CMP noted yesterday that the draft emergency management law – and the media clause that drew a wave of foreign media attention – was just that, a draft. Already today there are signs in the Chinese press that some leaders are unhappy with aspects of the proposed law, the media clause included. A news article on page four of today’s The Beijing News addresses several points under contention as members of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress debated the draft. The last portion of that story reads:
A number of standing committee members believe article 57 of the draft law, concerning “news media making bold to report on the handling of emergency situations in violation of regulations or issuing false reports” is insufficiently precise and should stipulate which government bodies are making these “regulations” and the nature of those “regulations”.
This means some committee members are expressing concerns similar to those voiced yesterday by Zhang Ping in his editorial in Southern Metropolis Daily, which ESWN has translated in full. For example, are the local “regulations” in question designed to orchestrate a cover-up of the emergency situation? Again, we’ll have to see how this story plays out, but unfortunately a number of Western media have already turned this into the conventional “media crackdown” story.
[Posted by David Bandurski, June 27, 2006, 10:30am]

A scathing editorial in today’s Southern Metropolis Daily set the stage for a showdown over a clause in China’s proposed national emergency management law that would place heavy fines on media that “made bold” to report on natural disasters, public health incidents or industrial accidents in violation of administrative bans. Significantly, the editorial was written by Chang Ping (长平), the penname of Zhang Ping (张平), a former visiting scholar at Berkeley removed in a purge of top editors at Southern Weekend in 2001. In the interest of full disclosure, we should say that China Media Project co-director Qian Gang was also removed at that time [South China Morning Post report here].
pdf_southern-metro-daily-ed-opposing-draft.htm
The proposed national emergency law — which has the stated purpose of improving disaster responsiveness and ensuring administrative responsibility — was announced in an official Xinhua News Agency release yesterday and included a clause on reporting by news media. According to the clause “news media making bold to report on the handling of emergency situations in violation of regulations” or “issuing false reports” would be fined a minimum of 50,000 yuan (US$6,250) and a maximum of 100,000 yuan.
The reference to “regulations” apparently included not just national bans and orders but also statements issued by local or regional authorities. If the law were enacted with the clause this could mean, for example, that a national or city-level newspaper from Beijing dispatching reporters to the scene of a disaster in another region would be violating national law and incur heavy fines by reporting on the situation despite bans by local officials (who have an obvious interest in putting a lid on news coverage). This would indeed deal a heavy blow to cross-regional reporting, or yidi jiandu (异地监督), making it difficult for outside media to monitor local leaders. Cross-regional reporting has in the past been instrumental in breaking the silence on important national disaster stories as well as regional ones. The exposure of China’s HIV-Aids crisis, which devastated whole regions of the countryside in provinces like Henan, required persistent reporting by media from neighboring provinces. The first major report on the crisis, done by Henan reporter Zhang Jicheng in December 1999, eventually ran in a commercial newspaper in Sichuan province.
Zhang Ping makes the point more forcefully in today’s editorial:
In the instance of a coal-mining disaster, this might be characterized [under this law] as a small-scale incident that need only be handled by local authorities. According to this draft, the local government will implement unified leadership responsibilities, unified information and handling of the accident, and unified management of news media. What this essentially means is that the release of all information is in the hands of the local government. Based on documented cases of mining disaster cover-ups we know the local government takes the lead in orchestrating and leading the cover-up. Let’s say the media reports on the cover-up itself – is this not what you would call “making bold to report”? Yes, clearly. According to this draft resolution, the local governments and the instigators of the cover-up should take the lead in fining news media – is this not entirely nonsense?
So why can Southern Metropolis Daily speak out so vehemently against the media clause of the proposed legislation? This is also an important point. We should remember this is a draft law, which means at present that Chinese media have a modest amount of space to move on this important story. The editorial should be seen as an important work of advocacy, an attempt on the part of the journalism community (at least in southern China) to press for reconsideration of this potentially devastating clause.
The issue of its authorship aside, the editorial is also important because it comes from Southern Metropolis Daily, the newspaper disciplined in 2004 for its overly bold reporting on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, in both 2003 and 2004 [SCMP coverage here].The 2003 debacle over the cover-up of SARS in China was thought by many to signal a new openness on the part of Chinese leaders concerning issues of public health, accidents and natural disasters. As the new leadership under President Hu Jintao removed the national health minister that spring, observers drew parallels with the disastrous nuclear accident at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union, which accelerated the process of glasnost and perestroika (openness and restructuring) there [Council on Foreign Relations]. China’s leadership, however, has continually shown in its handling of such events that government control is the supreme condition of information release — “openness” means openness when leaders are ready.
As to the impact of the Zhang Ping editorial, we will have to wait and see how, and whether, other media follow suit on this issue. Meanwhile, here is a bit of additional material, the opening of Zhang Ping’s editorial in today’s Southern Metropolis Daily:

