time to establish the China Model.” “The dominance of the China Model.” “The China Model as a preserver of human rights.” “Viewing the China Model through the troubles in Eastern Europe.” “Russian scholars believe the China Model benefits the whole of humankind.” “American scholar: the success of the China Model shames the West.”
An official Xinhua News Agency commentary on the occasion of Chinese National Day last year suggested that the global financial crisis marked the ascendance of the “China Model.”
At this time, plagued with the global economic crisis, the world economy faces a low point such as has not been seen in decades. Meanwhile, in the east of the world, socialist China is as ever maintaining a relatively high-level of economic development.
Four events in particular backgrounded the sudden rise of the idea of the “China Model” in China in 2008 and 2009. First, there was China’s hosting of the Olympic Games in 2008. Second, there was the thirtieth anniversary of economic reforms in late 2008. Third, in 2009, there was the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. And, finally, there was the global financial crisis.
At the end of last year, the Central Compilation and Translation Press published a book called The China System: Reading 60 Years of the People’s Republic of China (中国模式: 解读人民共和国的60年). As the book’s editor, Pan Wei (潘维), , the director of Peking University’s Center for Chinese and Global Affairs, explained to China’s Oriental Outlook magazine:
The economic model of the ‘China model’ has four pillars: state control of land and of the raw materials of production; a state-run model for the financial industry and large-scale enterprises; a free labor market; free commodity and assets markets. The political model [of the China model] has four pillars: the democratic concepts of modern democracy; an emphasis on the passing by officials of selection and evaluation mechanisms; an advanced, selfless and united ruling group; effective mechanisms of government division of labor, error-correction and checks and balances.
Pan believes that “breaking through the superstition surrounding [democratic] elections is an urgent task of the intellectual and political elite in our country,” and that China has not collapsed “precisely because it resisted the system of multi-party elections promoted by the West.”
Fang Ning (房宁), head of the Political Science School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, writes in the The China System that “carrying out this sort of development model requires a relatively centralized system.” The institutional secret of China’s rise, he says, “is that one-time authorization [of political power] lowers the cost of decision-making.” What he is suggesting is that the Chinese Communist Party’s sixty-year hold on power has been an extension of a one-time authorization [of political power] that took place back in 1949.
China’s leadership elites have generally maintained a subtle and noncommittal attitude toward the idea of a “China Model.” While Li Changchun (李长春), the politburo standing committee member in charge of ideology, and propaganda chief Liu Yunshan (刘云山) have both used the term before (in fact, the discourse of greatness is itself a product of their national image and propaganda strategy of “grabbing the discourse power” and “expanding influence”), President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have never used the term in formal remarks.
A number of Chinese intellectuals take a critical attitude toward the use of the “China model” and other such vocabularies of glory. They call for a more honest account of China’s problems and its crises, for a more direct look at the many and various reasons for China’s rapid economic growth and a number of “secrets” that must not be overlooked.
Tsinghua University professor Qin Hui (秦晖) said to Guangdong’s Window on the South magazine in 2008:
Aside from the traditional advantages of low wages and low welfare burdens [because basic services like education and healthcare are not provided to the workforce], China has used the ‘advantage’ of ‘low human rights’ (低人权) to suppress human, land and capital costs as well as the price of non-renewable resources. By preventing bargaining, and by limiting or even canceling many transaction rights, [China has] ‘reduced transaction costs’. By suppressing participation, disregarding ideas, conscience and justice, and by stirring people’s minds to pursue mirages of material prosperity, [China has] achieved a level of competitiveness that is frightening to all countries, whether they are free-market nations or welfare nations. Moreover, nations on the democratic path, whether they are making progressive steps or employing ‘shock therapy,’ have all been left behind.
In September 2008, Ding Xueliang (丁学良), a professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, wrote a piece on the Chinese-language website of the Financial Times called, “Why the ‘China Model’ is difficult to promote” (“中国模式”为何不好推广？). In it, Ding argued persuasively that China had paid a massive social cost for its rapid economic growth, including the destruction of the environment and a severe failure of social justice.
