By David Bandurski — At CMP we have continuously covered China’s national legislation on openness of government information, its promises and challenges. But the flip side of the push to make more of certain types of information public in China is the uphill battle to keep personal data private. [Frontpage image from budgetstockphoto.com].
As news bubbles up once again that China is moving ahead with a new law protecting private information, columnist Chang Ping writes at Southern Weekend about the need to make both priorities – openness and privacy – work hand in hand.

“Public Should be Public, Private Should be Private” (公开该公开的，保密该保密的)
By Chang Ping (长平)
Southern Weekend
August 27, 2008
Just as I was preparing to write this piece I received a letter notifying me that I had won 180,000 yuan in prize money, and I couldn’t help myself, I had to know if this was real or not. Before I’d had a chance to read through it my mobile phone rang. It was a telemarketer selling insurance policies. No sooner had I politely broken off her sweet spiel than I got the ring that signaled that an instant message was coming in. The message urged me not to worry myself over fake receipts (for expense reimbursement purposes) and said I should contact Ms. Liu post haste. This isn’t my problem alone. According to one study by China Central Television, 74 percent of those interviewed reported being harassed after having their personal information leaked . . .
Well, thankfully we’ve learned from various media in recent days that the draft version of the “Law on Protection of Personal Information” (个人信息保护法) has been put to the State Council, and that this draft stipulates that no group (团体) may release personal information to a third party without the consent of the person concerned, except for the purposes of criminal investigation, tax assessment or press supervision (媒体调查).
Along with these good tidings we have had a whole series of editorials expressing praise and eager expectation. These editorials testify once again to the importance of protection of personal information. I feel optimistic that this time it is for real. Why do I say “once again” and “this time”? Because, as people concerned about this issue should know, ever since 2003 many media, including Xinhua News Agency, have come out with reports about a law to protect personal information. This has happened one, two, three times maybe.
According to these reports, it was in 2003 that the State Council charged relevant experts with beginning the drafting process, and an expert proposal had already been completed by 2005 and submitted to the State Council for deliberation, kicking off the law-making process. From the beginning, the news of this process drew universal praise from the public, and media looked into the various methods of developed nations, thoroughly explaining the concept of private information and why it must be protected. Of course, these explanations seemed increasingly redundant, coming as they did amid a worsening climate of personal information leaking. Many people have tasted the bitterness of this problem, which has become a matter of absolute urgency for ordinary people.
Every year at the national “two meetings” there have been People’s Congress delegates speaking out about the problem. In 2006, for example, NPC delegate Zhang Xuedong (张学东) said in an interview with a Xinhua reporter: “The leaking and abuse of the personal information of citizens of our country has already reached urgency, and it has become imperative that we implement a law on protection of private information.” This year NPC delegate Sun Guihua (孙桂华) told a Xinhua reporter: “The leaking of personal information has already become a general social menace and moving quickly toward a law on protection of private information is an urgent task before us.”
What we need to notice in these reports and editorials is that we have not seen any note of opposition whatsoever. According to China’s Legislative Law and on the basis of practical experience, it is possible to limit deliberation in cases where there is relative unanimity over legislation in order to speed up the legislative process, and we long ago reached the point of urgency on this matter. Well then, why is it exactly that with the draft already done that we are still dragging our feet through the deliberation and voting process?
Any act of legislation has a process to go through, and perhaps five years is not a particularly long period of time. But we should let the people know where exactly it stands. Within this time we have had the “Ordinance on Openness of Government Information” take effect. According to this ordinance, this matter [of law-making], which “concerns the vested interests of citizens, legal persons or other organizations,” and moreover “reflects the set-up, functions and work procedures of administrative organs,” should be make public. Naturally, legislation is only partly a matter for the government and is more so a matter for the People’s Congress. Government information should be made public, and information about legislative matters should be made public too.
Much information about law-making has already been made public. And recently we also had the good news that in the future, the decision of the Chairman’s Meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress as well as legislative drafts under deliberation by the NPC Standing Committee will be made public so that feedback can be solicited from society at large. A commonsense understanding of law and politics would suggest that we should not only make public the text of legislation but also make public the legislative process itself, that we should not only make public the law-making process, but also make public the views of all of the various delegates participating in the legislative process.
While information that should not be made public continues to be made available, information that should be made public is not being released in a timely manner. The consensus in society today is that “openness be the rule and secrecy the exception” (公开是原则，保密是例外) in public affairs, and for personal privacy this is reversed, “the rule is secrecy, the exception is release.” Here with us, these two principles have been reversed. Only if they switch positions can we really and truly solve this problem.

