By David Bandurski — Zhejiang’s provincial people’s congress approved legislation last March that would make Hangzhou the first city in China to require Web users to register with valid identification before participating in local chatrooms and forums. This so-called “real-name Web registration system,” which was to take effect on May 1, seems for the moment, however, to be on hold.
A story from the official Xinhua News Agency, posted at many Web portals and run in a number of newspapers today, reports that the Hangzhou regulations have for the moment been “shelved” (束之高阁). [See the full Chinese text of the Hangzhou legislation HERE.]

[ABOVE: Screenshot of May 18 coverage in the Liberation Daily of Hangzhou’s “real-name Web registration system.”]

We can confirm what Xinhua is reporting — that users can, at present, get into major forums at Hangzhou portals, including Hangzhou Online, without providing any additional information.
After reading a statement in the registration section of Hangzhou Online stating that we would not “use this Website to harm national security, to twist or manufacture facts,” etc., we clicked “Accept” and went directly to the registration form.
Registering was as simple as typing in a username, setting a password and providing an e-mail address. There was no need whatsoever to provide valid proof of identity.
Below is a screenshot of an account we registered successfully from Hong Kong today:

“Accurately confirming information about Web users is very difficult to do,” said the head of one local Website in Hangzhou. “How should we confirm [their information]? Should we have them come in person to us and offer proof, or should we demand that Web users be truthful when they fill in their information? We haven’t yet seen a specific regulation about this.”

By David Bandurski — We are generally more likely to nitpick the work of Western journalists in China (on the rare occasions when we do turn an eye on their coverage of media issues) than to come to their defense. But the spitting match this week between The Telegraph and China Daily on the issue of “propaganda” deserves a moment’s discussion. [Frontpage Image: Propaganda poster photographed by Spiff_27 avalaible at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]
I’ll try to be brief.
The exchange in question began with a report by The Telegraph correspondent Peter Foster about how China had launched its “60th Anniversary patriotic campaign,” which he referred to as “propaganda.”
As Foster has since pointed out, The Telegraph is not alone in using the word “propaganda” to describe campaigns like this one to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the CCP.
Nevertheless, it was Foster’s report that drew an itchy rebuttal in China Daily by Australian columnist Patrick Whiteley, who said of The Telegraph:

“By constantly labeling Chinese government initiatives as ‘communist propaganda’ the newspaper deliberately paints a sinister and very outdated picture harking back to the days of ‘reds under the beds’ and the ‘yellow peril.'”

Whiteley’s basic point, if I understand him correctly, is that China no longer does propaganda. The director of China’s Central Publicity Department is not a “propagandist” — he is simply a politician, not unlike statesmen anywhere else in the world.
Whiteley’s argument centers on the English translation of the Chinese word xuanchuan (宣传), which, as he points out, cannot always simply be rendered “propaganda.”
If, against Whiteley’s better judgement, one insists on translating xuanchuan as “propaganda,” a simple and neutral Chinese word is saddled with a dark and unfair negativity. What you’ve basically done is taken a harmless word — something like “promote” — and infused it with the “evil shadow of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.”
That’s just not fair to well-meaning cadres like Li Changchun, China’s politburo standing committee member in charge of ideology, who I suppose we should call instead the CCP’s “chief message getter-outer.”
I could make a more elaborate argument about Chinese “propaganda,” but I did say I wanted to be brief. So I’ll just stick to an article about CCP media policy printed in last Sunday’s edition of the official Beijing Daily newspaper.

[ABOVE: Front page of May 10 edition of the official Beijing Daily with a report laying out “propaganda” guidelines for coverage of the 60th anniversary of the CCP.]

As a bold experiment I will resist rendering xuanchuan as “propaganda.” Here goes:

“Carrying Forward the Spirit of Patriotism and Adhering to Correct Guidance of Public Opinion to Create a CCP Anniversary of Soaring Spirit in a Social Atmosphere of Harmony”
Making an inspection yesterday at Beijing Television and the Beijing Bureau of Xinhua News Agency of preparations for news and publicity of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPC and Beijing Municipal Party Secretary Liu Qi (刘淇) demanded that [media] powerfully carry forward the spirit of patriotism and adhere to correct guidance of public opinion, creating a soaring spirit, joy and serenity, and a harmonious and civilized atmosphere for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China by publicizing the glorious achievements and successful experiences of the capital city . . .
Liu Qi emphasized that news and publicity departments must tightly adhere to the events and topics as determined by the Central Party, publicizing the resplendent journey since the founding of the new China 60 years ago, carrying forward the spirit of patriotism and upholding correct guidance of public opinion, publicizing the glorious achievements and successful experiences of the capital city, singing loudly the main themes of praise of the party, of socialism, of economic reforms, of our great mother country and of our various peoples . . .

I believe this excerpt, just one from among scores of articles over the last week alone dealing with media policy at the local level, is sufficient to illustrate my point.
I hope Mr. Whiteley, should he happen upon my translation, finds it instructive. Like all of us, Mr. Whiteley has a great deal to learn about precisely how China’s propaganda apparatus works — and how it is changing.
As a final point, I caution against simplistic comparisons with radically different press and political environments. Mr. Whiteley asks:

Would The Telegraph‘s Washington correspondents ever write: “An Internet poll conducted across several leading US websites as part of a government propaganda campaign to mark the Fourth of July, has drawn a patriotic response”?