Professor Ding said the Beijing Olympic Games had shown off both the frightening achievements and the frightening costs of the “China Model.” “Many nations of the world have the economic means to hold an Olympics on such a scale, but they do not wish to because they believe there are other areas where money might be spent more productively,” Ding wrote.
Earlier this month, Yuan Weishi (袁伟时), a professor at Guangzhou’s Sun Yat-sen University, voiced his doubts in an interview with Hong Kong Commercial Daily about whether a “China Model” had actually taken shape at all. Yuan said China was now entering a period of sharpening social tensions, and that once problems of subsistence had been resolved people would begin to express greater demands for the protection of their rights. Such social tensions could only be resolved, he said, through democracy and rule of law.
Scholar Wu Jiaxiang (吴稼祥) wrote on his blog recently that China’s model under economic reforms has been one of market economy + authoritarianism (市场经济加威权政治). To understand an abstracted China Model as a replacement for freedom and democracy, he wrote, amounted to “using honeyed words to get others to smoke opium and experiment with recreational drugs.”
Perhaps the most interesting dissenting views of all came on December 27, 2009, in the official CCP journal Study Times (学习时报), published by the Central Party School. Study Times ran four essays urging caution over the “China Model.” The writers of these pieces included former State Council Information Office head Zhao Qizheng (赵启正) and Li Junru (李君如), vice president of the Central Party School.
Stay tuned. In the future ups and downs of China’s discourse of greatness, we might find clues to changes in China’s political climate.
[Posted by David Bandurski, February 23, 2010, 2:10pm HK]
[Frontpage image by Matthew Stinson available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]
Li Huafang reviews CMP fellow Hu Yong’s The Rising Cacophony: Personal expression and Public Discussion in the Internet Age, published by Guangxi Normal University Press in 2008. [More at Cool Knowledge].
In this recent post at his online “one-man newspaper, 1bao, CMP fellow Zhai Minglei reflected on recent Internet events in China, including Google’s announcement of a possible withdrawal from China. [More at 1bao.org].
Deng Xiaoping, China’s legendary reformist leader, once said, ‘no matter black or white, it is a good cat as long as it can catch a mouse.’ It is this pragmatism that underlies China’s economic reform in 1978 after the disastrous decade of Cultural Revolution. China’s embrace of capitalism, as Zhu Xueqin likens it, successfully turns itself into a cat that catches many mice, or Western capitalist democratic nations . . . [More at Global Voices Online]
By Qian Gang — On January 26, Ren Xinghui (任星辉), a young Beijing resident, decided to stand up against China’s Ministry of Finance. Why? Because his request that income and expenditures for the Three Gorges Project be made public in accord with China’s National Ordinance on Government Information Release was rejected by the ministry.
Capital outlays for the Three Gorges project have been massive. In 1993, the state estimated that the project would require total static investment of 90 billion yuan. In consideration of price index changes and other factors, the investment was projected at 203.9 billion yuan when a specific financing program for the project was finally formulated. The government later announced that costs could be controlled within 180 billion.
Where were all of those funds supposed to come from?
[ABOVE: The Three Gorges Dam project under construction, photo by robertthuffstutter available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]
In 1984, before the project was finalized, the CCP Central Committee General Office and the State Council General Office issued a document indicating that the Three Gorges Construction Fund (三峡建设基金) would be created through profits from the Gezhouba Power Plant that were handed over to the state.
The Three Gorges Dam Project was finally approved by the National People’s Congress in 1992. A meeting of the Prime Minister’s Office of the State Council decided that year that a levy of .003 cents on every kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed nationwide would be used to provide additional financing for the project. In 1994, the levy was raised to .004 cents on every kilowatt-hour consumed. In 1997, it was again raised again to .007 cents in 16 provinces and major cities.
How much money have all of these levies amounted to? The government has never revealed a complete figure.
In June 2007, China Yangtze Three Gorges Project (TGP) issued corporate bonds, and on its prospectus for the bond offering it revealed that “as of the end of 2006, the Three Gorges Construction Fund has already accumulated capital totaling 72.743 billion yuan.
