By Ying Chan — President Obama’s town hall meeting with students in Shanghai was a highlight of his China trip. But more telling was the information war waged by the U.S. and the Chinese behind the scenes. Both sides tried to score points but both failed to win. In the end, it was technology that scored a small victory, offering a glimmer of hope for media openness in China.
The first salvo of the war was launched by the U.S. side on the eve of Obama’s arrival, when the US embassy invited a dozen noted bloggers from around China for a briefing about the visit. The unprecedented move immediately heightened vigilance on the Chinese side.

[ABOVE: Screenshot from The White House Blog discussing Obama’s “town hall” with Chinese students in Shanghai.]

Then there was the bargain over the town hall meeting that the Obama team had wanted so badly. Negotiations over details of the meeting continued, down to the last hour. The U.S. team pushed for live television broadcast that would carry Obama’s face and words into the homes of the 1.3 billion people in China, where 97 percent of homes have TV. The Chinese side would not budge and decided that the meeting would be carried by Shanghai television to be aired in the city only. Xinhua.net, the online arm of China’s state news agency, would also “broadcast the meeting live.” That was the limit of how far the Chinese would go.
The Americans were not about to give up. They turned to the Internet which was then becoming a weapon in the media war. The White House hired ConnectSolutions, a California-based company, to stream live the Shanghai meeting on its own website. The CoNx team also unveiled a chat room, calling on all Chinese to submit questions for Obama on the occasion of his China visit. [Link to White House Live page.]
In the chat room, the anger over the censorship of the Internet in China was palpable. CoNx reported that “over 75 percent of the roughly 7,000 Chinese who submitted questions in the chat room cited internet censorship as their greatest concern.” Some compared the “Great Firewall of China” with the Berlin Wall, citing the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Wall. One of the questions submitted later became the famous Twitter question that reverberated from Shanghai to the United States.
Not be outdone, Xinhua started soliciting questions and received several thousand questions by the closing of the poll. Not one question asked about Internet censorship, according to Xinhua.
Amidst the wrangling, the meeting went forward. But unlike previous visits by former presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, the meeting was not held on university campuses where presidential visits would attract crowds and gawkers. Instead, it was held at the Shanghai Museum of Science and Technology, located in Pudong, opposite Shanghai’s city center across the river. Students from eight universities were bused in. The area around the museum was cordoned off from the public. The museum itself was closed to visitors for two days ahead of the Presidential visit.
Further disappointments followed. As the town hall meeting started rolling, no video streaming showed up at Xinhua.net, only transcripts. Savvy Internet users had to turn to the White House website, where high definition video was served. In Beijing, the U.S. officials hosted viewing meetings for students and guests. “Many thousands more young (and not so young) people throughout China attended the event virtually in classrooms, coffee houses, living rooms, and at ‘watch parties’ organized by the U.S. Embassy and Consulates,” according to The White House Blog.
Meanwhile, the dueling continued inside the meeting hall. As the students were asking mostly soft questions, the Obama team advanced in an attempt to crack the Chinese information blockade. At Obama’s invitation, U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman fielded the President the now famous question on Internet freedom “on behalf of Chinese netizens.” With the easy serve, Obama got the opportunity to deliver a mini-lecture on the need for openness on the Internet. The maneuver broke through the Chinese defense line and became headlines for the Western media that next day. The answer also helped Obama address his liberal constituency back home who has been egging him on to play tough with China on human rights issues.
Even though Xinhua made claims of broadcasting the event in a “global exclusive,” CNN, Bloomberg and many other non-Chinese television stations managed to air the event live, using pool feeds from the Associated Press. Bloomberg did a decent job with a live cablecast. CNN was disappointing. Instead of letting Obama talk, Ed Henry, CNN’s White House correspondent who was traveling with the president, interjected often with his own remarks on camera. The worst came when CNN cut away to Henry when Obama addressed the Internet issue, his proudest moment of the show. On the Internet, angry bloggers threw curses and profanities.
In the meeting’s aftermath, the White House bragged that the town hall event was an “historic” public dialogue. That was true in a perverse way. Among all previous U.S. presidents’ meeting with Chinese students, the Obama one was the most controlled and managed. From the encounter, a few lessons could be learned.
First, Chinese authorities can maintain a high level of control using traditional means. Every aspect of the town hall meeting was scripted and managed, from choice of the meeting venue, the drilling of participants, to the questions asked.
Secondly, in spite of the tight control, cracks are showing. As a foreign government, the U.S. showed how it could challenge Chinese control of the Internet by serving as an information distributor. For the first time, the White House collected Chinese public opinion on Chinese soil and distributed information, in text and video form, throughout China.
Thirdly: China’s vibrant community of bloggers is challenging the government’s highhandedness. Twitter was blocked in China, but bloggers were sharing information online about the Obama visit, and tweeting real time throughout the town hall meeting. Challenge to the Internet censorship will grow.
Finally, the hundreds of Shanghai students at the town hall meeting were the biggest losers. They were ridiculed for lack of energy, poor English and asking softball questions to pander to Obama. “They talked according to formulae, first greeting or paying respect (to Obama), followed by self-introduction and then the question” said a blogger. But it was not the students’ fault that they were treated as stage sets. Adults have to take the blame for programming the young minds.
But there’s a glimmer of hope, the ubiquitous Internet has rendered society more transparent and all government must become more transparent. There is no turning back.
FURTHER READING:
“Obama Wades Into Internet Censorship in China Address,” By Helene Cooper and David Barboza, The New York Times, November 17, 2009
“Barack Obama Meets Shanghai Students in China,” By Tania Branigan, The Guardian, November 16, 2009
“Chinese students, netizens and shops welcome Obama to Shanghai,” By Jean Yung, LA Times, November 15, 2009

By David Bandurski — Today, just over one week after Guangdong’s Southern Weekend published the results of an independent report by activist lawyer Zhou Ze (周泽) on rising violence against journalists in China, news comes of the vicious beating of a senior editor in the northern province of Hebei.
Le Qian (乐倩), deputy editor-in-chief of Hebei Youth Daily and a former editor at Beijing Youth Daily, was reportedly waiting for the elevator at her apartment complex in Shijiazhuang Saturday night when an unknown male assailed her from behind with a brick.