As The Telegraph‘s China correspondents know, I’ve taken a couple of them to task privately about niggling issues in certain recent reports about press policies in China. They took these in stride, mindful of their own learning curves.
Still, I feel quite certain the answer to Whiteley’s question is NO — not for the reasons, however, that his strange rhetorical question implies. While the Fourth of July is certainly a party, it is not a one-party political affair, and press coverage of the holiday would never be organized and financed by the local, state or federal governments. Pray, what “leading US websites” are directly operated and controlled by government institutions that tell them what they can and cannot report, and what they MUST?
But I promised to be brief, and I have this sinking feeling I’ve been pulled down into an argument with a first-grader who insists that peanut butter isn’t sticky.
[Posted by David Bandurski, May 15, 2009, 2:08pm]

By David Bandurski — South Korea may have spearheaded the use of grueling boot camps to tackle the problem of so-called “Internet addiction,” but China is apparently leading the way in experimental treatments for this still very controversial condition. And Internet addiction and its determined enemies have brought a mini-storm of coverage and commentary in China’s media this month.
The latest controversy about “Internet addiction,” which has been hotly debated among Chinese experts in recent years, is swirling around Zhejiang doctor Yang Yongxin (杨永信), a widely known expert on Internet addiction and a fierce critic of online games, particularly World of Warcraft.

[ABOVE: World of Warcraft, destructor of Chinese youth?]

On May 7, China Youth Daily ran three reports about the use of electric shock therapy on children admitted to Yang Yongxin’s clinic in Zhejiang.
Other newspapers followed up on the story, with Guangzhou Daily asking suggestively in a headline over the weekend: “What is more frightening than Internet addiction?”
China’s chatrooms were hot on the heels of this issue late last year after a Web user identifying herself as Wu Xuying (武旭影) posted an account of her own experiences in Dr. Yang’s program. The post was called, “My Story, and a Diary of My State of Mind in the ‘Yang Yongxin Web Addiction Treatment Center’” (我的小故事及在“杨永信网戒中心”的心理日记), and it made the rounds on sites like Tianya and MOP.
The writer concluded with a list of what she saw as the problems with Yang Yongxin’s treatment methods. Here was the fourth:

4. Violation of human rights and of the right to privacy.
Yang Yongxin says himself in his classes: “Privacy does not exist for anyone here.” The so-called comment sessions are all about forcibly “airing out” your private business before the world. And the sessions are also filmed . . . If what he pushes is judging the standards of others, and if what he himself promotes is extreme or wrong, then those who are branded as wrong by him [in these comment sessions] (even under-aged children), are they not suffering a kind of spiritual brainwashing, being malevolently misguided, or even suffering personal attack?

Responding to the recent uptick in coverage of this issue, QQ.com has set up a special features page in their Views section, aggregating bunches of content about Yang Yongxin and Internet addiction. The editor’s note begins:

Recent news reports have brought the Internet addiction treatment methods of “national web addiction expert” Yang Yongxin (杨永信) into the spotlight. His curing methods, which involve attaching electrodes to childrens’ temples or fingers and stimulating the brain with electric current, have been fiercely controversial. There are presently more than 100 children receiving this form of treatment at the Fourth People’s Hospital in Linyi City, Shandong Province, and they are not permitted to leave. According to Yang Yongxin’s own figures, close to 3,000 “children with Internet addictions” (网瘾孩子) have received this sort of “treatment” at the facility.
Experts have debated whether Internet addiction can actually be classed as a mental disorder, and discussion has been renewed recently. Now it has become evident that electroshock therapy is also being used to treat Internet addiction. And what is more frightening is that the parents of these children have expressed their support. When a debate among experts is up against market demand, what should be done? . . .

[ABOVE: QQ.com’s feature page on Internet addiction and the controversy over Yang Yongxin’s treatment methods.]

One of the commentaries promoted on QQ’s feature page is written by journalist, media scholar and former CMP fellow Hu Yong (胡泳), who is also author of the recent Chinese book The Rising Cacophony.
A few portions of Hu Yong’s commentary follow:

“Breathing is Also an Addiction”
By Hu Yong
May 13, 2009
. . . So-called Internet addition refers to the repeated and excessive use of the Internet to the point that is becomes a kind of mental disorder. It can manifest itself as the intense desire to use the Internet repeatedly, and withdrawal symptoms are often observed when Internet use is decreased. At the same time, the disorder can result in somatic symptoms. Some experts have given us chilling numbers, saying that approximately 20 million people in China have Internet addiction or are predisposed. This shocking number prompted Yang Yongxin to write on his blog that if we cannot effectively control the spread of Internet addiction, it would mean the “death of the party and the nation” (亡党亡国) and would mean entire Chinese people “would be without children and grandchildren,” that it would make America’s 1970s policy of “victory without war” become a reality, allowing Chinese culture to perish under the onslaught of online imperialism!
Well, with things coming to such a point as that, how can our party and nation afford not to give this top priority? What is regrettable, though, is that these experts [like Yang Yongxin] have not to this day been able to define clearly what Internet addiction is . . .
But I don’t know whether our society has thought about this question: as the diagnosis and treatment of Internet addiction lacks clear standards, there are certain treatment methods that might, even while they deal with Internet addiction, subject children to even more frightful demons. Used on our so-called “Web addicted youth,” certain methods of dealing with psychological disorders might do physical and mental harm to our children. Moreover, we must ask who it is that gave some of these adults the power to limit the personal freedoms of their children?
FURTHER READING:
* “Yang Yongxin, saving youngsters from Internet addiction,” CRIEnglish.com, October 22, 2008
* Lixuan Zhang, Clinton Amos and William C. McDowell. “Rapid Communication: A Comparative Study of Internet Addiction between the United States and China,” Cyberpsychology & Behavior, Volume 11, Number 6, 2008
* “In Korea, a Boot Camp Cure for Web Addiction,” The New York Times, November 18, 2007
* “Inside China’s Fight Against Internet Addiction,” Time, January 28, 2009
* “US Shows Signs of Net Addiction,” BBC News, October 18, 2006
* “Internet Addiction May Affect One In Eight In USA,” October 18, 2006 [Medical study abstract here]
[Posted by David Bandurski, May 14, 2009, 3:15pm HK]