According to projections made by TGP ahead of its 2001 bond issue, the Three Gorges Construction Fund could collect an estimated 103.4 billion yuan between 1993 and 2009 through price increases for electricity, and could gain an additional 10 billion in capital through the Gezhouba Power Plant. The grand total would come to an estimated 113.4 billion yuan.
The careful and precise Ren Xinghui calculated that the Three Gorges Construction Fund accumulated through contributions from each Chinese citizen through their electric bills would exceed the 180 billion yuan estimated cost of the Three Gorges Dam project by more than 50 percent.
The Three Gorges Dam project is a massive public undertaking. Ordinary Chinese have not only borne the burden of added fees on their electric bills, but other inputs into national projects have added to their tax burden. Chinese citizens have a right to inquire and know exactly how big this accumulated capital is, and how exactly it has been disposed.
In the past, of course, there was no conceivable way citizens could check the government’s books. But in May 2008, China’s National Ordinance on Government Information Release formally went into effect, changing the nature of this equation — at least formally, that is. Suddenly, here was a regulation citizens could invoke to defend their right to know.
Article Nine of the Ordinance stipulates that administrative organs should actively make available government information that “concerns the vested interests of citizens, legal persons or other organizations.” Article Ten stipulates that budgets, final accounts reports, and the circumstances of ratification and implementation for major construction projects are all regarded as government information whose public availability should be prioritized.
Clearly, information about the Three Gorges Construction Fund meets the above-listed requirements for release according to the Ordinance. However, the Ministry of Finance has never released this information.
Many have viewed the news of Ren Xinghui’s lawsuit against the Ministry of Finance as a sign of how far China still is from the “sunshine governance” (阳光财政) it has been trumpeting for years now.
But the case also clues us in to how things might be changing.
It is interesting, for example, that the original story from The Beijing News about Ren Xinghui’s lawsuit was quickly picked up by People’s Daily Online, and that the Three Gorges website Ren launched with a number of friends remains available still. Moreover, the official Outlook Weekly magazine, published by Xinhua News Agency, has run a number of rather critical reports on the Three Gorges Dam since last fall. All of this would seem to indicate that senior leaders within the party have reservations about the project and its costs.
Ren Xinghui’s request for information release under the national ordinance also suggests the legislation might be useful in expanding the public’s right to know — although the ordinance does need to be improved in practice, and the government needs to show more “respect for the law” by taking greater initiative in releasing information.
When Ren Xinghui applied to the Ministry of Finance for access to information about the Three Gorges Dam, the reason the ministry gave for refusal was that the information he sought “had no direct connection to the special requirements of the applicant in terms of production, life or scientific research.”
The ministry claimed that its decision was based on Article 14 of an interpretive “opinion” on the Ordinance. It did not escape Ren Xinghui’s notice, however, that the article they cited in fact said that information release “was not related to the special requirements of said person [applicant] in terms of production, life or scientific research.” In explaining its decision, the ministry also added the word “direct,” suggesting the information would have to concern Ren directly for him to claim the right to access it.
A friend of mine, who is an expert in this area, tells me that freedom of information laws in various countries are essentially built on two different premises. The first kind are “exclusive” in nature (排除式), making very detailed stipulations about what types of information cannot be made public, and providing that all other forms of information are made public. Although many things may be expressly excluded, a clear and substantial space remains for the release of information.
The second kind are “enumerative” in nature (列举式), and it is to this category that China’s own Ordinance may be said to belong. These enumerate the categories of information that should be released, and they refrain from making hard-edged distinctions about what cannot be released. While many types of information are stipulated for release under this sort of law, much information that cannot be released (about which stipulations are not expressly made) remains hidden from view.
In my view, China’s government should move in the direction of releasing any information whose release is not expressly prevented by laws and regulations. Information that cannot be released should be subject to express provisions to that effect, stating precisely what cannot be released and why.
The government has no right to concern itself with an applicant’s reasons for wanting access to information. And herein lies the shortcoming of “enumerative” information access legislation – namely, that it leaves open a justification space in which government departments that want to avoid the release of information can make their case, and which is bound to lead to disputes between the government and the public.