[ABOVE: Screenshot of coverage at Sichuan’s Huaxi Metropolis Daily of an attack on Hebei Youth Daily deputy editor-in-chief Le Qian. Photo is of Le receiving treatment in a Shijiazhuang hospital.]

Le, who is now in the hospital recovering, told reporters from her own newspaper that her assailant said, “This is for your report!” again and again as he struck her head and face. She believes the attack was in response to watchdog journalism (舆论监督) carried out by the paper.
Hebei Youth Daily also reported today that it received a threatening phone call on November 7, in which a woman said higher-ups at the paper would be held to account for an investigative report it had done.
[Posted by David Bandurski, November 23, 2009, 1:39pm HK]

By Qian Gang — For more than a month now, rumors have flown back and forth about the problems facing Caijing magazine and its editor-in-chief, Hu Shuli (胡舒立), a former CMP fellow. Hu formally announced her resignation earlier this week. She will take up a position as head of the School of Communication and Design at Guangzhou’s Sun Yat-Sen University, and also work on her options for the launching of a new publication.
Caijing has long stood out as one of China’s finest professional publications, and troubles there have drawn attention from many quarters.
As could perhaps be expected, media outside China have leapt directly to speculation about the political factors behind Caijing‘s troubles. Some have positioned this as yet another story about a media crackdown in China.
But things are not so simple.
Anyone who has observed the ups and downs of Chinese media over the past decade will recognize that Caijing‘s troubles are very different in nature from explicit official moves in the past against such publications as Southern Weekend, Southern Metropolis Daily, and Freezing Point.
Based on what we know thus far, the Caijing affair arose primarily out of a row over ownership and interests between the editorial team led by Hu Shuli and the magazine’s bosses at the HK-listed SEEC Media, led by Wang Boming.
Beyond that, we are far from knowing the full story behind the upheaval at Caijing. But we can safely suppose – this is China, after all – that the story is a complicated knot of factors. It is about politics, yes. But it is also about profit, about dollars and cents. And further, it is about varying visions of how media reform in China should proceed.
For many Chinese journalists, this turn in Caijing‘s saga is cause for great emotion and agitation.
One observer wrote of the danger that the professional ideal and spirit in the media might “vanish into thin air.” China.com.cn, a website operated by the State Council Information Office, ran a special feature page about the story and tagged on a major headline that read: “Caijing is already without Hu Shuli.”

[ABOVE: Special page at China.com.cn aggregates content on Hu Shuli and Caijing.]

It is important to note that Hu Shuli’s departure from Caijing is not just a topic of conversation, but a topic of coverage too. The major points emerging from these discussions and comments are that people in China’s media industry generally have immense respect for Hu Shuli and what she represents, and that they are, at the same time, very concerned about the fate of journalism in China.
“To say people are deeply concerned about Hu Shuli prospects and those of Caijing is not so to the point as to say they are worried about whether [Chinese media] will make it through this thorny stretch of the path,” wrote blogger Chen Jibing (陈季冰), a former editor at Shanghai’s Oriental Daily.
By “thorny stretch of the path” Chen was referring, of course, to the present climate facing Chinese media and professional journalism in China – and this characterization is certainly more than fair.
Hu Shuli and Caijing traveled along this “thorny path” together for 11 years. As an editor, she held fiercely to the ideals of freedom of the press and journalistic professionalism.
From the earliest stages of Caijing‘s launch, she was crystal clear and steadfast about the need to produce independent news and conform with international journalism practices. She used the words “independent, exclusive and original” (独立、独家、独到) to encompass the magazine’s editorial goals.
Hu Shuli was fond of drawing analogies between the needs of the market and the importance of professional media. “Nothing can override the principles of ‘openness, fairness and equitability’ in the market,” she would say. “And of these three, openness has the first place. The public’s right to know and the media’s right to criticize offer the only guarantee of openness.”
Upholding these ideals, Caijing engaged in serious investigative reporting. The magazine courageously exposed corruption, challenged power and parsed the existing economic and political environment, becoming in the process one of China’s most trusted media.
News reports about the upheaval at Caijing, whether from party media or commercial media, have uniformly expressed enormous respect for Hu Shuli.
An article in the official Changjiang Daily (长江日报), “Ten Years of Hu Shuli’s Leadership at Caijing Re-defined the Image of Chinese Media,” spoke of the powerful example Hu’s magazine had set for the rest of China’s media.

With Hu Shuli’s departure, Caijing has no choice but to face “life after Hu Shuli.” Hu Shuli’s next step is a matter for her alone to decide, but the professional character and quality evinced by Caijing under her leadership over the past ten years, the intelligence and courage . . . should become resources from which all Chinese media draw lessons.

