By David Bandurski – As one major national newspaper said in its leading editorial today that the “court of public opinion” was turning against local officials from Liaoning’s Xifeng County after news of their attempted arrest late last week of journalist Zhu Wenna (朱文娜) in Beijing, the All-China Journalist’s Association (ACJA) said it was looking into the case. [Below: Screenshot of coverage of the Xifeng case at Chinanews.com].

Editorial writer Zhou Minghua (周明华) said claims by Xifeng’s propaganda chief, Zhou Jingyu (周静宇), that party secretary Zhang Zhiguo (张志国) was unaware of the police action in Beijing were “weak and unconvincing.” He said the actions of Xifeng authorities, presumably orchestrated by Zhang, underscored the inadequate protection of journalists in China:

The mass media are tools for watchdog journalism, and when they are carrying out their various functions, if those are in the public interest, well they are bound to do harm to power interests at certain levels. What our society needs is tolerance and “mercy”, and this is particularly true of those bound to protect the law. What is most discomfiting is that our nation’s laws on the protection of journalists are weak, and there are no relevant regulations.

In typical form, Guangdong’s Southern Metropolis Daily related the Zhao Junping/Zhu Wenna Case [See timeline HERE] to broader institutional problems in China, namely over-concentration of power:

Behind it hides a comprehensive system of government violence served by public security organs, procuratorial organs and people’s courts and beholden to autocratic bullying or to the will of the chief leader. Once the comprehensive power mechanism springs into action, and public instruments are turned to the service of personal ends, they are lethal and oppressive, whether targeting media organs or individual reporters.

But public opinion, the newspaper said, would not stand for such egregious abuses:

The news that Xifeng County sent people to detain the [Faren Magazine] reporter was reported to the world through the newspapers, and as it appeared on the Web voices rallied in support [of the journalist]. In fact, this pallid summons and detention order that could not possibly stand on legal principles has already been “ruled” illegal in the court of public opinion . . . Public opinion in support of the media and journalists has materialized right before our eyes . . . The reporter may choose temporarily to hide away from this wild arrest order. In the long run, however, journalists stand in the sunlight. Public opinion cannot lose, and public opinion will not lose.”

By David Bandurski — “Above there are policies, below there are countermeasures” (上面有政策,下面有对策). So goes the popular saying that more or less sums up the age-old dilemma of enforcement and entrenched local power in China. And as China’s central leadership pushes the principal (if not necessarily the practice) of information openness, local leaders are becoming more cunning than ever in applying countermeasures to deal with increasingly freewheeling media.
Now, it appears, local cadres are taking the fight to places far beyond their jurisdiction.
Last week, a number of national media in China turned to the harrowing story of local Liaoning businesswoman Zhao Junping (赵俊萍), who was detained for seven months in Xifeng County, Liaoning, before being tried and found guilty on charges of defamation and tax evasion in what appears to be a vendetta by local party secretary Zhang Zhiguo (张志国) involving a contested land seizure [See TIMELINE below]. National media coverage followed a January 2 report by Faren Magazine, a spin-off publication of China’s Legal Daily,

In today’s China Youth Daily we learn that even as commercial media were turning to the Zhao Junping Case on January 4 — an editorial in Southern Metropolis Daily related it to the Pengshui SMS Case back in 2006 and underscored the need for political reform — local Liaoning officials were in Beijing investigating and intimidating the journalist, Zhu Wenna (朱文娜), responsible for the original Faren Magazine report.
On January 3, the day after Zhu Wenna’s Faren Magazine report was published, the local prosecutor’s office in Xifeng County ordered Zhao Junhua (赵俊华), the older sister of local Xifeng businesswoman Zhao Junping, to appear for questioning. Zhao Junhua tells China Youth Daily she was pressured with accusations that she had paid the Faren Magazine reporter for the negative story. It was not possible, reasoned her interrogators, that a reporter would travel from Beijing to Liaoning for a story unless she had been offered payment.
The next day, Xifeng County’s propaganda chief, Li Fulu (李福路), and the head of the county’s politics and law committee (政法委), Zhou Jingyu (周静宇), paid a visit to the offices of Faren Magazine in Beijing to speak with the editor in chief. That afternoon, a group of Xifeng police officers entered the magazine’s offices with an order for summons and detention. They said a “defamation” case had already been opened against the reporter Zhu Wenna and demanded to speak with her about it.
China Youth Daily quoted Zhou Yi, a law professor from the China Youth University for Political Sciences, as saying that “if Xifeng Party Secretary Zhang Zhiguo believes that the SMS message sent out by Zhao Junping or the report written by Zhu Wenna are defamatory, he can bring a defamation case in a court of law. But for the Xifeng police to formally investigate a journalist for defamation, that is clearly against the law.”
The brazen actions of local officials in Xifeng demonstrate the new and changing pressures facing journalists attempting to carry out cross-regional reporting, or yidi jiandu (异地监督), in China.
Cross-regional reporting, which involves media from one province or city carrying out investigative reporting in another region or area, has typically afforded media more opportunities to tackle tougher stories. As such stories — about corruption, for example — do not implicate officials in their corner of China’s vast bureaucracy, media have generally been able to pursue them without the immediate fear that they will be censored or otherwise punished.
One of the most notable examples of cross-regional reporting was Zhang Jicheng’s seminal 1999 report on the HIV-AIDS epidemic in Henan province. While Zhang worked as a reporter for a local Henan paper, his report on AIDS in Wenlou Village, unpublishable in the local media, was run in Sichuan province’s Huaxi Dushibao.
In recent years, Chinese journalists have reported a number of tactics used by provincial and local officials to curb cross-regional reporting, including you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours pacts in which local party leaders agree to discourage investigative reporting by media under their immediate control.
The following is a timeline of the Zhang Junping case compiled on the basis of the January 7, 2008, China Youth Daily report:

