Author: David Bandurski

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).

Shocking cardboard bun story on Beijing TV a fake, Beijing authorities say

Chinese media, once again, have become the news. After a spate of recent news coverage highlighting poor food safety standards in China, an undercover story from Beijing TV showing steamed bun vendors in the country’s capital using cardboard as a meat substitute came as little surprise — that story, which over the last several days became international news, was orchestrated, authorities now say, by an unscrupulous freelance television reporter [Coverage here from Reuters].[IMAGE: Screenshot of latest “cardboard bun” story featured at Beijing Daily website].

get_img71.jpg

This latest news demonstrates, somewhat ironically, that recent concerns in and outside China about poor quality standards for Chinese products should be extended to include news products as well.
The bun story is the most recent example to date of the phenomenon of “fake news” in China, a recurring problem as commercialization rapidly takes hold in the media sector, and as far reaching media controls continue to place limits on professional reporting of a wide range of news topics.
A special investigative task force of Beijing police formed to look into the allegations contained in the television news report found that a reporter surnamed Zi for Beijing TV’s “Transparency” (透明度) program hired four migrant workers to stage the cardboard bun story. Authorities said it was a lack of proper quality controls at Beijing TV that made it possible for the false report to air.
Beijing TV issued an apology yesterday for the spot, and the reporter/director allegedly responsible has been detained by police, according to Beijing media.
[Posted by David Bandurski, July 19, 5:12pm]

Chinese Journalist magazine: lessons in propagating a favorable image of the Party overseas

In recent weeks, Party officials have ratcheted up pressure on Chinese media to mind their political P’s and Q’s in the run-up to the all-important 17th National Congress. For Party leaders, the question of how China can put on its best face as international attention turns to the political session in Beijing now takes on fresh urgency.
This month, Chinese Journalist, a monthly magazine published by Xinhua News Agency that, along with People’s Daily’s News Line, is responsible for conveying the “management spirit” of state propaganda ministers, ran a piece about how media can convey to the world the great achievements of the Chinese Communist Party — by employing “the facts”, no less. [IMAGE: Screenshot of Chinese Journalist online edition].

copy-2-of-chinese-journalist.JPG

The piece is written by two senior journalists with the “external division” of the official Xinhua News Agency, a division charged with generating China news for foreign consumption in a wealth of foreign languages.
A partial translation of the article follows. As readers enjoy the arguments, we encourage them to bear in mind that the authors are entirely serious:
Propagating Well the Image of the Chinese Communist Party
By Han Song (韩松) and Huang Yan (黄燕)
Chinese Journalist, July 2007
Concerning reports to the outside [world] surrounding the 17th National Congress, Xinhua News Agency’s external division (对外部) talks about the news topic of laying out the liberality and openness of the Chinese Communist Party, its closeness to and love of the people
Strengthening the directedness of news reports
In recent years, China’s progress in its peaceful development has been rapid, and it has involved itself in the process of economic globalization. A number of politicians in the West, however, continue to harbor prejudices. Stripped to its basics, this underscores deep differences in system and ideology. Given this situation, a major topic as we approach the 17th National Congress becomes how to propagate well the Party’s principles of leadership and its guiding policies toward the outside [world], how to propagate well the important position and function of the Chinese Communist Party, how to reflect well the good wishes of our country’s people to uphold harmony and their ardent love of peace.
These past few years we have done a number of good works, meticulously organizing coverage, for example, of the 85th anniversary of the founding of the Party [in China] and the 70th anniversary of the victorious Long March. Reports surrounding the 17th National Congress, it should be said, are of far graver import.
Every Party representative of every congress has had a substantial impact on the progress of China. Western public opinion is observing this [process]. We paid a visit recently to a number of media and foreign people in the capital. They expressed a keen interest in the 17th National Congress, and wanted to understand the actions of the Chinese Communist Party. Some foreign media have made contact with the Party School for interviews, and expressed excitement because restrictions on overseas media were relaxed on January 1 this year. In connection with the 17th National Congress, one issue of particular interest to the outside world has lately been: what does the Party intend to do once it has led the people of China on the path to mightiness? Related to this, how will the Chinese Communist Party meet the challenges that have come with economic and social development? How will China’s new top leaders handle relations with the world? Etcetera.
We are faced with the “China Threat” and “China’s Responsibility” theories of the West. Assessed objectively, these are questions of Western and Eastern ideology, and they have their origins in the negative effects in the West of the irresponsible comments of a number of cadres. China’s economic development has also brought the emergence of a number of new circumstances, such as trade disputes, environmental protection, workers’ rights. As for journalists, a number of problems are related to our lack of good faith in doing propaganda to the outside.