This article was also re-posted at People’s Daily Online.
For all the reasons cited in the Changjiang Daily editorial, Hu Shuli can be seen as a representative and role model for media reform in China.
Over the past 30 years, Chinese media have limped, slowly if not surely, toward the marketplace, and from a culture of overbearing control to one of greater diversity and openness. In this process, different media have chosen different paths.
Some media have fought bravely for freedom but had less success in the marketplace. Others have successfully entered the marketplace but remained narrow commercial ventures, interested only in leveraging political power for profit. Caijing was a rare example of a publication that had managed to achieve success in the marketplace while upholding its own ideal of independence.
Caijing’s market success was quite formidable, in fact. The magazine reportedly earned more than 60 million yuan in 2008. And Caijing Online, a separate business venture, was shaping up as a pioneering effort to combine the strengths of new and traditional media.
Most important of all, Caijing never restricted itself to a narrow field of financial reporting. It operated editorially with a larger sense of social responsibility, and it keenly observed public policy issues.
Hu Shuli has been a visiting fellow at the China Media Project, and a regular visitor to the Journalism & Media Studies Centre here at the University of Hong Kong.
In March last year Hu delivered a public lecture here in which, in retrospect, she glimpsed the events that would shake Caijing this year. “Whether it’s Caijing or Caijing Online, or Chinese media as a whole, all now face enormous challenges,” she told the audience. “These challenges arise from government controls and from commercial interests. There are a whole range of core problems and issues involved here. I have no doubt that independent media will be one of the most hopeful forces of China’s future. For now, however, media can only face the present.”
Hu Shuli and much of her editorial team have now left Caijing. Naturally, this has brought a fierce round of speculation. What will become of Hu Shuli without Caijing? What will become of Caijing without Hu Shuli?
That this lovely pair has been separated is certainly cause for remorse. But as for anxiety, I think people should be more in suspense about the fate of Caijing without Hu Shuli. We can look forward with confidence and anticipation to Hu Shuli without Caijing.
We hear that in the final days, Hu Shuli’s editorial team at Caijing kept their cool and went about their business producing the best issue they possibly could. Their coolness and precision are a reflection of confidence and ability, of their high level of professionalism.
We should not regard this as yet another “violent sacrifice” (壮烈牺牲), or necessarily as a solemn goodbye.
This marks a new chapter in the saga of change in China’s media. As we raise our heads, we see that “thorny stretch of path.” But I am confident that if we push on ahead, our feet will find the open road.
[Posted by David Bandurski, November 13, 2009, 1:54pm HK]

By David Bandurski — In China, the term “soft power” (软实力), coined by political scientist Joseph Nye in the late 1980s, took some time to gain traction. But since emerging in official party newspapers in late 2001, the idea — and the project — of “soft power” has become something of an obsession. This is true not only in the field of international relations but in the arena of journalism and mass communications as well.
The first use of “soft power” in China’s official party media came on November 15, 2001, in Guangming Daily, a newspaper published by the Central Propaganda Department.
The article in question celebrated China’s successful bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games, and concluded:

In sum, the true nature of the “humanistic Olympics” [a term China used during its bid] is, while emphasizing the “hard power” of our country, to place a stronger emphasis on improving and raising our nation’s “soft power” . . .

Since that early use of “soft power” the term has had a much more prominent place in mainland news coverage. Here are what the numbers looked like through the end of last year:

[ABOVE: Appearance by article of the term “soft power” in mainland print publications 1998-2008. Source: WiseNews.]

“Soft power” development now seems to be an area of particular interest for communications scholars in China. As well it should be. China’s leaders are now talking seriously about the need to raise the voice of Chinese news media internationally as part of a kind of centralized “soft power” strategy.
They are staking big money on this strategy as well (a boon possibly for strategic thinkers from China’s journalism schools), all of it focused on central party media that can be trusted to mind their propaganda P’s and Q’s. “China’s voice,” after all, is a matter of strategic national importance. And China’s only legitimate voice, from the standpoint of the CCP, is the party’s.
When China’s top propaganda leader, politburo member Li Changchun (李长春), delivered a speech on the occasion of Journalist’s Day on November 8, he placed heavy emphasis on the need for news media to “coordinate overall national interests on both the domestic and international fronts” (统筹国内国际两个大局).
This signaled the further maturation of the party’s new thinking on its media policy for the era of digital global communications, for what we have called Control 2.0.
Gone is the old way of thinking strategically about communications and their control, in which the domestic and international spheres could be conveniently compartmentalized. In the era of globalized communications, the “external,” or duiwai (对外) has a potentially profound effect on the “internal,” or duinei (对内).
The CCP’s old information worldview might have looked something like this:

It might now look something more like this . . .

. . . in which China’s internal communications concerns — so crucial to its concerns about stability and national security — are inextricably linked with its external communications concerns and strategies.
As Zheng Baowei (郑保卫), a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Renmin University of China and director of the university’s Research Center of Journalism and Social Development, argues in a recent piece of official scholarship published in CCP media journal China Journalist:

Experience shows that now the relationship between externally directed and internally directed communications, domestic and international communications, are reciprocal and mutually influential in nature. We truly have a situation in which “I am in you, and you are in me” (你中有我，我中有你), in which domestic problems can very easily bring an international reaction, and international problems can very easily have an effect domestically . . .

Professor Zheng also writes about a “butterfly effect” (蝴蝶效应) in global communications and public opinion, in which “the flutter of a butterfly’s wings in the Atlantic can potentially create a seismic wave in the Pacific.”
The news and communications aspect of China’s global “soft power” push is an important strategic attempt to grapple with the domestic and international challenges emerging in the age of globalized information.
China’s media “soft power” is emerging, of course, as a centralized strategy underpinned by hard media controls at home, by the monopolization and manipulation of information.
Nye talks about “soft power” as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion and payment.” The CCP’s vision of “soft power” looks rather more like “attractive coercion.”
This is visible in Zheng’s definition of “soft power” as “[a nation’s] news transmission capacity, cultural influence and capacity to channel public opinion” (“以信息传播力、文化影响力和舆论引导力为主的’软实力'”]. The focus here is on the CCP’s “discourse power” internationally, which is of course reinforced by its domestic monopolization of media and culture.
Strategic media and communications thinkers in China understand Nye’s notion of attraction in authoritarian terms, and their primary concern is with how to make news/propaganda that serves the CCP’s objectives more attractive to global audiences.
It is about marketing and re-packaging propaganda.
This is of course why, in Zheng’s (and other’s) formulation, concepts like “objectivity” and factual reporting must work as tools serving the higher goal of fashioning a more favorable image of China overseas.
Take, for example, this darkly humorous passage on the need to report objectively and “speak the truth through facts”:

By “speaking through facts” one can . . make the audience willingly submit to and accept the ideas and opinions conveyed by the disseminator.
Journalists must learn to objectively, reliably and simply convey the facts they have seen and then imbed within these objective accounts the point they wish to explain, in order that when the audience receives the facts reported by the journalist they unknowingly accept various standpoints and viewpoints contained therein. This is the ideal to which news and communications must aspire, and it is one of the most important arts and techniques a news journalist must grasp.

