China’s official Xinhua News Agency stepped up yesterday to deny “rumors” that an outbreak of unknown “hand-foot-mouth” disease had struck Shandong province, affecting scores of young children. News and information on the disease, first reported by commercial media on May 11 after rumors swept across the Internet, is now the center of debate over China’s recently publicized national ordinance on information release, which will include public health information under its mandate when it takes effect in 2008.
An editorial in today’s Yanxi Metropolitan Daily (燕赵都市报), a commercial newspaper under the umbrella of the official Hebei Daily, argued that opening up the media, rather than “simply directing or suppressing them”, would be key to ensuring accurate public health information reached the public in a timely manner, preventing widespread panic and social instability. The argument was reminiscent of the debate that followed revelations in 2003 of the government cover-up of SARS, which many see as a seminal moment in awareness of the need for information openness in China.
The Yanxi Metropolitan Daily editorial also argues that it is not enough for the government to release information, but that officials need to create “public confidence” in the accuracy of the information they release. This, too, will require the concerted effort of government offices and the media, the author says.
The Yanxi Metropolitan Daily editorial follows in full:
Linyi Affair Tests Capacity to Release Government Information
Yanxi Metropolitan Daily
May 14, 2007
By Yang Tao (杨涛)
PULLOUT: “As governments at various levels [of the bureaucracy] pay particular attention to openness of information (信息公开), they must determinedly look into how to raise public confidence in government information. An important part of this is opening up the media, relying on the media, rather than simply directing and suppressing them.”
Beginning in April, about 80 infants and toddlers were infected with an unknown disease in Shandong’s Linyi [a city in the south of the province, about 100 kilometers from Jiangsu Province], with infections most common in children under three years old. In the majority of cases of those infected, ulcers appeared on the hands, feet and mouth along with high fevers. According to information released by the Linyi government, this illness was hand-foot-mouth (手足口病) disease. Up to now, only one death on April 29 has resulted from this illness. But as journalists looked into the case they found discrepancies in information coming from various directions (Shanghai Morning Post, May 13). Information released on May 12 on the official Website of the Shandong provincial health office (山东省卫生厅) said media reports on May 11 claiming that an “unknown disease had claimed the lives of many children in Shandong’s Linyi” were false.
On April 5 the national ordinance on release of government information (中华人民共和国政府信息公开条例) was formally announced, to take effect on May 1 of next year. This sudden-breaking news event in Shandong’s Linyi is the first sudden-breaking public health incident of influence since the Ordinance was announced. [The question of] whether things can be adequately handled according to the principles of the Ordinance, whether or not the local government can issue timely information, and government information with the necessary public confidence, tests the ability of the local government [to live up to the obligations of information openness], and is of great significance.
According to the national ordinance on release of government information, administrative organs must release “any information concerning the vital interests of citizens, legal persons or other organizations, or which requires the broad participation or knowledge of the society and the public.” The ordinance also says that “state organs should release government information in a timely and accurate manner. In cases where State organs discover false or incomplete information influencing social stability or disturbing social order (扰乱社会管理秩序), they should release accurate government information within the scope of their duties” [Article 6]. Looking at the Linyi case, the government did release information and notified the media in a timely fashion, but there was still a definite lag. The first case was discovered on April 27, and terrifying rumors surfaced on the Web on May 7 about the appearance of an unknown disease. And yet, it was only on May 10, through [the official] Linyi Daily and Linmeng Evening Post that the “epidemic response” article called “Urgently Preventing Hand-Foot-Mouth Disease” was disseminated. At this point there was still no information available to society at large answering the rumors that were circulating. It was only after May 11, when a substantial number of print media began running news that an “unknown disease had claimed the lives of many children in Shandong’s Linyi”, that relevant government authorities formally released accurate information about this incident. By this point rumors had already spread panic among the public.
If the Linyi affair is seen as a preliminary exercise before formal implementation of the National Ordinance on Release of Government Information, well then, governments at various levels [of the bureaucracy] should take profound notice that: creating a “transparent government”, winning the confidence of the public, and eliminating and mitigating factors of social instability, require that passivity become initiative, that [governments] more keenly observe sudden-breaking public incidents, that they pay more concern to the dynamics of society, and release government information in a timely and accurate manner.
Whether or not state offices can release timely and accurate information is one thing, but whether this information meets with public confidence is another aspect of the problem. The latter is a question the Ordinance rarely gets into, but nevertheless a critical question for governments at various levels as they carry out the task of information release. In the Linyi affair, the local government of Linyi has already carried out release of information, and the provincial health office of Shandong has also publicly “staved off rumors”. Indeed, the incident has become a high priority for the Ministry of Health, which has demanded the rumors be “staved off” as quickly as immediately. However, looking at the investigations of the Shanghai Morning Post reporter, it’s clear that a number of circumstances [surrounding the incident] remain points of mistrust among the public. Moreover, the earliest reports … came from Chongqing Morning Post and various media outside the province and local media did no reporting on the incident. This does not tally with the fact that local reporters should be more familiar with the situation and be able to quickly and accurately follow up local news. All of this potentially lowers the degree of believability government information has in the eyes of the public, and creates prime conditions for the spread of rumors, making the government’s work of “staving off rumors” even tougher.
Therefore, as governments at various levels focus attention on openness of information, they must look determinedly at the problem of how to raise public confidence in government information. An important point here is the need to open up the media and rely on the media, not simply directing or suppressing the media. Local media need to be encouraged to participate more in the reporting of sudden-breaking news events, and outside media must be welcomed and encouraged to carry out “supervision by public opinion” [or “watchdog journalism”]. Only with free and open reporting by the media can falsehoods be eliminated and truths retained (去伪存真), and only then will public confidence and support for government information be substantially strengthened. This, in turn, will bolster the authority of the government and mitigate factors of instability in society.
I am confident that by striving together, the government and media can get a clear picture of the truth about the affair in Shangdong’s Linyi. But what is more important is that governments at various levels draw lessons from this case that can be applied in the future (举一反三), raising their capacity for information openness and ushering in the age of “transparent governance”!
MORE SOURCES:
“False Epidemic Outbreak Rumors Refuted“, China Daily (Xinhua), May 13, 2007
“Girl Dies from Hand-Foot-Mouth Disease“, China Daily (Xinhua), May 12, 2007
[Posted by David Bandurski, May 14, 2007, 1:39pm]

