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]

By David Bandurski — A top theorist involved in drafting Chinese President Hu Jintao’s political report to the 17th National Congress of the CCP in 2007 has been promoted to the post of deputy head of the Central Propaganda Department (CPD), according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency. The appointee, Wang Xiaojun (王晓晖), was formerly deputy secretary general of the Central Propaganda Department and chairman of the CPD’s Theory Office.
An elite party theorist and commentary writer, Wang replaces Jiao Li (焦利), who in May this year was appointed to take the place of Zhao Huayong (赵化勇) as chairman at China Central Television.

[ABOVE: Wang Xiaojun replaces Jiao Li as deputy head of China’s Central Propaganda Department.]

Mainland news reports on Wang Xiaojun’s appointment offered few details about his work at the propaganda department, where he has served for a number of years. But a report in Hong Kong’s Ta Kung Pao today said it was Wang Xiaojun who spearheaded the formulation of Hu Jintao’s “Six Why’s” earlier this year.
According to Chinese media reports, Wang arrived in Nanchang on August 7 for his first official visit as deputy propaganda chief. During a tour of the area, Wang and his entourage visited a memorial commemorating the August 1, 1927, “Nanchang Uprising” (南昌八一起义), which in CCP lore marks the birth of China’s Red Army, as well as other sites of party patriotism.
A report on the local government website in Nanchang also mentioned Wang’s visit to sites commemorating Deng Xiaoping’s work in Changsha, where Deng and his wife, Zhuo Lin, were exiled for three years beginning in October 1969, during the early stages of the Cultural Revolution.
[Posted by David Bandurski, August 10, 2009, 12:33am HK]

By Qian Gang — A post called “Conversations with an Old Comrade on the Eve of the 60th Anniversary of the PRC” (国庆60周年前夕一位老同志的谈话) has made the rounds on the Internet this week. The post, which comes ahead of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC, and urges a critical reassessment of the Communist Party’s record, is now being systematically removed from blogs and bulletin boards inside China.
“Conversations with an Old Comrade” was purportedly compiled from recent interviews with a former high ranking CCP official. The online text refers to him as a “leader of the country and the party” (党和国家领导人), suggesting he held a position at the national level.
Although the authenticity of the post has not been confirmed, most who have read it believe it was indeed sourced from a senior party member. Readers have also remarked that the post is reminiscent of “50 Years of Trials and Hardships” (风雨苍黄50年), an influential piece penned by party elder Li Shenzhi (李慎之) on the occasion of the party’s 50th anniversary in 1999.

[ABOVE: Party elder Li Shenzhi, author of an important reflection on the CCP in 1999, passed away in 2003.]

Certainly, both Li Shenzhi and the mystery author of this week’s post share an interest in treating major PRC anniversaries as opportunities to talk about the shortcomings of CCP rule. If “Conversations with an Old Comrade” is authentic, however, it seems that the “old comrade” in question is even higher ranking than was Li Shenzhi.
The post begins in a very unconventional way. It relates how a young professor from the Central Party School paid a visit one day to the “old comrade” and addressed to him a series of questions raised by local and regional leaders. What things have gone unchanged in the 60 years since the establishment of the PRC? Why have these not changed? Is change possible?
The old comrade responds to the professor:

There are so many things that have not changed in the 60 years since the nation’s founding. The most basic, underlying fact is that this nation is still ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, and this is a truth everyone is clear about. But what other things stand behind this fact? For example, the CCP is a party of 70 million members. It is the world’s largest political party. And yet, the party has not yet been registered with the government authorities responsible for managing social organizations [namely, the Ministry of Civil Affairs]. And why is that? Our country still has no Political Party Law (政党法). After 60 years, this is something that has not changed. Our country still, to this day, does not have a political system in the modern sense. It is truer to say, in other words, that “the nation belongs to the CCP” than to say that “the CCP is the party of the nation.” After 60 years the concept of “party and government leaders” (党和国家领导人) has not changed. And in terms of national finances, no barriers whatsoever have been erected between the CCP treasury and the national treasury.
Look further and you see that China’s millions of soldiers are still called the People’s Liberation Army. In this area too nothing at all has changed. We still have no national armed forces in the true sense. The highest member of the armed forces is the highest leader in the CCP . . . After 60 years, nothing whatsoever has changed on this front.
Look within the CCP itself, and you see also that in 60 years no competitive system in the true sense has been established [to determine leadership positions]. It goes without saying that the same is true of the government.