In this latest case, in which the Ministry of Finance has refused to provide information about the Three Gorges Construction Fund, we can see just how difficult it is in China to achieve openness of information.
Information about the Three Gorges Construction Fund is not a matter of national secrecy. Members of the public have a right to know. And the government, moreover, has an obligation to make this information public of its own accord, as stipulated by law.
These are financial and monetary issues, but they have bearing on the political system too. Some scholars have estimated that in the next ten years, at least three concrete steps will have to be taken toward political reform in China — intraparty democracy (党内民主), public budgets (公共预算) and public participation (公众参与).
In light of these necessary steps, the significance of Ren Xinghui’s active concern over the government’s books speaks for itself.
FURTHER READING:
English version of the original Beijing News report on Ren Xinghui’s lawsuit, at Probe International
[Posted by David Bandurski, February 6, 2010, 9:45am HK]
By David Bandurski — Google’s fate in China continues to grab international headlines, now jumbled together with other bilateral issues, including U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and an expected meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama. The Google issue continues to attract attention in China’s media as well, as one can see from this search through Google’s (erstwhile?) China competitor, Baidu.
But voices in support of Google in China have virtually disappeared from newspapers and online commentaries. Hmm. A true reflection of Chinese public opinion? How would anyone know? [See Qian Gang’s recent post on Internet freedoms in China].
[ABOVE: People’s Daily Online’s Strong Nation Forum: “Speech is completely free here,” says a People’s Daily editorial writer, below.]
Let us turn, anyway, to a piece that seems fairly typical of the criticism of Google we are seeing in the Chinese media landscape right now.
The following is an editorial that appeared last week at People’s Daily Online. In it columnist Jiao Xiang (焦翔), argues that through its open challenge to China’s government, Google risks throwing off its legitimate role as a multinational corporation, becoming instead a “tool of hegemony.”
My vote for the most precious line goes to: “Speech is completely free here at People’s Daily Online.” Enjoy:
“Google, Don’t Become a Tool of Hegemony”
Jiao Xiang (焦翔)
January 27, 2010
People’s Daily Online
The occurrence of the “Google incident” is in fact a strategic change on the part of the United States. In the past, the U.S. has used military power to maintain its global hegemonic status. But recently America’s power has taken a hit from the international financial crisis and the war against terror, and the U.S. has shifted the focus of its strategy from the arena of military affairs to the arena of the Internet. Google has become a tool of American online hegemony. How is it, in all truth, that a major multinational corporation can intrude on the security and the system of the country in which it resides [to do business]? Clearly, this is not corporate behavior, and other factors are at work behind the scenes.
When multinational corporation enter another country, the most fundamental principle to which they must abide is to respect the laws and system of that country. By the same rule, any country admitting a multinational corporation is bound by its own principles, and must abide by its national laws and system [in regard to that company]. This is a basic bottom line, and neither side may tread on that line.
It is only normal for a government to exercise control over the Internet, and it is the same in any country in the world, in such areas as fighting pornography or committing online crimes, for example. At the same time, various countries similarly demand that the content of Websites abides by national law and preserves national security.
In this regard, Google itself serves as an example, obscuring various satellite images of the United States. Generally speaking, monitoring, filtering and deletion are the basic methods by which countries control the Internet. This is especially true in Western countries, which while they yammer on and on about “freedom of expression” and “Internet freedom” in other countries, strictly control material that concerns their vital national interests. As, for example, when Google filters out posts that contain racial slurs or attacks on the United States.
China’s Internet monitoring is entirely in accord with the law, and both Internet companies and Internet users are afforded a large degree of freedom. There are now 200 million blogs in China, making it the biggest blogging nation on earth, and every day hundreds of millions go online to say what they wish.
As an online network, our People’s Daily Online is extremely free. We have already operated the “Strong Nation Forum” for a number of years. There is one principal that governs our work on the Internet, and that is respect for national laws and the preservation of healthy Internet development.
So long as it does not violate the law, anything can be raised. Speech is completely free here at People’s Daily Online. For example, we have set up various “message boards” for local governments [allowing people to post their issues], and in 2009 alone, more than 7,000 problems were voiced in these forums, and eventually peacefully settled.