By Qian Gang — History often makes us wring our hands. But perhaps this story, which is still very near to us, cannot yet be called history. On March 1, 2008, 72 days before devastating Wenchuan earthquake struck, earthquake preparedness quiz competitions were held in various parts of Sichuan. I don’t know whether people in Chengdu still remember cartoons like Dull Dog Versus the Overlord (笨笨狗PK巨能霸) [video here] and Toad Child (蟾童) [video here], which sought to convey basic scientific facts about earthquakes.
And I wonder how, after the earthquake struck, the Luojiang County team (罗江代表队) that won the “Deyang City Cup” (德阳数码电脑城杯), the first prize in Dayang’s local televised quiz for earthquake preparedness knowledge, assessed that competition that had been tied up so intimately with their lives and well-being.

[ABOVE: A still from “Toad Child,” an earthquake preparedness cartoon that aired in Chengdu ahead of last year’s Wenchuan earthquake.]

The earthquake destroyed much, including people’s memories. After the earthquake struck, we rarely heard people talk again about the earthquake preparedness work that was carried out before the quake.
But Wenchuan is not the final stop. There will be other major disasters in our future. So we must keep our wits about us, and we must learn our painful lessons.
The efforts we did make must not be obliterated, even if they fell short.

[ABOVE: Still from the television cartoon “Dull Dog,” which aired just weeks before the Sichuan quake struck. Here Dull Dog says, “Look, these are geological maps I searched out using my computer.”]

The test questions for a couple of these earthquake preparedness competitions are still available on the websites of the Mianyang and Deyang earthquake protection bureaus. There are 100 questions on the test form for Mianyang, and 200 on the test form for Deyang.
When I read these lists of questions I felt deeply sad and conflicted. What makes the deepest impression when you read these questions is knowing that prior to the 8.0 magnitude earthquake the government and people in the quake zone were not entirely ignorant about earthquakes and safety measures. Mianyang and Deyang were both designated as key areas for earthquake surveillance and protection (重点监视防御区) in 2004, and this state “secret” (机密) had already effectively been made public by means of these earthquake preparedness competitions themselves.
The test materials made it clear that these cities were located in an earthquake zone (the Longmenshan Fault passes through both cities), and that earthquakes had occurred there before (the 6.2 Beichuan earthquake in 1958 and the 1976 quakes at Songbo and Pingwu).
Both cities stressed the importance of building safety in these tests. Question number 88 on the Mianyang test, a multiple choice question, asks: “In earthquake disasters that have happened in recent years, what is the key reason for the common occurrence of the collapse of ‘shoddy’ buildings? A: work is not done according to standards; B: cheating on workmanship and materials; C: pre-fabricated structures cannot sufficiently withstand earthquakes.”
Question number 146 on the Deyang test asked: “Why must work quality be emphasized in particular as a factor in the earthquake resistance of buildings?” The standard answer provided for this question even raised the issue of the 1995 collapse of a structurally weak middle school building in Guangdong after an earthquake struck the Taiwan Straits.
There were no short-term predictions for the Wenchuan earthquake, and the event caught everyone off-guard. But one important impetus behind these quiz competitions — aside from the tenth anniversary of China’s Law on Earthquake Disaster Prevention — was the long–term forecast made in 2005.
Aba, Chengdu, Mianyang, Dayong — all of these places that later fell within the earthquake disaster zone — had already leapt into action.
The events of March 1, 2008, were of course merely quiz competitions. An major earthquake was already near, and even though these competitions conveyed important facts and concepts, it was already too late to make thorough inspections and repairs. But the topics and questions in these quiz competitions harbor important lessons for future earthquake preparedness work. China will experience more earthquakes, even major ones.
I hope that the government departments responsible for earthquake preparedness work will revise and bring back these valuable materials used for the quiz competitions, sharing them nationwide.
If these materials are revised according to the lessons of the Wenchuan earthquake, then I hope the government will place greater emphasis on the question of construction quality, particularly quality issues at schools and public buildings — and also on emergency information for students.
There should also be more emphasis on testing and reporting (of geological data) by the general public (群测群防), encouraging social organizations and individuals to conduct seismic monitoring to give us more information about possible quakes. Both of these focal points have been raised in the revised Law on Earthquake Disaster Prevention, which took effect on May 1.
[Posted by David Bandurski, May 12, 2009, 6:22pm HK]

By David Bandurski — Today marks the one-year anniversary of the Wenchuan earthquake. According to the latest official numbers, 68,712 died in the quake, of which 5,335 were students, and 17,921 remain missing, bringing the official human toll of the earthquake to 86,633. Given the importance of this anniversary, one might expect it to dominate the front pages of major newspapers across China. But that’s not exactly the full story today.
The two major stories today are the earthquake anniversary and the discovery of China’s first domestic case of swine flu in the city of Chengdu, which happens to be just 50 miles from the epicenter of last year’s quake.
Both of these stories were given priority on the front page of the party’s official People’s Daily today.
The narrow news space at the top of People’s Daily, generally devoted to important policy announcements, ran a story about an important directive from President Hu Jintao on readiness in dealing with the H1NI virus. Hu said China “needed to further strengthen its leadership, continuing to take the initiative in tackling crisis preparedness work, scientifically and effectively carrying out preventive measures, using all strength to check the spread of the epidemic in our country and ensure the health and safety of the Chinese people.”