Speaking with the facts
In meeting the challenge of reports surrounding the 17th National Congress, the most basic thing is to speak through the facts. Of course, these facts must have newsworthiness, must be balanced and objective.
If, for example, we want to write about the Chinese Communist Party’s position and function, the achievements she has made, there are facts that speak directly to this, namely some predictions in the West (or we might call them “curses”) that have not come to pass.
Ten years ago, for instance, the West believed the Communist Party couldn’t run an economy. Clearly, we have made it around a number of turns, but now China has quite an economic track record. Ten years ago, for instance, the West believed we would make a mess of Hong Kong, and some people believe the Chinese economy would collapse before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Takes these facts and place them side by side and this will be quite convincing.
And how can we express clearly that China’s development is an opportunity and not a threat? It’s not enough, I’m afraid, to simply resort to conceptual terms. We should tackle this by beginning with specifics. For example, people wonder where your military spending is going? … Just send someone to report from the most remote barracks, and let them see how poor our soldiers’ lives once were; write about how they raise their own pigs and grow their own crops behind their barracks. This is something I’m afraid American soldiers would find hard to imagine. So, a large portion of military spending has actually gone into improving the actual lives [of soldiers] …
There are more facts to talk about. For example, concerning the [Party’s] closeness to and love of the people, scientific development and democratic politics, there has been no little progress over the last five years, and this has also been a catalyst for economic development. According to one standing committee member of the National People’s Congress, when American representatives made a visit to China and witnessed grassroots elections, they were hugely surprised and said they had never imagined China would have that kind of democracy. Therefore, we can offer specific reports on elections as a part of internal Party democratization (党内民主), including new developments in grassroots building of the Party.
Reports can also be done on the topic of harmony, such as that this is the most welcomed political buzzword since the 16th Party Congress. The raising of the concept of harmony [by President Hu Jintao] itself is progress. When our top leaders make policy decisions, they listen more and more to the opinions of ordinary people, including directly, face-to-face. Also, non-Party people are playing an ever bigger role on the Chinese political stage, etcetera. These are all facts …

Write human stories about figures in the Party
News reports must have people. The portrait of a ruling party is drawn through specific quotes from Party members.
Here is an example: When Party Chairman Hu Jintao paid a visit to Boeing while in the United States, he received a baseball glove from one of the Boeing employees and gave him a “Western style” hug, upon which the American worker wept, having never imagined Chairman Hu would give him a hug! Based on his being “reared” on Western media, this ordinary American never dared to believe that a Communist Party member would show such a warm and human side …

[Posted by David Bandurski, July 18, 2006, 11:24am]

Information Office cadre calls cover-up of negative news “naive”

In the latest example of the puzzles and paradoxes coming from China’s top leadership on the question of information openness, the vice-minister of China’s State Council Information Office — the office taking the lead in expanding censorship of the Chinese internet — told China Central Television late last week that local leaders were “naive” in trying to suppress negative news. [IMAGE: Screenshot of CCTV Website coverage of Wang Guoqing appearance].

