By Qian Gang and David Bandurski — This has been a delicate year for China’s leaders, who must cross a veritable minefield of sensitive anniversaries. There was the 90th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, the 50th anniversary of the Lushan Conference, the 20th anniversary of June Fourth. And of course we have, just around the corner, the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
China is now in the midst of preparations for a National Day celebration that should by any standard be extravagant. Although the English-language Global Times managed to say in a single breath this week that “the ‘warm but frugal and cost-effective’ celebration” would include a “grand military parade and a mass pageant featuring 200,000 people.”
Meanwhile, the propaganda war for people’s hearts and minds has long been under way.

[ABOVE: “National unity” is one of the five “main themes” for National Day coverage. Screenshot of coverage at Global Times. A quick show of hands: how many think this photo is real?]

Media in China may view the National Day celebrations as a golden opportunity to cash in and enhance their commercial reach and influence. But China’s leadership views this event as an internal affair of paramount political importance, and as a key strategic front along which to tighten news controls.
It was way back last spring that China’s Central Propaganda Department conveyed its overall position on reporting of the 60th anniversary: “Shout throughout the whole of society the main themes of the goodness of the CCP, the goodness of socialism, the goodness of opening and reform, the goodness of our great motherland, and the goodness of our various ethnic groups.”
These five points, which are referred to as the “five goods,” essentially define the permissible scope of 60th anniversary coverage.
The term “main theme,” or zhǔxuánlǜ, is specific to public opinion controls (舆论控制) in China. The “main theme” refers to the general orientation and message the authorities expect news media to reflect.
So, to sum up, the crucial motifs for news reporting on the 60th anniversary are:

1. The leading position of the Chinese Communist Party
2. The strength of the socialist system
3. The importance of opening and reform
4. Patriotism
5. National unity

The demands the authorities have placed on reporting this year are essentially no different from those we saw for the anniversary ten years ago. But despite an overriding emphasis on Jiang Zemin’s policy of “guidance of public opinion” then, 1999 was a year of relative vitality for China’s media.
At the time, CMP Director Qian Gang was managing editor of the more freewheeling newspaper Southern Weekend, which on National Day that year ran a front-page editorial calling for political reform. “From a Society of Subjects to a Civil Society,” it was called (从臣民社会到公民社会), and it argued that rule by the people “is the stamp of a civil society” and “the moral foundation of the legitimacy of our government.”
In 2009, statements like this already seem unimaginable.

[ABOVE: Screenshot of a People’s Daily Online page, “I love you, China,” devoted to National Day.]

In June 2008, Hu Jintao introduced his new policy for handling news and information, which placed a strong emphasis on the notion of “public opinion channeling.” This is all about state media taking the initiative in getting the news out quickly, so that at least some critical information, particularly about breaking news events, is made public in record time. This more active posture was reflected to a limited extent during last year’s Beijing Olympics, but this year’s 60th anniversary has offered a stark contrast.
The Beijing Olympics were an international affair. Under the glaring lights of world attention, the authorities took a somewhat more open stance on press controls, even if this brought no relief for Chinese journalists.
The 60th anniversary is a “household affair,” China’s own business, and with social and political stability as the overriding domestic priorities the authorities are exercising strict control over the media.
The heart of the five “goods” is the “goodness of the Chinese Communist Party,” which means that the party’s leadership position is beyond question, and that the CCP’s accomplishments are resplendent and undeniable. As for the errors and blunders of the past 60 years, the human tragedies and buried injustices, these cannot be addressed at all.
Propaganda controls notwithstanding, the 60th anniversary will inevitably become an occasion to reflect back on sixty years of Communist Party rule. Whether or not CCP leaders are capable of taking an earnest and clear-eyed look at the party’s own record will be a key test of the party’s leadership.
But the initial signs are not encouraging.
The sensitivity of June Fourth is without question — this is a topic no media can be expected to broach. But so far even such episodes as the Anti-Rightist Movement of 1957 and the actions against rightists during the Lushan Conference of 1959, events on which the party long ago pronounced its official verdict, have become dangerous topics ahead of the 60th anniversary. Why? Because they touch on the crimes of Mao Zedong and on the serious failings of China’s political system.
Major web portals in China have planned a number of historical retrospectives, each of which highlights one important event during every year since 1949. Sohu.com has posted special features called “History in the Twinkling of an Eye” (回望历史瞬间) and “30 Years of Reform” (改革开放叁十年). Netease has one called “Made in China” (中国制造). The official Xinhua Online has a retrospective called “Footprints of the Republic” (共和国的足迹).
But what sort of events and landmarks do these highlight?
The Anti-Rightist Movement, during which some 550,000 people were politically persecuted as rightists, and millions of others dragged down into the chaos, was surely the defining event of 1957. Is it there? No, of course not.
The Great Starvation, which claimed the lives of some 36 million people, and the crushing of moves to promote democracy within the party, both resulted in large measure from the political madness of the Lushan Conference. Surely, that event merits attention in a historical retrospective.
But can we find it in 1959? No, of course not. We find at best fleeting references.
For 1957, Xinhua Online mentions “rectification within the party,” but includes only very light treatment of the campaign against rightists. QQ.com chooses to focus on Mao Zedong’s criticism of Ma Yanchu’s proposals on limiting population growth in China, but sidesteps the whole Anti-Rightist Movement. Sohu.com mentions the destruction of Beijing’s city wall in 1957. Netease notes only the conclusion of China’s first Five-year Plan.
For 1959, Xinhua Online highlights the putting down of rebellion in Tibet. Sohu.com notes the general pardon issued for war criminals and former Nationalist officials (as well as many “counterrevolutionaries”) to commemorate the republic’s tenth anniversary. Netease and QQ both choose to focus on the 1959 discovery of the oil field in Daqing.
None of these major web portals dared devote coverage to the Lushan Conference.
Two portals, Netease and QQ, did offer online polls that allowed users to select what they saw as the major events during particular years, and these included events like the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Lushan Conference. But these episodes in history could not be elaborated, and they could not become major defining events for those years.
In fact, we understand from our sources that user comments in the online polling sections of these sites are being actively removed. Forums for online comment have seemed unprecedentedly cold and cheerless ahead of the anniversary.
Websites have also been handed an explicit notice by the authorities letting them know that these two topics – the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Lushan Conference – are of extreme sensitivity.
In a moment of high spectacle, we have struck a new low. And this side-stepping of major episodes in China’s history does significant damage yet again to the credibility of China’s media.
[Posted by David Bandurski, September 10, 2009, 3:57pm HK]