The “old comrade” strongly opposes the slogan “60 years of resplendence,” which has been used to refer to the legacy of Communist Party rule in China. Is it possible to argue that the three or four years of the Great Leap Forward or the disastrous decade of the Cultural Revolution were resplendent? The CCP may not wish to subtract those painful years from the total, he suggests, but ordinary Chinese, historians and even ordinary CCP members most certainly will.
The old comrade recalls an exchange with an elderly party colleague who had presided over some work of the CCP’s Secretariat the early 1980s, and who resided in Shenzhen for several years in the twilight of his life. When the “old comrade” pays a visit to this elderly official, the latter shares one major delight and two major regrets about the path the country had taken.
His delight was that the economic reforms he had personally helped to promote in southern China had become a model for the whole nation to follow. One of his regrets was the party’s inability to rehabilitate its major historical errors. Another was the party’s failure to implement a policy of tolerance for alternative viewpoints. The “old comrade” recalls in the post: “He said very little. When he had finished speaking, the two of us just fell silent.”
The “old comrade” argues that tolerance for differing viewpoints should be a basic political ethic of the ruling party:

The Kuomingtang party lorded it over us for 22 years, closed down our newspapers and magazines, murdered members of our party, and expunged differing opinions from our schools. History has shown that these policies failed. The CCP, which has ruled for 60 years now, must not use similar methods against alternative viewpoints and against other people.

The “old comrade” in fact counts the CCP’s posture of intolerance toward popular viewpoints and ideas from scholars, experts and “members of democratic parties” as one of its most serious errors:

Sixty years is an occasion for both celebration and reflection. The whole nation must reflect back, and the whole party must reflect back. The ruling party, which is the nation’s only ruling party, and which has ruled for 60 years, should always have at least the most basic courage to reflect back. This, in fact, is a responsibility, a responsibility of the ruling party. Naturally, reflecting back would mean the airing of differing viewpoints. There is nothing at all unusual about this. If the climate becomes tense [ahead of the anniversary], if actions are taken to suppress [various ideas and activities], this suggests that the CCP is severely lacking in bearing and self-confidence. In my view, the views of the ordinary people, of members of democratic parties, of experts and scholars, and of the politically frustrated — these four categories of viewpoints — must be heeded and respected, and must not be suppressed. It discomforts me to realize that I am voicing ideas here that the ancients voiced more than a thousand years ago.

“Conversations with an Old Comrade” is identified online as having been “reorganized from four conversations with an old comrade of honor and integrity.” But if this is indeed the work of an elderly party member, who could it be?
There have been plenty of guesses. Most submit that this comrade must be a veteran of 1980s reforms in China, probably a member of the Secretariat of the 12th Central Committee of the CCP. Guesses have included Qiao Shi (乔石), Gu Mu (谷牧) and Wan Li (万里).
Others have suggested the work was done by a younger writer imitating the style of a party elder.
Whatever the case, I believe this article, which urges China and the CCP to mark the 60th anniversary of the PRC’s establishment by engaging in deep reflection rather than indulging in empty eulogies, does represent the views shared by leaders of conscience within the CCP.
[Posted by David Bandurski, August 7, 2009, 8:09pm HK]
SELECT DELETED POSTS of “Conversations with an Old Comrade”

By David Bandurski — Two research collections recently published by the China Media Project were among 44 books selected to the celebrity recommendation list at this month’s 2009 Hong Kong Book Fair. Local books on this prestigious list are compiled on the basis of recommendations by 34 Hong Kong celebrities, who also offer reviews of one or more books on the list.
Chinese Media and Political Reform (中國傳媒與政治改革), written by CMP director Qian Gang, was published in August 2008, while A Record of Change in China’s Media (中國傳媒風云錄), co-edited by Qian Gang and Ying Chan, director of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre, was released last fall.

[ABOVE: CMP co-directors Qian Gang and Ying Chan make an appearance with China Media Project book selections at this year’s Hong Kong Book Fair.]

Also on the celebrity recommendation list was Gravestone (墓碑), a book on mass starvation in China in the 1950s and 1960s written by CMP visiting fellow Yang Jisheng.
Yang visited Hong Kong several times on CMP fellowships while conducting research for his book. Yang was also one of the speakers for the China Media Forum, hosted by the China Media Project in October 2007.
[Posted by David Bandurski, July 31, 2009, 9:50am U.S. Eastern Standard Time]

By Qian Gang — A winter, bleak and gloomy, seems to be upon us. On July 14, Beijing Gongmeng Information LLC (hereafter referred to as “Gongmeng”), a non-governmental organization formed by a group of prominent Chinese lawyers, and registered as a private company, was fined 1.42 million yuan by tax authorities. Soon after, the Ministry of Civil Affairs banned the activities of Gongmeng’s research center.
I wrote in my last piece about how Chinese officials are rashly resorting to the use of the political catchphrase “stability is the overriding priority.” But there are other more palpable signs, like the troubles facing Gongmeng, suggesting the political environment in China is growing more tense.
Chinese media have been unable to speak at all on the Gongmeng affair, and this is an icy silence indeed. Aside from a brief report in Guangzhou’s Southern Weekend, we had only two blog entries on the issue. These were re-run by the Rural Issues Online site (三农在线). One of the bloggers was Yu Jianrong (于建嵘), an expert researching contemporary social conflict in China. He hit the nail on the head when he wrote: “The difficulties facing Gongmeng are a tragedy for our entire society.”