[Posted by David Bandurski, August 28, 2008, 4:37pm HK]

By Joseph Cheng and David Bandurski — Former premier Hua Guofeng (华国锋), the party leader eventually outmaneured in the late 1970s by the more charismatic Deng Xiaoping (邓小平), passed away quietly last week. Hua was given scarcely a nod from international media, who were busy, understandably, covering the Games in Beijing.
The response from China’s media was understated too, with a few notable exceptions from more freewheeling commercial media.
In official party papers, Hua was inevitably given a small, namecard-sized treatment last Thursday in the front page space Chinese journalists refer to as the “paper’s rear-end” (报屁股) — that is, usually, the lower right-hand corner. The text was uniformly the official Xinhua News Agency release:

Comrade Hua Guofeng, a distinguished Chinese Communist Party member, a tested and faithful champion of communism, who previously held important posts in the party and government, passed away on August 20, 2008, at 12:50pm in Beijing, due to an illness that did not respond to treatment. He was 87 years old.

Coverage at the official People’s Daily was typical, devoting a small box with a photo of Hua and the Xinhua release.

[ABOVE: August 21 edition of People’s Daily with “rear-end” coverage of Hua Guofeng’s death.]

Not surprisingly, news about Chinese President Hu Jintao dominates the People’s Daily page, the most prominent story (with photos) about Hu’s visit with the Chinese Olympic team.
In contrast, the official website of People’s Daily carried more extensive coverage of Hua’s death, including a message board where users could leave their comments.
Over at Shanghai’s official Liberation Daily, the page was almost identical.

[ABOVE: August 21 edition of Liberation Daily.]

The boldest front page on Hua Guofeng’s death is hardly a surprise.
Guangdong’s Southern Metropolis Daily splashed the official Hua Guofeng news release and a more lively color photo across the left-hand half of its front page last Thursday, sharing at least equal attention with news of Jamaica’s Usain Bolt breaking the world record in the 200 meters.

[ABOVE: Front page of August 21 edition of Guangdong’s Southern Metropolis Daily.]

Some of the boldest coverage of Hua’s death last week came from Shenzhen’s Daily Sunshine, which gave the story a front page nod as well as a full inside spread.
Here is the newspaper’s front page, which is filled with splashier commercial fare (the dominating headine is again about Bolt):

[ABOVE: August 21 edition of Shenzhen’s Daily Sunshine.]

And below is the black-and-white inside spread on Hua Guofeng, which carries the headline: “Hua Guofeng Passes Away in Beijing Due to Untreatable Illness.”
The page offers much more historical information on the former premier, including a fact that Chinese media rarely mention — that Hua opposed and stymied the rehabilitation of Deng Xiaoping.

By David Bandurski — An article in yesterday’s edition of Nanfang Daily, the official party newspaper of Guangdong province, reported that airport security in Guangzhou foiled a pair of terrorists bound for Kunming to carry out a bomb attack. The only problem was that news of the supposed plot came not from security personnel but from “travelers in the airport.” Say what?
The news report follows:

Yesterday morning two men who had packed explosive devices in their luggage with the intention of carrying them onto an airplane were fortunately discovered by security personnel at the Baiyun International Airport and delivered into police custody.
At around 12 noon, security personnel on duty at Baiyun International Airport spotted suspicious devices connected by wiring on an x-ray monitor and quickly intercepted two suspects, including one surnamed Qu, who were in the process of boarding.
Further investigation showed that Qu’s luggage contained explosive devices . . . Security personnel on the scene immediately controlled the two male passengers, and according to travelers in the airport, they were preparing to go to Kunming to carry out a bomb attack.

As the Nanfang Daily story made the rounds on China’s internet, Web users took the reporters responsible for the article to task.

[From Beijing]
How would travelers in the airport know they were planning to go to Kunming to carry out a bomb attack? What a reporter! There’s no doubt this is fake news.
[From Beihai City]
What kind of news is this. I don’t even understand it. What is it trying to say? Is it that security personnel at the Baiyun Airport are really great? Or that these two guys are pigs? Or maybe the reporter is just really bored?
[Chenzhou City]
The reporter just wants to build this up into a story. They write fuzzy intentionally. What a pig!
[From Chaohu City]
What messy news! Just a two-bit reporter trying to scrape together a living!
[From Chongqing]
This reporter definitely didn’t graduate from middle school!!! What the hell is he trying to say? Or perhaps he doesn’t want to say things clearly.
[From 116.55.232.* 2008-08-18 11:47:00]
People need to stop screwing around with Yunnan. Can’t they get Yunnan news straight before they send it out? This is really disturbing.
[From Zhuzhou City]
If you believe anything China’s media comes out with then your IQ’s a bit low ::::::
[From Shanghai]
Oh, these reporters don’t have any character whatsoever. They don’t even know how to be journalists.
[From Kunming]
Is this real or fake?

