Now Executive Director of the China Media Project, leading the project’s research and partnerships, David originally joined the project in Hong Kong in 2004. He is the author of Dragons in Diamond Village (Penguin), a book of reportage about urbanization and social activism in China, and co-editor of Investigative Journalism in China (HKU Press).
One
week ago, Li Zhanshu (栗战书), chairman of the
Standing Committee of China’s 13th National People’s Congress, delivered his
“work report” to the committee, in which he outlined the country’s
accomplishments over the past year and sounded a triumphant note ahead of the centennial of
the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. A rather verbose “abstract” (摘要) of Li’s report
was issued on March 9, but the full-text was made available only
yesterday.
Slicing through this thick layer-cake of Chinese newspeak, which
totals 13,693 words, just over 20 percent larger than in the 2020 report, there
are a number of trends worth noting.
First, there is a more than negligible rise of
language signalling the power of Xi Jinping. Appearances of “Xi Jinping” more
than doubled in this year’s report, and use of Xi’s “banner term,” or qizhiyu (旗帜语), increased. Several
other permutations of “Xi thought” for various policy areas were given greater prominence
in this year’s report.
The following graph compares how various Xi-related terms appeared in Li Zhanshu’s reports this year and last.
As
we have said repeatedly at CMP, the shortening of Xi Jinping’s
lengthy banner term, “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese
Characteristics for a New Era” (习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想), is the end-game in this drawn-out rhetorical
game. The ambition of Xi and his acolytes is almost certainly to achieve the
shortening of this unwieldy banner term to the more potent “Xi Jinping Thought”
with the approach the 20th National Congress of the CCP, which should be
held in the fall of 2022.
Another possible landmark, much closer, is the Party’s 100th
anniversary on July 1 this year.
While some scholarship and reporting outside
China has prematurely used “Xi Jinping Thought” to discuss Xi’s banner term, it
is important to understand that this transformation has by no means been
achieved. Ever since the 19th National Congress of the CCP in November 2017, Xi
has sought to cross this rhetorical river by feeling the stones. When possible,
testing the waters, those around him have promoted the application of “Xi
thought” to concrete policy areas,
such as rule of law, military affairs and diplomacy.
In last year’s NPC Standing Committee report,
however, Li Zhanshu mentioned just two forms of “Xi thought.” These were “Xi
Jinping Thought on Diplomacy,” clearly associated with Chinese Foreign Minister
Wang Yi, who last summer inaugurated a new center for
the buzzword; and “Xi Jinping Thought on Adhering to and Improving the NPC
System.” Dealing directly with the NPC, this particular “thought” is solidly in
Li Zhanshu’s territory, and the chairman has held a number of special meetings on the topic.
Not surprisingly, the fundamental character of this system is the
leadership of the CCP under the principle of democratic centralism.
In this year’s report, three additional forms of “Xi
thought” are added: “Xi Jinping Thought on Thought on Rule of Law”; “Xi Jinping
Thought on a Strong Military”; and “Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological
Civilization.” The first of these gets prominent play, mentioned six separate
times. This is significant, though not altogether surprising, considering that
the term has been ascendant since the last quarter of 2020 and Xi’s “important speech” to
the Central Work Conference on the Comprehensive Rule of Law.
These mentions of “Xi thought” can be regarded as
steps in the journey toward an eventual “Xi Jinping Thought” banner. But
perhaps it is better to view them as steps, sometimes faltering, in a delicate
dance in which the music is always changing. The epidemic last year temporarily
changed the tune, and we saw a corresponding downturn in talk of “Xi thought” during
the first quarter of the year, in the midst of the crisis. As China regained
control of the situation, however, the music changed again.
Reading the environment is a complicated process.
What do we make, for example, of the fact that “Xi Jinping Thought on
Diplomacy” has vanished from Li Zhanshu’s report this year?
No doubt a priority for Wang Yi in particular, “Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy” is missing from section five of Li Zhanshu’s report, though there is the usual talk of policy concepts subsumed by this “thought” – including the “community of common destiny for mankind” (人类命运共同体), the Belt and Road Initiative (一带一路), multilateral dialogue and so on.
Interestingly, section five does make prominent
mention of “Xi Jinping Thought on Rule of Law,” perhaps because this phrase is
closely aligned with the legislative work of the NPC on a range of issues that have
prompted international controversy, not least the question of Hong Kong and
national security. The section addresses the need to “promote the China path
and the Chinese system oversea.” This is about counteracting international
criticism of China’s actions, and Li suggests the NPC Standing Committee has
performed well:
[We]
actively promoted Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics
for the New Era, actively introducing China’s development achievements and its
contributions to the world. [We] actively promoted Xi Jinping Thought on Rule
of Law, introducing the people’s congress system and its legislative work. [We]
actively promoted China’s concepts of adhering to people first (人民至上) and life first (生命至上) in its fight against the
epidemic, sharing China’s experiences and methods in fighting the epidemic.
How
did the NPC achieve this messaging? Here we find an interesting note on the conduct
of external propaganda, not touched upon in last year’s report. Li notes: “[We] strengthened the building of the English-language
website of the NPC, and prioritized the English-language edition of NPC (中国人大) magazine, demonstrating the
advantages and efficacy of the democratic political system of socialism with
Chinese characteristics.”
China’s multifaceted approaches to external
propaganda and disinformation,
including through international social media platforms like Facebook and
Twitter, have received a great deal of scrutiny over
the past year. But would anyone seriously count NPC magazine
among the jewels of foreign influence?
This is an odd boast for the NPC Standing Committee. The kindest thing to be said about the magazine is that it faithfully reflects the vacuous and self-congratulatory myth-making readily found in the Chinese-language Party state media. “Under the leadership of President Xi Jinping,” reads one section header, following a drop quote from the General Secretary that reads: “China has the full confidence and capability to win the battle against the virus with concerted efforts, scientific containment and targeted policies under the strong leadership of the CCP.”
Even deeply ideological language like “the people’s war” (人民战争) is lobbed out into the wide world (assuming the publication has any measurable circulation) in the vain hope that it will find an audience.
But perhaps that is exactly the point. “External” though this propaganda may be, the work of NPC magazine is not directed toward foreign audiences at all. Not really. Like Li Zhanshu’s NPC Standing Committee report, it is a mirror in which all of us can gaze at the CCP’s reflection of itself — resolving gradually into the reflection of just one man.
Since December 4 last year, when Xi Jinping declared China’s victory in
the fight against poverty during a meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee,
this claimed victory has been a centerpiece of the CCP’s propaganda efforts,
both domestically and globally. Those efforts have further intensified since February
25, when Xi again spoke of a “complete victory” during a ceremony to commemorate the anti-poverty
campaign, declaring that China had “generated another earthly miracle
that will go down in the annals of history.”
Some have called China’s declaration of victory premature,
based on creative benchmarks and statistics. They have noted, for example,
that the line for extreme poverty should be around 5.5 dollars a day by World
Bank estimates, considering that China is an upper-middle income country. That
would mean about 13 percent of China’s population, or some 200 million people, still
live in extreme poverty.
For the purposes of its campaign, however, the Chinese government pushed its
line for extreme poverty down to 2.3 dollars a day.
Noting the costs of the anti-poverty campaign and its top-down nature, others have questioned its long-term sustainability. “To bring people out of poverty at a moment in time doesn’t mean you can keep them there,” Terry Sicular, a professor of economics at Western University, told NPR. Still others have highlighted the historical evasion underpinning the numbers, the CCPs own dishonesty about its role in creating economic misery from the 1950s through to the end of the Cultural Revolution. Hu Ping, editor of the New York-based journal Beijing Spring, wrote that the high “rate of poverty creation” (造贫率) in the decades before reforms was an important factor in the country’s climb out of extreme poverty.
But as I pointed out back in January, the propaganda push that has been constructed around this supposed eradication of extreme poverty – not just since the declaration of victory, but throughout the entire process – tells us a great deal about the goals of this eradication campaign, beyond the question of poverty. This talk of “earthly miracles,” or renjian qiji (人间奇迹), the Party’s final word on the anti-poverty campaign, is ultimately about the consolidation of power. It is about the “X factor.”
Allow me to explain what I mean by looking
at the latest piece of English-language poverty
eradication propaganda from People’s Daily Online, the portal
operated by the CCP’s flagship People’s Daily newspaper. Called, “The
ABCs to Decoding China’s Poverty Alleviation Campaign,” the feature graphically
provides “the keys for decoding China’s success in poverty alleviation” by
spelling it out with the letters of the English alphabet. This is the A-Z of
the poverty eradication campaign.
A is for “acting according to local
conditions.” B is for “budget allocation to poverty alleviation.” C is for “cooperation
between eastern and western regions.” D is for “development-oriented poverty
alleviation.” And so on.
Whatever one might think of the CCP’s external propaganda, and as heavy-handed as the tactics can be (“Z,” for example, is for the “zeal of the people”), there is an undeniable artistry to this particular piece of agitprop, with its colorful letters and its digestible descriptions of policy.
But the key to this key comes only toward the end of the alphabet. “X” is, not surprisingly, for “Xi’s leadership.” Never mind that the China’s positive trajectory on poverty alleviation, any way you slice it and any policy you credit for it, has been a journey of more than four decades. Without the charismatic leadership of the general secretary, none of this would have been possible. The description beside the “X” tells us: “To win the largest and most vigorous battle in human history against poverty, Chinese President Xi Jinping has remained steadfast at the country’s helm.”