Early 2006 — The Shenfeng Petrol Station (沈丰加油站), run by female business owner Zhao Junping (赵俊萍), owner of two petrol stations and one market, is slated for destruction by authorities in Xifeng County, Liaoning Province as part of local urban development plans. The Property Estimates Office of the local real estate bureau (房产局房产评估事务所) estimates the value of Zhao’s property at 3.64 million yuan (US$501,073). The local demotion and removal office (拆迁办) organizes a second estimation, and the value is given as 220,000 yuan (US$30,284). Zhao Junping objects to the estimate and enters numerous negotiations to no result.
May 2006 – The Shenfeng Petrol Station is forcibly demolished. Zhao Junping files numerous complaints with various government offices.
February 28, 2007 – Xifeng’s top leader, party secretary Zhang Zhiguo (张志国) reportedly orders that no compensation must be paid to Zhao Junping, that her remaining petrol station (not involved in the demolition dispute) must be shut down and that local police must be mobilized to deal with her.
March 3, 2007 – Police in Xifeng County claim to receive information from an “informant” saying that Zhao Junping’s third business, a market (自选商场), was illegally avoiding taxes. An investigation is opened against Zhao Junping and a stink made over the case on local county television (also under the control of top county leaders, including Zhang Zhiguo).
Early March 2007 – Zhao Junping angrily sends out a text message to a number of officials in Xifeng County saying: “In Xifeng, Liaoning Province, there is a major [criminal] case [going on]. The county head surnamed Zhang has lorded it over the county for six years. His corruption through misuse of the law is boundless . . . A major market case afoot/cadre-business collusion black as soot/a cloud gathers over Xifeng County.” The very day the SMS is sent out, “according to direction for county leaders” claiming slander and defamation, Zhao Junping’s sister and others are arrested for alleged role in sending out the message.
March 15, 2007 – Upon learning of the arrest of relatives, Zhao Junping sets out for Beijing with materials concerning the illegal activities of Xifeng Party Secretary Zhang Zhiguo. Her intention is to make a report to the Central Discipline Inspection Commission.
March 21, 2007 – Xifeng police arrest Zhao Junping in Beijing and take her back to Xifeng, confiscating all materials on her person.
On October 30, after Zhao Junping has been detained for more than seven months, the court in Xifeng opens that tax evasion and defamation case against her.
December 28, 2007 – The Xifeng court determines Zhao Junping is guilty on the charge of defamation, and that the nature of the crime is serious, “harming social order.”
January 2, 2008 – Faren Magazine’s report on the Zhao Junping Case is widely disseminated by Web media across China. The same day the prosecutor’s office in Xifeng County issues a notice to Zhao Junping’s sister, Zhao Junhua (赵俊华), asking to appear at the office for questioning the next day.
January 3, 2008 – Zhao Junhua is taken in for 12 hours of questioning by Xifeng authorities, who insist Zhao paid Faren Magazine reporter Zhu Wenna (朱文娜) for the report. Zhao insists she does not know the reporter and did not pay her. Employees in the prosecutor’s office insist this is not possible. There is no way, they say, that the reporter would travel from Beijing to Xifeng without payment.
January 4, 2008 – Xifeng County’s propaganda chief, Li Fulu (李福路), and Zhou Jingyu (周静宇), head of the county’s politics and law committee (政法委), visit Faren Magazine in Beijing to speak with the editor in chief. Later in the afternoon that day, a group of Xifeng police officers arrives at the magazine’s offices saying a “defamation” case has already been opened against Zhu Wenna and demand to speak with her about it.

By David Bandurski – While some analysts of China’s technology sector have suggested new regulations for the online audio and video industry slated to take effect on January 31 do not “actually represent a change in policy,” they have more edgy Chinese media up in arms, and CMP sources indicate authorities are already moving to quiet dissenting voices.
The State Council’s Information Office (the primary office tasked with policing China’s Internet) ordered the removal yesterday of an online editorial from Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post criticizing the regulations, a media source told CMP [Homepage Image: Youku.com, one of China’s leading video sharing sites].
Saying the new MII/SART regulations a were “clearly an act of establishing administrative licensing”, the Oriental Morning Post editorial [still available here] suggested they were a clear violation of Article 15 of China’s Administrative License Law, which additionally says that the setup of administrative licensing systems should primarily address such special areas as national security, public safety and limited national resources having a direct bearing on the public interest.
“An icy wind is cutting across the Internet as we enter the new year,” said the lead editorial in today’s Southern Metropolis Daily.
The newspaper said plainly that the new regulations “would bring the diversity of online video programming under much stricter controls”:

According to the regulations, companies hereafter applying to offer online video and audio services must be wholly state-owned (国有独资) or state-controlled (国有控股), and must have no record of violations in the three years prior to application. Many people believe that the lately very rich culture of online audio and video programming will soon lose its shine as it is “led to health and order.”