[Posted by David Bandurski, August 19, 2008, 2:33pm]

By David Bandurski — China’s medals tally as we are now halfway through the Olympic Games in Beijing is an impressive achievement for any country, not to mention a country that did not even compete in the Games until 1984. As can be expected, there have been notes of protest about the means by which China has accomplished this — through the mysterious “Project 119” (119计划), for example, a kind of centralized planning model for sports, with its sights on Olympic gold and no concern for the overall health of athletics in Chinese society, etc.
These criticisms are not entirely baseless, of course. China’s victories are not a reflection of the overall health of its athletics system so much as its resolve to win gold. But when this point is made by U.S. media in particular it inevitably comes off as a bit proud and self-congratulatory. Yes, you’ve won all these golds — but we have achieved our victories through a fair and open system not funded with taxpayer money.
For some, this has implicitly become an Olympics of dictatorship versus democracy, the flip side of what Chinese media have called the “Olympic Cold War.”
But this year’s Olympics are much more than an empty, superficial show of China’s national strength. They come, as we have emphasized before, on the thirtieth anniversary of reforms in China. And for all of its problems, China has made remarkable progress as a society over the last three decades.
As we have said repeatedly here at the China Media Project, one sign of China’s growing openness is the growing diversity of opinion you can find in its media, the ugly realities of censorship notwithstanding.
We were pleased, then, but not entirely surprised, to find a thoughtful editorial in QQ.com’s expanding opinion section begging tougher questions about what China’s Olympic medals haul actually means.
For those who think the cries of “Go China!” ringing from the stands in Beijing signal only a shallow, unreflective nationalism, this editorial is a reminder that Chinese can support the home team and still maintain a sense of perspective:

“It is the ‘National System’ That Will Win the Olympic Cold War”
By Liao Baoping (廖保平)
August 16, 2008
We are one week into the Beijing Olympic Games, and China’s gold medal count far surpasses that of the United States. While Chinese Olympic officials have said time and again that winning gold medals is not the chief purpose of holding the Olympics, the U.S.-China war for gold medals remains the topic everyone is paying most attention to.
For a long time, the United States has dominated Olympic medals tally. The U.S. has participated in 23 Olympic Games and has topped the medals chart for 16 of these Games, a remarkable achievement. It is still unclear whether or not China will shake America’s dominance at this year’s Olympics, and it would be rash to make predictions. Still, looking at the current standings, it seems only China has the strength to challenge the U.S. on this count. And who can say China won’t succeed, even if the U.S. may have the upper hand in track and field events.
In a short 20 years China has managed to transition from “the sick man of East Asia” (东亚病夫) to a “sports superpower” (体育强国), from zero gold medals to leading the gold medals table. This is a surprise not just for Chinese, but for the whole world. And this further evidences China’s steady rise over the last two decades.
This perhaps confirms the principle that national power and prosperity leads to strength in athletics. There is some reason in this. After all, if the people of a country don’t even have food to fill their bellies, how can they possibly find the strength for athletics? But this is not entirely true either. We all know that North Korea is not a developed nation, and yet it has not fallen behind in athletics, and in some events, for example women’s soccer and archery, it even excels.
Some countries in the world are rising powers, for example India . . . which in recent years has developed rapidly and bears some similarities to China, but India has won just one gold medal in these Olympic Games — it is 24 years after China in breaking through its slump of zero gold medals. So perhaps this tell us that national strength does not necessarily equal athletic strength.
Strength in athletic competition has to come from physical resources, from investment of wealth — this is a simple fact. Without the investment of people, resources and assets there is no conceivable way [a nation’s] athleticism can win out amidst fierce competition. The only difference is a question of what kind of investment of resources.
From everything we know, China’s method of investing in athletics is a “national system” (举国体制), it is about consolidating national strength and turning it to the athletic system. An academic study has shown that China now has 370,000 students funded by the state for athletic support, and 46,000 professional athletes are supported for sports at the provincial level or above. Such a massive system and group of athletes requires budget expenditures at various government levels, all in order to earn medals at various regional athletic events. Exactly how much this costs no one can say for sure.
In contrast, America’s athletic system was commercialized long ago. According to U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman Darryl Seibel, while it represents the U.S. in Olympic competition, the U.S. Olympic team receives no support from the government, relying instead on support each year from corporate sponsorship, private fundraising and roughly 150 million dollars funds distributed from the International Olympic Committee. America’s ability to maintain its long-standing dominance in athletics under this sort of investment relies on commercialization and on a stable reserve force of society-wide athletics. But in order to meet “fierce competition,” the U.S. Olympic Committee plans to approach the government about providing support to win the “Olympic Cold War” (奥运冷战).
Clearly, China’s “national system” has been effective in its move from weakness to strength in international athletics over such a short period of time. Or we might say, this highly effective system has made the old medals champion, America, very uneasy, and has caused it to think about how it might reproduce these results.
What is different, however, is that the U.S. Olympic Committee seeks additional funding by “requesting” it, and the matter of whether or not the government provides funding is one that must be decided by the taxpayers to see whether they approve of this kind of “campaign of national image building” (国家形象工程). Our own Olympic committee does not, unfortunately, face these sorts of concerns. Under this “national system” money is simply spent when its there, and strength expended. The government takes the initiative in expending resources.
We expended so many resources on athletics, and yet we can still sense how little of this has been shared with ordinary citizens. In our cities, we can see public exercise facilities, but in the countryside perhaps not even a single ping pong table is tough to find. This tells us that our “national system” for athletics is about using our national strength so that a few people can early gold and silver medals, about many people paying so that a few can perform. So, whether becoming a strong gold medal nation means that we’ve become a nation of strong athletics — this is something we have to hang a question mark over.
Of course we hope that China wins many gold medals, that it upsets U.S. dominance in the Games, and that we can hold our heads high in the arena of international sports. But we hope even more that we can also win a gold medal in the development of athleticism among ordinary people. I believe that when that time comes, when we have a solid foundation of society-wide sports involvement, then Chinese men’s soccer will no longer be as it is today, and that everyone will be able to taste the joy of sports.