The key to understanding the ultimate nature of the entire poverty eradication campaign as it was engineered from the beginning can be found here at the end of “The ABCs.” It is the reason why the CCP can rest on its laurels while 200 million Chinese still live in extreme poverty by very real measures, and 600 million live precariously on the edge, as Premier Li Keqiang could only hint at the NPC press conference last year.
It is all about the man and his ambitions for the Party. It is all about the X Factor.
On February 22, the Cyberspace Administration
of China (CAC), the country’s chief body for the control and regulation of
social media and online content, released new regulations
concerning platforms in China providing “internet user public account services”
–
what are more broadly known as “self-media” or “we media,” zimeiti (自媒体). While
reports in the
state media
have emphasized the ostensible public health aspects of the regulation,
stressing the need to ensure the “healthy and orderly” (健康有序)
development of public accounts, and a “clear online
space” (清朗的网络空间), the
regulation makes crystal clear that its chief purpose is to re-consolidate
Chinese Communist Party control over these platforms. It is about tightening
control, and about strengthening the “Party nature” (党性) of digital media more broadly.
Let’s
have a look.
The
Party Rules All
The first three of four articles under the “General
Summary” of the regulations deal with the legal basis, including the Cybersecurity Law and
the Internet Information Services Measures; the intended scope,
encompassing all those who “engage in the Internet user public account
information services” and well as account operators, or “public account
production operators” (公众账号生产运营者); and implementation, which will involve the CAC and its
regional and local offices.
The fourth article, the
lengthiest of the summary, brings political priorities immediately to the fore.
Aside from abiding by laws and upholding their “social responsibility,”
platforms providing public account services must “adhere to correct guidance of
public opinion” (坚持正确舆论导向),
this being still the primary phrase the CCP uses to denote the need to set the
agenda and control information in order to maintain the stability of the
regime.
Platforms, moreover, must have a correct “value
orientation” (价值取向)
– code for sharing the Party’s values and priorities – and must “promote
socialist core values” (弘扬社会主义核心价值观). These
values include power and prosperity, democracy, civilization, harmony, freedom,
equality, fairness, rule of law, patriotism, dedication, integrity and
friendliness. Those may sound wonderful. But make no mistake: the real core of
these values is the CCP, which regards itself as their embodiment, the
Party’s leadership being the “basic nature and character” of so-called
“socialism with Chinese characteristics.” This means that the Party’s leadership
and restraint applies to all of the above-mentioned values.
If
you are not sure what this restraint means in practical terms, here is a visual
illustration, a propaganda poster photographed several years back in Shanghai,
which explains the socialist core value of “freedom.” The poster shows several powerful
horses surging forward like a tide. The explanation to the right-hand side
reads: “Freedom is not unrestrained – it requires a harness, and it requires a
horseman.”
The Party is both halter and horseman,
restraining and “guiding” the value of freedom. And the same can be said of freedom
of speech as guaranteed in China’s Constitution (see Article 35). It is a right
over which the CCP has complete discretion.
Weaving “Party Nature” Into Decentralized
Media
Moving on, the next two lines of Article Four
are even more revealing about the concrete purpose of these new regulations
beyond mere restraint:
Party and government organs, enterprises and
institutions at all levels as well as people’s groups (人民团体) are encouraged to register and operate public accounts,
producing and releasing high-quality public affairs information or public
service information to meet the information needs of the public and promote
economic and social development.
Public account information service platforms
are encouraged to actively provide the full necessary technical support and
security guarantees for Party and government organs, enterprises and
institutions and people’s groups as they raise the level of public affairs
information release, public services and social governance.
The demand here is not just that platforms behave
in terms of content regulation, but that they work “actively” to strengthen the presence of Party-state voices
in the “self-media” space, ensuring that the Party’s views and agendas are
mainstreamed. Cleansing
the “self-media” space, restraining sensitive information and dissenting views,
is not sufficient on its own. The way must be cleared for the dominance of CCP-led
public opinion.
This not
unlike the anxiety that attended the rise
in the 1990s of commercial media, which despite their
locus within the Party-state media structure, were seen as crowding out more
“mainstream” Party voices – in particular the “Party papers” (党报) – and
having a
growing role in setting alternative agendas. Just as propaganda
officials once bemoaned the loss of Party paper influence at the hands of
“metropolitan papers” (都市类报纸) and
internet portal sites, the hand-wringing
in recent years has been about how to ensure the
Party’s voice is not crowded out by zimeiti that are fast, responsive to
audiences, and diverse enough to be unpredictable.
Building
the Party’s traditional influence over public opinion into the changing
information landscape is a major priority, not least because the leadership has
recognized that mere restrictions on content, the cat-and-mouse game between
censor and censored, is counter-productive over the long term. As one
scholar explained the dilemma four years ago:
When relevant departments block and restrict
public opinion arbitrarily, without clarifying the subject of their guidance
and without offering a comprehensive explanation or assessment of the facts of
public opinion, this inevitably lowers the effectiveness of news and opinion
guidance, or even renders it ineffective, ultimately impacting the credibility
of the government.
The answer is for the Party-state
to become deeply enmeshed in the medium itself, to “guide” conversation and
dissemination from the inside. Given the monikers “self-media” and “we media,” this
may seem an odd and ironic transformation. But it is clear that the CCP is determined
to place itself at the center of a media landscape defined by personalization
(个性化)
and fragmentation (碎片化) – a spider
weaving its own pattern into the web.
The
Fine Points
The
main body of the new regulations sets out the more concrete measures to be
taken in order to achieve the above-mentioned goals. In Chapter II, these deal directly
with the service providers, and they include:
In
Article 6, the demand that platforms have full management responsibility,
implementing the full and necessary technical and human mechanisms that will ensure
compliance;
In
Article 7, the demand that providers implement a tiered management
system (分级管理), which builds on Article 6 to make
sure that avenues of control and responsibility are clear in terms of content
management;
In
Article 8, the demand that providers ensure that real names and
identification are provided for all registered public accounts as a condition
of registration, and that all bios and profile images and so on are authentic and
verified;
In
Article 9, providing that all public account in professional areas such as
the economy, education, healthcare, legal affairs and so on provide professional
certification at registration, and that the provider verify this certification –
a process that could certainly be used to limit information shared by non-official
sources;
In
Article 10, specifying that providers ensure reasonable upward limits on
registration of multiple accounts;
In
Article 11, ensuring that providers prevent the transfer of registered
public accounts from one user to another;
In
Article 12, the demand that providers set up robust “monitoring and evaluation
mechanisms” (监测评估机制)in order to log traffic and other
activity, and to determine whether there are suspicious traffic patterns, indicating
statistical fraud and so on;
In Article
13, the demand that providers establish a “black list” (黑名单) system for public
account operators, logging violations of conduct rules;
In Article
14, specifying that providers must take the necessary measures to combat commercial
fraud, false advertising, reputational attacks, copyright violations and so on.
Chapter
III of the new regulations deal specifically with account operators, or “public account
production operators” (公众账号生产运营者). And it is here we should the sea change in the way
media controls now operate generationally in China. Specifically, while the
demand to uphold the “Party nature” and so-called “guidance of public opinion”
was in the past the responsibility specifically of traditional gatekeeping
media such as newspapers and magazines, and radio and television broadcasters,
it now applies to everyone. In this sense, it is important to recognize that the
decentralization and fragmentation of media, while making expression and publishing
readily accessible to all, has also universalized CCP controls on speech,
making them more direct and personal than ever before.
Article 15 specifies that operators must abide by platform
rules, which of course have already accommodated the Party’s content demands. Article
16 specifies that operators must take full responsibility for the content
on their public accounts, and to this end directs that they must “establish and
improve an entire-process information content safety audit mechanism (信息内容安全审核机制) to cover topic planning, editing and production of
content, publishing and promotion, interactive comments, and so on.” The goal
of this is to “strengthen the orientation, authenticity and legality of
information content, maintaining a favorable order in online
communication.”
Article 18 is a mixed bag of restrictions on the public
account operator, mixing legitimate goals (such as the prevention of online
violence) with political objectives. Perhaps most important here is the demand
that accounts not provide “internet news and information gathering and
publishing” and like services. This is essentially the demand that public accounts
not engage in news production, or journalism, the CCP intent on preserving its
control over this terrain through the licensing of news media and issue of press
cards. But there are also vague demands here, such as that public accounts
not “use sudden-breaking incidents to stir up extreme emotions” (利用突发事件煽动极端情绪). This of
course could be broadly interpreted to curtail any discussion of breaking
stories of great public importance. Likewise in this article with the demand that
operators not “distort the truth and the facts” (歪曲事实真相), or “mislead
the public” (误导社会公众) – both having frequently been used
to attack real facts that inconvenience the CCP narrative.
Chapter IV of the regulations
deal further with the need for “self-discipline” by service providers and public
account operators, and the need to cooperate fully with regional and local
offices of the CAC to ensure full compliance. There is also language about the
need for both service providers and operators to “willingly accept social supervision”
(自觉接受社会监督), including providing open channels
through which members of the public can report content and take part in ensuring
compliance.