As we understand, the “Emergency Response Law” has been in development since May 2003, and was encouraged by poor communication of information and inadequate task coordination during the period of SARS. Two senior officials [at that time] were required to step down, thus making “openness of information” a term of much prominence among the public, which called for timely and transparent watchdog journalism [“supervision by public opinion”]. In subsequent disaster situations, such as coal-mining accidents, air traffic accidents and typhoon situations, mass media have functioned effectively to release information in a timely fashion, exposing acts of corruption [ie, cover-up] and preventing the spread of rumors. All people … affirm the importance of quick and accurate watchdog journalism in responding to disaster situations.
We believe, as a matter of course, that the spirit of watchdog journalism should be upheld in this law on emergency management. But in fact this draft in its present form does exactly the opposite and doubtless represents a step back. This is a puzzling turn of events.
English coverage of the proposed law, which is available on a number of government websites, is indicative of most coverage now available in Chinese by such newspapers as The Beijing News and Beijing Youth Daily [see PDF 2 above].
[Posted by David Bandurski and Brian Chan, June 26, 2006, 1:36pm]
[UPDATE: AFP released a version of this story at 2:40pm Hong Kong time. We would like to note, in case there is confusion, that The Beijing News is not technically “state media”, although Xinhua News Agency, the source of The Beijing News story, of course is. Note the oversimplification in the final paragraphs and the appeal to simplistic notions of press control in China. Nor does AFP mention that this is a “draft” law. In the friendly spirit of accuracy, we would point out that it is far more accurate to say “the Chinese government exercises persistent and rigorous controls over its news media as a matter of policy” than to say, as AFP does, that there is a “sustained media crackdown” in China.]

It should perhaps concern Western journalists that they are doing a slightly better job promoting China to the world, according to the principle information office of the Chinese government. Wang Guoqing (王国庆), deputy chief of China’s State Council Information Office, announced to participants in the 2006 meeting of the China International Public Relations Association (CIPRA) on June 22 that “negative” foreign news reports on China were slightly down last year, continuing an overall trend. According to his office’s internal analysis of 243 articles from such “mainstream” Western media as the Washington Post, 26 percent were “impartial”, 40 percent “balanced” and 34 percent “prejudiced”.
Coverage by China News Service of Wang’s speech, “Building a Harmonious World and Our Image to the Outside”, explained:
For the most part the impression given in this coverage about China was that its economy was growing fast with great potential, and was actively participating in international trade; in political terms, China is playing an important role in international affairs, but falls short in the areas of democracy and human rights; in social terms, China has a deep and rich traditional culture, but falls short in terms of public health and the environment. Characterizations of the government and government organizations were largely neutral or negative, and the image of enterprises was downplayed.
In the 1990s, said Wang, “negative” reports accounted for 70 percent of total news coverage in similar surveys:
As to the results of this newspaper analysis, one of the most gratifying things to find is that in the 1990s there was much negative coverage demonizing [China], as high as 60-70 percent, so in recent years mainstream Western media coverage of China has undergone some changes. But the changes still fall short of what one would wish, and demonization of China continues to characterize much mainstream Western coverage.
[Posted by David Bandurski, June 24, 1:15pm]

As details continue to emerge in the corruption case surrounding Beijing’s former vice-mayor, Liu Zhihua, with news that Beijing Capital Land chairman Liu Xiaoguang (刘晓光) has now been arrested on possibly related charges (as reported in Chinese media Monday, Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po and Singtao News yesterday, and the South China Morning Post today), it’s a good time to re-visit early Chinese coverage of the case (the first Liu), which is one of the clearest examples of power and commercialization at play in Chinese journalism.
Chinese media were working under a ban on reportage – that is, they could use the official Xinhua News Agency release, but could not dispatch reporters, conduct interviews, etcetera. So what did coverage look like for newspaper readers on June 12?
Here is People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the central party committee. As a national Party newspaper, People’s Daily was not concerned with protecting Beijing city officials. But they did not want to call too much attention to story, which raises questions about misuse of funds for the 2008 Olympic Games. A very small article using the Xinhua release appears on page four, just above the weather report. Here, in fact, is where you typically find many of the really important stories in China:

The headline for the story actually emphasizes not Liu Zhihua’s arrest but the meeting of party officials. The decision to remove Liu actually came out of that meeting.
Beijing Daily, the mouthpiece of Beijing’s municipal party committee, has a vested interest in protecting city leaders. Not surprisingly, the coverage is strictly downplayed. The story is buried at the bottom of page one. The leading stories are about a new policy statement on improving skilled labor, and creating signature sites in Beijing to attract tourism. The story directly above the Liu Zhihua item is a grandiloquent policy statement about the need to fight corruption.