The Southern Metropolis Daily editorial argued that the SARFT/MII regulations are a “shocking intrusion” regardless of whether the government’s goal is to promote cultural development and innovation (a key Hu Jintao policy buzzword), or to ensure fair market competition.
“Industry controls on the online video and audio industry are unfair and directly concern the development interests of countless companies. They are also unjust, binding the civil right to expression in the online age,” the newspaper said.
RELATED READING:
“SARFT, MII jointly regulate and control online video business“, Caijing magazine, December 30, 2007
Supplementary Note, January 4, 2008, 8:35pm Hong Kong:
An additional point to note, as the debate over these new regulations unfolds in the Western media and blogosphere, is that these regulations should not be seen as an attempt to “shut down the industry.” Kaiser Kuo noted this correctly on his Digital Watch blog last month, and Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei.org has concurred. But we can eliminate the “shut down” thesis (as to the motivations of MII/SARFT) out of hand by simply looking at the party’s official media policy (“Three Closenesses”, “Media Strengthening”, etc.), which is about the perfect marriage of control and commercial growth. No, leaders have no wish to shut down the online video and audio industry, or to shake it up unnecessarily. They want it to flourish, and for service providers to make money hand over fist. But they also want to bring it to heel.
The crucial point is to observe how leaders might seek to accomplish these twin objectives through regulations of this sort.

By David Bandurski – While business headlines have been bullish on China’s digital television, or DTV, market in recent months, there are some indications consumers have been arm-twisted into making the switch, and many are unhappy about poor quality, insufficient choice and higher costs. But the message is out from China’s propaganda czars: DTV conversion is the future, and criticism must not impede technological and commercial progress.
According to a CMP source, the Central Propaganda Department issued a ban early last month on all coverage criticizing the rollout of DTV services in the country. Censors, the source said, singled out a December 7 editorial from the official Xinhua News Agency’s Xinhua Daily Telegraph. The article was called, “Overbearing ‘digital TV’ harms our self-respect.”
The Xinhua Daily Telegraph article was still available on the Xinhua News Agency website this month [See image below], but the propaganda department ban expressly directed all national and local media against excerpting the article or attempting their own coverage of the issue.

So-called “digitalization” of television services in China is a top priority of state economic planners, and the rollout of DTV has intensified over the last two to three years. According to China Netmedia, a market research division of the broadcast industry regulator and minder, the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT), there were 23.7 million DTV subscribers in China by the end of November last year.
Morgan Stanley indicated last month that it expected digital TV to be China’s fastest growing consumer segment through 2010, with the number of DTV users tripling annually.
But Xinhua’s recent criticism of DTV services — and the propaganda department’s aggressive move to limit similar coverage — suggest a deeper story. Yes, China’s DTV “subscribers” are growing by leaps and bounds. But are they opting for digital services or being cornered into them?
The Xinhua article raises a basic question about consumer choice and the legal rights of consumers. Shouldn’t consumers be able to opt against more expensive digital services without seeing their existing analog services disappear?
“At the very least, we should preserve their right to choice,” says the writer. “Those who wish to pay for TV service can have it installed, and those who don’t wish to pay for TV service can choose not to have it installed. Why is it that everyone is being forced to have it installed?”
The Xinhua article referenced an earlier editorial [available here] on DTV that pointed out the legal basis for consumer right to choice in China, Article 9 of “Law of the People’s Republic of China on Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests” (January 1, 1994) which clearly states that “consumers have the right to choose goods or services.”
“This means that users have the right to choose to continue using analog television [services] and refuse digital television,” that editorial concluded. “But in fact, the vast majority of users are actually compelled to accept this sort of service without choice and the extremely unreasonable prices that come with it. This is without a doubt a breach of their legal rights.”
The article also argued that as “digital television belongs to the category of ‘public utility’” it is wrong for operators to determine prices without first seeking consultation through a public hearing process according to law. Consumers, it said, “have a right to know why they have to pay over 1,000 yuan for a set-top box and then hundreds of yuan per month [in regular service fees].”
Then came the recommendation:

Taking this into consideration, we advise that the work of [digital conversion] not go ahead blindly, before measures have been taken by relevant parties to ensure the protection of legal rights. After all, the digitization of the community antenna TV (CATV) system concerns [the rights of] a great many people and has a strong public character. Government departments must not unilaterally call the shots, turning a project of popular favor (民心工程) into a project of popular resentment (民怨工程).

A deeper problem, though, is state monopolization of DTV services, which are being pushed (apparently rather aggressively) by provincial broadcast authorities across China. These are the very authorities, of course, who have a vested interest in DTV and will undoubtedly grab a portion of DTV revenues to pad their own administrative budgets.
The December Xinhua Daily Telegraph editorial follows:

In recent days, a new slang has materialized in our neighborhood – thieves. You can often hear such things as, “Have the thieves made it to your house yet?” or “Look, that thief has come again.”
This so-called “thief” is the guy from the provincial broadcast authority going door-to-door to install digital television set-top boxes.
[Why are they called “thieves”?] The reason is that everyone is extremely unhappy with the forcible way in which provincial broadcast authorities are pushing television reform. This round of digital television reform involves installation of a set-top box on existing television sets. Once they have been installed people consistently say that they are a pile of trouble and that reception quality suffers.
Before, watching television required just two steps. You turned on the power, grabbed your remote and that was it. But once the set-top box is installed the process becomes far more troublesome and it takes longer to switch channels [people say]. Most importantly, the picture quality clearly suffers . . . Moreover, there is no increase in the number of channels available.
Everyone feels that there’s no real need to install the set-top boxes. Despite the fact that they are provided with “inferior goods”, annual fees go up from 198 yuan to 296 yuan, a one-third increase. What’s more, you can’t opt out of it. If you don’t buy it, your existing television services first dramatically shrink, and then eventually disappear altogether.
Broadcast authorities have said that digital TV will allow viewing of “home movies”, “cartoon channels”, “cutting-edge documentaries” and other offerings, but charges are added for these. Television is the entertainment of the poor, and a sizeable proportion of ordinary users have no interest in paying money for television services. At the very least, we should preserve their right to choice. Those who wish to pay for TV service can have it installed, and those who don’t with to pay for TV service can choose not to have it installed. Why is it that everyone is being forced to have it installed? For a lot of people, the extra 98 yuan may be nothing . . . but in this age of rising prices for such basic necessities as rice, noodles and vegetables, a roughly 100 yuan increase is a lot to ask of lower-income people.
It’s no wonder many people are saying the aggressive pushing of set-top boxes it buying and selling under duress, that it is an act of robbery.