China’s journalists should aspire, in other words, to think professionally and commercially about their role as propagandists.
Anyhow, it should also be pointed out that Zheng is a State Council expert under special government allowance. He is one of a number of communications scholars helping the CCP sharpen its thinking on its global information strategy. [More on the research objectives of his center here].
A more or less full translation of Zheng’s article in China Journalist follows:

“Enhancing soft power, using ‘smart power’ to effect: thoughts on our country’s present strategy for external news transmission”
China Journalist
By Zheng Baowei (郑保卫)
October 30, 2009
1. “Soft power,” “smart power” and news [or journalism] and communications
The concept of “soft power” comes from Joseph Nye, an American professor from Harvard University. He separates a country’s comprehensive national strength into “hard power” and “soft power.”
“Hard power” refers to the material conditions of a nation’s strength, including its military might, the strength of its economy and its technological prowess.
“Soft power” points to a nation’s influence in the areas of culture and ideology, including its capacity to transmit ideas and information (信息传播力), the influence of its culture, its capacity to channel [global] public opinion, and the level and capabilities it shows in its participation in international institutions.
The state and condition of a nation’s “soft power” decides and influences that country’s comprehensive strength [internationally] and has an important bearing on its existence and development.
In the news and communications sphere, the key to “soft power” competition lies in enhancing the information propagation force (信息传播力) and public opinion channeling capacity of news media, and through this means expanding the influence of news media themselves, ultimately reaching the objective of increasing the nation’s soft power.
The information propagation and public opinion channeling functions of the news media make them important methods and tools for increasing a nations “soft power.”
By reporting and commenting on the news, news media exert influence on the public and channel public opinion, which creates cohesiveness among the people, brings resolution and unity, joins forces for the building of the nation, and through these means manifests the strength and value of “soft power.”
Another concept from Joseph Nye is that of smart power. He says that a combination of soft power and hard power forms a national strategy called “smart power.” At America’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, a center called the Smart Power Commission has been established for the purpose of promoting the use of “smart power” in foreign policy planning in order to preserve America’s international image.
When Hilary Clinton was appointed Secretary of State, she moved quickly to employ this concept [of “smart power”] in the foreign policy arena. During her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as she talked about the new foreign policy thinking and direction of the Obama administration, she said that America must make effective use of “smart power” in order to strengthen its foreign relations. This “smart power” encompassed foreign relations, economic, military, political, legal, cultural and other methods. She emphasized that “smart power” must be used as a bolster and support, and that foreign relations (and not military might) would be the centerpiece of American foreign policy in the future. This means that America sees “smart power” as the guiding force of its policies overseas in the future.
According to Joseph Nye, “smart power” should be separate from the “hard power” embodied in military, economic and technological strength. And it should be separate from the “soft power” embodied in [a nation’s] news transmission capacity, cultural influence and capacity to channel public opinion. It is a special sort of power resulting from the intertwining of “soft power” and “hard power.” [NOTE: In this passage Zhang defines “soft power” in uniquely Chinese terms, as: “以信息传播力、文化影响力和舆论引导力为主的“软实力”]. In this sense, we can understand “smart power” as an aiding intelligence (借助智慧) and technique by which [a country], through various means, can effectively exhibit and expand its vested power (or hard power) and its influence (or soft power).
The key to determining whether a nation has “smart power” or not lies in whether or not it is able to use various means in order to perfectly exercise, demonstrate and develop the reserves of hard and soft power it has at its disposal.
“Smart power” is both a technique and a kind of ability and capacity. Experience shows that it is insufficient for a nation to have only “strength” (hard power) and “influence” (soft power). It must also be able to apply this strength and influence cleverly, adeptly, and at the right time and place. Only through the adept use of “smart power” can one best one’s opponents and achieve success.
“Using smart power adeptly” (善用巧实力) in the area of news and communications means being skilled at using the right knowledge and techniques, and demonstrating and voicing through the medium of news and information your nation’s strength and influence. This means, at the same time, showing and realizing the transmission capacity and public opinion channeling capacity of the news media themselves. [NOTE: The assumption in this last sentence seems to be that news media work as a function of the state, and making these media strong and influential should itself be a core national strategy.] 同时要发挥和体现出传媒自身的信息传播力和舆论引导力 . . .
The basic task of our nation’s news media as they are directed overseas (我国的对外新闻传播) is to allow the world understand China and to allow China’s voice to be conveyed to the world. In this process, the news media have the important mission of raising our nation’s soft power.
The news media can employ timely, accurate and comprehensive news reports that are at the same time vivid, visual and concrete to show the reform achievements, constructive accomplishments and history and culture of our country, as well as the thoughts and customs of our people — and through this means influence viewers overseas.
Aside from this, the news media can use our country’s efforts to achieve economic growth and cultural progress, its efforts to fight poverty, achieve sustainable growth, to create a harmonious society and to thoroughly build a well-off society — and they can use our country’s honest, friendly and responsible attitude toward the international community and its concern about world piece and development . . . to win the trust and approval of international society, creating a favorable national image of China and enhancing China’s international influence.
When the international community is in the midst of quarrel or conflict, particularly when there are dramatic changes in international affairs, the news media can use the means of news and public opinion to emit China’s voice, to make clear China’s position, point of view and value judgements, and as much as possible to earn approval for these points of view and opinions by international public opinion.
In recent years, as the international position of our nation has been raised and interaction with the outside world has grown, the world has paid much more attention to China. People of many nations wish to better understand China’s principles, viewpoints and policies concerning major international issues. They want to understand China’s major decisions and changes in the areas of politics, the economy, military affairs, foreign policy, technology and culture. They want to understand China’s vast territory, its ancient history and resplendent culture. They want to understand the lives, thoughts and customs of China’s rich and varied population. Taking this content is transmitting to overseas audiences in a timely, accurate and comprehensive manner is the important task of overseas directed news and information in our country.
2. Enhancing the soft power and smart power of our nation’s news media in overseas directed communications