FURTHER READING:
“Phelps, China Dominate Opening Week,” AP, August 17, 2008
“U.S. vs China: Is This Good Versus Evil,” Bleecher Report, August 14, 2008
[Posted August 18, 2008, 12:19pm HK]

By David Bandurski — China’s female Olympic gymnastics team is now coming under intense pressure as evidence mounts that champion gymnast He Kexin (何可欣) is below the age of eligibility for Olympic competition in the event. The evidence against He’s eligibility includes online news coverage by China Daily and the official Xinhua News Agency, which Chinese officials are now saying is inaccurate.
But as Berkeley’s China Digital Times has noted, a number of Chinese newspaper articles last year and early this year reported He’s age as 13. In trying to build a credible case for the gymnast’s eligibility, Chinese officials will find themselves denying a series of independent Chinese news reports.
We’ll begin with the official Communist Party mouthpiece, People’s Daily, which reported on November 3, 2007 (possibly the same source as the online Xinhua News Agency article) that “13 year-old He Kexin” successfully completed an uneven bar routine of high difficulty.
The article appeared at the top of page 7 of that day’s edition of People’s Daily, under the headline, “Cooly Awaiting the Achievements of our Newcomers.”

[Page 7 of the November 3, 2007, edition of the official People’s Daily, with article reporting He Kexin’s age as 13.]

The first two-thirds of the People’s Daily article in Chinese follow, the last paragraph including the sentence about He’s age (highlighted in bold):

冷静看待新人成长
年轻选手在第六届全国城运会上捷报频传,国家体育总局副局长肖天提醒—本报记者汪大昭在结束了大部分场次的比赛后，第六届全国城运会已近尾声。如何看待和评价我国竞技体育后备力量的表现，事关城运会办赛宗旨。记者就此采访了组委会副主任、国家体育总局副局长肖天。
肖天说，参加本届城运会的74个代表团中，已有43个代表团获得了金牌，58个代表团获得了奖牌，70个代表团有运动员打进前八名。奥运会冠军朱启南在10米气步枪射击中，以703.7环的成绩打破李杰7年前创造的全国纪录，超过世界纪录0.6环。女子400米混合泳李玄旭游出4分37秒56，这一成绩排在世界第六。男子举重56公斤级黎立志和陶劲总成绩286公斤，超过今年世界锦标赛冠军成绩3公斤。任龙云在田径比赛中跑出28分08秒64的成绩，打破了男子万米全国纪录。
回顾城运会比赛，肖天认为，一批优秀的年轻选手表现出敢打敢拼的斗志和较好的基本功，他们在城运会上脱颖而出，显示出后备人才的发展潜力。17岁的丁宁战胜世界冠军郭跃和李晓霞，夺得乒乓球女单冠军。13岁的何可欣在女子体操比赛中出色地完成高低杠“李姮空翻”。国手张轶和小将仲春婵在女子10米气步枪射击资格赛中，都以400环的满环成绩平了世界纪录。年轻选手在射箭女子个人赛中发起挑战，使5名国家队运动员无一人进入八强。13岁的李玄旭夺得女子游泳3枚金牌。19岁的陈锦燕获得女子花剑冠军，使所有对手的得分都没能超过9分。我国乒乓球、羽毛球、跳水、体操等优势项目人才济济，梯队建设扎实，城运会比赛可以看作世界同年龄段最高水平的竞争。田径、游泳、水上等基础大项新人成长，部分集体项目涌现出新秀，人才储备有所改观。
(本报武汉11月1日电)

Just five days after the People’s Daily report, a separate news feature appeared on page 19 of Tianjin’s Jin Wan Bao introducing up and coming Olympic stars.