This is yet another illustration of how the walls have come down between the regime of CCP information controls, traditionally exercised through “mainstream” media, and the broader public engaging through social media platforms. The “report” function, which might in regulatory landscapes outside China have a strong ethical or legal component, is highly politicized in the Chinese context. It is not at all uncommon these days to hear regulators like the CAC citing “complaints by the public” when enforcing political discipline and “correct guidance.”
Late last week, a New Year’s letter appeared online written by Gao Yu (高昱), a deputy editor at Caixin Media and former reporter for Lifeweekly magazine. In the letter, Gao obliquely but palpably expressed his sense of despair at the present state of affairs in China – in which journalists trying to report the facts are criticized not just by the authorities but by patriotic “keyboard warriors” and others who subscribe to China’s self-congratulatory official narrative.
The letter was shared avidly through social media, including WeChat, and for many a single line stood out. “Standing here on the last day of 2020, I dare to overstep the bounds and speak a single sentence,” Gao wrote. “That all of the efforts at enlightenment over the past thirty years, they have failed.”
Another former journalist, like Gao a veteran of what can be considered China’s movement of professional journalism from the 1990s through to the mid 2010s, responded regarding this language of “failure”:
I want to understand the words of my colleague
sympathetically. I think it is the inevitable product of the feelings of
frustration and hopelessness that constantly strike us. But this is more an
emotional perception than a rational one. I don’t think there is any power at
the moment capable of undoing thirty years of enlightenment. It cannot be
zeroed out, but only transformed and compressed into a more complex form – the way
vast forests became underground deposits of coal. And this heat will one day
have a purpose.
This geothermal view of hope in the midst of the feeling of despair voiced by Gao Yu was perhaps welcome to some and painfully out of reach for others. But the discussion did not survive long. Within 24 hours, the post had been removed from domestic channels, though it has remained archived elsewhere, including here at Matters.
Some stray criticism of Gao’s letter has, perhaps not surprisingly, remained.
At Guancha Syndicate, a site based in Shanghai and supported by venture
capitalist Eric X. Li that is a favorite for so-called “new nationalists,”one post was typical in its critical
stance toward critical media, expressing the view that by reporting
critically, journalists like Gao had actually done harm to China. The post is fundamentally
adversarial in its view of the role of media as part of a “national team” dutybound
to “tell China’s story well” (to use the Xi Jinping phrase).
“I wonder, what has your group done?” the post asked of Gao. “Have you made an account in your heart? For a year, the West slandered, suppressed, besieged and attacked China. I don’t see you making a sound, or marching out to war. Instead, elbows to the outside, you plunge the knife inward.”
The following is CMP’s full translation of Gao’s letter.
I took out my old phone today, which has sat gathering dust for half a year. This was not to reminisce, but to offer thanks to the people we knew and didn’t know who helped us when we were in Wuhan [reporting on the epidemic], and to wish them a good New Year.
In the old phone, I came across this group photo [above], taken at 4:00AM on January 23, 2020, in the underground garage of Wuhan’s Grand Mercure Hotel. It was a moment at the start of a war to defend the city that still belongs to us.
Returning to those days, particularly when we were sharply accuse of having crooked backsides [being biased] and offering the knife [i.e., with which others could criticize China], I was asked by a friend: “So back then you said that you wanted to ‘make sure that the price paid wasn’t paid in vain,’ do you think now that the price was worth it?” I think the price I paid myself was worth it. The south wall was hit, but this story we forget, [as the song goes]. People can take from it what they will. But tragic losses in this country have been transformed into hymns of praise. Lessons have already been ignored. And we see few people even asking questions.
The ranks of the self-confident are swelling, while those with critical thoughts are busy with self-mutilation. The scars of natural and human disasters alike are recast as military medals by the counterpoint of Westerners’ foolishness. Our keyboard warriors (键盘侠们) hold up their magnifiers and besiege anyone on Weibo who dares to reveal the scars at all. As Professor Du [Junfei] wrote: “Doctors die while patients live; Facts die while illusions live.”
Standing here on the last day of 2020, I dare to overstep the bounds and speak a single sentence. That all of the efforts at enlightenment over the past thirty years, they have failed. More and more of the people we hoped to help in breaking free from terror, they have become the people who despise us more than those who oppress them.
If we have failed then we have failed. I am a positive pessimist. Even if we have returned to the darkness, I won’t go and dwell on those days when light shone. If there is no light, then I must fetch fire. We don’t persevere toward the good things in the world because there is hope; our perseverance is what gives hope. Anything worth having is worth holding on to, and worth waiting for.
After the last dark gengzi (庚子) year [in 1960, on the sexagenary cycle], our fathers waited 18 years [before reform and opening offered promise]. And before that, in the dark gengzi year before that [in 1900], our grandfathers waited 11 years [before the Xinhai Revolution]. Tomorrow is the start of year one. So I wait. Those thirty years of youth mean nothing. What else is there to be afraid of?
With faith and love, there is hope. In the years of perseverance and waiting, may there be those to wish you goodnight, may the narrow road on which you forge ahead not feel too lonely. I wish you health and wellness in 2021.
One week ago, the
UK’s Office of Communications (Ofcom), the government regulator for
broadcasting and telecoms, withdrew the UK
broadcast license for China Global Television Network (CGTN), China’s
state-run English-language satellite news channel. The decision was made on the
basis of UK broadcasting laws, which stipulate that licensees must have full
control, including editorial oversight, over licensed services.
The revocation notice
from Ofcom, available online and
transparent to all, makes plain that the primary issue of concern in the
regulator’s investigation of CGTN last year was that of control, relating to
the question of CGTN’s objects and purpose. The notice states:
[We] have
determined that CGTNC could not currently be granted a broadcasting licence as
it would be disqualified under the statutory scheme. This is because CGTNC is
both controlled by and an associate of an organisation, namely CCTV, which, as
a result of its relationship with the Chinese Communist Party through the China
Media Group, is a body whose objects are wholly or mainly of a political nature
and/or is controlled by a body whose objects are wholly or mainly of a
political nature.
Ofcom’s conclusion, then,
after months of deliberation, was that CGTN’s operations in the UK are not independent,
that it does not have full control, or editorial oversight over its programming.
Another fact is clear
in the Ofcom revocation notice – that CGTN and its representatives sought to
argue that it in fact did have control over the licensed
services. They asserted, for example, that “the news gathering and production
activities for the CGTN service are editorially independent and managed much
like that of other international news organizations.” They emphasized that
CGTN’s “Global Editorial Board exercises independent editorial control
over the CGTN service.” On the question of affiliation with CCTV, the state-run
broadcaster, and its subsidiary status under the China Media Group, they argued
that CCTV “continues to exist as an independent legal person under Chinese law
and its institutional nature remains unchanged.”
What should we make
of all this talk of independence?
First, we should note
that CGTN in fact accepted the basic legal premise behind the Ofcom decision –
that a licensee must exercise full and independent control over the licensed
services. For any seasoned observer of the Chinese media, however, CGTN’s
defense of its independence, and even that of CCTV, makes for odd reading. After
all, that both networks are entirely beholden to the Chinese Communist Party could
never have been seriously questioned.
It is a hard fact that these media are subject to the leadership of the CCP — a fact that has been constantly re-iterated by China’s “core” leader, Xi Jinping. Consider that in his February 2016 speech on news and public opinion, his most authoritative statement of media policy to date, which was accompanied by an official tour of CCTV, Xi Jinping said: “We must take on this responsibility and mission [to raise the banner of the Party and lead public opinion]; we must give political direction the primary place, firmly holding to the principle of the Party nature [of the media], firmly adhering to the Marxist View of Journalism, firmly adhering to correct guidance of public opinion, and firmly adhering to an emphasis on positive propaganda.”
In ruling that CGTN is “is controlled by a body whose objects are wholly or mainly of a political nature,” Ofcom is merely stating, albeit with a bit more concision, what the Party clearly and unambiguously insists upon. This is a point I will come back to – even though, as I said already, it should be painfully obvious.
A 2018 chart by the official social media account of the People’s Daily shows the Central Propaganda Department of the CCP “leading” the China Media Group, which newly combines CCTV, CNR and CRJ.
As Ofcom’s ruling
against CGTN sets off a wave of verbal attacks in China against the UK, and as
it has brought a retaliatory ban against BBC World News
for “violating the principles of truth and impartiality,” the sense of
self-denial about the nature of China’s media system has been incredible to
observe.
On February 6, a
commentary in the Chinese Communist Party’s official People’s Daily
attributed to “Zhong Sheng” (钟声), a pen name used for
important pieces on international affairs on which the leadership wishes to
register its view, called on leaders in the UK to “correct the
error” of the Ofcom decision. The move, it said, was “a brutal suppression of
Chinese media,” and it had “fully exposed the falseness of the so-called press
freedom flaunted by the UK.” For good
measure, the commentary tossed in the usual zinger about “anti-China
forces.”
But the
commentary did more than just fume. It attempted to cross the aisle, seizing
the moral high ground and staking claim to the noble principles at the heart of
communications and journalism. “The media are important bridges and ties by
which the people of various countries strengthen their interactions and advance
understanding,” it said. And on media values: “Chinese media abide by
journalistic ethics, and uphold the principles of objectivity, impartiality,
truth and accuracy, carrying out ordinary news reporting in various parts of
the world, including the UK.”