wang-guoqing.JPG

Appearing on a CCTV talk show on July 13, Wang Guoqing said some government offices were “relatively naive” in “covering up” negative news and preventing media reporting. Addressing the recent Shanxi Kiln Affair, the official said that if local officials had revealed the truth to begin with, “I think the public would have understood, and there wouldn’t have been the kind of irrational expressions on the Internet that we saw later.”
Covering up negative news, Wang said, had become a matter of custom for many local government offices.
However, as CMP revealed last week, the Information Office has moved to more tightly control speech on the Web in the run-up to the 17th Party Congress, expected to be held in September this year.
Web censors issued an order recently saying “[Websites must] intensify public opinion guidance and management on the Internet of the Shanxi Kiln Affair … regularly release positive and authoritative information, and regularly report information about related people receiving medical treatment and being safely relocated, leading to favorable online public opinion.”
A separate order said reports other than official ones “must not be given prominent positioning (不上头条), be placed in top news sections, allow Web postings (跟帖), or be given links to special sections [devoted to coverage of the story].” Websites, it said, must “severely monitor forums, blogs, instant information and other interactive forms, and immediately delete extreme language and harmful or bad information.”
The story of Wang Guoqing’s CCTV appearance, reported last Sunday by Beijing Youth Daily and The Beijing News, became a favorite topic of newspaper editorials yesterday. In an editorial posted on rednet.cn, Sun Lizhong (孙立忠) generally agreed with Wang’s calling the cover-up of negative news “naive”, but said a number of conditions had to be met before officials were politically disincentivized to keep bad news under wraps:
Much of what is called negative news actually has positive value, and has special importance for safeguarding justice and fairness, improving the system, etcetera. To report such matters is to display the functional strength of watchdog journalism (舆论监督). At the same time, a lot of so-called negative news that “touches on the vital interests of citizens, legal persons or other organizations”, “requiring the widespread knowledge or participation of society” is also the sort of government information the government is required to take the initiative in making public under the “National Ordinance on Release of Government Information” [recently passed and due to take effect in May 2008].
Effectively implementing the law on information release is of course necessary, but relying solely on this is not enough. We also have an urgent need to set up protections for watchdog journalism by setting down and perfecting a press law and other legal systems, allowing the media to thoroughly exercise watchdog journalism. We also need to strenthen the supervisory roles of the People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress. Once the “cover up of negative news” is discovered, the People’s Congress and CPPCC representatives who speak on behalf of the people should work fast to make inquiries, find out who is responsible, recall [officials] and [employ] other means to ensure those responsible are taken to account.
Only when those [systemic issues] that need to be perfected have been perfected will “covering up” of negative news truly become a “naive” action.

[Posted by David Bandurski, July 17, 2006,12:15pm]

Web user arrests in southern China underscore growing official fear of the Internet

In a further sign of the growing influence of the Internet in China, and growing fears about the technology among local party officials, authorities in the southern city of Xinyi (信宜) apprehended three men accused of circulating “rumors” on the Internet about a serial rapist. Columnist and CMP fellow Yan Lieshan criticized the action today in Southern Metropolis Daily [more from ESWN], saying Xinyi officials showed no apparent concern for their own negligence in failing to issue timely warnings to the public (police have admitted a series of rapes in Xinyi between March 19 and May 31 this year, with a suspect taken into custody on July 3), instead misdirecting their focus to allegedly exaggerated Web postings. [PHOTO: Screenshot of New Express coverage of arrest of rape suspect in Xinyi, July 7, 2007, via news.21cn.com].

xinyi-suspect-77.bmp

News of the arrest and pending case against the three Web users recalled the recent Haicang PX story in Xiamen, in which city officials said they were mulling local curbs on Internet use after new media played an instrumental role in organizing popular opposition to a proposed chemical plant in the city. An official from Xiamen’s commercial bureau recently told media that “after opposition to the PX project, the government [in Xiamen] felt that content on the Internet should be [more tightly] controlled.”
In his editorial, Yan Lieshan said China was “at a crossroads” and that greater acceptance and protection of public speech was needed in order to fight corruption and other evils. “If we want to change the state of affairs under which good cannot stamp out evil, the most effective and economical means is to give citizens a greater right to know, right to speak and right to monitor (知情权、发言权和监督权),” he said.
The key question in the Xinyi Web user arrests is whether netizens should be held personally accountable for the accuracy of their postings. In the Xinyi case, it seems, there was a basis for the postings, and it is Yan Lieshan’s contention that, in the absense of official information on the case, it might in fact have been the buzz created by the three Web users in question that “moved the killer to show some restraint” (使犯罪分子有所收敛).
Selected portions of Yan Lieshan’s editorial follow:
There’s no need for me to conceal the fact that my original intention was to complain of the wrongs against the three Web users [in Xinyi]. But that’s not all. I’ve already used this example to show that there is much greater danger in exposing local scandals. I could find a heap of examples just searching the Internet. I’m talking not just about informing and exposing of illegal activities, but of normal speech concerning local public affairs …
It goes without saying that there are many abnormal or backward things happening in the political life of our society these days – corruption and bribery, trifling with impunity with [one’s official] post. But it’s those who inform, who expose crimes that live in fear …
I’m completely with Professor Cai Dingjian on this point, that media are an instrumental factor in promoting social change, and that the government has a responsibility to respect the media and thereby the will of the people. What needs to be added is that the media he’s referring to includes, of course, the new media and the Internet (postings, blogs, streaming video, etc.), including all of those citizens (interactive writers) who provide the media with information, viewpoints and “buzz” (人气).
It could be said that China’s social transition is at a crossroads. If we want to change the state of affairs under which good cannot stamp out evil, the most effective and economical means is to give citizens a greater right to know, right to speak and right to monitor.