[Page 19 of the November 8, 2007, edition of Jin Wan Bao.]

He Kexin was included among the list of 10 athletes to watch, the first line identifying her clearly as “13 year-old competitor He Kexin.” The following is a close up of the right-hand section of that article:

As the Olympic Games draw closer, China’s gymnastics team has begun active preparations for competition, and coach Zhang Peiwen (张佩文) says the men’s team’s old leader Li Xiaopeng (李小鹏) has returned to form, and that the female team has reconsolidated its strength on the uneven bars, with 13 year-old junior team member He Kexin possibly to become the secret weapon at the Olympics.

The article repeats further down: “The ‘secret weapon’ Zhang Peiwen refers to is recently emerged star He Kexin. This 13 year-old junior team member can not only complete a [difficult manouever/”李娅空翻”], but displays a steadiness in performance inconsistent with her age.”
On January 22, 2008, the Legal Evening Post, a spin-off of Beijing Youth Daily, a newspaper published by the Beijing chapter of the Chinese Communist Youth League, ran an interview with one of China’s gymnastics coaches. The run-up to the Q&A read:

“Don’t rush yourself. Wait ’till your cough is settled and then do [your routine]!” This reporter observed practice on the balance beam at the training facility as 13 year-old junior team member He Kexin prepared for her routine and was suddenly interrupted by a fit of coughing . . .

By March, everything seem to change. All at once, Chinese-language news reports on China’s Olympic gymnastics team, including one from Beijing Daily on March 8, 2008, were no longer talking about “13 -year-old junior member He Kexin” but about “15 year-old junior member He Kexin.”
FURTHER READING:
“How Old Are the Chinese Female Gymnasts?” ESWN, August 15, 2008
“The Chinese Gymnasts: Age Questions Remain,” TIME, August 13, 2008
“Scandal of the Ages,” David Flumenbaum, Huffington Post, August 14, 2008
“One More Olympic Secret: How Old is He Kexin?” China Digital Times, August 14, 2008
“The Olympic’s Age-Old Problem,” Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports, August 15, 2008
[Posted by David Bandurski, August 15, 2008, 3:15pm HK]

By David Bandurski — The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games are of course the culminating event for China this year. But we should not forget that this year also marks the thirtieth anniversary of economic reforms and the beginning of China’s “economic miracle.” In fact, some of the most thoughtful coverage in China’s media in recent weeks has looked back on the lessons of China’s remarkable trajectory of reform.
In a recent interview with Window on the South, one of China’s more professional magazines, Yale University finance professor Chen Zhiwu (陈志武) offered his views on China’s fantastic economic growth over the last 30 years, its causes and its lingering challenges.
We include a portion, about two-thirds, of the interview below:

Concerning China’s economic miracle, Joshua Ramo, a [former foreign policy] editor at America’s Time magazine, once wrote a report in which he said China had, through great effort, ingenuity and bold experience, managed to find a mode of development that suited its own national realities. He termed this mode the “Beijing Consensus” (北京共识). In his view, China’s experience based on the “Beijing Consensus” has universal value, and can serve as a model for other developing nations, that is to say that it can serve as a model for more backwards countries seeking to spur economic growth and improve people’s lives.
How should we view this synopsis? As institutional economists see it, what neglected factors lie behind China’s economic miracle? Can this high level of economic growth be sustained? On this topic, one of our reporters interviewed Chen Zhiwu (陈志武), a professor of finance at Yale University.
Window on the South: Institutional economists believe that mechanisms for protection of property rights, rule of law, responsible government, etc., are all necessary conditions for economic development. But while China falls short in all of these aspects, it has still managed an “economic miracle.” Has China, then, created a new kind of economic model? How do you assess the “Beijing consensus”?
Chen Zhiwu: Those conclusions from institutional economics are not directed at highly imitative manufacturing economies, because manufacturing does not demand a great deal of institutional environments. For example, when I was a boy in the countryside of Hunan province, we might get scolded by adults for secretly snacking on someone else’s cucumbers. But this was just about taking a bit of cucumber or watermelon, and you would never entertain the thought of taking someone else’s furniture, plundering their belongings, or taking over their house. Clearly, in terms of basic property protection there were strict norms [in my boyhood Hunan], it was only that in that environment the norms governing property rights did not arise from a formal resolution about rule of law, but rather from invisible norms. When life and routine exchanges are confined to those with whom you are familiar, and when the usual products and assets [you come in contact with] are basically tangible things, then the “tangibility” of these tangible things is itself sufficient to guarantee the protection of these assets and their exchange. And so, the crucial thing in this case is not whether there is this solid, non-human system of rule of law.
However, if you want to develop a strong service industry, particularly financial services and other contractually-based economic sectors, and if you want to build a system of intellectual property, then the situation is very different. We are always talking about how profit margins are too low for Chinese manufacturing, that the money is whisked away by Western brands. But turning things around, we must ask why China cannot build its own brands. This is because China’s system of property protection is weak.
A friend of mine who is a lawyer in the United States specializes in patent cases. He has told me that in China if you buy a company’s product (for example, a computer) and afterwards sue the manufacturer, once you get to court, even if you present proof of actual purchase, and even if you present proof that the computer is the brand of the company concerned, Chinese courts will not necessarily agree that your computer indeed was manufactured by the defendant, and the trademark holder will say that the product is a fake in order to avoid taking responsibility. In the end the judges and lawyers will accept this sort of reasoning. If you tell American lawyers about these kinds of decisions, they will find it incredible. Because in the United States if someone buys a computer, even if they do not have a receipt, the trademark holder must take responsibility so long as it is their brand, and they must compensate the consumer. Of course, if it really is a fake, the trademark holder can turn right around and sue the manufacturer of the fake goods, but this is a separate matter altogether. If China’s legal reasoning continues to operate in this way, trademark and intellectual property protection will continue to be a problem, it will be difficult to develop the value of Chinese brands, and Western brands will continue to reap the profits.
As for this “Beijing Consensus,” I think it is too early too say, and it’s a bit hyped. We have to examine China’s economic development for much longer. Each person has his or her own ideals, and when some people rejoice over the victory of the “Beijing Consensus,” I find myself at a loss for words. But it is worth noting that over the last 60 years the international academic community has repeatedly committed the error of drawing conclusions prematurely, and have misled the world. One case in point was the early exaltation of the Soviet model. In the 1930s, the Soviet economy was also growing at a rate of over 10 percent a year. Stagnation in Western economies prompted many people to begin praising public ownership and the planned economy, and leftist economists all believed this was the death knell of capitalism.
From the beginning of the 1940s, Keynes and many other economists promoted the idea of increased government intervention [in economic planning], and the market economies of countries in Western Europe as well as the United States were guided [by national governments]. Many developing nations that achieved independence after the Second World War also looked to the planned economy of the Soviet Union. But by the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, this kind of state or controlled economic model had already become impossible to carry on. Renewed privatization became unavoidable. This brought us Reaganomics, the reform of England’s economy under [Prime Minister] Thatcher and a twenty-year tide of global privatization. Many countries have gone full circle because of early, faulty conclusions about the strength of the Soviet economic model and the unfortunate global implications of this.
Another example was the East Asian model. In 1986, not long after I had arrived in the United States as an exchange student, business schools at perhaps every university was looking for scholars who could come and teach who understood the Japanese economy and Japanese culture. They were all researching Asian-style government industry policies and the role of government control in economic development. Japan’s economy began sliding into recession in 1990, and these days business schools don’t teach Japanese management methods or Japanese economic models. In the mid-1990s it was again about the “Asian economic miracle.” Everyone was talking about the strengths of the East Asian model. But when the Asian financial crisis hit in 1997 many people saw their livelihoods destroyed. What will the fate of today’s “Beijing Consensus” be? To each his own view, and history will decide.
Window on the South: What does China’s “economic miracle” mean for people in other parts of the world?
Chen Zhiwu: Chinese manufacturing may have spoiled China’s environment, and the payback for laborers may have been minimal, but it has certainly spurred China’s economic development, and it has at the same time increased the wealth of people in other countries, allowing them to buy more and better products at a lower price. However, for the manufacturing sectors of other countries it is a different picture. Competition from China, coupled with the highly replaceable nature of blue-collar manufacturing jobs and their weak bargaining position, has meant that many workers in many countries have had their opportunities taken. This has to a definite degree exacerbated the conflict between labor and capital in other countries . . .