[ABOVE: The front page of the party’s official People’s Daily today.]

The larger story below this one (with photo) was about Hu Jintao’s meeting in Chengdu with various diplomats and heads of state present in Sichuan to attend the Wenchuan earthquake memorial event today. Hu Jintao expressed his thanks for the broad international support China was given in its time of need, and praised the way the Chinese people (the People’s Liberation Army, etc.) had “united in the struggle” for rescue and relief following the quake.
Most newspapers, party and commercial, have given prominence to the earthquake anniversary on their front pages. For an excellent collage of front pages across the country, visit this special page set up by QQ.com.
Here is the front page of today’s Southern Metropolis Daily, somewhat reminiscent of front pages we saw across China during the national period of mourning last year:

[ABOVE: The front page of today’s Southern Metropolis Daily: “.”]

But a few papers, notably Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post, focussed their front page attention on the H1N1 story. Here is today’s Oriental Morning Post, which shows a photo of the swine flu patient — a Chinese graduate student from the University of Missouri — currently under treatment in Chengdu.

By Qian Gang — It has been a year already since the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan. And as we remember that painful experience, we must engage in thorough reflection. That means also taking a fresh look at what actual steps were taken to prevent or mitigate disaster. [Frontpage Image: “China earthquake” by Sweejak, available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]
This does not mean that we must tear everything down and rebuild from scratch. In fact, we have many decent laws in our country that simply need to be put into action, and promptly. We have stringent regulations that through disuse have become empty scraps of paper.
With the help of the Internet, I have ferreted out some of these old documents, and I would like to share them with everyone here, so that we may draw important lessons from them.
On January 31, 2005, more than three years before the earthquake struck, the government of Sichuan province sent down government order No. 6 (“川府发”[2005]6号文件). It was called, “Notice Concerning Further Steps in the Work of Earthquake Prevention and Preparedness” (关于进一步加强防震减灾工作的通知). In accordance with regulations on openness in government affairs, this document was printed in the Sichuan Government Bulletin (四川政报) and is still available online today.

[ABOVE: Screenshot of the Sichuan Government Bulletin online site, with 2005 document No. 06 on enhancing earthquake preparedness. Were any of these steps taken?]

This document deals specifically with the strengthening of work toward preventing and mitigating earthquake damage, and lays out a full-scale strategy on how to “comprehensively improve seismic monitoring” (全面提高地震监测能力), “comprehensively raise our capacity for earthquake forecasting and emergency decision making and management” (高地震预报和应急决策管理水平), and how to conduct earthquake safety work in the countryside.
One thing in the document that should grab our attention as we read it today is its clear language about the need to “urgently rebuild and reinforce various dangerous and old schools” (及时改造和加固各级各类危、旧校舍).
When I continued searching along these lines, I was surprised to discover that many provinces and cities issued similar documents on earthquake disaster prevention and mitigation in early 2005.
Shaanxi said “priority had to be given to primary and secondary schools in rural areas, and to earthquake fortifications at hospitals” (要高度重视农村中小学校舍、医院的抗震设防). Guangxi said “educational departments and other relevant government offices at various levels must work urgently to rebuild and reinforce dangerous or old school buildings of various kinds in all areas” (各级教育主管部门和有关部门要及时改造和加固各级各类危、旧校舍). The city of Xi’an said “there is a need to pay special attention to the fortification of primary and secondary school structures against earthquakes, and those that do not comply with the demands of earthquake protection must be rebuilt” (要高度重视农村中小学校舍的抗震设防，对达不到抗震设防要求的要进行改造).
On July 28, 2005, on the very same day that the anniversary of the Tangshan Earthquake was commemorated, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development held a national forum attended by the heads of earthquake disaster prevention offices across the country. The ministry demanded that “special attention be paid to the seismic fortification of large-scale public buildings” (特别注意大型公共建筑的抗震设防), that “leadership be strengthened and responsibility be taken, employing measures to ensure every effort is made to reduce injury and loss of life in the event of a disaster.”
Every single one of these documents makes reference to another important document, the State Council’s “Notice Concerning the Strengthening of Prevention and Mitigation Work for Earthquake Disasters” (No. 25, 2004). This document serves as the policy reference for all of these local and regional documents on earthquake readiness.
If you make a careful reading of the speech delivered by Zhang Peizhen (张培震) of the China Earthquake Administration’s Institute of Geology to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on June 30, 2008, everything becomes clear instantly. Zhang, who is head of the Institute of Geology, said: “In 2004, the China Earthquake Administration organized earthquake experts from around the country to carry out research on earthquake rise from 2005 to 2020. They designed 22 areas around the country that were considered to be priority regions for earthquake monitoring and defense.”
The documents released by the State Council and by various provincial and city governments at that time were clearly part of an overall government push for earthquake disaster prevention.
But the burning question is: were these documents actually translated into action?
For example, taking into account the fact that most all of these documents mention the urgent need to reinforce school buildings, we must go back and ask: after the government raised this issue, what was the response of the various government officials responsible? Did education offices file their own reports on the situation? Were any funds appropriated for this work? How were housing and development offices involved? Did lower-level governments put these policies or recommendations into effect? Further, did the media play the role it should have in publicizing the issue and monitoring the situation?
It is never too late to make amends. The first goal of reflecting back must be to root out fatal loopholes. We have to take a pragmatic approach in getting a clear picture of what actions were taken after the 2004 State Council document was handed down. With this information in hand, we must take a fresh look at every step in earthquake distaster prevention and mitigation work, up to the moment that the earthquake struck.
The comprehensive push for earthquake readiness that we can glimpse from these government documents, a push that was prompted by long-term earthquake forecasts from experts, was followed not long after by last year’s Wenchuan earthquake. These documents hold extremely valuable lessons as we review our policy successes and failures in disaster warning and prevention. The government, academics, the media, all of us must give these administrative clues the attention they deserve — and we can afford even less to willfully ignore them.
A version of this article appeared in the May 7 edition of Southern Weekend.
[Posted by David Bandurski, May 8, 2009, 12:36pm]