[Posted by David Bandurski, July 13, 2007, 4:39pm]

Guangzhou police discover six tons of unlicensed “pornographic” magazines in raid on local printing house

Authorities in Guangzhou announced a raid yesterday on a printing house where “stacks upon stacks”, reportedly more than six tons, of an unlicensed “pornographic” magazine were waiting for distribution. Guangzhou’s New Express reported police were alerted to the operation by a disgruntled employee who had been fired by the printing house. [BELOW: Screenshot of New Express coverage of police raid on Guangzhou printing house at QQ.com].

get_img70.jpg

The newspaper quoted the source, Ah Bing, as saying: “I don’t want to help them do those kinds of immoral things anymore. And I don’t want to allow the printing house to continue harming others.” He said the printing house had produced various pornographic publications on demand. “They would print anything,” he said. “All it took was money.”
The story highlights a persistent problem facing authorities in China, where the age of commercialized media has spawned an explosion in unlicensed “adult” publications despite strict laws and regulations on indecent content.
CMP reported back in December last year on the phenomenon of salacious so-called “law and order” tabloids, which were readily available — and plentiful — at newstands in Shanghai. Some of the publications were plainly unlicensed, while others used publishing licenses, or kanhao, for unrelated publications, suggesting the licenses had been “rented out” by the “managing units” (主管单位) that legally held them.
[Posted by David Bandurski, July 13, 2007, 12:05pm]

July 9 – July 15, 2007

July 13 — In a further sign of the growing influence of the Internet in China, and growing fears about the technology among local party officials, authorities in the southern city of Xinyi (信宜) apprehended three men accused of circulating “rumors” on the Internet about a serial rapist. Columnist and CMP fellow Yan Lieshan criticized the action today in Southern Metropolis Daily [more from ESWN], saying Xinyi officials showed no apparent concern for their own negligence in failing to issue timely warnings to the public (police have admitted a series of rapes in Xinyi between March 19 and May 31 this year, with a suspect taken into custody on July 3), instead misdirecting their focus to allegedly exaggerated Web postings.
July 13 — Authorities in Guangzhou announced a raid on a printing house where “stacks upon stacks”, reportedly more than six tons, of an unlicensed “pornographic” magazine were waiting for distribution. Guangzhou’s New Express reported police were alerted to the operation by a disgruntled employee who had been fired by the printing house. The newspaper quoted the source, Ah Bing, as saying: “I don’t want to help them do those kinds of immoral things anymore. And I don’t want to allow the printing house to continue harming others.” He said the printing house had produced various pornographic publications on demand. “They would print anything,” he said. “All it took was money.” The story highlighted a persistent problem facing authorities in China, where the age of commercialized media has spawned an explosion in unlicensed “adult” publications despite strict laws and regulations on indecent content.

Investigative reporting 调查性报导

Many professional journalists in China look to reporting of the Watergate scandal in the United States as the ultimate example of a professional press at work. Likewise, they see the “investigative report” as the “most comprehensive test of a journalist’s level of professionalism”, and the accomplishment of such a report as the “apex” of a life’s work in journalism.
The dawn of the investigative report as an object of desire for professional Chinese journalists came in the 1990s, as China Central Television launched its “News Probe” investigative news program and Southern Weekend devoted substantial resources to investigative reports and established the first “investigative” newspaper section.
At the same time, there appeared in China a group of “investigative reporters” who werrelatively well known by the public (Wang Keqin, Liu Chang, Lu Yuegang). Still, investigative reporters in China face substantial obstacles, including the party censorship apparatus, commercial pressures and threats to their personal safety.
According to many accounts, investigative reporting (generally carried out under the banner of “watchdog journalism“) has faced increased challenges under the leadership of President Hu Jintao. Some reporters say even internal references, sensitive news reports not published but circulated among party leaders, have been subjected to tighter controls.