By David Bandurski — When Chinese President Hu Jintao pledged in his political report to the recent 17th National Congress to “promote [the] vigorous development and prosperity of Socialist culture,” he was talking not just about a re-awakening of arts and letters, but more importantly about a renaissance in China’s global power and influence.
He was talking about taking the kid gloves off and hitting hard with cultural “soft power.”

[ABOVE: Screenshot from Friends of Party Members and Cadres website article on ‘soft power’ showing an American student holding her Chinese language textbook.]

The language of “soft power” has come on strong in recent months in China, where leaders clearly now see culture as a key point of global contention among nation states.
“We cannot be soft on ‘soft power,'” declared an item in the official People’s Daily on March 31, 2006:

Just as experts have said, [despite China’s being] a cultural fountainhead with more than 5,000 years of civilization, we only export television sets and don’t export content to be televised. We have become an “assembly plant.” Actually, culture is a key integral part of a country’s overall national strength, what people have called “soft power,” and it has become a point of competition between national powers.

“If China is to become a powerful nation,” the article concluded portentously, “culture, politics and the economy must strengthen in step.”
The rise of “soft power” as a buzzword for China’s political elite was further signaled in May of this year as propaganda chief Liu Yunshan (刘云山) made a tour of Henan province to push local “cultural industry development” (文化产业发展):

[Liu] said the first 20 years of this century were a key strategic period in China’s modernization process and also a key strategic period for cultural development. We must firmly grasp this historical opportunity, energetically promoting cultural development, working hard to achieve a major rise in our nation’s cultural soft power.” [Hong Kong’s Ta Kung Pao, May 21, 2007]

With all this talk of power and cultural prowess, it comes as no surprise, perhaps, that Samuel P. Huntington has emerged as the theoretical darling of China’s “soft power” set.
Huntington’s ideas, though, seem to have been applied in reverse, not as a descriptive thesis about culture and conflict in the post-Cold War world, but rather as a kind of 21st-century Art of War — a lesson, if you will, in cultural realpolitik.
Take this passage from Li Shulei (李书磊), a recent CPC congress delegate from the Central Party School, quoted in an interview with 21st Century Business Herald back in October:

Culture is first and foremost an expression of our souls and emotions, our spiritual home. But to speak plainly some powerful foreign nations wish to use culture as a weapon against other nations, and for this reason we must work hard to raise our country’s “soft power.”

Li Shulei speaks of two aspects of culture. First, there is the pure and peaceful aspect, in which “Socrates belongs to China, and Confucius belongs to foreign nations.” Then there is the clash or struggle of cultures — culture as conspiracy. One culture — or nation (his lines blur on this critical distinction, but then China, we are elsewhere told, is “a civilization masquerading as a nation-state”) — attempts to spiritually colonize another.
Li’s historical examples, Christian missionaries and the English language as tools of Western colonialism, don’t seem too far-fetched. But then his left hook swings for American pop culture:

When we speak of culture as impure and as struggle, we mean that culture has always been used as a tool by people in international struggles. We glimpse this in the earliest colonialists using English and Christianity to rule peoples in colonized regions, and today as America uses its movies and popular music to disseminate its ideology and expand its national interests.