[ABOVE: Chinese lawyer Xu Zhiyong (许志永), Gongmeng’s legal representative. Xu has tried numerous rights defense cases. This picture was taken on June 9, 2004, in a petitioner’s village in Beijing. Xu’s blog may be found HERE.]

Gongmeng’s fate is rooted in the nature of its emergence and identity. It is a corporation in name, but in fact works as a non-governmental organization (NGO) that does legal assistance work. The organization represented the plaintiffs in China’s poisoned milk scandal, and was involved in the case of Deng Yujiao (邓玉娇), the waitress who stabbed a local official, as well as the Yang Jia (杨佳) case. Why did it not register as a social organization? Because registering as a social organization is much more difficult than setting up a private enterprise.
China’s constitution states that citizens enjoy freedom of association [Chapter II, Article 35], but has this freedom ever been realized? Registering social organizations requires association with a “sponsoring unit” approved by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and there is a further requirement that “there is no social organization with the same or similar scope of operation within the same jurisdiction.” If you don’t wish to be “yamen-ized” (衙门化), or co-opted into the bureaucracy, then your only alternative is to commercialize. But once you have taken this route, you fall into the snare of taxation authorities, opening yourself up to fraud charges.
There have been many guesses as to the precise reasons for Gongmeng’s troubles. I don’t wish to add my own speculation here. But we should pay close attention as this situation unfolds, observing the potentially serious political signs emerging from the Gongmeng story.
It is no secret that China’s political reform process has long been hamstrung. Still, it is not entirely accurate to say that the Chinese Communist Party is utterly indifferent to political reform. CCP political theorists have long expended effort to carve out what they see as the safest and most reliable proposals for Chinese political reform. More recently, they have publicized a “60 year schedule,” counting from 1980, that has China establishing democratic politics (民主政治) by 2040. [See Gongjian (攻坚), pg. 45, by Zhou Tianyong (周天勇)、Wang Changjiang (王长江) and Wang Anling (王安岭)].
This “democratic politics” would of course come with the precondition that the CCP’s leadership position be preserved, that the party would maintain control over official appointments (党管干部), over the military (党管军队) and the media (党管新闻). This means that even according to the most progressive political reform plan party theorists can muster, China will still not have general elections, a private-sector military or freedom of speech in 30 year’s time.
But the CCP has planned to “test the waters” (试水) in two areas in particular — the first is “civil society,” or minjian (民间), the second is religion. The party has talked about “bringing into play the active role of civil society organizations and religion” (发挥民间组织和宗教的积极作用), creating a “modern civil society” by 2020 (形成现代的公民社会). It was a positive sign for NGOs like Gongmeng that the party should venture language like this.
In fact, mainland China had quite a lively civil society during the Republican Era. But in the half century since the CCP came to power in 1949, the nation has been under the party’s comprehensive control, and socialism has made space only for the “ism” and has left “society” out in the cold. Since the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, the term “civil society” (公民社会) has appeared more regularly in China’s media.
An active civil society is an indispensable median zone between the government and the public. It plays a positive role in promoting information sharing, reducing conflict and encouraging people to be good citizens. Whether in Taiwan or Hong Kong, a civil society is an absolutely necessary factor in the process of social development. After the earthquake in Sichuan in 2008, the government recognized the tremendous potential of NGOs and volunteers.
I accept the argument for gradual political reform. The CCP bears substantial historical burdens, and citizens must become more mature and engaged, and if political reform leapt straight to core changes to the system, this might be too hasty. Working toward the development of civil society, and protecting the basic rights of citizens, might be an effective way to move forward in a steady manner. But senior leaders in the CCP remain coy about civil society development. The term “civil society” is not a sensitive one in China, and party theorists have generally treated it as a positive factor, and sometimes even actively advocated it. Strangely, though, party leaders have never used the term in speeches or official documents.
If NGOs are cravenly obedient, they might continue in China without incident. But if, like Gongmeng, they work determinedly toward democracy, rule of law and social justice, making their presence felt in major legal cases, they will find opposition from the authorities.
Steadily through the years news has emerged from the mainland about NGOs being harassed and shut down. They have pressed ahead through a political minefield, one terrible explosion following another. In this sense, actions against NGOs have been unexceptional occurrences. But the Gongmeng affair has andcome at time when we are again hearing language from the leadership about stability being the overriding priority, and we must therefore pay close attention.
It is chilling indeed to see an NGO to be targeted in such a way. The party now seems to regard even the most moderate forces of change as a scourge on its leadership. And the only explanation for this can be that hardline, extreme elements within the party are making their influence felt. These are dangerous signs!
[Translated by David Bandurski]