Aside from this, we have a “discussion square” program in which anyone can offer their opinions and criticisms, which can ultimately be implemented or resolved. So long as there are ideas to support it, the Internet will have vitality and spirit.
Google is a company with a strong innovative spirit, and it has its own unique development ideas, a tall order for any company. I am confident that if Google can simply walk the path of corporate development, it will develop strongly. I hope it does not become a tool of hegemony.
[Posted by David Bandurski, February 3, 2010, 1:31pm HK]
[Homepage image by freefotouk available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license].
By David Bandurski — CCP leaders continue to prioritize the amplification of “China’s voice” on the world stage. This can be seen in their campaign of spending on core state media, including Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television, with the idea that these media will “go out” and compete with international media giants, thereby tipping the scales of global public opinion in China’s favor.
In the latest development, China Xinhua News Network Corp (CNC), the new television production service of Xinhua News Agency, was formally launched in Beijing on December 31. The following day, on January 1, CNC began broadcasting in the Asia-Pacific and in certain European markets.
But in an editorial in yesterday’s Chengdu Commercial Daily, Chen Jibing (陈季冰), a professional journalist and blogger, suggested that China was placing too great an emphasis on the technical aspects of its so-called “communication capacity.”
Chen argued that China would have to surge ahead in terms of the basic quality and credibility of its information as well — an area where he says Western media have traditionally excelled — if it wished to raise its international influence.
His editorial was highly critical of Chinese news stories and their typical emphasis on the actions of party leaders over the crucial basics of professional news reporting, the so-called “5 Ws.” Using analogies from business, Chen also suggested that aggressively pushing inferior media products could have the opposite effect, drawing “contempt and ridicule” rather than raising China’s soft power.
A translation of Chen’s editorial, which also appeared on his several blogs (including here and here) follows. We strongly recommend reading Chen’s piece in concert with Roland Soong’s wonderful piece today on Han Han’s comments on culture in Xiamen:
China on the Screens of CNTV and CNC
By Chen Jibing (陈季冰)
February 1, 2010
As we stand at the threshold of the second decade of the 21st century, many people have discovered suddenly that the media (public opinion) that should generally be news reporters and commentators have all too frequently created a flutter themselves as news stories. There is no need to speak of other cases — the “Google incident” alone is sufficient to agitate political, economic and cultural nerves in the heads of people of various different viewpoints, with various concerns.
In contrast to the silence that has met foreign [news] the information with which China’s media has attacked outward has not been taken seriously. On December 31, 2009, [the official] Xinhua News Agency’s China Xinhua News Network Corp (CNC) held its opening ceremony in Beijing. On January 1, 2010, CNC formally started broadcasting in the Asia-Pacific region and parts of Europe.
Just two days earlier, at 10 a.m. on December 29, 2009, China Central Television’s China Network Television (CNTV), launched with initial capital of 200 million yuan, formally began broadcasting, and is said to be “actively preparing” for a public listing. Go back another six months to April 20, 2009, and we saw the launch of the English-language edition of Global Times, a publication under [the CCP’s official] People’s Daily newspaper. The English-language version of Global Times Online was launched at the same time. [Global Times] is the second comprehensive English-language newspaper in China to be circulated nationally . . .
This series of actions was of course done in order to more thoroughly and comprehensively convey “China’s voice” to the world, in accord with China’s strategic need to raise its own “soft power” internationally. People’s Daily, Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television, as China’s “national team” (国家队) represent three different [media] segments, newspaper, newswire and broadcast television, and so the nation has given them this glorious task, and along with it massive capital injections, as can only be expected. The hope is that CNTV, CNC and Global Times can be depended upon to have some effect in promoting greater understanding of China in the world and raising the influence of Chinese culture internationally.
But for some time now, a certain specious viewpoint has had some currency in domestic media, academia and even political circles. With some measure of justification, it points out first of all that one of the most important reasons the voice of the West has a firm grip on discourse power in the majority of regions in the world lies in the strength of Western media, because Western media play a role in transmitting the value system of the West; and the strength of Western media owes to the economic and technical dominance of the West.