Attacking the UK for
its decision, Shanghai’s Xinmin
Evening News, directly under the local CCP Committee, could not
resist an Austin reference as it implicitly advocated the same values of
impartiality, truth and accuracy by sucker-punching the UK media:
Belittling and discrediting the media of other countries
will not ultimately promote and demonstrate their own excellence. The British
mainstream media have been frequently exposed in scandals for their pre-set
positions and manufacture of fake news, revealing their pride and prejudice to
the world.
Character
attacks on the British media have been par for the course over the past week.
With a hint of the sensational, the Xinmin Evening News piece ran
through several cases and points of criticism in the BBC’s history. It cited
cases like the misuse of a massacre photo, which the BBC
openly acknowledged and which was robustly
discussed,
as such cases should be in societies with professional media. It mentioned a
documentary on racist violence the BBC aired ahead of Euro 2012, and which drew
harsh criticism from several hosts, including Poland and Ukraine. BBC editors
openly responded to criticisms in that case as well,
defending their work.
Shanghai’s Guancha Syndicate (观察者网) similarly tried to revisit every ethical outrage in the BBC’s history in a diatribe that attacked the freedom of expression espoused by “Western capitalist nations.” Parts of the attack were plain atavism, as though pulled directly from the Party media of the 1950s, when such broadsides generally criticized press ownership in the United States, arguing that only families like the Scripps and the Howards could enjoy press freedom – because they owned the press.
We could go on and on about implicit bias and institutional bias, about good reporters and bad reporters, about fairness and accuracy. But all this talk about “excellence,” truth and bias is a monumental distraction. First, because excellence was never the standard applied in the Ofcom decision. And second, because the standard that was applied, independence, is actually an issue on which Ofcom and the CCP are fundamentally in agreement.
The “Zhong
Sheng” commentary in the People’s Daily said that “Chinese media abide
by journalistic ethics, and uphold the principles of objectivity, impartiality,
truth and accuracy,” suggesting that these principles apply in the case of CCTV,
CGTN and all Party-state media. But let’s take another clear-headed look at the
language China uses internally to talk about these media. When it comes to analyzing
this discourse, the potential choices are legion. We could, for example, return
to Xi Jinping’s 2016 speech on media and his visit to CCTV, during which he
stressed that all media “must be surnamed Party” (必须姓党) – and specifically that they must “love the
Party, protect the Party and serve the Party.”
A sign displayed prominently at China Central Television in February 2016 for the official visit by Xi Jinping reads: “CCTV is Surnamed Party, With Absolute Loyalty, Please Inspect Us.”
For anyone who was paying the least bit of attention to Xi Jinping’s February
visit and speech in 2016, the question of independence is case closed. But let
us turn for good measure to Xi Jinping’s language about the media, and
particularly CCTV, that accompanied the 60th anniversary of the network,
celebrated on September 26, 2018. The day after the anniversary, the news of Xi’s commemoration of the
anniversary was on the front-page of the People’s Daily, in
prominent position just beneath the masthead.
The focus of the speech, as the headline indicated, was on fashioning major Party-state media as “first-rate international mainstream media,” the word “mainstream” referring here, as always in a CCP context, to media directly run by the Party and government. He also spoke of “strengthening mainstream public opinion” (主流舆论), meaning rather explicitly the Party’s power to control the news and set the agenda.
As Xi Jinping lays
out the role of CCTV, today and historically, there is no mistaking the fact
that the concepts so recently and so fervently espoused by China’s Party-state media
in regards to the Ofcom decision are nowhere to be found.
Xi
Jinping said in his greeting that the television industry is an integral part
of the Party’s news and public opinion work. For 60 years, the masses of television
industry workers have under the leadership of the Party adhered to correct
political orientation and [correct] public opinion guidance, focused on the
central tasks [of the Party], serving its overall interests, propagating the
viewpoint of the Party, reflecting the voice of the people, singing the main
theme (唱响主旋律), transmitting
positive energy, making
immense positive accomplishments for the work of the Party and the people.
This, mind you, is only the second paragraph of the official Xinhua release in the People’s Daily. The rest of the release, as Xi’s greeting to CCTV itself, is chockful of CCP jargon, including the notion that CCTV must continue to conduct “external propaganda,” presenting to the world a “true, complete and three-dimensional China.” This is the only point at which the notion of truth emerges at all, but of course this is the Party’s truth, and about this fact there is never any mistake. At one point, too, Xi emphasizes CCTV’s adherence to the so-called “Four Consciousnesses” (四个意识), which refer to consciousness of the 1) need to maintain political integrity with the Party, 2) think in big-picture terms of the Party’s interests, 3) uphold the leadership core, and 4) maintain alignment with the CCP.
Aspect three of the “Four Consciousnesses,” the so-called “core,” refers of course to General Secretary Xi Jinping himself, which is why this CCP catchphrase is closely associated with the consolidation of Xi’s position within the Party. So not only is the fundamental role of CCTV and all Party-state media defined politically as the need to adhere to the CCP and its prerogatives, but that role also formally revolves around China’s most powerful individual.
If this is not yet clear enough, we can turn to page five of the same edition of the People’s Daily, where a “commentator from CCTV” (央视评论员) offers an organizational view of the network’s role. The entire commentary is a genuflection. But we can focus on one illuminating passage.
Our
banner determines our direction [as a network]. We must take speaking politics
(讲政治) as our first demand,
making loyalty and reliability [to the Party] our first standard. As a member
of the “national team” at the news frontlines, and as the frontline troops of
broadcast television, we must firmly adhere to the principle of Party nature [of
the media], implementing the demand that “Party media be surnamed Party. In
speaking politics we must hold to the highest standard, the strictest demands,
firmly establishing the “Four Consciousnesses,” with real actions and true
results firmly defending the core status of General Secretary Xi Jinping,
resolutely defending the authority and unified leadership of the CCP Central
Committee, maintaining a high level of uniformity with the CCP Central Committee
with Xi Jinping as the core in terms of political position, political direction
and political principles.
Those who dutifully donned
their Wellingtons and trudged through the muck of that paragraph will not have stumbled
across words like “independence,” “impartiality,” “fairness” or “truth.” They
just don’t matter, and there is perhaps no better proof of this than the phrase
“speaking politics,” synonymous with obedience to the Party’s political
prerogatives, however expedient, and which had an unfortunate role to play
at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic last year.
But perhaps the best translation of the above paragraph might be lifted directly from Ofcom’s revocation notice. The CCTV commentator might just as well have written that his network is “a body whose objects are wholly or mainly of a political nature and/or is controlled by a body whose objects are wholly or mainly of a political nature.”
How odd that this matter should cause such an international fury when all sides essentially see eye to eye.
But like any momentous
achievement in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has invested its legitimacy
and standing, this victory was always in the cards. It was never a matter of
ensuring the right outlay of resources, or that resolute government officials had
the right set of strategies. From the moment Xi Jinping pledged to eradicate
poverty in 2015, the story had been written. It needed only elaboration – through
a vast national network of county and city propaganda offices, and through the
dogged work of a media system whose allegiance had already been pledged.
This is not to say that China’s anti-poverty
work has been nothing but empty propaganda. Nationwide efforts at “poverty
alleviation,” or fupin (扶贫), have quite possibly had a real impact on the lives
of many. They can, if one so chooses, be viewed through the lens of social and
economic policy. But to ignore the role of China’s vast media and propaganda
system, single-mindedly trained on the direction of public opinion both inside and
outside the country, is to ignore one of this story’s central threads.
As the CCP readied itself to
close the book on the 13th Five-Year Plan
and inaugurate the next economic era with fanfare, Party-state media stacked
their editorial plans with touching retrospectives and
intimate portraits of rural
lives that had been transformed by the compassionate hand of the Party.
Even as the epidemic raged in
Wuhan in January, as yet not publicly acknowledged as a serious national
crisis, the fight against poverty was the story of the year, and Xi Jinping was
its main protagonist. The Party’s flagship People’s Daily set the tone
with a series called “The General Secretary Visited Our Home,” featured repeatedly
on the paper’s front page, but also disseminated widely, through app-ready content, in numerous state media outlets.
The app-based content featured brushed-up
images like the one below, echoing propaganda images of Mao from
a bygone era. Xi Jinping, hand-in-hand with the people, in touch
with their immediate concerns.
An image of Xi Jinping visiting a rural home, included in China Daily online coverage of the People’s Daily series “The General Secretary Visited Our Home.”
The epidemic in Wuhan eventually upended
the publicity objectives of propaganda officials, at least for a time. But by
April and May 2020, the focus had been drawn back to poverty
and the achievement of a “moderately prosperous society.” The demand for
anti-poverty coverage necessitated a wealth of local stories from across rural
China. Such stories were in ready supply. After all, the narrative push had always
been closely intertwined with the mobilization of the campaign itself.
Local Myths in the Making
Enter the story of Dong Heqin (董贺勤), a once impoverished farmer
from Anhui province who in recent years, aided by the grace and wisdom of
anti-poverty officials, managed to dramatically turn his fortunes around.
According to the basic thread of
Dong’s story, he was officially designated as living in poverty in 2014, after
spending all of his life savings for the treatment of his sick son. In 2015,
directed by local officials charged with anti-poverty work, Dong began planting
chili peppers on his land. He now earns more than 600,000 yuan, or around 93,000
dollars, from his crop annually.