It is the author’s view that in order to strengthen soft power and adeptly use smart power, the following strategies and methods must be adopted by our nation in the area of overseas directed news and information.
1. Coordination of our overall national interests on both the domestic and international fronts
Hu Jintao said in his speech during the visit to People’s Daily last year that: “Along with changes in the international situation, along with the steady expansion of our nation’s opening to the outside world, China is more and more intimately connected with the world. In order to accomplish the work of the party and the nation we must coordinate our overall national interests on both the domestic and international fronts (必须统筹国内国际两个大局). In running the newspapers [or media] our comrades must also coordinate our overall national interests on both the domestic and international fronts. I hope our comrades maintain solid footing at home as they turn to the world, steadily raising the quality and effectiveness of People’s Daily‘s international news reports.”
This [statement] arises out of a macro-strategic consideration for the coordination of our overall national interests on both the domestic and international fronts, and emphasizes that news work must also coordinate domestic and international aspects . . .
As new technologies have emerged of late, particularly the emergence of the internet and other new media, these have broken through the original temporal and spacial limitations of information exchange and cultural dialogue. They have also broken through the original regional barriers and political barriers on news, information and public opinion, causing news, information and public opinion to develop in the direction of globalization.
Any particular regional public opinion flashpoint can by means of new communication technologies be quickly conveyed to other regions in the world, which means the influence of public opinion has been internationalized (舆论影响的国际化). This is very much like the “butterfly effect” (蝴蝶效应) talked about in communications studies — the flutter of a butterfly’s wings in the Atlantic can potentially create a seismic wave in the Pacific.
Given such a situation, contact and interconnectedness between various nations economically, culturally and politically is growing closer by the day. The mutual influence and interpenetration of ideas and culture, ideologies and value systems has grown ever deeper. It has become easier and easier for people to become influenced by the cultural ideas and ideologies lurking behind news and information, and this has brought a diversification of the patterns of public opinion in society. Moreover, the public opinion environment in society has grown more complex. Therefore, from the standpoint of the nation, news and information and public opinion are no longer independent and unidirectional, but are rather, to some extent, whether directly or indirectly, influenced by external information and international public opinion.
In this sort of information environment and public opinion environment, the news media’s discourse power (话语权) in the area of externally directed news and information and its capacity to regulate public opinion (舆论调控能力) concern not just the information security (信息安全) of the nation but also have a profound impact on the national dignity and self-confidence of the domestic population.
This [state of affairs] demands that externally directed news and information is timely and effective in responding to various important information, public sentiments and public opinion both domestically and internationally, in an effort to channel them. As much as possible, [our state media] must seize the discourse power (掌握 … 话语权) for externally directed and international communications, expressing our nation’s voice in news reports on major international events.
Amidst these modern trends of political multipolarity, economic integration and the globalization of information and communications, our nation must strengthen links and exchanges with the rest of the world, obtaining the optimal external environment for the building of a favorable national image.
The requires that the news media in our country actively grab the discourse power in externally directed and international news and information, and that they be adept at employing the most superb news and communication techniques and arts of public opinion channeling (舆论引导艺术) in order to positively, actively and effectively (积极/主动/有效) influence international public opinion, preserving the national interest and raising national influence.
Experience shows that now the relationship between externally directed and internally directed communications, domestic and international communications, are reciprocal and mutually influential in nature. We truly have a situation in which “I am in you, and you are in me” (你中有我，我中有你), in which domestic problems can very easily bring an international reaction, and international problems can very easily have an effect domestically . . .
2. Grasping the mood and demands of overseas audiences
“People oriented” (以人为本) is a new government concept introduced at the 16th National Congress [in 2002], and its core idea is that all work must consider the “human” factor, that we must take the “human” as the starting point and center of all work.
In news work the objective of “people orientation” is about the need to be “audience oriented,” taking the interests and demands of the audience as the starting point and end goal. The most basic standard and demand testing the results of news and communications is whether the audience accepts it or not, welcomes it or not, is satisfied or not.
Externally directed news and communications must have a thorough respect for the audience’s psychology of reading and accepted habits. All news content selection must be grounded in the interests and demands of overseas audiences.
To this end, we must strengthen research into overseas audiences, seeking to truly understand what information they would like to know and how kind of help they wish to receive; what they like and don’t like; what they are interested in and not interested in. And relying on this [knowledge] we must organize news reports, providing various necessary services.
Owing to cultural gaps, and differences in ideology and value systems, as well as differences in media concepts and habits, overseas audiences will have special demands toward our news and communications. If we cannot transmit clearly oriented content according to the interests and demands of overseas audiences, then naturally we will be avoided and excluded by them and will find it difficult to achieve our goals and results in news communication.
Therefore, overseas directed news communication must thoroughly consider the interests and real demands of overseas audiences. We must be adept at using factual reports that are concrete, visual, animated and lively, and that overseas audiences can enjoy, in order to achieve our communication objectives. As much as possible, we need to provide in a truthful, comprehensive, timely and active manner the information they hope to obtain about various aspects of China, not binding ourselves hand and foot by artificially creating “forbidden zones.”
Experience shows that in the context of globalized information exchange and the internet, artificial blocks on the transmission of content and delays in news reporting serve only to place one in a defensive position.
3. Openness of information must be timely, thorough, transparent and effective
When major and/or sudden-breaking incidents occurred in China in the past, particularly incidents concerning sensitive internal issues, our nation’s news media would respond slowly and hesitantly, and during this process of vacillation would lose the active advantage. In some cases, in consideration of various concerns, we would resort to outright suppression [of the story], presenting the active advantage to others in information release and public opinion channeling. There have been numerous cases in point. [NOTE: The handling of unrest in Tibet in 2008 would here be seen as a classic case of what the author is referring to. And low and behold, the Tibet example follows right on below.]