Pop music and American strategic interests? Clearly, they don’t watch enough MTV over at the Central Party School.
Hu Jintao is dead serious, though, when talks in section seven of his political report about “promoting [the] vigorous development and prosperity of Socialist culture.”
In the preamble to that section Hu says China “must keep to the orientation of advanced socialist culture.” That, in turn, will “bring about a new upsurge in socialist cultural development, stimulate the cultural creativity of the whole nation, and enhance culture as part of the soft power of our country to better guarantee the people’s basic cultural rights and interests, enrich the cultural life in Chinese society and inspire the enthusiasm of the people for progress.”
How does Hu Jintao propose to accomplish this?
That’s where section seven, part four of his political report comes in. Hu’s strategy for cultural development and the raising of China’s “soft power” profile involves a range of policy mechanisms to “stimulate cultural innovation.”
Freedom of expression is not among them.
“The only way to invigorate culture,” says Hu, “is to promote innovation in its content and form, its structure and mechanism, and its means of dissemination from the high staring point of our times and release and develop its productive forces.”
China must “create more excellent, popular works that reflect the people’s principal position in the country and their real life.” It must “vigorously develop the cultural industry, launch major projects to lead the industry as a whole, speed up development of cultural industry bases and clusters of cultural industries with regional features, nurture key enterprises and strategic investors, create a thriving cultural market and enhance the industry’s international competitiveness.”
Since Hu’s pronouncements came out last October, we’ve gotten a glimpse of what the above passage means — basically, more media commercialization under party control. It means the creation of bigger, more powerful, more consolidated Chinese media groups that do the party’s bidding, an intensification of Hu’s earlier policies of the “Three Closenesses” (三贴近) and “media strengthening” (做强做大).
It was no mere coincidence when GAPP minister Liu Binjie (柳斌杰) announced on October 17 that China would now allow “comprehensive listings” (of both business and editorial sides) by media companies and invite an infusion of capital from major state-owned enterprises. Nor was it a surprise when news followed on November 20 that Liaoning Publishing & Media Company Limited (辽宁出版传媒股份有限公司) had become the first Chinese media company to make a so-called “comprehensive listing.”
Both moves were further signs that Chinese media consolidation and commercialization are heading into high gear.
But while culture must contribute to GDP and to “soft power,” control remains the paramount priority. It is embedded in the language of innovation.
“We must step up the development of the press, publishing, radio, film, television, literature and art, cleaving to correct guidance and fostering healthy social trends,” read section seven, part two, dealing with buiding a “culture of harmony.” “We will strengthen efforts to develop and manage Internet culture and foster a good cyber environment.”
For party leaders, creating “favorable conditions for producing fine works, outstanding personnel and good results” has nothing to do with a climate of free expression. It is not about liberating, it is about mobilizing.
Which is why China announced over the weekend that it is beginning work on a national awards system (荣誉制度) — proposed in the last line of section seven, part four of Hu’s report — as a means of impelling the people to greater things and “achieving victory over material desires.”
In the absence of specifics about how the system would take shape and what standards would be applied, a handful of Chinese media voiced their concerns.
At Yanzhao Dushi Bao (燕赵都市报), columnist Guo Songmin (郭松民) wrote plainly in his concluding paragraph about his fears that national awards might be manipulated by those with power and money:

What needs to be emphasized here is that the trend a future national awards system most needs to avoid is the route taken in education and academia, in which all one needs is money and power to obtain [awards]. This would lead ultimately to a surplus and abuse of awards and make the national awards symbols of bribery and abuse of power. If we cannot ensure that we avoid this kind of situation, we should not be in a hurry to build a national awards system.

True to form, Southern Metropolis Daily implicitly linked the question with larger concerns like political reform and rule of law.
Awards of this kind, the editorial’s logic tiptoed, are “achievements based upon values,” and “history has shown that those national honors that are truly commended and remembered by people of the world must be those that can be shared by humankind.”
Furthermore, “we’ve seen that many universal values, including democracy, freedom, fairness, rule of law, human rights and human dignity were written into the 17th National Congress report this year within the system of Socialist value objectives,” so . . .
The upshot was to caution that national awards should be made in a spirit of openness and be based on universal human values, not serve narrow national goals.
Hu Jintao, however, has already defined the spirit of these awards. They will serve the interests of the party in its goal of building of an “advanced socialist culture”, the kind that can make money hand over fist while minding propaganda discipline.
Suppression, macro-meddling, nationalism and cultural snobbery. Now there’s a recipe for a cultural renaissance.
But the proof, as Hu would tell you himself, is in the business. And the question is now set: when the flowers of China’s “soft power” are brought to market, will the free world care to buy them?

By David Bandurski — When a frenzy of hatred turned on Chairman Mao Zedong‘s fourth wife, Jiang Qing, and the Gang of Four in October 1976, one of the most shocking revelations about Madame Mao’s excesses concerned her use of tens of thousands of yuan from the Chairman’s publishing royalties to fund her extravagant lifestyle. The Chairman himself was blameless, of course, hovering godlike above scrutiny.
But China had brutalized itself for a decade in Mao’s struggle against the “liberal bourgeoisie,” and some wondered privately why the Chairman should have royalty monies at all when writers like Ba Jin (巴金) had been persecuted for such bourgeois crimes.

[ABOVE: Screenshot of recent coverage of the Mao Zedong royalties issue at people.com.cn.]

The issue did not surface again until 1999, when Wang Binbin (王彬彬), a well-known writer and People’s Liberation Army officer, published an article in Guangdong’s Southern Weekend (then under the tenure of CMP co-director Qian Gang) called “Mao Zedong’s Royalties“.
Wang’s article began with an innocent recollection of Mao Zedong’s generous spirit, then peeled back the layers to expose the larger implications of that kindness:

After Mao Zedong quit the world, there were often words recollecting that Mao Zedong had used his writing royalties to aid his old friends and acquaintances and those who worked by his side. For example, every year he would send someone off to give 2,000 yuan to Zhang Shizhao (章士钊). When Zhang protested that he didn’t want it, Mao would explain that he had withdrawn it from his own royalties, that it was a personal gift, and only in this way would Zhang be set at ease. When people told these sorts of stories it was to show not only that Mao Zedong was gracious and enjoyed helping others, but that he was clean, honest and self-disciplined, that even as a man of unlimited power he used the fruits of his own labors when helping others, and dared not use public monies.
As Mao repeatedly applied his royalties to help others, he certainly had no small sum of royalties stashed away. As to how much exactly, I once surmised that it must have run into the tens of thousands. This, already, was a bold guess, for in those times this was an earthshattering amount. But it was only recently, when I read through A Record of Mao Zedong’s Relics, edited by the Shaoshan Memorial to Comrade Mao Zedong, that I realized my numbers had been hilarious underestimates.