Conduct an image search for Dong’s
name and you are treated to a mosaic of anti-poverty propaganda. Dong working among his rows of peppers. Dong among the honorees in a
2018 ceremony for “positive role models,” bathed in blazing light onstage. Dong
pictured during a television interview with
the official Xinhua News Agency. Dong the “Moral Exemplar” (道德模范).
Results from a Google Image search for Dong’s name.
According to CMP’s database search,
Dong Heqin did not emerge on the national media stage until July 2018, at which point he
was hustled to center stage by Anhui propaganda officials eager to supply their
own candidates for a national propaganda campaign on the “tough battle for poverty
alleviation” (脱贫攻坚战), announced as
a national priority at the Fifth Plenum of the 18th CCP Central
Committee in October 2015. Responding to the campaign, the “National Poverty
Alleviation Award” (全国脱贫攻坚奖) had been launched in September 2016 by the State Council’s
Poverty Alleviation and Development Small Group.
In the years and months that
followed the award’s creation, poverty relief officials across the country were
on the hunt for inspirational examples, for seemingly ordinary country folk who
could be plucked out from the masses and paraded through the news headlines. From
2017 onward, China’s government made an active push to foster the creation
of “poverty alleviation and prosperity leaders” (脱贫致富带头人) in poor areas across the country, seen as critical
to the overall poverty alleviation strategy,
which itself included a section on “adhering to propaganda models.”
Later reports would make clear
that Dong Heqin had been chosen in April 2017 as the designated “poverty
alleviation and prosperity leader” for Anhui’s Funan County. And as award
season approached for the “National Poverty Alleviation Award” in 2018, the Anhui
Provincial Center for Poverty Alleviation Propaganda and Education released its
list of candidates for the national stage on July 27. Dong Heqin was included
on the roster of candidates for the “Endeavor Award” (奋进奖).
As Anhui releases its list of candidates for the “National Poverty Alleviation Award” in July 2018, Dong Heqin is on the roster of candidates for the “Endeavor Award.”
Shortly after, in August 2018, Fuyang
Daily, the local Communist Party newspaper in Dong’s hometown, ran a profile of Dong Heqin as a “leader in
throwing off poverty and becoming prosperous.” It told the story of how Dong
had once made decent money off in Beijing, a migrant worker running his own recycling
station. But the illness of his son in 2007 had placed Dong and his entire family
in jeopardy. Finally, in 2015, after several trying years, Dong, who was now
back in his native Yanmiao Village with medical debts for the treatment of his
son piling up, had been designated a candidate for “targeted poverty alleviation.”
The next year, with government
help, Dong worked toward expanding his chili farming operation, as the Fuyang
Daily explained:
In 2016, 6,000 yuan in industrial poverty alleviation
funds issued by the government came like welcome rain to Dong Heqin. “My
planting technology had passed muster, and my peppers had been well received in
the market. I want to expand scale, but I had no capital.” After receiving
the government’s industrial poverty alleviation funds, Dong said, he built a
new steel greenhouse and expanded his scale. In 2017, his income from growing
peppers reached 230,000 yuan. Not only did he throw off poverty, but he also paid
his lingering debts, and his life was full of sunshine.
Perfectly on cue for a set piece
on the grace of the Chinese Communist Party, the Fuyang Daily profile
ended with Dong’s conversion. He had joined the Party in the hope that he might
“better play the role of a model leader in poverty alleviation.” “I sincerely
thank the Party’s poverty alleviation policy for making a big change in my life,”
the paper quoted him as saying.
In January 2019, the city of Fuyang looked back on 2018 to showcase
exemplary instances of “positive energy” – a reference to Xi Jinping’s
injunction for the media and society to avoid negative reporting and seek examples
of inspiration and unity. The retrospective included Dong Heqin as a “model
person escaping poverty” (脱贫人物典型). “In the past, debts forced him to leave home and
seek a living,” the short post read. “But now, relying on the Party’s poverty alleviation
policies, he has thrown off poverty through struggle and become
prosperous.”
Image of Dong used for a January 2019 report from the Fuyang government, superimposed with the characters “Positive Energy” used for the same report.
The same month, a special feature on Dong
carried on the province’s official government news website, Anhui News (中安在线), continued the account of his
trials and tribulations, and the dramatic turnaround made possible by poverty
alleviation funds.
By the end of 2019, as China was
gearing up for the 2020 campaign toward the “victory” over poverty, local stories
of success were regular fodder on national news platforms. On December 31, several
weeks after Xi declared a decisive victory over poverty, The Paper, a Shanghai-based
news website under the state-run Shanghai United Media Group (SUMG), ran a special story on the
theme, “Targeted Poverty Alleviation In Step with a Moderately Prosperous
Society” (精准扶贫同步小康). The subject
was again Dong Heqin, the chili pepper farmer from Anhui.
A special on Dong Heqin appears at The Paper on December 31, 2019.
This version of Dong’s story, which
ran in scores of outlets in December
2019 and January 2020, was sourced to China Poverty Relief magazine (中国扶贫), a news outlet operated by the State Council’s
Poverty Alleviation and Development Small Group, the same office that had established
the “National Poverty Alleviation Award” in September 2016.
By this point, Dong’s story had come full circle. A national movement coordinated from the top had generated demand across the country for exemplary cases. These had trickled back up to the top as local leaders signaled their compliance, offering up lists of local award candidates, like ritual offerings of “positive energy.” Repackaged at the national level, stories like that of Dong Heqin were delivered through outlets like The Paper, Xinhua and the People’s Daily.
Satellites of Propaganda
When they conform so perfectly to the CCP’s master narrative on poverty eradication, how far can we trust stories like that of Dong Heqin? They show at times such an eagerness for perfection – the tears trickling before the hallelujah moment when the protagonist thanks the Party and then the government, always in that order – that they resemble, in their DNA, the conscientiously crafted falsehoods of China’s past.
This is the ghost of basic skepticism
that haunts all of the grand claims in China’s tightly controlled press. When
success is the only outcome possible, when happy endings are the order of the
day, can success and positivity be trusted at all?
There is a slang term in Chinese
today that speaks to this basic skepticism, directing suspicion at those boasts
that are so enlarged that their seams begin to tear, revealing the stuffing inside.
That term is “launching a satellite,” or fangweixing (放卫星), and its history stretches back
to the calamitous political actions of the 1950s, when tens of millions starved
in the wake of such lies.
When the Soviet Union launched
Sputnik I, the world’s first artificial Earth satellite, on October 4, 1957,
the event spawned a frantic response from the United States, demonstrating
Soviet advancements in technology in the midst of the Cold War. In November
1957, shortly after the successful launch of a second Soviet satellite, communist
leaders from around the world gathered in Moscow for the 40th
anniversary of the October Revolution, where Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev
pledged to surpass the US in industrial output within 15 years.
Enchanted by Khrushchev’s ambition, Mao Zedong followed with his own declaration that China would achieve industrial glories all its own, surpassing Great Britain in steel production within 15 years. The next year, grain and steel production were the pillars of Mao’s economic plan, and communities across China labored blindly under impossible quotas. As the political incentives for falsehood climbed, so the claims became ever more unbelievable. Propaganda across the country likened the ambition for high production to the success of Sputnik, talking metaphorically of “satellites” of productivity.
A 1950s propaganda poster shows a steel worker in an industrial landscape gazing in wonder at a launched rocket. The caption reads: “Let the ‘satellite’ of high production always revolve in the sky.”
On October 26, 1958, an entire page in the People’s Daily spoke of economic miracles in China’s northwestern Qinghai province. Everything was “astonishing” (惊). The treasures in the province’s underground mines were “so rich as to astonish people.” Grain production was so abundant that it “crossed the Yellow River.” The page even included a poem called “Satellites of Wheat Astonish the World” (小麦卫星惊世界), the first of four stanzas reading:
Satellites of wheat have launched in Qinghai, Eight thousand per mu, the yields astonish the world. Over the miles, clashes of thunder and flashes of lightning, Mean that fortunate news is nigh!
小麦卫星出青海，
亩产八千惊世界，
千里的雷声万里的闪，
带着喜讯传开来.
These days, the CCP no longer talks in its official discourse about “sending up satellites” of economic or other policy glory. But the phrase remains as a popular reference to absurd and boastful acts of propaganda. And last week, a post on China’s WeChat platform applied the phrase to Dong Heqin’s story. The headline: “Officialdom Launches a Satellite: It is Captured Alive by Netizens!” (官方放卫星，被网友活捉).
The WeChat article was based on a video of that appeared online in May 2020, after the immediate crisis of the Covid-19 epidemic had been contained in China. It begins as a reporter enters one of Dong’s greenhouses and walks toward the farmer, who rises from a chair next to a full-sized propaganda billboard. In what any novice would recognize as a scripted action, Dong never lifts his eyes from the official Party journal he is obligingly pretending to read. On the magazine rack behind him hang copies of official newspapers, including the flagship People’s Daily.
Cut to Dong laboring away among his rows of peppers as he again tells his rural-rags-to-rural-riches story. “Why do I do this work when I’m so old?” the 68 year-old Dong asks the reporter. Pointing to the propaganda billboard, an official account of his success, he answers with a phrase nearly ubiquitous in official media coverage of poverty alleviation efforts. “It’s because I wanted to take off the hat of poverty.”