Put another way, the West has a much stronger communication capacity than non-Western societies, and this dominant strength in terms of communication capacity has already made, and continues to make, Western culture and value systems insidiously permeate non-Western societies at various levels, resulting in a fundamental corrosion of non-Western cultures and a process of cultural colonization (文化殖民). Putting it into political terms: the Western media, which occupy every corner of the globe, have become the most powerful and effective tools of peaceful evolution (和平演变).
We can admit that this analysis is in some measure correct, and that it does agree with the true sense of Joseph Nye’s theory of “soft power” — an attractiveness that makes people consciously follow. I am confident that it is out of such a recognition that various sectors of Chinese society — especially high-level political decision-makers — have clearly seen the need and importance of raising the international influence of Chinese media. This is why they would invest such massive state assets in CNTV, CNC and Global Times.
Nevertheless, this sort of analysis, whether intentionally or unintentionally, places too great an emphasis on the technical communication aspects of communication capacity and influence . . . and even paints an equal sign between the act of communication and the achievement of influence. And this has seriously obscured other deficiencies in the soft power of Chinese culture.
In business schools you often come across the saying that “the channel is king” (渠道为王), meaning that whoever holds the keys to communication with the consumer occupies the high ground in commercial competition. Some people interpret this as meaning simply that whoever can get newspapers and broadcast signals most effectively into the sitting rooms of the public will have the power to dominate public opinion (舆论的主导权). It should go without saying, however, that the principal of “the channel is king” is premised on the idea that “mutually competing commercial products are of equal (or near equal) quality.
This is a subversion of conventional wisdom about commercial sales, which we find embodied in such sayings as “Good wine needs no bush” (ie, good products advertise themselves). No self-respecting business school professor would tell you that all you need to do is grab hold of the sales channels and your products will beat out those of your competitors, even if yours are inferior fakes (冒牌货). Exactly the opposite, they will admonish us that if you peddle inferior products, then no matter how broad and fluid your channels are, your brand will break down rapidly and your company hit the skids.
Therefore, if mass media coverage and influence have a proportional relationship, this is only true with the further self-evident condition that your media content is of a high quality, or at the very least is basically passable. It is difficult to imagine a newspaper that tramples the truth in its news, that disseminates viewpoints grounded in fundamental prejudices, yet is capable nevertheless of influencing readers across the world simply by virtue of appearing on every newsstand in the world.
Just the opposite, we can affirm rather that if a television station is of shabby quality, the only thing it will return is contempt and ridicule, even if its signal covers the surface of the moon.
Of course, as a media professional with close to 20 years of experience in the news, I will admit that news and opinion (and other cultural products) are different ordinary goods. And their standards of quality — such as objectivity, truth and depth — are not themselves objective in nature, and have a great deal to do with the viewpoints and positions of those who receive them. But neither can it be denied that news products still have some basic bottom lines for quality. For example, in the case of mine accidents, their impact and how they should be handled afterwards may be a matter of opinion. But such facts as when and where the accident occurred, how many people were injured and how much damage was caused, the hard elements of the 5 W’s applies, and they are not subject to change on the basis of value judgements.
You can write a 1,000-character news piece and spend 900 characters describing how the central, provincial, city and country leaders are laying out relief efforts, and how they care so much for the injured, and spend just 100 characters at the end getting to those 5 Ws [of professional journalism]. But if this news report is minus those last 100 characters, in my view it is a substandard news product. Even if you manage to get every person on the planet to read it, it will have no positive impact whatsoever on their thoughts and feelings, but instead will encourage their hearty dislike.
Objectively speaking, the influence of Western media has been determined not just by an advantage in assets and technology translating into broad geographical coverage. To a large extent, it derives also from the high quality of their news content. Leaving other examples aside, while the [2004] Asian Tsunami occurred much farther from the United States than from China, and while U.S. journalists stationed in the region were no greater in number than journalists from Chinese media, the bulk of information we had in the early stages came still from American media.
So if we truly want China’s voice to gain a foothold on the stage of world public opinion, I am afraid it is far from sufficient to put our energies into communication channels and the technical side alone.