Window on the South: I think that in order to understand China’s economic miracle, we need to go back to the beginning and look at the course that was chosen. If we don’t understand the early choices we lack the foundation we need to talk about the Consensus.
Chen Zhiwu: Many people attribute China’s economic achievements to the market economy, to its opening to the outside world, to its surplus population, its industriousness and such factors. In fact, these are all true. They are all important. But they are not the foundation [of China’s successes]. In the late Qing Dynasty and the Republican period, China also had a market economy, it had been forcibly opened to the outside world, its proportion of the world population was higher than today, people were just as industrious, but it did not achieve success by the economic standards of today.
What makes China’s economic achievements of the last 30 years stand out? The reason is that China’s economic achievements during this period have been built on a mature [global] foundation of modern industrial technology and a free trade system, and these foundational conditions did not exist in the late Qing or in the Republican period. Today, 85 percent of China’s gross domestic product (GDP) comes from modern industry and service industries, including energy, finance, manufacturing, transport, the Internet, computers, etc. And without exception these all come from the West. China’s products can flow to the whole world because of the free trade system established by the West. So saying China’s economic miracle belongs to China alone is not as accurate at saying it is the product of developments in global modernization.
Naturally, this is just the basis and condition for China’s economic miracle. India, Russia, Vietnam and other countries also have these conditions, but they have not matched China’s miraculous economic growth. This is because China’s national circumstances and conditions differed from these countries during this early round of globalization, and they all took very different development paths.
First of all, since the 1950s China has been through a whole series of poltical movements and human catastrophes, including the Great Leap Forward and the “Cultural Revolution.” Up to the end of the 1970s Chinese society was suffering severe crises on various fronts, and if it did not change it was headed for collapse. This forced people into a process of complete rethinking. When Deng Xiaoping raised his “cat theory” (猫论) those from more left-leaning segments of society perhaps found it difficult to accept, but this became the guiding thought of reform and opening at that time. Moreover, reform and opening gained broad social consensus in China. Even with things as they were, people were propeled by a kind of inertia, and unless they were faced directly with crisis, they were bound to stick to the old path. But by around 1978 the facts already spoke plainly that China’s system was insupportable . . . and in this situation there were few obstacles to carrying out fundamental reforms.
When India achieved independence in 1947 it set up a democratic system with checks and balances on power, elections and a definite degree of rule of law. We know that the goal of democracy is not to seek what are objectively speaking the best possible policy decisions, but rather to prevent others from consolidating power and making poor decisions that harm the society. In this way, democratic systems are about minimizing the degree of bad policy-making, maintaining the status quo, creating harmony and stability and staving off social crisis. Democracy is not suited to grand strokes of reform. Ever since India established democracy the society has been dominated by the [political] left, which opposes marketization, globalization and supports economic planning. Up to 1993, India found it difficult to opt for the reform path of market economics and globalization . . .
[Portion on Russia and China not translated]
Window on the South: Within just a few years of the “Beijing Consensus” being bandied about, Chinese manufacturing has faced numerous difficulties. Do you think China’s high level of economic growth is sustainable?
Chen Zhiwu: It can be sustained. However, this hangs on the question of whether or not China can step ahead in reforming a system the serves the state-run economy, and whether or not constitutional government and rule of law can be developed. Chinese exports have grown rapidly since it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. In the United States right now, aside from luxury goods consumed by high-income families, nearly all daily household goods consumed by low to middle-income Americans are manufactured in China, from curtains and bedcovers to televisions, computers and furniture. America’s household furniture industry was once centered in South Carolina and North Carolina, but not it has been taken over by Chinese manufacturers. What were once furniture manufacturers have become furniture importers.
At Yale University,where I am now, we have people of all shapes, colors and countries. All of them express great interest in China. This speaks to the influence of Chinese manufacturing, and it also tells us that the likilihood of further Chinese export growth is growing smaller and smaller, that it is no longer realistic to look to expansion of the export market. When we add to this the fact that trade protectionism is now rearing its head [globally], and the fact that manufacturing is on the rise in other developing nations, we can see that China’s current export-led economic model has already run its course, so that it is increasingly unsustainable. The next phase must be led by domestic demand . . .
[Discussion of inadequacies resulting from state control of resource allocation not translated.]
Window on the South: What concerns you most about China’s recent development?
Chen Zhiwu: It is the tendency to “lift the stone and drop it on one’s own foot.” It is human nature “not to weep until you see the coffin.” Even when the situation is serious, if the current system seems sustainable then there is less and less potential for self-examination and innovation. This is particularly true this year, as people [in China] have generally taken a self-defensive posture, and have built themselves up in a frenzy of nationalism, so that they can’t stomach home truths (逆耳忠言). In such a situation, whatever road China wishes to take, those on the sidelines can only look on. When the rain is coming and the bride wants to wed, often times even though you know tragedy awaits, there is nothing you can do. Those who spend all day singing hymns of praise for China accomplish nothing for its progress. Saying pretty things is the easiest thing in the world to do. In fact, those who talk about China’s “coming collapse” are far more valuable for China. We can look constructively at them and try to understand the reasons and forms of collapse they’re talking about, and we can look at what we might do right now to help China avoid this trap.
[Posted by David Bandurski, August 14, 2008, 1:15pm HK]