The obvious creative liberties of
the video aside, the WeChat article points out a number of serious questions
looming behind Dong’s simple turn-around story.
Dong has claimed that he now earns 640,000 yuan, or about 100,000 dollars, farming chili peppers on 50 mu of land, this being just over 33,000 square meters. Farmers on average in China have access to just 1.3 mu of land, and for many farmers in Anhui that number is even lower, just one mu, or around 666 square meters.
So the first question is how Dong managed to get roughly 50 times the land available to other farmers in the area? Was this land transferred to him? Who came up with this money? If the land was sold, where are the farmers who sold it? Have they too “taken off the hat of poverty”? This is quite a serious and sensitive question in a country where farmland is scarce and often fiercely contested.
“Remember, Uncle Dong had an established file and card as an impoverished family, and land transfers do not come cheap,” the WeChat article cautions.
But let’s assume the transfer did happen. The WeChat article estimates that the cost of building greenhouse structures on Dong’s 50 mu of land would be no less than 50,000 yuan per mu, which means the total cost would run to 2.5 million yuan, or nearly 390,000 dollars. “Good Lord,” the article gasps. “Who came up with that money?”
There are problems, too, with Dong Heqin’s claimed annual income of 640,000 yuan. Considering that 1,500 kilograms of peppers for each mu of land would be considered a high yield, and would earn around 5,000 yuan, Dong could expect, at the high end, an annual turnover of about 250,000 yuan. This is less than 40 percent of what Dong has claimed in report after report.
Has Dong used some of his
newfound wealth to subscribe to every Party journal and paper he can get his
hands on? And has he erected his own propaganda billboard? Well, we do know that
Dong has been quoted in several stories as saying he joined the Communist Party
because he hoped to become a better “model leader in poverty alleviation.” Perhaps,
then, this is his personal library?
The WeChat article is less charitable, concluding that the propaganda billboard and magazine rack would most definitely have been lugged over from the local government office. It is all just too much, after all. Too perfect. The seams are coming apart, the stuffing exposed.
The article closes by bemoaning the fact that media in China continue to produce such “standard rubbish” (正经的胡说八道) in the face of what is a major policy of the central government, something to be taken seriously. “What is most lamentable,” it concludes, “is that such rubbish is a absolutely everywhere!”
In remarks to a hearing at the Congressional
Executive Commission on China (CECC) on June 4, 2019, House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi said that it was “a beautiful sight to behold” to see people in Hong
Kong speaking out through a candlelight vigil to commemorate the anniversary of
the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square. Her words were clearly not a
reference to destructive behaviour by Hong Kong protesters, or to clashes
between protestors and police.
Since that time, however, Chinese state media and foreign ministry officials have repeatedly and consistently returned to this talking point, using “a beautiful sight to behold” (美丽的风景线) to signal alleged American hypocrisy that condones violent political acts and cloaks them in the language of democracy and human rights.
In November 2019, as a video
emerged in Hong Kong of a man doused with fuel and set alight by a protestor, an
English-language
headline at People’s Daily Online read: “Is setting a man on fire the
so-called ‘beautiful sight to behold’ that Pelosi described?” And in May last
year, as scenes of looting, vandalism and fires accompanied protests in some
cities against the killing of George Floyd, the state
news agency Xinhua referred to the attending violence as “Pelosi’s
beautiful landscape,” and the provocative editor-in-chief of the Global
Times, Hu Xijin, wrote: “US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi once called the
violent protests in Hong Kong ‘a beautiful sight to behold.’ Now, the ‘beautiful
sight’ is extending from Hong Kong to over a dozen US states. US politicians
now can enjoy this sight from their own windows.”
It is hardly surprising, then, that
the phrase has returned with a vengeance today, as Chinese media relish the chaotic
scenes that unfolded last night on Capitol Hill, at the very heart of American
democracy.
The Global
Times, CCTV and other state media
have widely made reference to Pelosi’s “beautiful sight,” which should now be regarded
as a stock propaganda catchphrase, and internet users are also widely picking
up and sharing references to “a beautiful sight” to mock the US and its criticisms
of China’s handling of events in Hong Kong in 2019.
In a “Quick Take” promoted on its
homepage today, CCTV.com was quick to declare an end to the myth of American
democracy. The commentary, “A Mob Smashes Capitol Hill, And American-style
Democracy is Smashed” (暴民打砸国会山，美式民主演砸了!), began:
An
all-out assault (全武行) performed by Trump supporters
(拥趸者) ripped away the last fig leaf
of the American democracy about which US politicians have boasted. Beginning on
the afternoon of [January] 6th, US time, mobs (暴民)stormed Capitol Hill and smashed
numerous areas, including the office of [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi. Even the
live broadcast locations of television networks broadcasting live from the square
were not spared. This “beautiful sight” (美丽风景线)prompted an uproar in global public
opinion!
The government-backed Guancha
Syndicate website in Shanghai ran a headline today on events in the US capital
called: “This Time is It a “Beautiful Sight to Behold”? Pelosi Calls [Actions
By] American Protesters a ‘Shameful Attack on Our Democracy’” (这回不是“美丽风景线”了？佩洛西称美国示威者“可耻攻击民主”).
The article included the now images of a Trump supporting sitting in Pelosi’s
office, his booted feet resting on her desk.
The phrase “a beautiful sight to behold” (美丽的风景线) first appeared in the CCP’s official People’s Daily newspaper on August 27, 2019, in a piece called, “Double Standards with No Bottom Line” (毫无底线的“双重标准”), which said “certain US politicians have spared no ends in seeking to restrain China,” and specifically criticized the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which was reintroduced in June 2019, less than two weeks after Pelosi’s “beautiful sight to behold” remarks at the CECC.
Since that first People’s Daily article, the phrase “beautiful sight to behold” has appeared in 9 other articles in the newspaper, all dealing with the issue of Hong Kong. One of the most prominent was a commentary on July 16, 2020 – shortly after the imposition of Hong Kong’s national security law and the passage by the US Congress of the “Hong Kong Autonomy Act” – by Zhong Sheng (钟声), a penname the paper has used since November 2008 for important pieces on international affairs on which the leadership wishes to register its view (the name “Zhong Sheng,” literally meaning “bell tone,” a shortened version of “bell tone to warn the world” (警世钟声).
The Zhong Sheng
column read:
In the so-called “Hong Kong Autonomy Act,” the United States has made false claims about “rights” and “freedom,” exposing its outright hypocrisy. The radical violent crimes in Hong Kong have seriously endangered the lives and property of Hong Kong residents, far beyond the limits and scope of the legal exercise of personal freedom and rights. Some US politicians have called them ‘a beautiful sight’ and are openly anti-China chaos in Hong Kong.
Since its origin in 2019, Pelosi’s “beautiful sight” has become official shorthand in China for what is in fact a very old propaganda theme under the CCP, the falsehood and hypocrisy of American democracy.
On page five of today’s official People’s Daily newspaper, a commentary by Guo Jiping (国纪平) – short for “important commentary on international affairs,” or you guan guoji de zhongyao pinglun (有关国际的重要评论) – offers a full-scale account of China’s year in 2020. It will surprise no one that this account is entirely positive, full of unambiguous superlatives about China’s achievements and how, most importantly, these can all be chalked up to the superb leadership of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.
The commentary, “Facts
Speak Louder Than Rhetoric” (事实胜于雄辩),
is a sprawling page of rhetoric – about the “community of common destiny for mankind” (人类命运共同体),
about “Six
Stabilities” (六稳)
and the “Six Guarantees” (六保),
about the “miracle of China’s rapid economic growth,” and so on.
If there is any question about how the Chinese Communist Party will choose, officially, to remember 2020, all questions are answered in the soaring rhetoric of the Guo Jiping piece.
The summary sentence at the start:
At a major historical juncture, mankind faced a major
test. China showed its report card, and injected confidence and hope into the
world. How extraordinary!
And here is the basic assessment of the year:
China achieved major strategic results in the fight
against Covid-19, delivering a response that satisfied the people, turned the eyes
of the world, and is to be recorded in the annals of history. China has become
the only major economy in the world to achieve positive economic growth, and it
made major breakthroughs on the Three Major Struggles [of preventing and resolving major risks, achieving
poverty alleviation, and preventing pollution] as well as major progress on
science and innovation, on major breakthroughs in reform and opening, and on strong
guarantees for the peoples’ livelihood. These achievements did not come easily,
but came through hardship and obstacles, and they result from the resolute leadership
of the Chinese Communist Party with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core, and result
from the united struggle of the whole Party, the whole army, and people of all
ethnic groups throughout the country.
There are many voices in the world praising China one
after another. As the former foreign minister of and deputy chancellor of Germany
Joschka Fischer declared in the Spanish media that “2020 is a successful year
for China.”
There is no mention, of course, that while Fischer did write earlier this month that “2020 proved to be a highly successful year for China,” particularly noting failures of leadership elsewhere in the world, he also was very clear that “[serious] failures by Chinese authorities permitted that outbreak to grow into a pandemic that has now killed almost 1.5 million people and brought the global economy to a standstill.”
But the Party and its flagship newspaper know only too well that rhetoric can speak louder than the facts.