Since the release more than a week ago of new legislation on government transparency in China, a number of domestic media have addressed its possible impact on a range of issues, such as anti-corruption, public health and environmental protection. In two separate editorials last week, 21st Century Business Herald (21世纪经济报道) addressed the national ordinance on release of government information (中华人民共和国政府信息公开条例) and similar legislation released one day later by China’s State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA). The crux of both editorials was the need to push for institutional change to force accountability within China’s vast bureaucracy, and one editorial likened the process to IBM’s turnaround in the 1990s, saying China needed to become a “great nation” with the finesse of a “dancing elephant.”

A May 2 editorial called “Information Openness is the Foundation of Environmental Protection Work” in 21st Century Business Herald, said the date of formal release of the national transparency legislation, April 25, 2007, was a “turning point” for environmental protection in China, with SEPA’s provisional rules on information openness coming the next day. The legislation would “possibly”, it said, “provide a powerful weapon for the public in participating in the work of environmental protection, altering the severely imbalanced equation of power.” The “public’s right to know” (知情权), or zhi qing quan, said the editorial, would have to be upheld if environmental protection was to succeed in China.
But the editorial also expressed concern that the openness legislation released by SEPA, which is also to take effect from May 1, 2008, makes no allowances for administrative discipline of local environmental protection leaders who do not uphold their duties: “But what makes one worried is the fact that SEPA, which formulated these rules, does not have the power to directly penalize those local environmental protection officials who are not forthcoming with information, and local governments still have the power in all financing and personnel matters of those offices that are to carry out environmental management.”
The page four editorial in the May 1 issue of 21st Century Business Herald, written by journalist Guo Yukuan (郭宇宽), was called, “The Dancing Elephant and the Governance of a Great Nation”, and applied the corporate governance lessons of IBM under Lou Gerstner, the author of Can This Elephant Dance?, to the issue of governance reform in China [Link to Gerstner book on Amazon].
After recounting Gerstner’s story, Guo Yukuan had the following to say about resolving social and governance issues in China:
If we look carefully at the problems facing Gerstner at IBM, such as bureaucracy causing this massive corporate structure to lose its competitiveness, we see that these challenges exist in much the same way in our own country — it’s just that our “elephant” is a whole lot bigger than IBM. The process of teaching the elephant to dance is about revitalizing an organizational structure that has lost its vitality due to bureaucratism, and this requires rebuilding a healthy [governance] culture, improving backwards systems and selecting a top-notch team …
The rebuilding of a nation is a far tougher process than the building of a large-scale enterprise. But we should be heartened by the way Chinese leaders have been up to the task. In speeches in recent years, we can see that their attention is focused not on the “big” issues of national geography or overall economic growth, but rather on vitality and innovation, on the happiness and prosperity of the people …