By Qian Gang — In the “great earthquake” of May 12, just one year ago, we saw the combined devastation of a natural disaster and social tensions in a way that was unprecedented. Chinese news reports on this major story unfolded in a complicated environment, and it is impossible to render a simple verdict about media coverage.
As rescue and relief efforts began, the release of information prompted the international news media to note a “rare openness” in news coverage within China. Subsequent restrictions on reporting of shoddy school construction told a very different story.
A Wildfire is Extinguished
The phenomenon of school collapses drew attention on the very day the earthquake struck. Wenchuan was pinpointed as the epicenter of the quake, and rescue teams and journalists sought to make their way there at the first available moment. But because the roads were destroyed, their way was blocked at the city of Dujiangyan.
In Dujiangyan, where the quake activity had not been the most serious, what everyone witnessed was not damage to residential buildings but rather the complete collapse of schools, which had resulted in a disproportionate loss of life among students and teachers. In a news extra in the early morning hours of May 13, Southern Metropolis Daily gave prominent place to a photo essay dispatched by their reporter on the scene in Dujiangyan. It was called “Masses of Students are Buried at Dujiangyan.”

[ABOVE: Screenshot of online coverage of a Southern Metropolis Daily report on school collapses in Dujiangyan, Sichuan, May 13, 2008.]

Early on May 13, the official Xinhua News Agency also released a dispatch called, “Quake Causes the Death of Around 400 Students at a Middle School in Sichuan’s Qingchuan County in Guangyuan Prefecture” [Video of CCTV coverage here].
The bulk of news reports about school collapses came in the first three weeks following the quake. During this time there were in fact bans from the Central Propaganda Department. On May 15 the propaganda department had ordered that “no specific examples of rescue efforts at schools be raised in reports on the Wenchuan earthquake rescue.” But not unlike the propaganda department order that media not dispatch journalists to the quake zone, this order quickly became a worthless scrap of paper.
By May 18, school collapses all over the disaster zone had been reported by Chinese media – in Dujiangyan City, Beichuan County, Wenchuan County, Shifang City, Qingchuan County, Mianzhu County and Pingwu County. In the vast majority of cases these schools had collapsed due to structural weaknesses and had been laid flat within moments. These collapsed structures offered a stark contrast to neighboring buildings, including many previously designated by the government as unsound, which had sustained little damage.
Not to be bested by commercial media such as Southern Metropolis Daily, party mouthpieces like People’s Daily Online, Xinhua Online and Sichuan Television also paid attention to the problem of school collapses in earlier reports. On May 16, People’s Daily Online arranged an online chat between Web users and officials and scholars from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Housing and the China Earthquake Administration. During that session, officials said that “there were certainly quality issues behind the collapse of school buildings and we will conduct a strict and uncompromising investigation.”
The second wave of reporting on the issue of school collapses came after the national period of mourning from May 19 to 21. For three consecutive days, Southern Metropolis Daily ran a series of reports called “Xue Shang” (学殇), or “The Premature Death of Our Students.” The reports exposed even more bitter truths to the public, reporting how the party secretary of Mianzu City prostrated himself before the parents of primary school students as they petitioned for redress of wrongs. This prompted other news reports, and also resulted in the tightening of controls on reporting about school collapses.
But then came an even more powerful third wave of reporting on the issue. On May 29, Southern Weekend ran a whole series of reports – “Ministry of Housing Experts Rule Juyuan Middle School in Dujiangyan a Substandard Structure: An Investigation Into the Collapse of Dujiangyan’s Juyuan Middle School,” “Mianzhu Fuxin Second Primary: How the Collapsed School Buildings Were Constructed,” “Dongqi Middle School: Could Tragedy Have Been Averted?” On June 6, the weekly newsmagazine Outlook ran a report called, “An Investigation Into School Collapses in the Quake Zone: Why Did Old Residential Structures Stand?” On June 9, Caijing magazine published its own report, “School Buildings, A Chronicle of Concern.”
It was at this time that the Central Propaganda Department and local propaganda offices issued comprehensive bans on further coverage of the issue of school collapses. Caijing’s report was the last to be openly published, and it was also the most serious report.

[ABOVE: Screenshot of online coverage of the Caijing magazine report, “School Buildings, A Chronicle of Concern,” June 2008.]