Wang went on to calculate — quite reliably, on the basis of party records — that Mao’s revenues from his writings had been around 240,000 yuan per annum before and during the 1960s, and that annual interest from deposits stood around 15,000 yuan.
But the PLA writer’s revelations got worse. He even exposed the gifts (legitimate inheritance?) given to Mao Zedong’s daughters and son by the General Offices of the CPC in the 1980s:

For many years after Mao Zedong’s death no one brought up the question of the assets he had left behind. Until, in 1981, the General Offices of the CPC sent someone to inquire after Li Min (李敏). Li Min said: ‘I don’t have any expectations in particular, but if it’s possible I’d just like to get the portion dad originally gave me.’ In this way, Li Min received from the General Offices in 1981 the sum of 8,000 yuan, one 20-inch color television, and one refrigerator. At the same time, the General Offices gave a color TV and a refrigerator to Li Na (李纳), another of Mao Zedong’s daughters. It turned out that Mao had given Li Na 8,000 yuan back in 1975, and Mao Anqing (毛岸青) had received the same.

Wang’s facts were a slander on Mao Zedong’s good and holy name. The Central Propaganda Department’s secretive News Commentary Group (阅评组) was furious, and issued a harsh criticism that resulted in Wang Binbin’s discharge from the PLA.
Once again the matter dove into the deep. There were only whispers in private, about, for example, how Mao had dipped into his horde to pay for the building of a private swimming pool.
Over the last few days, however, this touchy issue has resurfaced in a big way, offering a more critical picture of the legendary Chairman, and an interesting counterpoint to Hu Jintao’s re-iteration of the Four Basic Principles (including Mao Zedong Thought) at the recent 17th National Congress.
Even as Mao’s legacy remains an important ideological bargaining chip in leadership circles, it seems — on a preliminary analysis of this recent news wave — that his legacy is now more open to scrutiny.
Have the clouds parted over this erstwhile taboo?
An article in the December issue of China’s Literary Circles of Party History (党史文苑), called “The Controversy over Mao’s Royalty Millions” (毛泽东亿万稿酬的争议), reported that Mao’s royalties, including interest, totaled a staggering 131 million yuan, or roughly 17.6 million U.S. dollars as of May 2001 [Coverage from China.com.cn].

[ABOVE: Literary Circles of Party History, an official journal of history relating to the Communist Party of China, reopened the issue of Mao Zedong’s royalties this month.]

The numbers, long assumed to be top secret, reportedly came out in the wash in July 2003, when the Historical Research Center of the CPC (中共中央党史研究室) and the Central Working Committee (中直机关工委) stumbled onto the question of whether or not copyright fees for a new edition of Mao Zedong’s Selected Works should be taxed. The question was referred to the State Council and the details of Mao’s treasure house were subsequently laid bare.
The Literary Circles of Party History article, which made the rounds on such Web portals as the official People’s Daily‘s people.com.cn on December 10, also discussed the intra-party controversy over Mao’s millions:

After Mao Zedong’s death, there was a dispute within the CPC about how to deal with the assets from his royalties. According to Wang Dongxing (汪东兴), Mao Zedong himself said that after he died the monies should be applied to his party membership fees (党费), and that the cash on hand should be divided amongst his bodyguards. But one view in the Central Party was that Mao Zedong belonged to the party as a whole, that Mao Zedong’s works were the crystallization of the party’s collective knowledge, therefore the royalties Mao Zedong left behind are not for Jiang Qing (江青) and other relatives.

Jiang Qing, the article said, had made at least five formal appeals saying she had a right to Mao Zedong’s assets and wished to recover 50 million yuan for her two daughters and other relatives. Her requests were denied. Li Min and Li Na reportedly also made demands, which were similarly refused until the General Offices of the CPC gave both daughters the sum of around two million yuan to purchase homes and cover other miscellaneous expenses.
Coverage has followed from Guangzhou Daily and other newspapers this week, and the story is bubbling through portals and chatrooms.
It’s in the editorial pages, though, that the facts concerning Mao’s millions have widened into a debate not just about how they should be disposed of, but about whether they are “legal” at all. There are deeper questions too about what the case reveals about where to draw the line between the public and private spheres.
A December 10 editorial, “’Who Should ‘Mao’s Royalty Millions’ Belong To?” (“毛泽东的稿酬”应该归谁?), addressed the royalties issue from the standpoint of law, and took issue with the previous party position that his works were the “crystallization of the party’s collective knowledge, therefore the royalties Mao Zedong left behind are not for Jiang Qing and other relatives.”
Writing in Southern Metropolis Daily yesterday, Xu Youyu (徐友渔) concurred with the first editorial, saying the royalties issue was for “private law”, and not to be politicized. But the editorial then veered purposefully into the mess of history: “[A]s Mao Zedong is a great political and historical figure, the connection of his royalties to political and historical conditions needs to be talked about,” he writes.
As he picks out the facts of history, Yu becomes increasingly uncertain about the “legality” of Mao’s millions. “Because if we want to talk about rule of law,” he says, “the first principle is that people all have equal rights. If royalties were utterly abolished during the Cultural Revolution, and Mao Zedong was the only exception, then this legality becomes a problem.”
In another editorial in today’s Southern Metropolis Daily, Ge Jianxiong (葛剑雄) argues that Mao’s royalties should be dealt with differently for different historical eras — that, for example, he should not have monies from periods during which royalties were abolished:

And so, the legal and reasonable way to resolve this would be to take “Mao Zedong’s royalties” and divide them up. In those times when the country did have a system of royalties, the works Mao published can be factored in. For those works Mao Zedong published after the royalties system was abolished, and through the Cultural Revolution, monies should be factored only according to per-word article fees [Note_Bandurski: We are dealing with three phases here. Up to the early 1960s, a royalties system was in place. For a brief period up to the onset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, per-word fees were paid for writings. During the Cultural Revolution nothing was paid. Article fees were re-instituted in the mid-1980s, and royalties reintroduced in the early 1990s]

One of the most interesting questions to come out of the debate over Mao’s millions is whether party cadres should earn royalties on writings done in an official capacity.
In his editorial, Xu Youyu raises the prickly question, for example, of whether “we might put our Great Leader in the compromising position of ‘using power for personal gain'” by allowing him (and his descendants) to profit from works, like the Sayings of Chairman Mao (“Little Red Book”), that achieved wide circulation not through sales but through political mobilization.
And what about official telegrams and notices and documents gathered together in the various “selected works” of Jiang Zemin and others? Should party leaders receive royalties on these? Or do they belong not to what Xu Youyu calls “private law” but to a separate public, government sphere?
The answer may seem obvious to some, but in China this is an open question. And Mao’s millions are now at the center of that question.
Which means it is not entirely frivolous for us to wonder:
When Xi Jinping (习近平) and/or Li Keqiang (李克强) are calling the shots in 2013, and Hu Jintao settles back into a not-so-quiet retirement, mightn’t he dine on his political report . . . and practice his backstroke in a pool of royalties?
[Coverage Continues: See the latest article on Xinhua News Agency’s official website, December 15, 2007]

By David Bandurski — In a CMP-sponsored lecture at the University of Hong Kong last week, Lu Yuegang talked about the role of journalists in documenting the facts of history, and how, in an open society, people must be free to seek historical truth. But as Chinese web users put one up on the scoreboard last month by exposing the South China tiger hoax, did China’s public miss an opportunity to re-visit a critical moment in PRC history?
That’s exactly what Li Gongming (李公明) suggested when he wrote last month in Southern Metropolis Daily, a commercial spin-off of Guangdong’s official Nanfang Daily, that “the writings of various scholars in recent days reflecting back on Russia’s ‘October Revolution’ actually should have drawn more attention from the public.”

[ABOVE: An image from Guangdong’s Tongzhou Gongjin, November 2007, of Soviet leaders, with the headline, “1917-2007: Here We Soul-Search History”.]

Attention to the anniversary had, in Li’s view, been disappointingly scant. “In contrast to the ‘South China Tiger’ affair, which has bubbled with activity all along, attention to the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution has languished. But while the former is all about public opinion in pursuit of the truth, the latter is in fact provides us with a historical case of much deeper importance for this kind of factual pursuit.”
But seriously now, who cares about the October Revolution?
Well, China’s Communist Party used to care, and care very much — and that’s precisely what made this year’s 90th anniversary (which should, numerically speaking, have been a whopper) so interesting.
The anniversary of Russia’s October Revolution, the 1917 coup d-etat that brought the Bolsheviks to power, once loomed large on China’s social and political calendar. The gunshots of that event, as Mao Zedong once said, brought Marxism-Leninism to China — and that was cause for celebration, for a real honest-to-goodness holiday, or jieri (节日).

[ABOVE: Front page of the November 7, 1957, edition of the official People’s Daily.]

But the hold of ideology has progressively weakened in China since the launch of economic reforms more than three decades ago. By the time the revolution’s 70th anniversary arrived on November 7, 1987 — the revolution happened in October of the Julian calendar, hence the “October Revolution” — the day no longer merited distinction as a holiday.
Not surprisingly, this year’s 90th anniversary passed without fanfare. No official celebrations were planned. No top officials stepped out to commemorate the event. The anniversary barely merited mention in the official People’s Daily, where decades ago it would have commanded the front page.
A lone article in the back pages of People’s Daily on November 23 this year announced that “the World Socialism Research Center and Marxism Research Academy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and other units” had held a discussion forum in Beijing on ‘”The October Revolution and the Contemporary Socialist Road.” The subtitle of the event was: “Studying the Spirit of the Party’s 17th National Congress, Commemorating the 90th Anniversary of the October Revolution.'”
“Those at the meeting believe,” said the article, lamely parroting Mao’s famous saying, “that the ‘gunshots of the October Revolution brought Marxism-Leninism to China.’”
In closing, the article invoked Hu Jintao’s recent political report to the 17th National Congress, saying the party must “press ahead on the road to Socialism with Chinese characteristics” (坚定不移地走中国特色社会主义道路).
Most interesting about this year’s anniversary, however, was the extent to which it WAS covered by non-party media, particularly in more outspoken Guangdong.
Back at Southern Metropolis Daily, Li Gongming wrote that today “there is already an objective and impartial reckoning of the October Revolution among historians internationally . . . and we can say that these historical truths are beyond a shadow of a doubt, unlike the smoke of the South China tiger affair.”
The problem, said Li, was that many people in China were still covering up the truth about the October Revolution and its implications for contemporary Chinese politics as well as history:

The problem now is that more than a few people are still keeping mum about the facts of history, still protecting those myths instilled in us for so long. It seems that determining the fact or fiction of a tiger isn’t too difficult, but letting everyone recognize clearly the fact or fiction of that tiger is not so easy. Why is it that even when the truth has been spoken, falsehood can still obstruct everyone’s vision? We’ve all heard this saying before about lies – that if they are repeated a thousand times they become truth. Jin Yan tells us that hundreds of thousands of copies of the mythical Soviet work “The October Revolution” were printed . . .
For more than a half century these historical materials as broad as the open sea, plus an even vaster volume of ordinary reading material and children’s books, works of art, all were inculcating historical lies. And this raises another question: how is it that lies can survive for so long?