By David Bandurski — The murder in Beijing on Saturday of American Todd Bachman, the father-in-law of U.S. men’s volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon, was a major story, particularly coming as it did at the end of the first day of Olympic competition. But while Chinese Web users had a reasonably good chance of running across the story, newspaper readers might have missed it altogether.
The morning after the attack, the brief Xinhua News Agency release on the story was available under the domestic news section of the main news page at QQ.com, one of China’s top Web portals.
The QQ headline clearly linked the murder to the U.S. Olympic team: “Relative of U.S. Men’s Volleyball Team Murdered at Drum Tower.”

[Screenshot of news page at QQ.com, August 10, 2008, 9am, article on murder circled in red.]

In China’s official party mouthpiece, People’s Daily, it was a very different story. As expected, the dominating meta-story was the Beijing Olympic Games as an unprecedentedly positive historical, political and sporting event.
Media have certainly been instructed to “emphasize positive news” during this key moment for China. And there is the further issue — pressure from propaganda authorities aside — of news choice among Chinese editors, who are likely avoid more unpleasant stories that seem to dampen the positive public mood surrounding the Games in Beijing.
The latter is of course partly a commercial choice, and also, no doubt for some editors, a personal inclination.
For the People’s Daily, the reason for de-emphasizing the Bachman story is clear — it damages the purely positive image China is trying to project for the Games. The story is therefore pushed to the very back of the paper, to page 19, the last page of news. Again, it is the official Xinhua release.
Why run the story at all? To demonstrate, of course, that China does not regard the incident as totally inconsequential.

[Above: Page 19 of the August 10 edition of People’s Daily, story of Bachman’s murder circled in red.]

How did commercial newspapers play the story?
Beijing Times, the commercial spin-off of the official People’s Daily, gave the story no front page coverage. But the paper did play it on page 10 with a slightly larger headline, right below a story about how train tickets in Beijing can now be purchased five days in advance, and right above a human interest story about a Chinese AIDS orphan visiting the capital to attend the Games.
The headline for the Beijing Times story, again the official Xinhua release, emphasized China’s diplomacy and made no reference to the U.S. Olympic team: “China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Gives Top Priority to Murder of American Tourist.”

[Above: Page 11 of the August 10 edition of Beijing Times, with the murder story circled in red.]

In perhaps the best indication of the pressure coming down from the top for “positive news,” and of the potential risk involved for national newspapers that might consider running the Bachman murder story more prominently, Southern Metropolis Daily, one of the country’s leading commercial newspapers, gave the story no front page attention.
Southern Metropolis Daily buried the story on page 16, deep inside its rosy Olympics coverage. The headline similarly made no mention of the murder’s connection to the U.S. Olympic team, focusing instead on the actions of police: “Beijing Police Issue Release on Murder of American Tourist.”

[Above: Page 16 of the August 10 edition of Guangdong’s Southern Metropolis Daily, with murder story circled in red.]

So, did any of the ten or so mainland Chinese newspapers to run the Bachman murder story on August 10 give it relatively prominent play?
Yes, in fact. Just one.
Xi’an Daily, the official party newspaper of the city of Xi’an, ran the Bachman story at the bottom right-hand corner of the front page. The tiny headline was identical to that of Southern Metropolis Daily, focusing on the actions of police.

[Above: Front page of the August 10 edition of the official Xi’an Daily, with story on Bachman murder circled in red.]

In fact, if we were to offer awards for guts in the placement of the Bachman story in China, they would all go to party newspapers. Commercial papers, stuck between the official priority of “positive news” and the need to please readers with the right kind of Olympics coverage, were in no position to push.
The following is from the August 10 edition of the official Zhejiang Daily, which played the Bachman story on page 2.

[Above: Page 2 of August 10 edition of Zhejiang Daily, with murder story coverage circled in red.]

Zhejiang Daily‘s placement of the story was perhaps extra gutsy considering that Tang Yongming (唐永明), the man responsible for the murder of Todd Bachman, was one of the province’s own, a laid-off factory worker from Hangzhou.
The headline read: “Zhejiang Man Kills One Tourist and Injures Two in Attack at Beijing’s Drum Tower.”
FURTHER READING:
“The Chinese Censorship Foreigners Don’t See,” Rebecca MacKinnon for The Wall Street Journal, August 14, 2008
“Beijing Olympics: Chinese Tanks Watch Over Media Centre,” The Telegraph, August 12, 2008
[NOTE: Richard Spencer mentions an order concerning the Bachman story, and calls it “unusually specific.” In fact, the text of this order (The Telegraph claims to have obtained a list of these orders) sounds very much like what we have seen of such orders, including specific instructions for media to use only Xinhua news or avoid a particular story altogether. It sounds like the newspaper got its hands on a page of routine orders given to various media from the propaganda department and giving instructions on coverage.]
“China’s Media Censored Over Stabbing,” The Age, August 12, 2008
“Unlike Athletes, China’s Media Held to Different Standards During Olympics,” OpenNet Initiative, August 12, 2008
[Posted by David Bandurski, August 12, 2008, 4:37pm HK]