In the case of the “March 14 Incident” in Lhasa [Tibet] last year, delays and lack of information transparency by our nation’s news media — [NOTE: As a result, naturally, of propaganda controls] — generated the passive posture that followed. In contrast, during this year’s “July 5 Incident” in Urumqi [Xinjiang] our nation’s news media issued reports within hours. The response was rapid, the reports timely, information transparent, and in this way we achieved the active advantage and won a favorable result.
Overseas directed communications must give special care to techniques and art. They must be adept at employing smart power. They must achieve “clever exercise of power.” [NOTE: Here, “clever exercise of power” (巧使力), is a synonym of “smart power” (巧实力)].
The overseas communication concept summed up by our country’s British ambassador, Fu Ying (傅莹), deserves consideration and reference. She sums it up as: “Speak early, speak a lot, and speak clearly” (早说话，多说话，说明白话). As a diplomat who has spent a lot of time overseas, and who has had direct contact with people overseas, Fu Ying is familiar with the public opinion environment in the West. The [communication] concept and method she lays out is the product of personal experience.
According to the author’s understanding, “speak early” means speaking at the first available moment after an event has occurred. It means speak at the beginning, at the point when people are anxious for information and to understand the situation. If at such a moment you clam up and keep silent, this suggests contempt for the public’s right to know and indicates a disregard for the effect speaking can have.
From the standpoint of news and communications, this so-called “speak early” is about “reporting early and timely reporting” . . .
So-called “speak a lot” points to the need to speak regularly, with initiative and repeatedly. You need to make people feel your sincerity and candidness, to understand that you are willing to have candid dialogue and interaction, and that you will not intentionally bury or avoid something.
In the context of news and communications, this “speak a lot” means “reporting a lot, and reporting thoroughly,” that through the whole process during which the news event is occurring and being handled, the news media issue regular reports following changes and developments, giving the audience a comprehensive understanding of the situation . . .
To “speak clearly” is about speaking accurately, directly and clearly, allowing people to understand what you are saying and your true thoughts so that ambiguities do not emerge.
In the context of news and communications, “speaking clearly” is about “reporting accurately and clearly,” making clear the sequence of events in a news story and paying attention to truth, accuracy and relevant background information . . .
For overseas audiences, bringing them to understand what you are saying requires also attention to the use of language they can understand in their own linguistic context and broadcast concepts and formulated opinions that are generally accepted. Only in this way can you ensure that they can understand your speech and listen to what you have to say.
Analyzing overseas audiences, we understand that the reasons are complicated as to why they harbor an attitude of rejection and exclusion toward Chinese news and communications, creating misunderstanding and estrangement. But some general reasons are as follows:
One kind of person is antagonistic, and this sort of person always has an interest in blackening China’s image and spreading the “China Threat Theory” and such things.
Another kind of person is arrogant, and this sort of person always harbors an unaccountable sense of racial superiority, believing that China cannot do good and refusing to acknowledge the progress China has made.
Another kind of person suffers from prejudice, and this sort of person does not believe China can possibly do so well, and doubts China’s development and progress.
Another kind of person is conventional [or adheres to limited concepts], and this sort of person, having been influenced by cultural traditions and communication concepts (such as those in Western countries who hold that “the worst tidings are the best news”), believes the news media should expose problems and should not speak words of praise and encouragement.
Most people are simply ignorant, the principal problem being that they don’t sufficiently understand China, and that there are gaps and inaccuracies in the information they are exposed to. In these people’s eyes China is still the China of the past — women with bound feet, people dressed in cheongsams, impoverished and ignorant.
The above-mentioned factors take their toll on the effect of our nation’s overseas directed communications, and they present us with an extremely serious issue — how can our overseas directed communications make it through and reach their mark?
Only by thoroughly meeting the demands of overseas audiences and providing information they can accept can our nation’s news media make them better see and understand China and remove misunderstandings about our country.
4. Being adept at using the facts to speak (善于用事实说话)
Based upon our past experiences, the most effective method in getting audiences to quickly accept news and communications and to achieve maximum effect is to be adept at using the facts to speak.
According to basic human psychology, people accept with general ease facts that are specific, lively and inherently convincing. They tend not to accept messages that are hard and preachy, empty or dicey, stiff or inflexible or slogan-like in nature. This is because they prefer to understand the facts and come to their own conclusions rather than listen to posturing and postulation.
“Facts achieve victory over eloquence” (事实胜于雄辩). In prevailing over audiences, and particularly over overseas audiences, the most convincing things are without a doubt those real objective facts. Therefore, when news media are carrying out overseas directed news and communications they must uphold the principle of “speaking through facts,” using specific, lively, visual and convincing examples and models to arouse and guide the audience.
By “speaking through facts” one can . . make the audience willingly submit to and accept the ideas and opinions conveyed by the disseminator.
Journalists must learn to objectively, reliably and simply convey the facts they have seen and then imbed within these objective accounts the point they wish to explain, in order that when the audience receives the facts reported by the journalist they unknowingly accept various standpoints and viewpoints contained therein. This is the ideal to which news and communications must aspire, and it is one of the most important arts and techniques a news journalist must grasp.
Zhao Qizheng (赵启正), head of the School of Journalism and Communication at Renmin University of China, former head of the Information Office of the State Council, former head of the external affairs committee of the CPPCC, and one of our nation’s best known communications experts, not only introduced that communication concept of “explaining China to the world” (向世界说明中国), but also much experience with “speaking through facts.”
When, for example, he delivered a talk during “Chinese culture week” in Paris on September 2, 1999, while summing up China’s changes over the past century, he used many fact and figures. He used facts and figures on China’s annual GDP growth of around 9.2 percent over 20 years to explain the major changes brought on by economic reforms in China. In introducing changes to the situation for women in China over the past century, he contrasted a photo of a foot-bound woman at the outset of the 20th century with a photo of China’s World Cup-winning women’s soccer team. These [facts] were visual, lively, impactful and convincing, and they were used to great effect.