The editorial then turned to a discussion of speech and information openness, invoking an editorial by national police spokesperson Wu Heping (武和平) on April 20, in which he argued for more openness with the media, saying, “If we allow the media to speak, the sky won’t fall” (China Youth Daily):
The development of the Internet means the grassroots [of society] have the right to speak (话语权利), and this has had an influence on policy. The most representative [example of this] is the public solicitation of proposals on healthcare reform, with the seventh proposal due to be out in May. The proposals are cooperative efforts by the Ministry of Health and research institutions including Peking University and Beijing Normal University. Every one of these proposals is sure to draw discussion … At a recent forum [on the proposal process], Renmin University of China professor Mao Shoulong (毛寿龙) commented that “the Ministry of Health has learned to take a backstage role, gathering together the views and opinions of the whole society. This is the only really smart way.”
They are not alone [in thinking this way]. On April 20 China Youth Daily ran and article called, “If we allow the media to speak, the sky won’t fall” by Public Security Bureau spokesperson We Heping. When I went online to have a look, there were not a few responses [to Wu’s article] … [some critical of his views, saying the tone was still ‘official’] … But if you look carefully at Mr. Wu’s article you can’t help but feel that he means well and is being constructive. For example, he says, “No matter whether you like it or not, whether you wish to or not, the supervision by public opinion of which media are the most representative form is a systematic design in line with the spirit of the constitution, and it is also a necessary aspect of representing the wishes of the public and promoting the general design of rule of law … If we see Wu Heping’s article as a breath of clear breeze, then the People’s Republic of China National Ordinance on Openness of Information recently signed by Premier Wen Jiabao gives us even more cause to believe that the building of transparent governance and responsibility to the people has already become a common goal of [our] leaders as a whole.
The problem, however, as the editorial carefully pointed out, is official respect for rule of law in China, the need for rule of law to triumph over the autocratic whims of party officials. Guo Yukuan refers first to a February 2006 court case in Zhejiang province (recently covered on China Central Television) in which the defendant was Zhejiang’s provincial governor. In that case, 12 peasants sued the provincial government, of which the governor is the highest representative, for requisition of their land for a development project without proper compensation or procedure, and were victorious.
Guo wrote that the Zhejiang court’s decision shows the “determination of Zhejiang province to build rule of law”. For the governor to have lost, said Guo, was in fact a major victory for the governor and the province as a whole, showing that “a government that allows its people no room to speak reason (无处讲理) is a government without face.” The editorial continued with a reference to the recent “nail house” case in the city of Chongqing:
The same principle applies to the “nail house affair” in Chongqing. For perhaps the first time ever, a citizen publicly opposed forced removal [from their home] under the gaze of the media and received relatively satisfactory compensation through a process of negotiation. This shows that the principles of operation in China are becoming clear-cut [i.e., rule of law versus behind-the-scenes power plays], and only under such clear-cut rules can the government and the people find unity . . . and the creative forces of a society be liberated. This closely resembles Gerstner’s arrival at IBM, when his first demand of secretaries there was that they don’t tell others “what Gerstner’s demands are”, but rather act according to the [company] system.