Making the world hear the voice of China is not difficult. It is partly a matter of how much money we put in. But the difficulty lies in making the world accept China’s viewpoints. In the final analysis, the origin of the influence of the media or any cultural product lies in the true and credible nature of the facts of the news and in moral values with appeal (具有道德感召力的价值观).
[Posted by David Bandurski, February 2, 2010, 3:07 pm HK]
[Hompage image by Matthew Stinson available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license. Satellite dishes outside the Jinmao Building in Shanghai’s Pudong District.]
By Qian Gang — I often urge my friends and colleagues in Hong Kong to come to grips with the paradoxical pattern of “step, standstill and back-step” (进步/止步/退步) that characterizes China’s development today. I try to explain how China does not lend itself to simple labels like “free” or “unfree.” As we broach this now exceptionally sticky question of Internet freedom in China, I encourage readers to step back and take the same vantage point.
On January 24, a spokesperson from the State Council Information Office asserted, among other things, that “the achievements of China’s Internet have drawn worldwide attention,” and that “China protects online freedom of expression in accord with the law.”
The spokesperson said in support of these statements that, “China now has more than one million online forums, and more than 200 million blogs, with Web users making more than four million blog posts each day, and new posts to various chat forums each day too numerous even to count.”
And yet, as hundreds of millions of Web users have borne witness, many forums and blogs have also been shut down completely. Countless blog entries have been swiped clean from China’s Internet, and postings in response to news stories, or gentie (跟贴), are obliterated in great numbers every passing moment.
Is the Information Office spokesperson completely in the dark about these practices?
Conversely, it is impossible to support the assertion that China’s Internet is a bleak and sunless place where no word or thought can grab hold.
In recent years, more and more news facts have been broken first by Internet users. More and more corrupt officials live in dread of the “human flesh searches,” in which Internet users dig out and display their dirty deeds before national audiences of netizens. It is also true that the Internet has enabled the distribution of bolder writings by more and more people inside China.
So, can we say that China’s Internet is controlled, or not? What sort of control are we talking about?
Internet controls, in fact, are something every Internet user in China experiences and understands on a very intimate level. And the statement on Internet freedoms issued by the Information Office can itself be taken as an example of how control works.
What we call the “long tail phenomenon” (长尾现象) can be seen as one of the defining characteristics of China’s Internet. The “long tail” refers to the chain of Web user comments and discussion that trails after online news stories. These can be exceptionally long tails. In fact, some news stories on major Internet portals can draw hundreds of thousands of comments, the plainest illustration of how enthusiastic Chinese feel about the right and the opportunity to speak their minds.
Obviously, the recent statement from the Information Office on the topic of Internet freedom, an online story that was billed at the top of most major news portals in China for two straight days earlier this week, was guaranteed to draw the attention of Chinese Internet users. And this is also a topic we can expect to generate strong feelings and opinions.
But when I searched through ten of China’s most high-traffic news portals on January 28, I discovered that four sites had no comments posted whatsoever.
At China’s two leading official news sites, People’s Daily Online and Xinhua Online, there were very few comments. Sina.com, one of China’s biggest commercial Internet portals, indicated 373 comments, but only one page could be viewed — and all the comments visible were denunciations of Google and the United States.
If, as the Information Office spokesperson said, “Chinese web users can fully express their views within the scope permitted by the law,” this is certainly a most unexpected outcome.
Are we to believe this is a faithful reflection of Chinese public opinion?
It has long been rumored that China has vast teams of “50-cent Party” members working online for the party and government, who are paid for making posts that favor the interests of the CCP, but these claims have been difficult to clearly substantiate.
On January 19, Lanzhou’s Western Business Post (西部商报) reported that Gansu province had decided to build a team of 650 online commentators, the official term for these “50-centers.”
The report read:
Online commentators will regularly visit Websites, bulletin-board sites (BBS), blogs, etcetera, in order to understand the information circulating online and make timely posts on hot-button issues receiving concern from Web users, in order to correctly channel public opinion in society.