Using the WiseNews Chinese language database to search for all mainland Chinese articles with the keywords “earthquake” and “school collapse” over the past year, you can spot a clear downward trend in the number of reports from late May onward. As the one-month anniversary of the earthquake approached, reports on shoddy school construction were virtually nonexistent.
On June 25, media in Sichuan province ran an article called “The Earthquake is the Culprit in the Destruction of Buildings: Survivors Must Look Rationally to the Future.” At this point, journalists from other provinces were pulled from the earthquake zone under a compulsory order. Media such as Southern Metropolis Daily and Southern Weekend that had reported on the problem of school collapses were severely criticized and eventually subjected to purges of editorial staff.
There have been three notable official overtures on the issue of shoddy school construction. The first came in the early days of the relief effort, the second on the occasion of the six-month anniversary, and the third during the “two meetings” of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress earlier this year. In each instance the resolve to seek out the truth and hold people accountable has weakened.
In the earliest phase Chinese media used circuitous reporting tactics to circumvent propaganda bans. Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhu Yu (朱玉), for example, wrote a report called “The Disaster Prevention Strategy of a Rural Schoolmaster in the Quake Zone.” The report managed to underscore broader failures of government preparedness by glorifying a local school official in Sichuan who had for many years worked privately to reinforce his own classrooms. When the earthquake struck his school was not damaged. The Xinhua report was fiercely criticized by the Central Propaganda Department when it came out on May 23 .
By the time the Southern Metropolis Daily was criticized by authorities in late May 2008 the issue of school collapses was effectively untouchable. But media still seized the opportunity afforded by International Children’s Day on June 1 to honor students who had died.
The next major report skirting the edge of this issue came many months later, on February 6, 2009, as China Economic Times, a newspaper published by the Development Research Center of the State Council, ran a report by veteran investigative reporter and CMP fellow Wang Keqin (王克勤) called, “An Investigation Into the Collapse of the Bank of China Building in Mianzhu.” The report, which exposed construction quality problems very reminiscent of those behind school collapses, was again fiercely criticized by the Central Propaganda Department, which quickly issued an order for the recall of newspaper copies that had already been distributed.
Investigations into the collapse of schools in the quake zone did not cease despite restrictions. Even as the rubble was cleared away — and with it much critical evidence — the parents of students who died in the quake and other citizens in the disaster zone used their own cameras and mobile phones to document the scene. Many journalists from outside China sought at great risk to film documentaries in the quake zone, and many were detained by authorities, but at least three documentaries were completed.
Sichuanese writer and activist Tan Zuoren (谭作人) made scores of trips into the disaster zone, and an incomplete independent citizen survey of 64 schools that he released confirmed the details of at least 5,761 students that had died in the quake, the vast majority due to shoddy school buildings. On March 28, Tan Zuoren was arrested by authorities in Sichuan under charges of “inciting subversion of state power.” Tan’s independent numbers offer an interesting counterpoint to official numbers released this week saying 5,335 students died in the quake.
Beijing artist Ai Weiwei has also sought to conduct a citizen investigation online. His blog entries on his citizen investigation have been deleted as soon as they appear, but he has continued to make updates and re-posts. Up to April 27 he had already gathered specific information about 4,481 students who died in the quake.
The Political Logic of News Controls
News openness in the early stages of the earthquake relief effort was something to which we all bore witness. Controls were relaxed even on the issue of school collapse in the very early stages, and we saw party media like Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily Online jumping into the fray. Early on, Chinese authorities also indicated that there would certainly be investigations into problems in school construction.
The environment steadily tightened, however, and there were three principal reasons for this. First and foremost, news reports on school collapses were implicating more and more officials. Many officials who previously served in areas impacted by the quake had now moved on to higher positions in the official hierarchy. In one of the more outstanding examples, Sichuan’s provincial propaganda chief, the very man whose responsibility it was to control media in the quake region, had served previously as the party secretary of Dujiangyan.
Former Sichuan officials were also now serving within the central party leadership in Beijing. News reports touching on official negligence were clearly disadvantageous to their “political survival.” And so the tangled fabric of power within the vast bureaucracy quickly knotted together in a recognition of mutual interests, and this force worked against the resolve at the center to get behind the problem of school collapses.
Secondly, the collapse of schools in the quake zone quickly set off a massive grassroots rights defense movement (民间维权行动). And thirdly, the school collapse issue touched on even deeper and more sensitive nerves — the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games and China’s international reputation. A top Sichuan education official, Lin Qiang (林强), even resigned his role as an Olympic torch bearer, saying in an interview with Southern Weekend on May 23, 2008, that “the truth is more important than glory.”
In the official response to reporting on the Sichuan earthquake, we also saw signs of emerging changes to media control and censorship in China, what we have called at the China Media Project “Control 2.0” (传媒控制升级版). It is fair to say that media controls in mainland China have never slackened, but “control” has undergone many changes, not just in methods and tactics but also in the standards applied to control — What should be controlled and what not? What should be controlled more strictly? What areas can be loosened?
In the past controls were largely ideological in nature. Propaganda organs of the party routinely punished media in their capacity as the guardians of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. But in the post-totalitarian era in China, in the era of what we can call “market Leninism,” ideology has faded, and as the power of the central party has waned, the power of local interest groups is on the rise.
The primary impetus for media control today is now direct and personal political interest. Officials and interest groups at various levels often manipulate propaganda offices to stifle news media, and the most effective charge they now levy against them is that they are “harmful to the national interest” or “damaging to social stability.” This is why, in the case of the Sichuan earthquake, we saw on the one hand that news reports on the disaster situation itself were far richer than we saw for previous major disasters (such as the quake at Tangshan), and on the other hand that reports on school collapses were suppressed. These reports on school collapses exposed the corrupt and negligent behavior of officials, and so were a direct challenge to their political interests.