[For reference, we publish the full Chinese text here of the 1999 editorial by columnist and CMP fellow Yan Lieshan (鄢烈山) published on the front page of Southern Weekend to commemorate China’s National Day.]
从臣民社会到公民社会
——庆祝中华人民共和国成立50周年
鄢烈山
50年前的今天，古城北京举行开国大典，毛泽东主席在天安门城楼上向全世界庄严宣告：中华人民共和国中央人民政府成立了！这位无产阶级革命家和政治家，用他特有的富于诗意的语言，简洁明快地揭示了这个伟大历史事件的深厚意蕴：“占人类总数四分之一的中国人从此站立起来了。”
中国人民从此站起来了！不言而喻，从前中国人民是跪着的，是俯伏着的。难道不是这样吗?几千年来，中国是一个封建君主专制的臣民杜会，“普天之下，莫非王土；率土之滨，莫非王臣”。家天下兴，百姓苦；家天下亡，百姓亦苦。自上个世纪中叶，帝国主义列强以炮舰轰开我们的国门，一百多年里，这群强盗杀我人民，割我领土，索我“赔款”，神州大地被浸没在一片血与火的海洋之中。
然而，中华儿女是有血性有骨气的，中华民族岂甘忍受任人宰割的命运?他们要推翻内外压迫者，赢得生而为人的权利与中华民族的尊严。他们中的先进分子披荆斩棘探寻着救国救民的真理。他们曾试图“师夷长技以制夷”。 1894年(甲午)中日之战的失败宣告了“洋务运动”的失败和“中体西用”道路的破产；1905年日本战胜沙俄，更使国人看到了“立宪”对于富国强兵的重要性。人们认识到，所谓坚船利炮并非仅仅是器物制造技术的成果，军事实力与战争动员能力并非无源之水、无本之木，中国只有在政治经济等事关根本的制度层面变法维新，才能改变积贫积弱受人欺侮的局面。目睹无数血写的事实，大多数的中国人才达成共识，以“宁赠友邦，勿予家奴”为信条的腐朽卖国的封建王朝若不彻底推翻，中华民族就不可能避免亡国亡种的灾祸，起而拥护孙中山领导的“目的在求中国之自由平等”的民主革命。
从“五四”新文化运动到八年浴血抗战，到推翻国民党蒋家王朝建立新中国，“民主”，一直是引领中华民族踏平坎坷，走向胜利的光辉的旗帜。在战争最艰苦的阶段人们憧憬着新中国，他们发自内心深处地歌唱“没有共产党就没有新中国”，因为看到“她建设了敌后根据地，她实行了民主好处多”，相信“她一心救中国，她指引了人民解放的道路”。几千年来被“治”得一盘散沙的中华民族，何以有了空前团结一致的凝聚力，这力量比铁还硬，比钢还强?因为人们是在向法西斯蒂开火，是要让一切不民主的制度死亡，是亘古未有的民主信念“向着太阳，向着自由，向着新中国发出万丈光芒！”
中华人民共和国的诞生，其所以是划时代的，是因为它意味着，中华民族从此可以挣脱被束缚被奴役的命运。对外，赢得了国家独立解放，将以爱好和平自由的姿态成为世界各民族大家庭中平等的一员；对内，赢得了人民当家作主，各族人民将以勤劳勇敢正直的品格组成一个在法律面前人人平等的“公民杜会”。人民当家作主，是“公民社会”的本质特征，它不仅是语言学和政治学家给出的“人民共和国”这个词语的含义，而且是我们的立国之本，是我们这个政权的合法性的道义基础，是我们的社会主义制度区别于一切剥削阶级专政制度的真义和正义所在。
“天下为公”，“天视自我民视，天听自我民听”，可以说是中华民族的祖先最久远的关于公民社会的理想，但几千年来一直是个乌托邦。在世界史上，从中世纪的“主权在神”到宗教革命后的“主权在君”，再到18世纪启蒙时代以来形成“主权在民”的思想，国际社会普遍承认“民主”的涵义，是人民参与政治过程井赋予政府行为的合法性，国家政权是为人民服务的公器而不是少数人作威作福的工具，是保障公民自由与人权的盾牌而不是少数人滥用权势的利器；但理论不等于是现实，资本主义社会的民主只能是资产阶级的民主。中国共产党领导人民进行革命，建立新中国，而今又领导人民进行社会主义建设和改革，正如江泽民同志所说，“是要实现全中国人民的自由、民主和人权。”我们的民主理应是最广泛最真实的民主，虽然这仍然是我们须不懈追求的目标。
正是努力实行最广泛的人民民主，中国人民有了当家作主的感觉，才焕发出了前所未有的劳动积极性和首创精神，让中华大地涌现出蓬勃的活力和生机，用不长的时间在旧中国一穷二白的基础上，建立了比较完整的工业体系和国民经济体系。也恰是由于党和国家的政治生活后来违背了民主集中制的原则，出现了个人专断，“运动”群众进行所谓“大民主”，使中国人民经历了以“文革”为高潮的极“左”路线造成的大劫难。党的十一届三中全会拨乱反正，邓小平同志领导全党全国人民总结“文革”和．建国后的经验教训，他旗帜鲜明地提出：“没有民主就没有社会主义，就没有社会主义的现代化。”并高瞻远瞩地指出：“为了保障人民民主，必须加强法制。必须使民主制度化、法制化。”
遵循邓小平的理论，20年来，我们大力发展社会主义民主，健全社会主义法制，努力改变“无法无天”的局面，切实保障人民当家作主，参与管理国家事务和社会事务、管理经济和文化事业的权利，成就有目共睹。《中华人民共和国宪法》修正案庄严地载入了“建设社会主文法治国家”的目标；《中国共产党章程》庄重承诺(也是规定)：“党必须在宪法和法律的范围内活动。”从此，任何组织和个人都不再享有超越宪法和法律的特权。作为现代民主国家依法治国基本方略的成果，这些年我国先后制定了一系列实体法和程序法。为防止滥用行政权力，保障公民的自由与人权，我国于 1989年出台了《中华人民共和国行政诉讼法》，为“秋菊”们民告官“讨说法”提供了法律依据；今年又颁布了《行政复议法》，强调以法律作为判别是非的标准，开始改变以权力为标准的传统状况。此外，如《国家赔偿法》的颁行，新的刑事诉讼法对无罪推定原则的采用，都是中国公民权利得到前所未有的保障的显证。与此同时，村民自治、厂务公开、政务公开等一系列民主建设正在展开，我国人民正在逐步提高对杜会与公共事务管理的发言权。尤其值得大书特书的是，二千年来我们不断解放思想，打破形形色色的精神桎梏，确立了建立社会主义市场经济体制的伟大目标，努力为全体公民创造发挥个人潜能，参与平等竞争获取成功的机会，极大地解放了社会生产力，也切实提升了人民的生活水准和人格尊严。
不必讳言，在我们这样一个有长期封建主义传统，经济和教育欠发达的国家，要达成完全的民主与法治，实现充分的自由与人权，还需要经过相当长时间的艰苦奋斗。官贵民贱的等级制思想和“官本位”的封建遗风，吏治腐败、司法腐败等种种严重腐蚀政权、涣散人心的丑恶现象，它们的存在与蔓延，是与人民共和国的国体绝不相容的。历史的经验告诉我们：对外，若国家没有完整的独立的主权，就不可能保障本国公民的人权；对内，若人民没有当家作王的权利，则不可能实现杜会安定、经济发展和综合国力的强盛，以维护国家主权。两者是互相关联、积极互动的关系。因此，作为中华人民共和国的公民，作为真正的爱国者，为了增强我们国家的经济实力和国防实力，为了增进中华民族对人类社会的影响与贡献，我们必须以高度的历史使命感加强社会主义民主与法治建设，促进政治民主化、经济市场化和社会治理法制化，从而增强民族的凝聚力。
自知者明，自胜者强。让我们在邓小平理论指引下，以更加成熟的理念，更加坚定的意志，深入推进政治和经济体制改革，扩大对外开放，扫除发展道路上的一切拦路虎，阔步迈向21世纪，创造光辉灿烂的未来，把我国建设成为一个富强民主文明的社会主义现代化国家，实现中华民族的伟大复兴！
来源：南方周末 来源日期：1999-10-1

By David Bandurski — Public opinion channeling is hot, hot, hot. If you’re in charge of a party or government organ in China, or the head of a local police force, chances are you’re scrambling to get on board with Hu Jintao’s new program for news and propaganda work. You want your people to be a lot more savvy in getting your message out, and you want to avoid the dreaded “public opinion crisis.”
What you need, first and foremost, is training and team building. State media reported last week that a three-day training session on public opinion channeling for news and information was held in Gansu province, with 134 police officials in attendance.
A Legal Daily article re-posted at People’s Daily Online said the Gansu session was the first of its kind “for police leaders working on the front lines,” and that it would be “advantageous in utilizing the media to support and publicize advanced models of police work and team building.”

[ABOVE: Screenshot of coverage of local media cadres meeting in April 2009 to discuss more effective channeling of public opinion.]

To some extent, it makes sense that leaders and local authorities in China are more interested in what some dismiss as run-of-the-mill “spin control.” Isn’t it a sign of progress, for example, for government spokespeople to step out more frequently and explain a situation, and the government’s position? [See the back-and-forth in the comments HERE for a plucky discussion along these lines.]
We have to remember, though, that these “spin” tactics are being applied against a backdrop of strict propaganda controls, party-government monopolization of news voices, and rigorous internet censorship mechanisms. The government’s voice is amplified. Reporters, meanwhile, can only sit on their hands, or join in the amplification.
But the recent mention of “public opinion channeling” by the vice-director of China’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, who encouraged state-owned enterprises to set up press offices to combat “negative news,” has drawn some mild criticism in China’s media.
The basic argument in a few editorials, including one in Guangzhou Daily yesterday, has been to support the idea that media should play a crucial role in improving state-owned enterprises by conducting watchdog journalism, ferreting out problems that enterprises can then address.
The concern, in other words, should not be to massage their public image, but to address the real problems that are the real cause of their poor public images. If the government really wants to clean up state-owned enterprises, it should invite more “bad” public opinion, not less.
Below is a translation of yesterday’s article in Guangzhou Daily, which suggests the strong focus lately on “public opinion channeling” — trendy though it is — exposes an old way of thinking about information, namely that “the responsibility for a poor image lies with the media, and with the news report itself,” not in internal problems in enterprises and/or institutions.