Then comes the fundamental issue at hand, the way the Soviet Union failed by not instituting socialist democratic reforms (with China’s own failure presumably the subtext):

In fact, as early as 1918, not long after [the Bolshevik’s] had come to power, [Rosa] Luxemburg issued a warning to Lenin: “Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.” [NOTE: The rest of Luxemburg’s quote, as often cited, goes: “Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule. Such conditions must inevitably cause a brutalization of public life: attempted assassinations, shootings of hostages, etc.”]

A feature article by Wang Kang (王康) in Southern Weekend called “Redemption, Tragedy and Inspiration”, running over 13,000 words, said that “whether you support or oppose it, no one can deny the earth-shaking importance Russia’s October Revolution had for human destiny in the twentieth century … ”

[ABOVE: Front page of the November 8 edition of Guangdong’s Southern Weekend, picturing an October Revolution commemoration ceremony in Moscow.]

Wang’s article took an in-depth look at the October Revolution and its significance for world history. The article, which took a centrist position stripped of official ideology, contrasted the hopes of Marx and Engels for the “liberation of mankind” with the failures of the Soviet system, including the evils of Stalinism, over-concentration of power and cults of personality.
The article concluded:

Not only did the October Revolution fail to achieve its beautiful ideals, but in the end was not able to build a modern society of a higher order than that of Western capitalist societies.
The tragedy of this revolution was the material, spiritual, humanitarian and institutional gap that separated their [revolutionary] ideals from the historical conditions and the moral and spiritual force they had rallied.

The most important modifier in the above passage was “institutional”, the “institutional gap” (制度上的鸿沟), the recognition that the Soviet Union had failed to create an adequate political system to ensure the “liberation of mankind”.
Of course, these criticisms of the Soviet Union can apply as well to contemporary history in China, a fact of which writers like Wang Kang are doubtless well aware. It was, after all, Deng Xiaoping who broached the issue of “party-government separation” in the 1980s to resolve the problem of over-concentration of power (权力过分集中), which was seen as having directly caused such calamities as the Cultural Revolution.
The publication that seems to have offered the most in-depth exploration of the institutional implications of the October Revolution is Tongzhou Gongjin (同舟共进), a monthly magazine published by the executive committee of Guangdong’s Political Consultative Conference.
Tongzhou Gongjin‘s November issue was star-studded with leading Chinese thinkers, including Xie Tao (谢韬), the scholar whose call for democracy earlier this year touched off a debate over political reform in China, and Gao Fang (高放), one of China’s leading experts on Marxist history.
“The October Revolution had an immense impact on the lives of people of my generation,” begins Xie Tao, who was born in December 1921, just four years after the revolution:

The buffeting winds of decades, the various difficulties and hardships, gropings and desires [we have endured], the joys of work and the pain of error, all are directly or indirectly connected with it.

In a later section, Xie Tao explores the question of institutional weakness, drawing on the words of Chinese Communist Party founder Chen Duxiu (陈独秀):”‘If we don’t seek out weaknesses in the system and learn from these, merely shutting our eyes and opposing Stalin, then we will never see with clarity. When one Stalin falls, numerous others will emerge in Russia and elsewhere.”
Xie Tao writes:

Why was the Soviet-style path of socialism unable, after the end of the Second World War, to compete with capitalist countries? What happened to the “superiority of socialism”? This question of course has deep institutional and theoretical roots. My feeling is that this was due to inherent weaknesses in the Soviet system.
Simply speaking, the Soviet system was characterized by: a high level of concentration of power and the economy, the application of force to promote economic development, and reliance on force to restrain normal thought [and discourse].

In another essay in Tongzhou Gongjin, Cao Lin (曹林), an editor at China Youth Daily, picks up on the institutional threads of earlier articles (such as Xie’s) dealing with democratic socialism. In the piece, “Who Says Ordinary People Can’t Compete with Officials?”, Cao writes directly about the virtues of competitive electoral politics, drawing on recent regulations passed in some areas of China that establish acceptable ratios of party cadres in local people’s congresses.
Xinjiang, for example, reportedly passed a regulation on September 19 this year saying that at least 75 percent of delegates to city and district-level congresses in the autonomous region must be workers, farmers, intellectuals or other “ordinary” people (NOT, that is, party officials).
But why, asks Cao, do we need quotas of this sort when free, competitive elections would do the trick?:

If an industrial worker can represent the interests of farmers after being elected as a delegate, if he can submit proposals that reflect the interests of farmers, then farmers can put their votes in for this worker. In the same way, if a cadre can win an election on a pro-business platform, then he can earn the votes of business people . . . If its a competitive election, then having more cadres isn’t a problem — the presence of cadres would indicate that they had greater trust among voters. If elections are the result of competition, there’s not way you can control ratios, and there’s no need to do so, because competition ensures delegates speak for the interests [of others] and not for their own interests . . .
. . . In this way, there’s fundamentally no need to limit the ratio of cadres [in people’s congresses]. Who says ordinary people can’t beat out officials?

By Cheng Jinfu — Addressing an audience at the University of Hong Kong yesterday, Lu Yuegang, former deputy editor of China Youth Daily’s Freezing Point supplement, expressed optimism for the press situation in China today. “Although there have been unhappy events,