[Posted by David Bandurski, November 12, 2009, 9:58am HK]

By David Bandurski — Tensions between professional values and the party line have quietly marked every Chinese Journalist’s Day since the holiday was inaugurated on November 8, 2000. Nine years ago, the November 8 issue of Guangdong’s Southern Weekend argued boldly that journalists should show “social conscience” by exposing the truth. On the same day, however, propaganda leaders stressed that journalists must “be firm and unshakeable in carrying out the news theory and policy direction of the ruling party.”
This year, Journalist’s Day has come and gone with little cause for celebration among journalists in China who harbor professional ideals. The holiday was marked, in fact, by two distinct warning bells.
The first warning bell came as recent troubles at Caijing magazine culminated in the resignation of editor-in-chief Hu Shuli (胡舒立).
Hu’s departure marked the end of Caijing as one of China’s most outspoken and professional media outlets, and as a key destination and training ground for top journalists. It also underscored the way the professional spirit in Chinese media is now being squeezed more tightly than ever between the priorities of government censorship on the one hand and the prerogative of commercial profit on the other.
The second warning bell came in the form of a speech by politburo member Li Changchun (李长春) to mark Journalist’s Day, in which the ideological chief laid stronger emphasis on media control and avoided all pretense of caring about the public’s “right to know.”
In a sobering analysis of this year’s speech, Song Zhibiao (宋志标), a journalist who works at Southern Metropolis Daily‘s editorial page, noted important changes from Li Changchun’s 2008 speech. Song’s post was quickly expunged from mainland-based websites.

[ABOVE: A search for Song Zhibiao’s analysis of Li Changchun’s Journalist’s Day speech through Baidu.com comes up with a warning saying results cannot be shown because they do not comply with laws and regulations.]

As in last year’s speech, Li gave top priority to “the principle of party spirit [in journalism]” (党性原则), the notion that news media must adhere to the party’s propaganda discipline and to “correct guidance of public opinion.”
But this reiteration of the priority of media control was complemented in this year’s speech by clear changes in official language concerning citizen’s rights and information.
Song notes that in Li Changchun’s 2008 speech the term “truth in the news” (新闻真实) made an appearance. This year, the term made a rapid exit.
Perhaps more worryingly, Hu Jintao’s so-called “four rights” — the right to know (知情权), right to participate (参与权), right to express (表达权) and right to monitor (监督权) — which appeared in the political report to the last Party Congress in 2007 and made Li’s speech last year, were dropped altogether this year from the main portion of Li’s speech dealing with priority work for the future. The language appears only in Li’s preamble, which outlines “valuable experiences” in media policy over the past 60 years.
These rather conspicuous absences seem to indicate that top leaders would rather not stake out a position on the ethic of neutrality (中立价值) for the news media, and intend to emphasize the news media’s fealty to the party over any interest, however tentative, in social rights.
Li Changchun’s speech on Sunday also placed a great deal of emphasis on the idea of “discourse power” (话语权) — the CCP’s “discourse power,” that is. This underscores in particular an interest in strengthening the party’s capacity to make its voice heard both domestically and internationally.
This is also an important reason why the term “public opinion channeling,” or yulun yindao (舆论引导), rises in the ranks of Li’s speech this year. This further drives home what we have been arguing here at CMP for months — that the party is reworking its media control system to allow traditional controls and active agenda-setting (“grabbing the megaphone“) to work hand-in-hand.
This change, which we have called Control 2.0, sees the priorities and tactics of propaganda as transcending national boundaries and requiring much more clever and aggressive techniques of persuasion. It can be glimpsed again in Li Changchun’s language this year about the need to “coordinate overall national interests on both the domestic and international fronts” (统筹国内国际两个大局).
In other words, China’s is taking its propaganda campaign global, and the success of domestic controls hinges on China’s success or failure on the international battlefield of public opinion.
More on that in tomorrow’s post, which deals with China’s unique vision of “soft power” as what one might call “attractive coercion” — in apt distortion, of course, of Joseph Nye’s formulation of “soft power” as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion and payment.”
Getting back to Li Changchun’s speech, though. Song Zhibiao sums up both the 2008 and 2009 speeches with the phrase, “Light on citizen’s rights, heavy on official power” (轻民权重官权).
But unlike last year, this year’s speech makes no effort whatsoever to conceal this fact. It is a bald pronouncement of the way things will be, and the way they should remain for some time to come.
“This is the news we receive on this Journalist’s Day,” Song concluded balefully. “We can avoid this holiday, but we cannot avoid attack from these principles that have been newly packaged and presented. This is the situation we in the press must face.”
[Posted by David Bandurski, November 10, 2009, 2:30pm HK]

By Qian Gang — How should we best understand the extravagance that marked China’s recent National Day celebrations? In the wake of the pomp and circumstance, a good friend of mine summed it up with a single phrase: “Four portraits and four anthems.” By portraits he was referring of course to the four massive portraits of state leaders – Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao – that gazed over the celebration.
And four propaganda anthems blared out to reiterate the importance of these CCP lions – “The East is Red” (东方红), “A Story of Spring” (春天的故事), “Into the New Age” (走进新时代) and “Oh, Lovely Land” (江山).
This soundtrack was not an incidental choice. Rather, these songs were representative of each of the “four generations of leaders.” The official Xinhua News Agency even issued a special report called, “Four Anthems Sing of a China Bravely Advancing.”

[ABOVE: Screenshot of online news coverage of National Day celebrations, showing President Hu and his motorcade.]

“The East is Red” was of course Chairman Mao’s personal political anthem. But when I was collecting folk songs for a project twenty years ago, I was surprised to discover that the “The East is Red” was originally a romantic ballad. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, it was rendered as the popular song “Riding White Horses”:

Riding white horses,
Armed with Western guns,
Three brothers with the Eighth Route Army
Living on its grain.
They’re thinking of girls back home again.
But fight on against Japan.