In these drops [of progress, such as the Zhejiang court case and the Chongqing “nail house affair”], even as there are so many things to leave us dissatisfied, so many demands that await satisfaction, we can yet feel the steps of progress, like the steps of an elephant that is learning to dance and is sure to make a few clumsy moves . . .
MORE SOURCES:
“How Lou Gerstner Got IBM To Dance“, Forbes, November 11, 2002
“Can This Elephant Dance?”, Time, February 8, 1988
“Hungry tiger, dancing elephant” (on IBM in India), The Economist, April 4, 2007
“IBM’s software group: can the elephant dance?”, Software Magazine, August 1996
“Government-funded Courts Find Ways to Deliver Justice“, Shanghai Daily, April 13, 2007
“A Step Toward Rule of Law” (about Zhejiang legal case), Asia Times Online, April 18, 2007
[Posted by David Bandurski, May 6, 2007, 6:07pm]

Since news over a year ago that China’s national ordinance on government information openness (政府信息公开条例) was in the works, CMP has focused attention on how such legislation might impact news media. In our view, the effectiveness of the ordinance, and the realization of the government’s commitment to transparency, depends in large part on the degree to which Chinese media are permitted to serve the public’s right to know (知情权) [CMP on yesterday’s release of the text of the openness legislation].
But today, as professor Zhou Hanhua (周汉华), who played a key role in the drafting of the ordinance, spoke with Chinese media, there were hints the effectiveness of the ordinance would be hampered by the same problem that has plagued openness legislation in China from the beginning — the role of journalism and the identity of the journalist.
Speaking with Beijing’s Morning Post, Zhou Hanhua, a professor of law with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), was asked how the new legislation would impact news reporting. Here is the exchange as it appeared at Sina.com:
Reporter: As a journalist, am I right to understand that once the ordinance goes into effect, as long as the content [I’m looking for] is to be released [under the provisions of the ordinance], government organs should not avoid my request for coverage (or “gathering of news”/采访)?

Zhou: I can only say that the media’s right to interview and the citizen’s right to know are different, and that media are not vested with special rights. The content stipulated in this ordinance focuses centrally on protecting the citizen’s right to know.
That is to say, if a government at whatever level understands information release as holding a single press conference then they are wrong. But in the ordinance as it was publicized, this point is not sufficiently clear, and that’s one regrettable aspect of the ordinance.
The ambiguity, which Zhou seems to find regrettable — the professor told CMP repeatedly in an interview last August that the ordinance would apply to “anyone” (任何人) — concerns the difference between “citizens” and “journalists”, between the citizen’s “right to know” and the journalist’s “right to gather news” (采访权). This lack of clarity, which speaks to the more fundamental issue of party press controls in China, has to recall for Chinese journalists the case of Liberation Daily reporter Ma Cheng, who tried suing Shanghai’s city planning authorities almost a year ago under Shanghai’s own information release statute after he was denied information, and whose career as a journalist was ended as a result [June 2006 coverage from CMP]. While many Chinese journalists and academics see news media as critical facilitators of the public’s right to know, media are still regarded in China as agents of the party’s will and as a means to control, or “guide”, public opinion.
Zhou’s response to the Morning Post reporter suggests the ordinance, when and if it takes effect in May 2008, will have little direct impact on the work of journalists in China. Even while the ordinance is historic in terms of the promises it makes to Chinese citizens, this gap in the legislation should also raise tough questions about its overall effectiveness.
[Posted by David Bandurski, April 25, 2007, 1:58pm]