On December 2, Xinhua News Agency
issued a lengthy official news release with a ponderous headline that included
two Chinese Communist Party buzzwords meant to signal the power of General
Secretary Xi Jinping. But there was a problem.
The headline,
seen in the screen capture below, read in full: “Casting the Soul of the Army
Under the Banner of the Party: A General Narrative of the Entire Army Supporting
the Use of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a
New Era and Xi Jinping Thought on a Strong Military to Shape the Soul [of the Army]
and Educate [Soldiers].”
Last night, the Xinhua article was given further prominence as it was summarized on the nightly official news cast, Xinwen Lianbo (新闻联播). This was a clear sign of official support for the article, which outlined Xi Jinping’s ideas about the importance of “realizing the Party’s goal of building a strong military in the new era.” The Xinwen Lianbo report included the full headline of the article onscreen.
The December 2 edition of Xinwen Lianbo covers the Xinhua article on “Xi Jinping Thought on a Strong Military.”
In all, the Xinhua release
mentioned the phrase “Xi Jinping Thought on a Strong Military” (习近平强军思想) eight times. Of these, five uses combined the phrase
with Xi’s banner term (旗帜语), the political
catchphrase meant to subsume all of his ideas and stand as the monument to his
legacy. Like the headline of the article itself, these five instances talked
about “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New
Era and Xi Jinping Thought on a Strong Military” (习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想和习近平强军思想).
By the laws of CCP discourse – remembering that in the formulation of language at the highest levels, nothing is taken lightly – this should be a serious error on the part of Xinhua, and then again on the part of CCTV.
As we
have previously written, Xi’s banner term, “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism
with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” (习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想),
which first appeared in October 2017 at the 19th National Congress of the CCP, is
on a winding path toward formalization as the shortened and more potent “Xi
Jinping Thought” (习近平思想), putting Xi on par with
Mao Zedong. Despite some rather careless and premature references
in academic literature and mainstream news reports outside China to “Xi Jinping
Thought,” it is worth remembering that “Xi Jinping Thought” has in fact not yet
emerged, not formally, and this is a distinction that certainly has not escaped
Xi and his acolytes at senior levels, who are busy trying to achieve this
transformation.
“Xi Jinping Thought” is the
end game, and when we see the emergence of a host of subordinate permutations
of Xi thoughts in various policy areas, including “Xi Jinping Thought on a
Strong Military” and “Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy” (习近平外交思想), these are meant to help pave the way toward “Xi
Jinping Thought.” Think of it as a rhetorical game of crossing the river by
feeling the stones. In 2018, at least 10 such sub-forms of Xi thought appeared
in official sources.
But the point of Xi Jinping’s
banner term is to subsume all of Xi’s ideas. There is meant to be one
banner, the umbrella phrase under which all lesser banners fly. And any suggestion
of equivalence between the lesser thoughts and their parent phrase would serve
to diminish the gravity of “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese
Characteristics for a New Era.” This is the serious problem in the Xinhua
article, the “and” drawing an equivalence between Xi’s banner term and “Xi
Jinping Thought on a Strong Military.”
The term “Xi Jinping Thought on a Strong Military” appears in military-related sources, such as the People’s Liberation Army Daily, but is generally marked as being subordinate to the overarching banner term. When Party media in China reported on the release last month of the “People’s Liberation of China Joint Operation Outline (中国人民解放军联合作战纲要), they stressed that “the ‘Outline’ is guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for the New Era, and thoroughly implements Xi Jinping Thought on a Strong Military.”
A November 27, 2020, news release from Xinhua clearly shows use of “Xi Jinping Thought on a Strong Military” given secondary emphasis following “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for the New Era.”
The proper juxtaposition of these two phrases should have been something more like: “ . . . with Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as the guide, thoroughly implementing Xi Jinping Thought on a Strong Military” (以习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想为指导, 深入贯彻习近平强军思想).
How did this low-level error happen at Xinhua? How was it perpetuated on the official nightly news program? This is difficult to know. But how these terms appear together in the future will be something to continue watching.
Anyone could be forgiven for entirely ignoring last week’s China New Media Conference (中国新媒体大会), held over two days in the city of Changsha. Attended by propaganda officials, journalists, internet company representatives and communications scholars from across China, the event dealt with the insipid theme, hardly enlivened by official news releases, of “media convergence.”
How could this conference possibly be relevant outside the drab echo chamber of elite Chinese politics and communication, much less outside China? Beyond the usual parade of official news in Chinese, only Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post paid the event any heed at all.
But hold on just a minute. This year’s conference, which opened with an address from Xu Lin (徐麟), director of the State Council Information Office and a deputy propaganda minister, was an illuminating and deeply important look at media policy in China – with implications domestically and internationally. It essentially outlined how the Chinese Communist Party intends to leverage transformations in global communication, both at home and abroad (though the latter is more implied), to sustain the regime and increase its influence internationally.
Screenshot of a report by Hunan province’s official rednet.cn website on the 2020 China New Media Conference.
The event followed the September release of Opinions on Accelerating
the Promotion of Deep and Integrated Media Development (关于加快推进媒体深度融合发展的意见), which was important
enough to make the space just to the right of the masthead in the September 27 edition of the CCP’s official People’s
Daily newspaper. The Opinion spelled out a range of
actions to be implemented at all levels and at all departments in China in
order to create “an omnimedia communication system with assurances provided by
innovative management” (创新管理为保障的全媒体传播体系). The meaning of this will become clearer as we proceed.
The front page of the September 27 edition of the CCP’s official People’s Daily newspaper, the report next to the masthead about accelerating the development of media convergence.
Broadly speaking, media convergence in any context is about the
integration of information and communications technologies, various forms of
media content, and computer networks – for which some
scholars now use the shorthand
“Three C’s” (communication, computing and content). This may sound
like a fringe concern, something to be hemmed and hawed over by communications
scholars at some afternoon panel, but in this context media convergence is
about so much more.
One of the key messages in Xu’s address to the conference was simple.
“[We] must resolutely prevent the weakening of the Party’s leadership in the
name of convergence,” he said, “and must resolutely prevent the risk of capital
controlling public opinion.” For the Chinese Communist Party, media convergence
is really about harnessing of the digital media revolution – which in any case
is happening – to serve and preserve the Party’s political dominance. The
stakes are large, and China’s leaders want to get this right, which is why it
has become, as Xu said, a “national strategy.”
Promotional brochure for the China New Media Conference, hosted in Changsha on November 19 and 20.
At its most fundamental, media convergence (媒体融合) in China is about resolving the dilemma
facing the so-called “mainstream” media of the Chinese Communist Party –
namely, that they no longer appeal to wider audiences in an era of digital
media proliferation. The challenge is to
ensure that the CCP’s dominant ideology, wrapped up in the affirmation and
consolidation of its own legitimacy, can permeate throughout social media and
commercial websites and accounts.
Xu Lin spoke in his address to the conference of the goal in the last five-year plan to “build up a new mainstream media” (新型主流媒体), and to build up “strong county-level media convergence centers (县级融媒体中心). The project, in other words, involves a deep-level and nationwide transformation and re-building of the CCP media system. It seizes the moment of digital transformation, a trend shared across the globe, to re-insert the Party at the center of media development – after what has since the 1990s essentially been an increasing process of Party media marginalization.
Battling in the Belly of Princess Iron Fan
Concern over the possible, perhaps impending (or so is
the fear), loss of dominance over public opinion is a constant theme for the CCP
leadership, still enshrined in the central propaganda notion, dating to the
brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests in June 1989, that “guidance of
public opinion” (now synonymous with media control) is essential to preserving
regime stability. Throughout the Hu Jintao era, and the latter part of the
Jiang Zemin era that preceded it, the project of “guidance” was in tension
with the trend of media commercialization, the emergence of a vibrant
internet space, and the rise of a sometimes restive core of professionally-minded
journalists, and an increasingly curious and consumption-oriented population
with an appetite for information but also for entertainment.
In August 2013, in his first
major speech on ideology
after coming to power, Xi Jinping outlined the context of the Party’s struggle
against dissent. “As for propaganda and ideological positions, if we do not
occupy them, others will,” he warned his audience of propaganda apparatchiks.
He talked about “three zones” existing in the field of public opinion and
ideology. The first was the “red zone,” or hongse didai (红色地带), which consists primarily of “mainstream
media,” meaning her Party-controlled media, and “positive forces online.” This
zone, said Xi, “must be held, and absolutely cannot be lost.”
The second zone was the “black zone,” or heise didai
(黑色地带), which was principally
comprised of “negative language” online and in society, but which according to
Xi “also includes the speech manufactured by various hostile forces” – this
being a catchall term for the CCP’s internal and external enemies, though it is
often understood to refer to unspecified acts of infiltration by foreign
sources with hostile intent. “This is not the mainstream,” Xi said of the black
zone, “but its influence must not be underestimated.”
The third zone was
the “grey zone,” or huise didai (灰色地带),
“existing between the red zone and the black zone.” In dealing with these
various zones, Xi proposed differentiated strategies. For the red zone, the
focus should be on “consolidation and expansion, steadily enlarging its social
influence,” said Xi. But his characterization of the strategies for the grey
and black zones was most interesting, and perhaps chilling:
For the black zone,
we must courageously enter it, like [Sun Wukong] entering the belly of Princess
Iron Fan to do battle, steadily promoting its red transformation. As for the
grey zone, we must carry out large-scale work, accelerating its transformation
into the red zone, preventing its metamorphosis into a black zone. This work
must be firmly grasped, and with perseverance it will obtain results.