This news story from the Western Business Post marks the first time ever that that the work of the “50-centers” has made a formal, official debut in the news, and a number of Websites quickly picked up the story. Before long, however, the story was expunged from the Internet.
The secret is now out of the bag, and the deletion of the Western Business Post story should make plain to everyone exactly what Internet control with Chinese characteristics entails.
The Information Office spokesperson’s insistence that the figures for the rapid growth of Web users and Websites in China sufficiently illustrate the correctness of the government’s policies and practices on Internet control, that they indicate that Internet freedoms are protected in China, is unconvincing.
The rapid development of the Internet in China is principally the result of strength of information technologies themselves. The Internet presents us with all sorts of possibilities — not just freedom of expression. It encompasses the media, and yet is not equivalent to the media. It serves at the same time as both a public instrument and a tool for personal use.
In China, the Internet and other new technologies are political double-edged swords, allowing citizens to resist silence and fight despotism, and at the same time assisting the political leadership in its own objectives (one example being the recent building of a massive mobile phone messaging network by which CCP policies and directives can be quickly filtered down through the bureaucracy).
The Internet will remain a market of immense potential in China, and investors, whether public or private, will head there with the hope of striking it big. In fact, Chinese leaders both love and hate, spurn and desire, the Internet. From time to time, more moderate officials will express their goodwill toward Internet users, resulting in patches of occasional openness.
A number of overlapping factors have made for what some have seen as dazzling changes in China’s Internet. More than 384 million users, and 3.68 million sites — certainly, these are achievements of China’s Internet.
But can we chalk these up as achievements of our leaders?
What is more, the most important factor in the expansion of online freedoms has been China’s citizens themselves, who have not set aside their constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of expression. Every moment they fight to make their voices heard, and they pay the price. These are spaces we push into and hold, little by little, not spaces granted to us by the leadership.
China’s Internet is a chaotic space. There are times when controls are more strict, and other times when controls momentarily relax. Some places in China are controlled more tightly by local party leaders, while others are more open.
The only true constant is the government’s determination to exercise control. And the government does not merely control, as the Information Office spokesperson said, information that is “subversive,” “destructive” or “seditious.”
Most of the content routinely “harmonized” — as the process of censorship has come to be referred by Internet users — are observations or remarks about party leaders, angry protestations about corrupt officials, or discussions about the necessary direction of political reform, things of that nature . . .
In most places outside China, including here in Hong Kong, this sort of content is protected by the law. According to internationally accepted norms, they fall into the category of freedom of expression.
China’s control of the Internet is swimming against world trends. It is not open. It is not transparent. And it is still a great distance from “rule of law.”
We should also take note of the fact that Chinese leaders are not only resolutely defending the Internet. Over the last two years, they have adjusted their tactics, and applied national capital to launch a strategic offensive in the Internet realm.
A good friend of mine formerly served as editor-in-chief of a well-known Internet portal in China. About six months ago, he resigned from his position. In a letter, he wrote:
What I feel most sad and dispirited about is that China’s Internet is being rapidly transformed into an internal network. That the global Internet and overseas sites are being blocked goes without saying. But their strategy of nationalizing the Internet is already going ahead with full force. [They] use the charge of low-brow or indecent [content] to blacken the name of commercial Internet sites. They use the specter of Internet addiction to demonize the Web itself. They squeeze out small and medium-sized sites by restricting domain registration and filing requirements. Finally, they use the financial might of state assets to promote national Internet TV and Xinhua News Agency video content. And what’s more, they won’t stop there. In the future they will use state-owned search engines, state-owned real-time communications and online games, etc. Any Internet product that is of a media nature will be gradually nationalized and monopolized.
This state of affairs for China’s Internet is not an isolated occurrence. It is an inevitable byproduct of the swelling and expansion of state capitalism, and the progressive deepening of the monopolization of politics, the economy, society and culture.
Internet freedoms are a microprint of civil rights in China. Will we be able to hold on to the small freedom that we have claimed for our own to this point? How much more freedom will we be able to claim in the future?
We must all watch closely.
[Posted by David Bandurski, January 28, 2010, 3:55pm HK]
[Homepage photo by wysz available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license].