[Posted by David Bandurski, May 7, 2009, 1:54pm HK]

By David Bandurski — May 1 this year marked the one-year anniversary of the implementation of China’s ordinance on government information disclosure, a moment hailed by some as a breakthrough for information access in China. Since late April, Chinese media have used the occasion of the ordinance’s one-year anniversary to talk about supposed advances in information freedoms in China — and also, in more isolated cases, about lingering challenges.
For the obstinate optimists there is no doubt reason enough to remain positive about the promises of the Ordinance on Openness of Government Information, or zhengfu xinxi gongkai tiaoli (政府信息公开条例). After all, as they frequently point out, it does mark a break in principle with the assumption that information should be secret as a matter of course.
But the real track record so far, as commentators such as Xu Zhiyong (许志永) have noted (BELOW), is certainly less than stellar.
In the rosy camp today is a piece from the Jinghua Times appearing also at People’s Daily Online. The article talks about how changes in China’s handling of the SARS outbreak in 2003 and the Sichuan earthquake last year reveal its changing attitude toward information release.

Concerning the release of information, there are many examples both positive and negative. Of these, there are two examples in particular etched into the minds of Chinese.
The negative [example] is the SARS epidemic six years ago. At that time, a small number of officials, out of various considerations, covered up the epidemic situation and spoke lies to the people, vastly delaying the opportunity to check the spread of SARS. Later, the reason we could win the battle against SARS was because we learned our lesson, releasing information on SARS every day through the media.
The positive [example] is the Wenchuan earthquake one year ago. Faced with a disaster of epic proportions, the government released information at the earliest moment, and people could access reliable information quickly through the Internet, radio, television, mobile SMS and other channels. The anxieties of the people quickly settled, and there was no place for rumors to abide. People across the country united as one, gathering their strength for the disaster relief effort.

“Late reporting and the cover up of ‘negative news’ suggests a guilty conscience and a basic inadequacy, and this is also a failure to understand the importance of information openness,” the article concluded. “Openness of information is about being earnest and withholding nothing; it is an expression of a government’s confidence.”
This statement about openness and government confidence needs to be tallied, of course, with the steady suppression of information that began just one week after the earthquake struck, and which stood in sharp contrast to the earlier overtures of openness. Many key issues, such as the collapse of school buildings and disaster preparedness (long-term earthquake prediction, etc), quickly became off-limits. And to this day, much information about the Sichuan quake, particularly touching on government decision-making, has been suppressed at the local, provincial and national levels.
In another piece of positive news today, the official Xinhua News Agency hailed the pending launch (on May 30) of a comprehensive national online platform for the release of government information. It appears that the site, clearly still in the works, will serve as a kind of information release clearing house, providing on a single platform bulletins and reports released by local governments across China.
Further coverage at Sichuan Online (SCOL) today provides a slightly more neutral view of the information release ordinance and its accomplishments.
The article cites as a further example of China’s new attitude of openness the degree of access afforded to foreign journalists in China during the Beijing Olympic Games. “The right of foreign journalists to report legally in our country has gained new long-term protections under Chinese law,” it says.
A number of the inherent weaknesses in China’s approach to information openness do come out in the Sichuan Online piece, the bulk of which is an interview with legal scholar Wang Xixin (王锡锌). Wang points out, for example, that China’s secrecy laws are overly broad and this often results in the failure to release information that falls under the new ordinance.
But one of the strongest criticisms of the inadequacies of the new information openness legislation came late last month from legal scholar and activist Xu Zhiyong (许志永), who in his personal blog turned a sharp eye on official work reports on information release put out by government offices in Beijing’s Haiding District.
A translation of Xu’s blog entry follows, but we also suggest that readers of Chinese take a quick look at another April 30 entry in which he discusses information release by looking at India as a case study:

After the Ordinance on Release of Government Information took effect, governments at various levels all built websites, formed information release work groups and designated special personnel in charge of information release. And for certain basic categories of information, such as government duties, laws and regulations, organizational guides (办事指南) and work briefs (工作动态), they did make information available. In Beijing’s Haidian District, for example, they set up a special government office — the information release management section of the district government — as well as six district-level government information release locations (政府信息公开场所). Various administrative organs and institutional units in the district set up active information release locations and mechanisms for information release upon request, and also designated special personnel to deal with the work of information release. According to Articles 9 through 12 of the Ordinance, which dictate the scope of information to be released, administrative organs throughout the district worked to sort through information and generate indexes, and according to Article 15 they released these of their own accord through government websites, government bulletins and other means making access convenient for the public . . .
Generally speaking, if citizens apply for the release of standard government documents (规范性文件), government work briefs (政府工作动态), work plans (工作规划), summary reports (总结报告), punitive administrative actions (行政处罚) and other government information of an ordinary nature, most of this information can be made available . . .
If citizens request information that perhaps touches on corruption, the abuse of administrative power and other rather sensitive types of information, they find it difficult to receive an answer. In Haidian, when citizen Zhu Fuxiang (朱福祥) requested information about land compensation, resettlement and land use contracts in Sijiqing (四季青镇), he was told that such information did not exist. When citizen Chen Yuhua (陈育华) requested that police authorities release receipts from the collection of fees for dog permits and registration, he received no answer. When lawyer Yang Huiwen (杨慧文) filed a request with 73 relevant government departments and district governments for the release of expenditures on public transportation and the use of public funds, no office released the information within the legally designated 15-day period, 34 offices demanded an extension for response to this request, and 20 were simply silent.
In a number of other well-known cases, such as a request by Shanghai lawyer Yan Yiming (严义明) that information be released concerning a 400 million yuan project, information release requests were denied.
According to the 2008 report released by the Information Release Management Section of the Haidian District Government, Haidian received 350 information requests in 2008. Of these, 340 requests were made in person, accounting for 97.1 percent of the total, and 10 requests were made via the Internet, accounting for 2.9 percent of the total. Looking at the content covered by these requests, matters of urban construction, neighborhood planning, housing rights and land rights, demolition and removal compensation, etc., accounted for 308 cases, or 88 percent. There were 13 requests [for information] concerning environmental impact assessments and environmental quality, accounting for 3.7 percent of the total. There were also 13 requests [for information] concerning population statistics and public sanitation, accounting for 3.7 percent of the total. Other types of requests accounted for 4.6 percent. As of December 31, 2008, of these 350 requests for information release, 340 were answered. Of these: 229 resulted in “agreement to release” (同意公开), accounting for 65.4 percent, and most of these concerned urban development, neighborhood planning, housing rights, land rights and demolition and removal compensation. Eight cases resulted in “agreement to partial release” (同意部分公开), accounting for 2.3 percent, and these largely concerned land requisition and compensation for demolition and removal. In 12 cases, accounting for 3.4 percent of the total, the ruling was that the information was “not permitted to be released” (不予公开), and these largely concerned land requisition and development. In 47 cases, 13.4 percent of the total, the response was that the “information does not exist” (信息不存在). In 10 cases, or 2.9 percent, the response was that the “information is not in the possession of this office” (非本机关掌握). A further 12 requests, or 3.4 percent, came back with responses saying that the “information requested is not clearly specified” (申请内容不明确). And for 23 requests, or 7.7 percent, the information requested was “not government information” (非政府信息).
Aside from this, a total of 168 requests for information release were made in 2008 [at lower administrative levels] in Haidian District if one adds together the annual work reports of the various council committees (局委), neighborhood units (街道) and townships and villages (乡镇). Of these, 35 were answered “”agreement to release”,” 40 were answered “agreement to partial release,” 39 were answered “information requested does not exist,” 12 were answered “not in possession of this office” and six were answered “release not permitted.” In 36 cases, the information requested was either deemed non-government information, the information requested was not clearly specified or corrections to the request were demanded.
I cannot say for certain whether or not the figures from the Haidian District Government are meant to include numbers from its lower offices, but when you add all of these various reports together, the annual report [on information release] released by the Haidian District Government does not tally with the numbers of its subordinate offices. And judging generally, the situation of information release requests being accommodated is not cause for encouragement.
The chief obstacles to the release of government information
The first issue is inherent flaws in the ordinance on information release. Compared to information openness laws in many other countries, our information release law is merely an administrative regulation (行政法规) and not a law formally promulgated by a legislative body. According to our regulation on information release, the scope of information release applies to the government only in the narrowest sense, not including legislative bodies, the political party or social organizations. The ordinance is overly general on the question of information secrecy, erecting a roadblock to the release of information from certain government offices. Then there is the further issue of blocks put in place by the law on secrecy and other laws (保密法等法律).
Inherent flaws in the ordinance have meant that information about the vast majority of actual policy decisions that impact on the lives of the people cannot be released. Many local governments are meticulous and prissy about the release of information. In its annual report, for example, the State Asset Regulatory Commission in Wenzhou expressly emphasized the issue of secrecy protection, and had the audacity even to define the three broad categories of “petitioning by the masses” (群众信访情况), “sensitive issues in enterprise restructuring” (企业改制敏感问题) and “enterprise commercial secrets” (企业商业秘密) as information that could not be released and that should be actively restricted. They required at the same time for “reliance upon distribution procedures for public documents, so that information planned for release is examined on a case to case basis prior to release in a three-step process, with examination first by office personnel, verification and approval by office heads and final re-checking by leaders in charge. Only pre-approved documents may be posted on the Web, to ensure that no secrets are leaked.”
What’s more, information release requests lack a system of legal recourse. Article 33 of the Ordinance states that in the event that the government fails to release information, the applicant may lodge a complaint with superior offices, and if the government violates the legal rights of the citizen “in the process of information release,” [the applicant] may bring administrative litigation. This stipulation lacks specificity — exactly what kind of government behavior warrants administrative litigation in refusing information release? Experience teaches that while some courts do accept such administrative litigation from citizens, other courts do not.
Legal recourse is extremely critical. There is an urgent need, therefore, for the Supreme People’s Court to come out with a judicial interpretation that clarifies the situations in which administrative litigation can be brought when information release requests are denied.
Thirdly, a civil society is insufficiently developed [in China]. The work of information release is inseparable from non-government organizations in our civil society at are concerned with the public welfare. These organizations are natural monitors of the government. Social organizations in our country are insufficiently developed, and they do not yet constitute movements for information release such as those we see in India and other countries.

FURTHER READING:
“Chang Ping: Openness and Privacy Must Switch Places in China,” China Media Project, August 28, 2008
“What Happened to China’s Era of ‘Sunshine Government’?” China Media Project, August 6, 2008
“China Newsweekly: Government ‘Cold’ on ‘Information Openness’“, China Media Project, July 31, 2008
[Posted by David Bandurski, May 5, 2009, 12:18pm HK]