There is More to Image Improvement than Public Opinion Channeling
Guangzhou Daily
September 6, 2009
The role of the media is to reveal the facts and to inform the public, but as to what impression these facts make on the public, and how they shape public feeling, this is a matter of the news event itself and of the judgment of the public.
The channeling of public opinion is a topic getting more and more attention. It is now, perhaps, an uptrend of sorts. Online e-government services and the set up of official press spokesperson systems — these are all about correctly and effectively channeling public opinion in order to create a favorable dynamic between the people and the public sector. In recent days, in order to instruct state-owned enterprises to improve their news release systems, the State Asset Regulatory Commission has said it will come out with a policy establishing press spokesperson systems for state-owned enterprises and other related information release mechanisms so that the voices of enterprises can be actively and effectively heard.
Nowadays it is popular practice to utilize the media and carry out public opinion channeling in order to raise your own good image. And clearly, this action by state-owned enterprises to set up press spokesperson systems is in response to recent “negative news” about a number of enterprises. In a push to improve the situation and create a favorable public opinion environment for the development of state-owned enterprises, the enterprises themselves are staking a lot on these press spokespeople.
But many people have raised doubts about whether it will make any difference at all to the public image of state-owned enterprises to have spokespeople out there channeling public opinion. The reasons is simple. Because the onus is on the enterprises themselves, not just on public opinion channeling, for the general improvement of their public image. If an enterprise hopes to win the approval of the public, the secret lies not in the manipulation of public opinion but in its own behavior.
The rolling out of the press spokesperson system is only one means for state-owned enterprises to face the public directly. Smashing through the dominance of [state] monopolies, sharing the super-profits equitably with the public, accepting public supervision and raising efficiency — these are the only ways central state-owned enterprises can win favorable images.
The role of the media is to reveal the facts and to inform the public, but as to what impression these facts make on the public, and how they shape public feeling, this is a matter of the news event itself and of the judgment of the public. We often say that the masses have sharp eyes, and this is precisely the point.
In reality, of course, there are always those who make a habit of clouding the eyes of the people, and suppression of the media and of individual journalists becomes their trusty ace card. In some places, after mining accidents happen, the first thought is not to reveal the full extent of the casualties to the public, but rather to do everything humanly possible to ensure the truth is hidden and that journalists are prevented from covering the story. As they see it, news reporting smudges a black mark on their safety record . . . Applying the same reason, when mass incidents occur in some areas, they are kept under wraps from the beginning and media prevented from reporting. But experience has shown that reporting by the media promotes the resolution of such incidents, and in fact helps benefit the image [of local leaders] in the eyes of the public . . .
The watchdog function of the press may affect the interests of a particular area, office or enterprise in the short term. But in the longer run, this influence of public opinion will be beneficial to overall interests. Regrettably, many people still persist in believing that the responsibility for a poor image lies with the media, and with the news report itself . . .

[Posted by David Bandurski, September 7, 2009, 2:09pm]

By David Bandurski — We wrote last month at CMP about how Hu Jintao’s policy of active agenda-setting and “public opinion channeling” — what we’ve termed Control 2.0 — has enshrined the notion of public opinion as crisis. In other words, party leaders often approach real crises of public interest as public relations challenges. On the surface, at least, they seem less concerned with addressing real social problems, and more concerned with convincing everyone these problems do not exist.
In a piece posted last week at the website Oeeee.com (奥一), writer Xiao Hanjie (肖汉杰) argued along similar lines after Huang Danhua (黄丹华), vice-director of China’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council encouraged state-owned enterprises to set up press offices to combat “negative news.”

[ABOVE: Knocking the news dead: a government spokeswoman for the city of Changsha is voted one of China’s ten prettiest government spokeswomen.]

Why, Xiao asked, when enterprises should be concerned with identifying and addressing problems in restructuring and operation, was the focus on “channeling public opinion”?
A full translation of Xiao’s editorial follows:

“Public opinion channeling” not as good as “being channeled by public opinion”
September 2, 2009
The vice-director of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, Huang Danhua (黄丹华) said recently that a number of central-level enterprises had been beset with “negative news coverage.” He advised that central-level enterprises set up news release systems and employ official spokespeople in order to improve channeling of public opinion (Beijing Morning Post, September 1, 2009).
So problems happen, and the reaction is not to establish supervision mechanisms to look into their own long-established bad practices. No, instead they set up news release structures so they can “channel public opinion.” So it’s as though they assume when the bells go off that the problem doesn’t lie in the system and in their own work, but rather in the fact that there are no spokespeople to carry out public opinion channeling.
Channeling public opinion? Isn’t it more to the point to say they dread public opinion? They say they channel public opinion “in order to create a favorable public opinion environment for the reform of state-owned enterprises.” I disagree with this completely . . . Public opinion can reflect on advantages and disadvantages, and so it can assist central-level enterprises in assessing their own faults and strengths. Why, then, would you attempt to channel public opinion, twisting its original purpose and the spirit of free criticism? And in a false public opinion environment, how are central-level enterprises supposed to assess their own advantages and disadvantages?
A French writer once wrote that “without the freedom to criticize, praise is utterly worthless.” This could no doubt be taken as a jab at the idea that central-level enterprises should “channel public opinion.” Public opinion channeling is about releasing “positive news” and avoiding “negative news,” about talking up political achievements and playing down problems. This process affects the ability of the public to really understand the facts and come to their own judgments, and ultimately it does harm to the public’s freedom of expression. If we begin to see public opinion turning very kind in favor of state-owned enterprises, what meaning is there in that?
What’s more, the “tactic” of public opinion channeling is generally about not publicly airing news and information and the voices of public opinion, about letting the public see only those things that are “praiseworthy.” This is a disservice to the factual nature of the news, and an invasion of the public’s right to know. The principals of journalism tell us that the news should convey comprehensive and objective facts. The people have a right to know the full story, and they have a right to freely express their opinions about news fact.
“Public opinion channeling” is good for problem avoidance, but it cannot resolve problems that are objectively there. How much better it would be to channelled [in our actions] by public opinion, first listening to what public opinion is telling us, then promoting those things that are beneficial while abolishing those things that are harmful . . .
Along with the development of the Internet and other new media, as speech is becoming freer by the day, “public opinion channeling” is not a reasonable method, and is not suited to the information spirit of the age. As for the “negative news” facing public institutions and state enterprises, the urgent priority should be to accept public opinion and criticism, seeking out the problems that exist at the institutional and management level and making changes. The thought should not be with how to lead and channel public opinion, allowing the rot to take root inside our enterprises.

[Posted by David Bandurski, September 6, 2009, 8:57am HK]

By Qian Gang — It is no petty crime in China to be accused of setting up an “illegal organization.” Last month, the organization “Gongmeng,” a group of rights defense lawyers that had not obtained legal registration, was branded an “illegal organization,” and its Gongmeng Legal Research Center was raided and closed down.
At the end of April, the Wenzhou Business Club of the Dongguan General Chamber of Commerce in Guangzhou was ruled an “illegal organization” “daring to carry out activities” in the name of a social group, and was ordered to cease all operations. Some time before this, authorities in Guangzhou said taxi drivers who organized a general strike late last year under the auspices of a “collective tea time” (集体喝茶), “[in fact] had illegal organizations working behind the scenes.”
Under strict censorship controls, the vast majority of Chinese journalists are suffocated with a silent fury over such trumped up allegations. But this week instead we’ve seen the opposite — media aggressively opening fire on a so-called “illegal organization.”
On August 26, the Beijing News reported that Zhao Yang (赵阳), a member of the City Administrative Department of Nanjing’s Xuanwu District – this is the office that runs the local brigades of non-police ‘city inspectors’ charged with keeping public order in China’s urban neighborhoods – had been charged with organizing an online “national joint session of city administrative department heads.” Zhao had dared to hold an event without proper registration and in the name of a social group, so this amounted to the act of “illegal organization.”