Xi is known to have a fondness for colorful language and historical and literary references, and his mention in this passage of “entering the belly of Princess Iron Fan to do battle” can be understood as a colorfully oblique reference to the larger project of co-optation, not just of alternative or potentially competing messages inside China, but of critical voices globally.
The reference comes
from the 16th century Chinese classic Journey to the West, in
which at one point the main protagonist, the Monkey King, or “Sun Wukong” (孙悟空), possessing a magical staff
that enables him to shrink down to the size of a needle, does battle with
Princess Iron Fan (铁扇公主), the
wife of the Bull Demon Kong, by morphing into a fly, entering her mouth and
flying down into her gut. Once inside Princess Iron Fan’s soft belly, the
Monkey King punches and kicks her into submission.
Sun Wukong and Princess Iron Fan do battle.
Xi Jinping’s colorful literary allusion, along with his identification of three public opinion zones, tells us a great deal about the CCP’s objective in harnessing the digital revolution. The point is to ensure that the Party’s political frames permeate the public opinion space domestically, consolidating the “red” hold over grey zones, and transforming, through a process of deep internal struggle, black zones into red strongholds. This can be accomplished only if the Party has a strong, and also pliable and innovative, grasp of “media convergence,” of the entire process of content creation, distribution and demand.
In his speech to the China New Media Conference, Xu Lin addresses six key aspects of the CCP’s “national strategy,” which I include below with commentary and context.
Accelerating the full construction of an omnimedia communication system (全媒传播体系)
Xu Lin outlines the creation of an comprehensive national system at four levels, from the center to the province, city and country, that integrates content production and distribution through “advanced [communication] technologies” (先进技术) – and is “resource intensive” (资源集约) with a “high-level of coordination” (协同高效). Xu characterizes the internet as the “principle battleground” (主战场) and recognizes that mobile-based and video content is a more and more dominant trend. Talking aabout the relative roles of Party media (those directly overseen by Party Committees) and commercial media (commercially operating spin-offs overseen by Party or government bodies, and for-profit online media), Xu says that while Party media will set the tone of “mainstream public opinion” (主流舆论), meaning Party-led messaging, “commercial platforms will principally serve as channels, their technological and other advantages aiding the transmission of mainstream public opinion.”
Adhering throughout to correct guidance of public opinion (始终坚守正确方向导向)
As I mentioned earlier, “correct guidance of public opinion” remains a
key term denoting the central prerogative of information control to achieve
regime stability. “The guidance and value orientation of public opinion is the
soul of news and public opinion work,” says Xu in this section. And he states
the overarching priority of media control in the midst of technological
transformation more clearly here than we have perhaps seen in some time. He
says: “The development of convergence may bring a change in the forms of the
media, but regardless of what kind of media, regardless of whether these are
mainstream [CCP] media or commercial platforms, regardless of whether they are
online or offline, regardless of whether they are small-screen or large-screen,
in terms of guidance there is only once standard. There is no land outside the
law, and there are no public opinion enclaves.” While convergence is a priority
in consolidating the Party’s control over the message, Xu is very clear here
that “we must resolutely prevent the weakening of the Party’s leadership in the
name of convergence, and must resolutely prevent the risk of capital
controlling public opinion.”
These two points are the real heart of information policy, and the most
important aspect of Xu’s remarks, reflecting what has been called “Xi Jinping
Thought on
the News”（习近平新闻思想）.
Beyond this fundamentals, the leadership understands that there is
demand for information that it is effective and appeals. Today’s propaganda
cannot be yesterday’s propaganda, and it must not seem so to increasingly savvy
Chinese audiences. Moreover, it must accommodate if not lead the global
standard in terms of technology, so that China reaps the economic and political
benefits. And so:
Focus on expanding the production capacity of high-quality content (着力扩大优质内容产能)
Xu says that in the current information environment, what we see is “the
proliferation of information, and feel that quality content is scarce.”
“Whether or not we can attract the masses, and whether or not we can lead
public opinion, and building consensus, is ultimately up to whether or not our
content is good.”
As George Orwell wrote, “Doublethink means the power of holding two
contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of
them.” And here, in Xu’s third aspect, we can glimpse the doublethink at the
heart of the CCP’s conception of media development and control – that you can
have a vibrant media space, commercially viable and creatively responding to
audiences, even as you dominate and control it. In the simplest sense, the
media revolution that unfolded in China from the 1990s, even as Jiang Zemin
spoke of the “Three Closenesses” (三贴近),
essentially the idea that control and commercialization could proceed side by
side, exposed the flaws of this doublethink. One important result was the
emergence of a professional and often restive commercial media space that
fought to greater space and air to breathe – and had a deep imprint too on the
internet and early social media spaces in China as fields that complicated the
Party’s project of “guidance.”
Media policy under Xi Jinping
comes at a time when the CCP seems to have much greater hope that the
technological tide is in their favor, as the tools of creation and distribution
can also now be tools of restraint, repression and surveillance.
In this section too, Xu talks
about the need to create a flood of information the spreads “positive energy” (正能量), another specialized media
terminology under Xi Jinping that essentially is a makeover of an older term of
the Jiang and Hu eras, the need to “emphasize positive propaganda.” Imagine a
world of colorful, uplifting and entertaining media products, none of which
turn thoughts to the unfortunate aspects of life, society or politics.
Actively seizing the high ground of communication technology (积极抢占传播技术高地)
Media convergence, says Xu, is a “media transformation brought on by
technological innovation.” Technologies like 5G had driven transformation, and
to stay on top in terms of guiding public opinion and ensuring the dominance of
the Party as “mainstream,” the leadership must ensure that it is not just
leading technological trends, but also leading in terms of the means of
harnessing and controlling them.
In the past, perhaps, Chinese leaders were unprepared for various forms
of media transformation, including media commercialization –coming ahead of
China’s World Trade Organization membership in the late 1990s and greater
integration with the global economy – and the rapid rise of social media
platforms like Weibo. This time, they are determined to be prepared. “We must
strengthen forward-looking research and the application of relevant new
technologies in the field of news and communication,” Xu said, “and we
absolutely must not simply look on and take a
passive approach to dealing with them.”
Advancing and controlling the media transformation from a technical
perspective is of course not enough. The priorities outlined in the first two
aspects that Xu addresses will require the CCP also to remake the human
mechanisms of media development and control. It will no longer be sufficient,
for example, to have one leader on the traditional media side and another on
the new media side, what Xu calls a “two skins” approach. Patchwork approaches
and temporary fixes must give way instead to more comprehensive solutions on
the management side, which involves of course both content
production/distribution and the policing of “correct guidance.”
Xu’s final aspect is about the people who will staff and implement this
new vision of the Party-led media system.
Fully stimulating the vitality of talent teams (充分激发人才队伍活力)
“The core competitive strength of the media lies in its people, and talent, the unit, is critical to achieving convergence,” Xu says. He talks here about developing the proper human resource and training programs, and also “scientific systems of examination and assessment.”
China’s Story Converges
The “national strategy” of media convergence, Party-led digital transformation, or whatever else one wishes to call it, is an ambitious project with far-reaching implications not just for speech and information inside China, but for the global conversation on a range of issues touching on China’s ever-broadening interests — from security to 5G, from diplomacy to trade and investment, from health to human rights and democracy.
Xi Jinping has emphasized that China must expand its “discourse power” internationally by “telling China’s story well,” which essentially means shifting global narratives to suit the objectives of the CCP, with regime preservation topping the list. Just as it is key to the transformation of domestic media control, media convergence is at the heart of the re-envisioning of external propaganda and influence. In 2016, an article appearing in the People’s Daily and addressing the creation of “a new mainstream media” said that “innovative expression, and telling China’s story well, require promoting the integrated development of traditional media and emerging media, not losing any opportunity.”
In a study published last year, Chinese communication scholars Jia Wenshan (贾文山) and Zhao Limin (赵立敏) wrote for the China Social Sciences Daily (中国社会科学报) — in an article exploring the expansion of China’s “international discourse power” (国际话语权) against a dominant West — that “[how] the media tells Chinese stories well and enhances the dissemination capacity of China’s international discourse raises new expectations for media convergence.”
Understanding the international dimensions of the national strategy of what might also be called China’s “red convergence” will unfortunately require a great deal more attention to insipid events like last week’s China New Media Conference, and to equally insipid documents like the September Opinions on Accelerating the Promotion of Deep and Integrated Media Development. For Xi Jinping’s CCP, global cyberspace is a map of black, grey and red, and it is not at all an exaggeration to say that media convergence is a battle cry.
According to a report from local Hunan media, a top China Media Group executive attending the China New Media Conference, Liu Xiaolong (刘晓龙), said that “mainstream” CCP media must “persist in using offense as defense in transmitting China’s voice.” They must strive, he said, to increase the territory they occupy in the field of international communication, fighting with a “combined punch” (组合拳) in what he referred to, echoing Maoist language Xi Jinping has re-introduced to policy-making on communication, as a “public opinion struggle.”