Given a targeted official ban against Web portals re-running editorials from Southern Metropolis Daily — a nasty move, but also a nod to the newspaper’s influence among readers — you might not have run across the newspaper’s reflections today on Gansu’s “Walls of Shame”, a story reported yesterday by the official Xinhua News Agency. CMP noted yesterday that the Gansu story begged tough institutional questions about how China’s policy of the “new Socialist countryside” is being implemented at the local level. [PDF of today’s editorial page at Southern Metropolis Daily, pdf_article843.pdf].
The Southern Metropolis Daily editorial does not shrink from the deeper import of the “wall of shame” story. It argues that the idea of a “new countryside” is not about new building projects, or even the making over of peasant homes, but rather about the need for a new conceptual approach to dealing with the welfare of China’s rural poor. The final paragraph directly references related institutional problems, and urges readers to think about them as they read the Gansu story.
Portions of the editorial follow:
Gansu’s Yongjing County has been designated as a national priority area for poverty relief (国家扶贫重点县), with a poverty rate of 10 percent, going as high as 70 percent in some villages and townships. But reporting in the area recently, Xinhua News Agency reporters found that “walls of shame” had been erected in nine places on both sides of the highway, totaling some two kilometers, and that these were there to obstruct the view of the dilapidated home and courtyards of the peasants. What is most significant is that for many of the peasants whose homes have been blocked off by the wall of shame, food and water [supplies] are basic needs, and because they have insufficient money to buy bricks to use in building aqueducts, they cannot get water into the villages. And according to the [Xinhua] report, one meter of this “wall of shame” costs around 100 yuan. According to a leader in one of the villages 40,000 yuan was spent for their 400 meter section of wall.
Perhaps for some Party and government offices, the outer beauty of the countryside and pretended splendor are more important than the real-life realities of these villagers. For some leaders, the broken-down homes stand to affect their achievements fighting poverty [in the eyes of their superiors], and so the idea of a wall to hide their many inadequacies was hatched and quickly carried out. They made no effort to seek the opinions of the villagers … and was they were after was the elevation of their local image, particularly that they would win points in the eyes of their superior leaders when they visited on inspection tours.
This kind of high-wall culture has long been a form of self-protection in traditional culture. It is a kind of precaution against the outside world, designed to provide ease of mind. As our society progresses (随着社会文明进步), many cities have begun to advocate the opening of walls and [the creation of more] green space, allowing the space outside and inside walls come together. Gansu’s Yongjing County has opened a new chapter in the history of wall culture, turning it to another end. They have taken monies intended for the people and applied it to build walls against them, disguising the realities of poverty …
The building of a new countryside is not about the “new building of the villages”. It should not be a new re-packaging of the cultural wall. Nor can we simply achieve it by rebuilding the homes of peasants. What the new countryside demands are new human concepts (人文理念). It is about paying attention to the lives and productivity of the peasants to raise the overall strength of the countryside. Some areas have allowed for the building of villas using rural loan programs, lending the countryside the appearance of modernity virtually overnight, but in the end the peasants are unable to repay these loans and become bankrupt and dispirited. The basic sense of the new countryside is allowing for a countryside capable of sustainable production and living …
As we question the political conscience of these local leaders, we must also ask ourselves about the related [leadership] systems. We must address the system to prevent this “aesthetics of pretense” (假象美学) and ensure various regions are not overrun with walls of shame. This is the key to rooting out vicious local governance that cheats and deceives the world.
[Posted by David Bandurski, April 19, 2007, 2:15pm]

China’s top cultural officials announced at a meeting in Beijing yesterday that the country would institute a new licensing system this year for employment in the cultural sector. Reportedly in the works for five years, the system would mean those employed in close to 30 cultural areas, including the cinematic arts, dance and singing, would be required to undergo professional examination and apply for government-issued licenses.
The purpose of the new system, said officials, was to “raise the level of and character of the cultural industries and their practitioners to satisfy the [goal of] building an advanced Socialist culture.”
Details of the licensing system were not yet available, but Chinese Web users heaped criticism on the new procedures in postings following news coverage at major Web portals.
“I’m sure this is just finding a reason to take money!” fumed one Web user. “Regulations like this are clearly a step backwards, the kind of thing we’d expect to see during the planned economy era. That government offices can think up such policies to suit their own interests, it really makes one doubt their ability to lead!”
Wrote another:
This is a terrible regulation! If you talk about doctors, lawyers, engineers or teachers then requiring a professional license for employment is necessary. But requiring documentation for singing and dancing is too much and inhibits the development of the cultural spirit. True art is of the people, created by the people and belongs to the people.
Others expressed concern that the licensing process would make it impossible for talents like Yang Liping (杨丽萍), a popular singer and dancer from China’s Bai minority, to break through the barriers to success:
If this was how things worked [before], Yang Liping and others like her wouldn’t have had any way of getting out there.

MORE SOURCES:
“Propaganda head Liu Yunshan promotes commercialization of media to strengthen China’s ‘cultural soft power’”
[Posted by David Bandurski, April 19, 2007, 10:39am]