[ABOVE: Do city inspectors need their own guild? Screenshot of coverage at Hebei News Online of city inspectors overseeing the demolition of “illegal” housing in Hebei.]

The reporter following up on the story came across this organization’s statutes. They discovered that the organization had a founding chairman, an honorary chairman, a rotating chairmanship, a managing director, a deputy director, an executive council and so on. It had set up an administrative headquarters, and even had a membership fee system in place. It had already held three national conferences, had issued awards and conferred titles. It had decided on national standards for city inspector identification. For all intents and purposes, it was the national guild for city inspectors in China.
The report caused an uproar. For the authorities to see “illegal organizations” as thorns in their side, that was one thing. But it seemed like a great big joke for government officials like city administrative department heads to be participating in such organizations. The media followed up on the story and found that the organization behind these joint sessions was in fact a private company, which was scooping up all of the funds. A private company boss, in other words, had been toying with city administrative department heads across the country, offering public relations and crisis management services to address the poor public image of city inspectors.
Like a rat scurrying through a busy market, this organization of city inspectors was suddenly the target of unmitigated attacks. Between August 26 and September 3, over just nine days, 353 reports appeared on the Internet (returned in a Baidu search of the terms “city administration heads” and “illegal organization”). Of these, 56 were re-postings of the original Beijing News story. People were up in arms about many different things, including how various local governments could be using taxpayer money to support such an organization.
One Web user at the popular portal QQ.com summed the case up in a snide imitation of the divisive CCP jargon generally used in the event of social unrest:

This is all about ‘people ignorant of the situation’ and ‘at the instigation of a few elements’ daring to take part in ‘illegal organizations.’ As for participation in ‘illegal organizations’ by city inspection heads, we can only say that they were ‘controlled by people with ulterior motives.’

Journalist Guo Yukuan (郭宇宽) wrote in Huashang Bao that the charges made against this “national joint session” were identical to those made against Gongmeng and its founder, Xu Zhiyong: “First of all, it did not register with the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Secondly, it definitely did not have credentials as a public charity organization. So regardless of whether the units involved gave money and participated voluntarily, the founders fall under suspicion of tax evasion for perhaps not having reported taxes to the tax authorities.”
Guo Yukuan (郭宇宽) continues:

Some people will say, if they’re not doing anything illegal, why didn’t they just go and register? But you have to understand that in China the registration process is incredibly troublesome. To register a non-profit organization, you must find a government office or other institution (事业单位) willing to back you up …. And if you want to register as a company, well, then there are substantial tax burdens involved, and setting up an office, even if you don’t have a cent of income, can require tens of thousands of yuan. Who could possibly play such a game? And for all that, you are still not allowed to do activities in the name of a public charity organization . . . We need to think about the fact that it is this excess control that has created this situation in which all over the country we have these ‘illegal organizations’ ‘daring to hold activities.’

China’s media, which are still strictly controlled, must keep quiet about many things that would infuriate the public if known. Like trees abiding in the cracks of a sheer cliff face, they grow twisted. They make only glancing and oblique attacks against the hovering mass of authoritarian power.
Unable to issue direct calls for the relaxation of controls on civic groups in China, the media have paid back in the same coin, viciously attacking the “national joint session of city administrative department heads,” an “illegal organization” bringing private and official business together in an unsavory alliance.
Citizens and media in China have numerous “soft opposition” (软抗争) tactics at their disposal. There is “pretending to be deaf and dumb” (装聋作哑), for example, when journalists hear thunder but act as though they had no idea a storm was coming. The Chinese edition of Esquire had to know last month that Gongmeng was in trouble, and yet they used the small window of opportunity in which the government had not yet fully shut Xu Zhiyong’s mouth, promoting him to the magazine’s cover.
Then there are “word games” (文字游戏), as when Web users criticized Hu Jintao’s policy of “harmony” (a.k.a., censorship) on the Internet by making a cottage industry out of a humorous synonym, “river crab.”
There is the “fresh flower with thorns” (鲜花带刺), writing in a panegyric style what is essentially a critical report – as when media reported on a Hope School that did not collapse in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake as a way of drawing attention to the problem of shoddy school construction.
These tactics of opposition are necessitated by a society that is basically unwell. Chinese media have no other choice but to carry out a low-grade guerrilla war with authoritarian power. Of course we are eager for a time when criticism is afforded dignity, a time of open and rational debate, a time when the ordinary monitoring of power is possible and acceptable. But that time can only come in China when freedom of expression is respected.
[Posted by David Bandurski, September 4, 2009, 12:36pm HK]

By David Bandurski — Interested in trying your hand at the fine art of press censorship? The city of Zhuzhou, in China’s inland Hunan province, wants you. A notice posted on one of Zhuzhou’s official news sites yesterday called for applicants to its news commentary group, or xinwen yuepingzu (新闻阅评组), a group tasked with issuing post-facto criticisms citing violations of propaganda discipline which can often result in disciplinary action against specific media and/or journalists. [Frontpage photo by kvitlauk available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]
China’s central-level news commentary group, unofficially situated within the Central Propaganda Department, is a powerful group of 7-9 mostly retired propaganda officials with a potentially powerful influence over the press. It was the news commentary group that forced the brief shutdown in 2006 of the journal Freezing Point.

[ABOVE: Want to be a censor? Call this number. Screenshot of notice published at Zhuzhou Online.]

Formed in the early 1990s, the news commentary group was a response in part to changes in China’s media brought on by the process of commercialization. In a censorship system focused on prior instructions on “discipline,” more freewheeling media were finding creative ways to push the boundaries. One answer to this problem was to add a layer of censorship, a group that could make its own after-the-fact assessments of how well media were towing the party line. [See, “China’s Shadow Censor Commissars,” FEER, March 2006.]
Party leaders throughout China’s bureaucracy set about establishing their own news commentary groups, some for media generally and others focused specifically on the Internet.
In what it characterizes as a reshuffle designed to better guide public opinion locally, Zhuzhou is now casting about publicly for new members of its news commentary group. Here is the announcement:

City Propaganda Department Publicly Seeks News Commentators
August 31, 2009
www.zhuzhouwang.com
The propaganda department of the party committee of Zhuzhou is looking to hire news commentators. If you love the news, if you support the news work of Zhuzhou and care about the growth of media in Zhuzhou, if you have a strong knowledge of the news and a decent command of writing, then you can either call 2868-0232 and apply, or apply directly at the news division of the city propaganda department.
The news commentary group is an important means of ensuring the correct guidance of public opinion of news propaganda, and the quality of news reports. Our city has supported this work for a number of years already. In order to improve the effectiveness of news propaganda in our city, to ensure correct guidance of public opinion, and to better uphold the news policy of “Three Closenesses,” the municipal propaganda department has decided to reshuffle its news commentary team, and now publicly seeks scores of news commentators from the general population.
News commentators are responsible for criticisms of city-level media, and will be paid on a per-article basis. We ask that all those interested send an example of news criticism, with name, sex, age, employer and contact information, to the news division of the city propaganda department at [email protected] before September 5.

[Posted by David Bandurski, September 1, 2009, 12:02am HK]

By David Bandurski — Every so often in China, this or that local government tackles the issue of political accountability and cooks up something that resembles a fresh idea. They pass an ordinance demanding greater transparency of themselves. Or, with grand munificence, they distribute 960,000 name cards to the local populace.
Larger political realities render these gestures inconsequential, even ridiculous. But they manage at least to give local governments a nice flash of publicity before sizzling into irrelevance.