Media independence 媒体的独立性

The current press structure in China is fundamentally fused with the organizational structure of the ruling Communist Party, and media are extensions of various bureaucratic branches of the party and/or government. Under such a state of affairs, one can imagine the level of sensitivity accorded the notion of “media independence”. The term therefore generally does not appear in publications or publicly circulated articles.
However, in the warming intellectual climate of the early to mid 1980s, scholars in China began raising the idea that the press should have “relative independence” (相对的独立性) or “formal independence” (形式上的独立). In May 1981, Sun Xupei, a key force behind the push for media reform and freedom of speech within the socialist system throughout the decade leading up to the Tiananmen Massacre, wrote in Investigations of Press Theory (新闻理论探讨): “When we talk about socialist freedom of speech, this means the media must certainly accept monitoring by the people, by the party and by the law. [We will] persist in the socialist project, [we will] persist in serving the masses. At the same time, [we must] allow the press relative independence, permitting [them] a freedom that cannot be violated both within the scope of the law and the [political] system.”
As China entered the 21st century, a number of journalists and scholars felt that media commercialization might push the country toward more independent media. In response, Qian Gang, former chief editor of Southern Weekend, warned that: “Journalism should be independent — it should not serve neither official power nor the interests of capital.” Zhan Jiang, a professor of journalism at China Youth University for Political Science, has also, employing the work of Jurgen Habermas, written of the “re-feudalization” of Chinese media — a dirty pact between official and business interests — as a result of the push to commercialize.

Credibility 公信力

In the late 1990s, media professionals in mainland China began to more frequently employ the term “credibility”, first introduced from Hong Kong and Taiwan. The term appeared early on as a slogan among commercial media. Southern Weekend, a commercial spin-off of the official Nanfang Daily in China’s southern Guangdong Province, for example, advertised itself as “China’s largest-circulation, heftiest, most credible and most influential comprehensive weekly, and the country’s most important newspaper (中国发行量最大、版数最多、公信力最强、影响最广的综合性周报,也是中国最重要的报纸).”
In the beginning, the term “credibility” was connected with the goal of objective reporting independent of outside (and government) influences. As media commercialization picked up pace, it became more closely connected with the question of the “professional integrity of the press” and “press corruption” (a side-effect of commercialization under state control). The term has frequently surfaced in debates surrounding cases of press corruption, in which “the quality of credibility” (公信力品质) has been pitted against the “profit motive” (利润最大化).

Idealism (of media professionals) (传媒人的)理想主义

On June 13, 2003, China Youth Daily reporter Lu Yuegang published a public letter online addressing a speech given on May 24 that year to top newspaper cadres by Zhao Yong (赵勇), secretary of the standing committee of the Chinese Communist Youth League, publisher of the newspaper. In his letter, Lu Yuegang said Zhao’s speech was “full of sermonizing, intimidation and ignorance.” Summarized, Zhao Yong’s three main points had been: 1) whoever doesn’t fall in line with the CCYL will be sent packing, 2) China Youth Daily is a publication of the CCYL, not an ‘abstract major newspaper’ [in other words, not a professional journalistic enterprise], and 3) the newspaper could not operate on the principle of “idealism”.
For more than a century the tradition of press professionals in China has held that “the responsibility of defending the nation lies with the people” (天下兴亡,匹夫有责). This sense of idealism and purpose could be seen in the Shiwubao (时务报) of the late Qing Dynasty (19th and early 20th centuries), in the Ta Kung Pao of the Republican Period. For more than a half century, the news industry in China was colored strongly with a sense of justice and social conscience. Economic reforms in the 1980s brought the reemergence of this sense of idealism among the generation of journalists who had experienced the Anti-Rightist Movement of the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution. China Youth Daily was home to a number of such journalists, including Lu Yuegang and Li Datong.
In the preface to Zan Aizong’s book The Fourth Estate [Introduction to Zan at Independent Chinese Pen Center], Lu Yuegang explains “idealism” in the following way: “All editors and reporters will face these sorts of questions – Why do we interview and write? What are our basic rights and interests? In our social environment, whose interests does public opinion serve? In what way can we carry out objective and impartial reporting? In what way can we get nearer social truths? In a normal social environment these questions don’t constitute questions, or merely become questions of technique. But for us [Chinese] they are question we cannot turn away from. Some people say I’m an ‘idealist’. An idealist’s action is characterized by ‘acting for something even if you know that thing is nearly impossible’, and in the process drawing the attention of the world. Strictly speaking, I’m not that kind of idealist. Rather, my standard for idealism is ‘keeping truth as one’s creed even if it means losing one’s head’, basically not hesitating to shed blood or lose one’s head for some belief or concept about which you are determined.”