In 1944, Shaanxi farmer Li Youyuan (李有源) and a rural schoolteacher appropriated this tune to compose “Migration Song,” which contained the following verse:

The East is red,
The sun, it rises.
And in China, a Mao Zedong is born.

Through further alterations by CCP lyricists, “Migration Song” became “The East is Red.” After 1949 the song gradually became an indispensable part of the cult of Chairman Mao. With each successive round of song, the process of deification intensified. Meanwhile, the perfect and godlike Chairman orchestrated one revolutionary struggle after another, urging the nation deeper and deeper into turmoil.
The reform movement engendered by Deng Xiaoping had its origins in breaking through Mao’s cult of personality and throwing off the yoke of extreme over-concentration of power.
Through the entire decade of the 1980s, veneration of CCP leaders was repressed. There were no grand lyrical tributes to Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, and songs were rarely sung in praise of Deng Xiaoping at the time.
As an anthem of political praise, “A Story of Spring” was a song very unlike “The East is Red.” Its lyricist, Jiang Kairu (蒋开儒), was an old man who had lived a rough life. As a youth he had joined up with the People’s Liberation Army. But because he was found to have family in Hong Kong, and was therefore tied down by this alleged “overseas connection,” he was eventually forced out of the military and banished to the northeast, the “great northern wilderness” as it was called.
When the Cultural Revolution finally passed, Jiang felt as though Spring had returned. In 1979, Jiang was permitted to come to Hong Kong to reunite with his family. He saw with his own eyes the changes reforms brought to Shenzhen in the years that followed.
In 1992, as Deng Xiaoping made his “southern tour,” Jiang Kairu was moved by the wave of reports in China’s media urging further economic reforms. He was living in Shenzhen at the time, and toward the end of the year he composed “Spring Story”:

1979, a year of Spring
An old man marks out
A circle [of hope] in China’s south.

These are lyrics penned by an ordinary man moved by Deng Xiaoping and the reform movement he represented. But the song gained in popularity only after 1996, as Deng Xiaoping fell gravely ill. It is perhaps impossible to know whether the paramount leader ever even heard “A Story of Spring” before he passed away in February 1997.
By the time Deng passed away, Jiang Kairu was working for the literary and arts federation of Lo Wu, on the Hong Kong-Shenzhen border. In anticipation of Hong Kong’s return to China that year, he wrote a song called “China is Blessed.”
The composer later recalled: “Leaders in Lo Wu excitedly glimpsed an opportunity: a song about three generations of party leaders.”
Local cadres worked together on the song lyrics, and the result quickly drew the attention of top leaders in Shenzhen. Once China Central Television got wind of the song, it was appropriated for a television spot.
Ahead of the 15th National Party Congress held later that year, the song was reworked to become “Into the New Age,” layers of political propaganda thickening over it with each retouching. Even the folk rhythms of Jiang Zemin’s native northern Jiangsu province were incorporated.
By the time the fiftieth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China rolled around in 1999, the song had already become a propaganda anthem symbolic of Jiang Zemin’s leadership. The official People’s Daily praised the song, which it said “shaped the musical images of three generations of party leaders.”

“The East is Red,” we sing,
Standing up on our own.
We share a story of Spring,
We prosper under reform and opening.
He who leads us on the forward road,
Takes us into a bright new age.

“He who leads us on the forward road” was of course a reference to Jiang Zemin. During October 1 celebrations in 1999, “Into the New Age” was reserved for the climax of festivities. This was in fact the first clear instance of political hero worship (个人崇拜) since the onset of China’s economic reform policies, and it stepped way beyond the bounds that Deng Xiaoping had drawn.
Since becoming General Secretary of the CCP, Hu Jintao has invited caution in the assessments of him made by others. In Jiang’s day the media routinely used the phrase, “the central party the core of which is comrade Jiang Zemin.” When the torch passed to Hu Jintao, the language was a touch more cautious: “the central party of which comrade Hu Jintao is general secretary.”
The enthusiastic cheerleading for President Hu during the recent 60th anniversary celebrations was therefore all the more a surprise.
Mao, Deng, Jiang and Hu were all represented together during the festivities. And in fact, the ceremonies included two anthems symbolic of Hu Jintao’s leadership.
“Oh, Lovely Land,” which accompanied the massive portrait of Hu, is perhaps not an anthem in praise of him personally, but praises him indirectly as a leader who “governs for the people”:

The ordinary people are the earth;
The ordinary people are the sky.

“On the Sunny Road,” which Peng Liyuan (彭丽媛) sang over the grandiose fireworks display, was a clear and conscientious choice:

On the sunny road,
In the air the banners soar.
Scientific development and harmony,
Guide China to brighter shores.

“Scientific development” and the “harmonious society” are of course markers of Hu Jintao. They are his political banners.
These four songs — or five — all fall into China’s tradition of what can be called “song politics,” or gequ zhengzhi (歌曲政治). They mark the intersection of high-level power plays and political slogans with the realm of culture and popular entertainment.
They are also relics of the totalitarian era.
“Why have they decided to drag out even our most unsightly assets?” another friend of mine remarked during the celebrations.
In fact, the massive portraits and propaganda songs placed Hu Jintao in a precarious position. Perhaps those charged with crafting and massaging his public persona are still unsure. Perhaps they are testing the waters, and we shouldn’t read anything more into this.
But even if Hu Jintao had no intention of fueling his own cult of personality, that moment of high self-praise has been witnessed already by hundreds of millions of Chinese.
I have no interest in exploring the political machinations that might underlie the parading of these giant portraits and these anthems of political praise. For Chinese today, parsing our political environment is a tiresome exercise. We dwell more on the question of China’s future. We know China must not repeat the mistakes of its past.
And that is why it is time we say goodbye to these unbecoming political traditions.
FURTHER READING:
“Four Songs Tell China Story Over Six Decades,” Xinhua News Agency, October 1, 2009
“China’s National Day parade: public barred from celebrations,” The Guardian, September 30, 2009
[Posted by David Bandurski, October 27, 2009, 10:05am HK]