[ABOVE: Local government efforts at transparency reveal nothing but whitewash. Photo by cbcastro available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]

The latest ooh-ah move comes from the city of Kunming, which earlier this month issued a draft ordinance against official abuse of duty saying that leaders who “interfered with or obstructed legal acts of press supervision would be held accountable and even face legal liability.”
Chinese editorials have called the law an “ice breaking action.” The shift, some say, from “official documentation in support [of watchdog journalism] to actual laws in support [of watchdog journalism]” marks a fundamental breakthrough.
Others, fortunately, have been duly skeptical.
The columnist Pan Duola noted quite accurately in a piece in the Zhu Jiang Evening News that, “if this [language in an anti-corruption law] is our standard, then before Kunming we already had an ‘ice breaking’ regulation in the form of Shenzhen’s ordinance against official abuse of duty . . . ”
But the precedent goes back even further. In 2003, Fujian province passed a local ordinance with the stated goal of fighting corruption, and made “supervision by public opinion,” or watchdog journalism, one of its key components. Shenzhen followed suit the next year, passing the ordinance noted by Pan Duola.
From the standpoint of journalists, these ordinances have offered no real encouragement. The environment for Chinese investigative reporters, the standard bearers of “supervision by public opinion,” has gotten steadily worse since 2004, and local governments bear much of the blame.
What enthusiastic commentators on the Kunming ordinance fail to acknowledge is the fact that press control in China is not ultimately a matter of law. It is a matter of party discretion.
The CCP’s propaganda apparatus is a vast extralegal mechanism for maintaining the party’s vested interests, what is termed “propaganda discipline.”
As Pan Duola explains:

What is even more worrying is that the “Ordinance” [in Kunming] ignores the fact that state organs, enterprises and state-sponsored institutions often obstruct watchdog journalism not through direct conflict but rather by seeking help from officials further up the chain of command, through departments in charge [of the media, or through public relations [pressuring behind the scenes to have reports killed]. Then there is the media’s so-called ‘propaganda discipline’, and orders [from the propaganda department] which impel media to remove ‘negative reports’ and back off from watchdog journalism.

On a cosmetic level, language from party officials about encouraging and leveraging “supervision by public opinion” is welcome. We might search with faint hope for the term in political reports, an indication party leaders have not discarded it utterly.
But here, again, with this news from Kunming, the Chinese press is playing the part of The Boy Who Cried Change . . . Please, wake us with a swift kick when the party bosses of Kunming announce at a press conference that they have dissolved their local propaganda department.
[Posted by David Bandurski, August 27, 2009, 10:57am HK]

By David Bandurski — International news coverage just isn’t fair. And that, CCP theorists say, is because the entire field is stacked against the developing world. The answer, according to a recent piece in Qiushi, the leading theoretical journal of the CCP, is “the creation of a free and fair international news and information order.” [Frontpage image by Pierre Pouliquin available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]
The Qiushi article, “Freedom of Speech and the Media’s Responsibility,” was posted at the journal’s website on August 16, and essentially offers a supporting grand narrative for Hu Jintao’s new media policy of action and influence, what we have called “Control 2.0.”

[ABOVE: Screenshot of the homepage of Qiushi‘s online site, August 24, 2009.]

In a nutshell, decades of media market pressure in the West and the resulting emergence of media conglomerates (and loss of media diversity) have created “giants” who monopolize not just the market but the message. Slavishly bending to audience demand for the seamy and puerile, these Western media have fanned prejudices about developing nations, principally China, which is one of the favorite targets of Western media “demonization.” This must end. The answer?

We propose the creation of a free and fair international news and information order. We know this will not be easy. But we are confident that in step with economic globalization and a multi-polar world, in step with a developing rational consensus about the common fate of humanity, the international order in the areas of the economy, politics, culture and information must continue to develop in a more just and reasonable direction.

China, as we have said before at CMP, wants to grab what it sees as its fair share of “global public opinion.” And this is why we’ve seen glimpses of an ambitious program to develop the international influence of central CCP media.
The Qiushi piece is an interesting mix of facts, perplexing suggestions and outright fictions.
There is a basically sound summary of the demise of the local newspaper in the U.S. market, and the dominance of the media landscape by conglomerates — something Western communications scholars have voiced concern about for years and years. [Click HERE for some interesting data points on the “death” of newspapers in the U.S.]
Then there are the points where the logic fails and the hypocrisy creeps in. At one point, the author decries the fact that “today it is ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and CNN, five major networks, that decide what Americans see and hear about the world around them.” Now, I won’t sit here and argue the strengths of the American media system, which irks me in so many ways. But when push comes to shove, shouldn’t I prefer that my view of the world be mediated by five competing networks rather than one true monopoly, China Central Television, listening to one Central Propaganda Department?
No one is going to argue that the West has worked out a formula for how we can have the best and most diverse media possible. And it is undoubtedly true that voices from developing nations, including China, should be better heard.
But the Qiushi article, with its overly simplistic assessment of the situation and the nature of Western journalism, fails to make a compelling argument for how more aggressive propaganda from national governments — now a “matter of necessity,” the article says — is going to make for fairer and more credible news.
For those who wish to understand the thinking that underpins Hu Jintao’s new media policy, this piece is an important one nonetheless. So here goes:

“Freedom of Speech and the Media’s Responsibility”
Qiushi
August 16, 2009
By Guo Ji (郭纪)
To keep to the road of peace and development, this is the grand promise China has made to the world. To this end, China has raised high the flags of peace, development and cooperation. It has pursued an independent foreign policy of peace and an open strategy of mutual benefit. It has earnestly practiced what it advocates, with the goal of building a harmonious world of lasting peace and common prosperity. In recent years, China’s path of opening and reform, its unity and initiative, its fairness and friendliness, its honesty and sense of responsibility, have won greater and greater respect in the international community, and led to a more objective, rational and friendly disposition [toward China]. However, China’s efforts and earnestness have met with an international public opinion environment (国际舆论环境) stacked unfairly against it. A small number of Western media have managed to dominate the international news and information order (国际新闻传播秩序), masking the truth, disseminating prejudices, creating through human effort one after another “iron curtain” and “vast divide,” seriously impeding interaction, conversation and mutual understanding between peoples.
The time has come to reflect on the current international news and information order
Monopoly is the Natural Enemy of Freedom
Monopoly is the most salient characteristic of the current international news and information order.
Freedom of speech and of the press have long been a platform and slogan of the bourgeoisie in opposing feudalism, and they were an important victory of the bourgeois revolution, a sign of social progress. But under the laws of capitalism, it is market mechanisms that are primarily entrusted to spur the development of news institutions (新闻事业), [or journalism], and the monopolization of news environment has been the inevitable consequence of market competition. This has become the most salient characteristic of media systems (新闻体制) under capitalism. The logic of competition, of the “big fish swallowing the little fish,” has resulted in monopolies by large-scale media corporations in the media markets of developed Western nations, and this trend has worked at cross purposes with the values of freedom of speech and of the press. Let us take the United States as an example. In the decades following the Second World War, the process of monopolization in the U.S. newspaper market went unabated, and influential newspapers were progressively concentrated in the hands of a few major financial groups. More than 90 percent of American cities found themselves with just one newspaper, a clear sign of monopolization in the American newspaper industry. Today it is ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and CNN, five major networks, that decide what Americans see and hear about the world around them.
The news giants of the West, using the vast resources they have accumulated, send out reporters around the world to gather the kind of international news that they “like” and “need,” and the vast majority of media, who do not have the resources to send reporters, must purchase syndicated international news products [from these giants]. In this way, these Western media giants not only monopolize news at home, but also monopolize international news around the world. The result is that the bulk of small media around the world become channels for their own information. Right now, the Associated Press, Reuters and AFP account for four-fifths of the international news reports filed around the world. More than 90 percent of the international news disseminated around the world is provided by Western media, and of this 70 percent is monopolized by the news giants.
The attention of the world, therefore, is drawn to wherever these Western media giants wish. So a small number of powerful Western media set the tone for global public opinion. The voices of developing nations are annihilated, suppressed and disregarded.
Everyone knows that monopoly is the enemy of freedom. The highly monopolized state of the current international news and information order impedes access by people of all nations to objective and impartial news and information . . . When the eyes and ears, and even the minds, of peoples of all nations are controlled by the “gate keepers” of just a few major Western media groups, what freedom of speech is there to speak of in the world . . .
Prejudice is More Terrible than Ignorance
Prejudice is the most patent outcome of the control of the international news and information order by Western media giants.
If the Western media that monopolize international information resources could abide by the values of “objectivity and impartiality” that they trumpet so loudly, and if they could report and comment on events in the world with a sense of responsibility, then the situation would be better.
This is not how they behave, however. To the contrary, Western media evince a kind of “West above all” superiority and prejudice in their reporting of international affairs. They tireless propagate Western ideologies, and use Western standards to pass judgment on all things that happen in the world. They see as correct anything that accords with Western ideology, and anything that does not they demonize . . . In recent years, people have seen far too many examples of this prejudice on the part of Western media.
Chinese people have perhaps felt this more deeply than most. After last years 3.14 Incident in Tibet, some media whipped up an anti-China storm, seriously misleading the international community. After serious violence in Xinjiang on July 5 this year, the government of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region responded to the international community in a considerate manner, quickly permitting the entry of journalists from inside and outside China with the hope that this openness would contribute to a lessening of prejudiced reports from Western media.
But while China is changing, the prejudices of some Western media are not changing. The vileness of the July 5 incident, the violent criminal actions, were again portrayed [in the Western media] as “peaceful demonstrations,” as the “Urumqi uprising,” and the actions of the police to restore order were again described as “a bloody crackdown,” as “Beijing’s suppression of China’s minority Muslim population.” How can one not be furious at such a distortion of the truth, at such an obscuring of the issue, at such a blatant effort to mislead the public! . . .
[More here on the Dalai Lama and Rabeer, as figures reviled by all 1.3 billion Chinese. Other alleged distortions carried out by Western media, who “turn demons into angels.”]
Truth is the lifeblood of journalism. And by necessity, the intrusion of prejudice does damage to the truth of the news. If a news and information order is guided by prejudice, how then can this news and information system be said to be fair and impartial?
An Extreme Market Orientation Harms the Media’s Social Role [Responsibility]
An extreme market orientation is the disease suffered by value standards in the Western media.
News media in the West have often been called “public instruments” (社会公器). But in all actuality, the majority of Western media are held in private hands, and capital related controls on the media are present at every turn. Media are treated as profit-making mechanisms. Under the priorities of capital, when making a profit is the first objective, market “selling points” come before all else (市场“卖点”压倒一切). Circulation and ratings, and the advertising dollars that come with them, are the top priorities. All that is required is “reader demand” and “audience approval” and a newspaper can stay mum on something that should be reported, or take something that shouldn’t be reported and whip it up into a froth.
In an extreme market environment, “only bad news is good for the news” has become the value standard for Western media. The more abnormal it is, the more negative it is, the more sudden and shocking it is, the more it is built up into a sensation, the more news value something has. Violence, sex, crime, scandal and other manner of negative news fills up the screen. In reports on developing nations, wars, political coups, chaos, disaster and other dark aspects are played up . . .
According to the Western view of journalism, the profession is duty-bound to monitor and criticize. “We are free to criticize our own government, and of course we are also free to criticize the governments of other nations — this is only fair,” [they say]. But they overlook a most basic fact: in their own country, when they criticize the government, this cannot and will not stand in the way of the public’s understanding of that country. This is because they live their daily lives in their own nation, and they are equipped to make their own judgments about whether the criticisms of the media are accurate. When the media report on the outside world, however, if they only “seek out the ugly” and “scoop up excrement,” reporting superficially on the seamy side, this cannot help the public better understand the truth about the outside world. Quite the opposite, misunderstandings will accumulate and prejudices become entrenched.
The Western media complain constantly about how China doesn’t open up enough to them. They criticize China, saying there is no freedom of speech here. But the fact is: since economic reforms, Chinese media have carried out objective, comprehensive, broad and deep reporting on the West. In contrast, Western media reporting on China not only lacks objectivity and comprehensiveness, but in fact is generally filled with serious prejudices. China today increasingly enjoys looking out on the world, and Chinese understanding of the outside world has reached a level unprecedented in China’s history. This is because China has been able to study the lessons of foreign cultures since economic reforms began. But in developed nations like the United States, some people now voice surprise at seeing that Chinese have mobile phones just as they do, and they ask ridiculous questions like, “You Chinese use mobile phones too?” Their understanding of China is trapped in the 1970s. The public’s poor understanding of the outside world owes in large part to reporting by the media . . .
Toward a New International News and Information Order
In the modern world, as economic globalization deepens and nations are increasingly interconnected, the mutual interests and challenges of humankind have increasingly come to the fore. Global financial security, the stability of the global economy, climate change, food security, energy and resource security, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, large-scale natural disasters, major epidemic threats and other global problems are on the rise. They present a serious challenge to world peace and development. No single nation can face all of these problems on its own. Countries must work together in a spirit of unity and cooperation . . .
The world is rich and diverse . . . and it is the coexistence of different cultures, and interaction and contact between them, that promotes the development and progress of humankind. Different cultures should not discriminate against one another, exclude the other or treat them with hostility. They should act with mutual respect, study one another for mutual benefit, learn from one another’s strengths, thereby advancing the harmonious development of human culture.
The inequality of the international news and information order, its lack of freedom and fairness, is now impelling a number of victimized nations to strengthen their capacity for projecting information internationally (国际传播能力). This has become a matter of necessity. Another result of this has been a loss of credibility and influence among some Western media. Respect for facts and the truth is the basis of all dialogue. If even the facts can be twisted in order to blacken, distort and demonize a nation, and the most basic honesty and sincerity is lost, then the only way we can deal with them is to say: “Ignore them!”
Modern China’s relationship with the world has undergone historic changes. And China’s fate and future are closely tied to the fate of the world. We propose the creation of a free and fair international news and information order. We know this will not be easy. But we are confident that in step with economic globalization and a multi-polar world, in step with a developing rational consensus about the common fate of humanity, the international order in the areas of the economy, politics, culture and information must continue to develop in a more just and reasonable direction.

[Posted by David Bandurski, August 24, 2009, 5:35pm]

By Qian Gang — Environmental tragedies are being replayed over and over again in China these days. According to an official at China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, major environmental accidents have occurred in China at a rate of one every two days ever since the Songhua River Incident of 2005, when an explosion at a chemical factory in northern China sent 100 tons of toxic benzene and nitrobenzene into the nearby Songhua River.
This month alone, we have had arsenic pollution in Jiangsu’s Pizhou city, a cadmium spill in the city of Liuyang in Hunan province, and a mass lead poisoning in the city of Fengxiang in Shaanxi province. [More coverage from Xinhua News Agency here].

[ABOVE: Party media “take the initiative” in news reporting. Photo by Grant Neufeld available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]

A recent study found that children in two villages close to the Changqing Industrial District in Fengxiang suffered extremely high levels of lead contamination. Of 1,016 children under 14 tested in the county, 815 were found to have high levels of lead in their blood streams. The source of the contamination, Dongling Metal Smelting, has now been shut down, and tens of millions of yuan worth of equipment scrapped as unsafe.
The Commercial Media Step in First
But how did the Fengxiang lead poisoning case come to the attention of the public in the first place?
The story began when villagers reached a local metro newspaper, Sanqin Metropolitan Daily (三秦都市报), with their complaints. The paper published the first report on August 6.
Sanqin Metropolitan Daily is a newspaper belonging to Shaanxi Daily, the province’s official party newspaper. We can think of Shaanxi Daily as the “mother paper” (or “big paper,” 大报), and of Sanqin Metropolitan Daily as the “child paper” (or “little paper”, 小报).
While the “mother paper” relies almost entirely on subscriptions at public expense, mostly from government departments and state-owned enterprises, the “child” has to carve out an existence in the marketplace. It has to sell from the newsstand and draw advertising revenues. And while the “mother paper” is primarily a propaganda tool, a “mouthpiece” in the traditional sense, the “child” must accommodate the demands of the media consumer. This is the state of affairs as it has developed in China’s newspaper industry over the past ten years.
The small report in Sanqin Metropolitan Daily about the problems in Fengxiang was printed on page 8. In the days before the Internet in China, a report like this would not have been distributed widely and could not draw widespread attention. But these are different times. On August 6, the Web portal Netease, which has a broad reach, ran the story on its news page, and other portals followed suit, including Sina, QQ and Sohu.
All of these are commercial websites, the companies behind them listed on various stock exchanges. These sites are expressly prohibited from running their own news operations, but when combined with the commercial newspapers, the result can be powerful. Together, these websites and the “child papers” have opened up a crucial channel for the dissemination of important hard news in China.
As you might imagine, authorities in Shaanxi were not happy with the reports about lead poisoning in Fengxiang. This becomes clear when you observe the cold silence at the official Shaanxi Daily. It was not until nine days after the tragedy became known that the paper issued its first news item about lead contamination in Fengxiang. And this coverage was the direct result of pressure exerted by high-level party media – notably, Xinhua Online. Xinhua Online, in fact, was extremely active in reporting on the Fengxiang case.
How Xinhua Online took charge of Fengxiang reports
I’ve made the point before that some of our friends outside China often see China’s media in very simplistic terms. They might suppose, for example, that negative news cannot be reported at all in China. Or that party media are propaganda tools that would never dare to expose ugly facts. But what we have seen in the Fengxiang case is that high-level party media have been the fiercest, both in revealing facts in the case and in offering shrill criticism. They have, in other words, taken the lead (掌握了主导权) .
Xinhua Online ran its first report on the Fengxiang case on August 7, the day after the Sanqin Metropolitan Daily report. From August 12 to 20, Xinhua News Agency reporters Chen Gang (陈钢) and Liu Tonglian (刘彤连) filed 13 reports. When re-postings of these Xinhua reports on various websites are figured together, this amounts to 358 reports. According to statistics from China’s Baidu search engine, there were a total of 3,210 articles on the so-called “blood lead incident” (血铅事件) in Fengxiang.
Of these, the most important reports included, “An investigation into the Fengxiang ‘lead poisoning’ incident” (陕西凤翔“血铅”事件调查) on August 14, the editorial, “All the facts still unknown in the ‘lead poisoning incident’” (“血铅事件”真相远没有大白于天下) of August 16, and an investigative report on August 18 called, “If pollution standards were met, how is it that people were still poisoned with lead?” (排污达标了，咋还让人铅中毒). All of these stories went aggressively after the companies involved and the local government. And yet, strangely, through all of this, those media like Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily that were once so outspoken on such stories remained silent, shrinking in the cold.
Press supervision, which in China is called “supervision by public opinion,” or yulun jiandu (舆论监督), often happens in this sort of top-down fashion. In the Fengxiang case, local leaders were placed in the awkward position of being monitored by central party media. If you compare coverage from the Shaanxi Channel of Xinhua Online with coverage from Shaanxi’s official website, CN West (西部网), the differences are obvious. While Xinhua Online describes the Fengxiang incident in the darkest of terms, CN West downplays the situation.
This is yet a further sign that China has now entered the era of what we have called Control 2.0 (新闻管制升级版). Not long after the Sichuan earthquake struck in May 2008, President Hu Jintao articulated his new press policy, which demanded party media, particularly central-level party Internet media, strengthen what he called “public opinion channeling” (舆论引导), taking the initiative in news reporting and controlling the power of discourse. Chinese media are referring to this as “grabbing the megaphone” (抢喇叭).
Under this new strategy, authorities exercise strict control over commercial media. They employ bans that “limit cross-regional reporting,” effectively shutting down investigative reports. They prioritize reviews of editorials at major newspapers. All of this works to bog down media. In contrast, party media, and particularly central-level party media are afforded privileges, and this means they are the first to get to many of the most important stories. This includes top-down monitoring within the system. But on Hu Jintao’s watch, entrenched local power and special power interest groups have strengthened, and press supervision has become increasingly difficult.
A cheerleader becomes a monitor?
Looking carefully at the reports you can see that Xinhua Online focuses its attention first and foremost on the source of the pollution – the private Dongling Metal Smelting. As for the government, which also bears responsibility, it brandishes a knife but goes easy.
When I searched further, I was shocked to find also that prior to the Fengxiang tragedy, Xinhua Online was an enthusiastic cheerleader of the county. The Shaanxi Channel of Xinhua Online set up special pages for the local government. These pages were stacked full of praise, with nary a word of criticism or supervision. The Xinhua Online news page for Fengxiang also praised the local government for its generous and respectful policies toward businesses. On the very day that Sanqin Metropolitan Daily broke news of the lead contamination, Xinhua Online ran a story praising the Changqing Industrial Zone, the source of the pollution, as “a great engine of economic development.”
This is the state of China’s official media today: they must do as the master says, whether that means blowing praise or striking out to kill. There are journalists within the official media who can be driven by a sense of justice, and when they strike out to kill they may earn the praise of the people. But in a larger sense, China’s official party media, which are controlled and directed by ideology and high-level politics, cannot win true credibility.
[Posted by David Bandurski, August 21, 12:59am]

By David Bandurski — Ever since President Hu Jintao’s speech on June 20, 2008, about the need to “actively set the agenda,” officials across China have set to work finding new and creative ways to massage public opinion. We’ve offered plenty of analysis and commentary on Hu’s new approach to news and propaganda, so we’ll spare readers the jabber and cut straight to the materials.
Below is a piece published in a recent issue of China Press Journal (中华新闻报), a publication of the All-China Journalist’s Association. The article was reposted at Nanfang Daily, the online China Journalism Review and other places on August 13.
In language typical of the thinking we’ve seen recently, the article talks about public opinion in terms of “crisis.”
This is in fact an apt characterization, as a lack of real transparency and responsiveness at government institutions and the crisis of credibility facing China’s media has meant that public opinion often emerges irrationally and explosively (on the Internet or on the streets). Precisely because, to reiterate the point, state controls limit rational channels.
Is it so surprising that Chinese officials are obsessed with putting out fires? After all, preventing them would require a more serious project of political reform, beginning with an expansion of media freedoms.

[ABOVE: Is this what public opinion looks like to a CCP official? Photo by vissago available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]

A full translation of the China Press Journal piece follows:

How Public Prosecutors Can Neutralize Online Opinion Crises (检察机关如何化解网络舆情危机)
August 13, 2009
What is online public opinion? Online public opinion refers to the views, beliefs, attitudes or emotions expressed by the masses of Web users concerning various social (either real or virtual) problems and phenomena. An “opinion crisis” involves rather deep and broad opinion on an especially provocative event, in which a substantial volume of information in a short period of time . . . If the side attacked cannot correctly address it, this “crisis” might, instantly or very quickly, become a mass incident involving conflict of opinions and perhaps conflict of real actions.
Online public opinion crises involving public prosecutors refer to “public opinion crises” concerning the work and team building efforts of prosecuting offices that emerge and are disseminated on the Internet and have already, or might quickly, have a baneful influence on the work and image of public prosecutors. The nature of the Web dictates the breadth and influence [of such crises].
The characteristics of online public opinion crises involving public prosecutors are: 1. suddenness, 2. destructiveness, and 3. urgency. Up to now, public prosecutors in China have been relatively weak in dealing with online public opinion crises. Essentially, there are four issues involved:
1. Our systems for handling public opinion crises are not sufficiently strong, and we cannot deal with crises promptly; 2. [We] are not good at dealing with the media and lack knowledge of crises and the tools and experience to deal with online opinion crises; 3. [We] are behind in our assessment and analysis of public opinion, leading to passivity in the handling of crises and events; 4. In the Internet age, many of the means of news control that were effective in the past are no longer useful, and many in fact bind our own feet and hands, creating passivity in the handling of crises by the party and the government.
In the new era, how can public prosecutors deal with online public opinion crises, seizing trends in opinion in society and enhancing their ability to channel public opinion, firmly grasping the initiative in public opinion work concerning procuratorial, judicial and public security organs? Specific strategies include:
(A) Strengthening the building of prosecution offices themselves, reducing from the roots the likelihood that online public opinion crises occur. This is the basis.
(B) What the age of the Internet results in for prosecuting authorities is an all-pervasive monitoring (无孔不入的监督). Only by rigidly enforcing the law and making the masses satisfied can the emergence of online public opinion crises be avoided.
2. Increasing understanding of public opinion among employees at public prosecution offices to create correct concepts of public opinion.
For a long time, a misunderstanding has persisted among some employees at public prosecution offices, who believe that having contact with the press is the job of the propaganda department and has nothing to do with them. Knowledge of crisis management is lacking about slow or passive response to sudden-breaking incidents. This creates a vicious cycle and results in more serious consequences.
[Offices] must have correct concepts of public opinion, that openness is preferable to obstruction, that disclosure is preferable to cover-up, that a proactive stance is preferable to a passive one, that preventing fires is preferable to putting them out. [Offices[ need to renew their thinking about public opinion crises, making every moment count in putting out news releases. They must first go online, then hit the newspapers. Get simple reports out first, then more detailed ones. [Offices] must grasp the initiative and take the lead in releasing information online.
3. Paying great attention to the influence the Internet and other media have on social stability, building and perfecting a system of assessment, analysis and early warning for online public opinion crises, and actively strengthening the control of online opinion. This means:
(A) Perceptively finding and compiling relevant information about public opinion.
(B) Correctly discriminating and screening. Ensuring the objectivity of public opinion.
(C) Carrying out tracking of [opinion] activity
(D) Scientific evaluation and analysis. To the highest degree possible, comprehensively and objectively exposing the current state of public opinion and what direction it is trending.
(E) Achieving a system of regular analysis [of public opinion]. Regularly carrying out assessment and analysis of trends in public opinion, making an appropriate analysis of the situation.
4. Formulating a detailed and studied public opinion contingency plan. A detailed and studied contingency plan would mean ensuring that when crisis strikes things can unfold in an orderly manner, enabling the highest degree of initiative. We can reference the “National Contingency Plan for Sudden Breaking Incidents (国家突发公共事件总体应急预案), which sorts crises into four levels, Level One (cataclysmic), Level Two (severe), Level Three (major), Level Four (moderate) . . .
5. Public opinion channeling, and the building of Internet commentator teams.
As mentioned previously, if there is negative news about the procuratorial, judicial and public security organs then perhaps thousands of posts from Web users will “spit saliva” (vent anger), but in many cases this will not accord with the truth. In such situations, it is important for Internet commentators to become involved. Internet commentators can employ reasonable and objective comment and explanation to defuse extreme information online, and they are extremely important in quieting online opinion crises. Creating Internet commentator teams and organizing channeling of online opinion has become a clear and present need.
6. Striving for the support of traditional media and building a press spokesperson system.
When public opinion crises occur, as the situation is not fully known and information is incomplete, this can result in rumor and speculation. [In such cases we] must substantially gain the support of traditional media, using the credibility and authority of the traditional media. While the full situation cannot be grasped in the early stages of a crisis, information should be released quickly and objectively. In this way the people’s right to know can be respected, and the negative effects of the spread of rumors and speculation can be lessened, avoiding disadvantageous public opinion guidance. Quick dissemination of information and effective management of the media also helps to mobilize activity on various fronts, creating widespread understanding, cooperation and support in the handling of a crisis.

[Posted by David Bandurski, August 17, 2009, 2:17pm]

By David Bandurski — Are China’s leaders becoming more responsive to the concerns and demands of the public? Is China, thanks to the Internet, moving toward a more “deliberative” and participatory political culture? Rebecca MacKinnon’s forthcoming work on what she is calling “cybertarianism” will no doubt address these and other related questions, and her preliminary comments are well worth a read.
We are still a long way from understanding the real effects of the Internet on public discourse in China. But first and foremost, we must not assume the Internet has been the only deliberative mechanism working in China’s controlled media environment.
China has a long tradition of journalists working within the system, controls notwithstanding, to expose social injustices and other wrongs. And there are signs that hard-nosed journalism, investigative journalism carried out under the banner of “supervision by public opinion” — or Chinese watchdog journalism — has been under threat on several fronts during the past few years.
Can blogs and online forums pick up the slack?

[ABOVE: Chinese President Hu Jintao chats online with Web users for the first time on June 20, 2008, as propaganda chief Liu Yunshan (far left) looks on with furrowed brow.]

Another critical question is to what degree some of the apparent signs of greater “deliberation” are in fact more aggressive, grandstanding attempts by the leadership to massage public opinion — while traditional controls, we must remember, are perhaps stronger than ever.
How excited should we be about Hu Jintao’s online conversation with “web friends”? [Chinese transcript of conversation here].
This is where all of our chatter about what we have called “Control 2.0” intersects with the discussion of “cybertarianism,” “deliberative authoritarianism,” whatever you wish to call it.
We have only to look at the party’s own discourse on news and propaganda policy to understand that the CCP is interested in harnessing the power of the Internet, not unleashing it.
A few interesting articles have emerged from Chongqing this month about how the CCP can become more effective at “channeling public opinion on the Internet.”
Chongqing’s deputy propaganda chief, Zhou Bo (周波), published an article in the official Chongqing Daily earlier this month called “Leaders and Cadres Must Continually Strengthen Internet Public Opinion Channeling Capacity.” The piece argued that the Internet has transformed “the structure of public opinion channeling.” Leaders, said Zhou, must appreciate the new and growing role of the Internet and “move away from misunderstandings about the Web.”
Typical Hu Jintao “use the Web” kind of stuff, right? It doesn’t really sound that bad. Zhou seems to be saying that party leaders should not fear the Internet and should not react to it irrationally. He is advocating a change of attitude, and that’s probably a good thing if you’re looking for reasons to feel encouraged.
But while Zhou’s article talks about the Internet as “an important agent for promoting the building of democracy in our country,” “an aggregation platform through which people can vent their emotions and voice their demands” and “a new point of economic growth” (a profit-making industry in its own right, in other words), he also views the Internet in dangerous and aggressive terms as “a key strategic position as we battle our enemies for public opinion.”
“We” refers here to the leadership of the CCP, of course. So while the Internet is core to China’s continued development, and is itself an important part of the economy, it must be conquered and held against — who else? — those nasty “hostile forces” that would seek to divide China against itself.
This is fundamentally about preserving the leadership of the party, not about opening it up to questioning.
The argument is a strange compound of old impulses and new thinking. But as I’ve written elsewhere, it basically boils down to the fact that the CCP has finally embraced the Internet — and it is not letting go.
Lest we forget that control is the overarching priority, Zhou Bo’s piece emphasizes that the Internet is now the focus of propaganda work, which seeks to ensure “correct guidance of public opinion.”
Another interesting and related story to come out of Chongqing earlier this month was news that one of the municipality’s districts, Nanchuan (南川), has issued a policy requiring district-level leaders (or specially designated representatives in case important business takes leaders away) to participate in an online interview program on the last Monday of each month.
The district document, “Provisional Proposal for Nanchuan Online ‘Internet Discussion’ Work”, mandates the creation of this monthly program at the local government news website, Nanchuan Online (南川在线). Through the program, the document says, leaders will “listen to the voices of Web friends, all working together for the betterment of Nanchuan,” and they will field questions about problems and issues of concern to the masses.
That sounds like an entertaining exercise, certainly. And perhaps residents can feel they’re getting all chummy with district planning officials, for example. But what happens when someone asks a probing question like, “Could you tell me, Sir, why land was requisitioned in our district without providing residents with adequate compensation?”
Have a peek at the link directly above and you’ll see how real my hypothetical question probably is. I simply made an educated guess as to what kind of grievances people in the district might have. I plugged “Nanchuan” and “requisition” into a search engine and presto — alleged protests and police beatings over property seizures. Was I lucky? Or are such problems endemic? Do local officials really need “web friends” to point these problems out?
Experience shows that local officials are far more adept at looking out for themselves than they are at monitoring their own behavior. So what level of responsiveness can local people expect from the gracious party leaders of Nanchuan?
Nevertheless, the “Nanchuan Model” has begun to receive some attention outside Nanchuan as a bold new idea to be applied to the work of “enhancing public opinion channeling.”
Writing at Chongqing News Net on August 4, Liang Jiangping (梁江平) said that the “Nanchuan Model” offered a good example of how the drive to “enhance public opinion channeling” can be furthered by seeking “systematic and regularized” mechanisms.
“I believe the ‘Nanchuan Model’ has definite merit as a example, and it deserves emulation elsewhere,” he wrote.
The piece was re-posted on the Website of Shanghai’s Xinmin Evening News, so perhaps the idea will begin to take root.
Disgruntled citizens, start working on those lists of questions.
[Posted by David Bandurski, August 13, 2009, 2:00pm HK]