Next, we turn to Beijing Youth Daily, a newspaper published by the Beijing chapter of the Communist Youth League, a national organization for Communist Party recruitment. Because the paper falls under the auspices of Beijing city leadership, the coverage is similar to that of Beijing Daily. There are slight differences, but the biggest ones concern the overall commercial look of the paper and not the placing of the Liu Zhihua story. Commercial considerations carry the story to the front page, where it joins safer stories of “relevance” to the people, about a “Domino Olympics” and emergency exit plans for a Beijing subway station.

The headline and use of the Xinhua release in the Beijing Youth Daily story are identical.
Now for Beijing Evening News, a commercial spin-off of Beijing Daily, the city-level mouthpiece we discussed earlier. The content is unchanged, but the positioning is more prominent. The subhead about the removal of Liu Zhihua might capture some attention at newsstands and drive the desired spike in circulation.

But the top stories in Beijing Evening News are about a new Aids drug (with photo at center) and a drunk-driving case (across the top). Coverage of the World Cup runs along the right margin.
Moving again up the administrative ladder national party papers with a commercial interest in the Liu Zhihua story, the differences are more pronounced. The image below is the cover of Jinghua Times, a commercial spin-off of the official mouthpiece, People’s Daily, that started off the analysis. Jinghua Times has a definite commercial interest in the story about Liu Zhihua – it can “attract eyeballs”, as they say in today’s Chinese media industry. At the same time, it doesn’t need to step carefully around top Beijing city leaders. However, the ban on reportage is national (the central government is worried about fallout for the Olympic Games), so there is no additional news material. The answer is a massive headline under the banner that directly pronounces Liu Zhihua’s removal from office. Readers are then referred to the story on the inside pages, where they will find the Xinhua news release.

Moving on to other cities in China the differences are also clear. The following is from the Oriental Morning Post, a commercial newspaper in Shanghai published by the official Wen Hui Bao. Like Jinghua Times, and out of the same commercial considerations, they run a huge headline about Liu’s removal on the front page. The article below the headline, however, is much longer than the Xinhua news release. How is this possible given the ban? The newspaper simply searched a Beijing government website for public information about Liu Zhihua. The information available, which no-one had apparently thought to remove, clearly spoke to Liu’s position within the city’s leadership at a time when other Beijing leaders were trying frantically to distance themselves.

[Posted by David Bandurski and Brian Chan, June 21, 2006, 3:13pm]

In China, where corruption cases are regarded as potentially dangerous sources of social instability, there is a tendency toward ritual demonization in much corruption-related news coverage. Government prosecutors release a dossier of sins and indiscretions and Chinese media feed on the ugly details. How much money was taken? How many mistresses did he have? [PHOTO: Liu Zhihua meets with workers in January 2006, The Beijing News].
When an official from Hebei was charged with corruption in 2001, the media even detailed an episode of road rage to show what a nasty fellow he was:
Li Zhen paid no mind to traffic signals, but roared straight through whether the light was red or green. More experienced traffic cops, who knew his car by sight, never dared stop him. A fresh recruit, not knowing better, once pulled Li over, but the official rolled his window down, spat directly in his face and peeled off down the road. (Legal Daily, June 14, 2003)
If you’ve been reading up on the most recent case, the firing of Beijing Vice-Mayor Liu Zhihua (刘志华) for his “decadent” lifestyle (we are told by media inside and outside China that he had a “pleasure palace” full of concubines), this kind of treatment will sound familiar.
[Coverage from The Guardian]
[Click here for China Daily’s take]
[Coverage from Reuters]
[Coverage from The Globe and Mail]
From the standpoint of the Chinese leadership, the wonderful thing about such coverage is that boat-rocking questions about endemic corruption are drowned out by the media circus. So how are Chinese media doing this time? Is anyone teasing out the deeper issues? Given the trickle of available information, and most likely a ban on reporting (under which media are ordered to use only official Xinhua News Agency coverage), one must turn once again to the editorials.
To start us off with the predictable, Lanzhou Chen Bao, a commercial spin-off of the official Gansu Daily, focused, like most everyone else, on the story’s moral aspects and thought it was a good time to revisit the “Eight Honors and Eight Disgraces”, President Hu Jintao’s new campaign of national moral cleansing:
This [action against Liu Zhihua] signals another success in our Party’s anti-corruption campaign, and a reminder of the urgent need for the Socialist Honor and Shame Ideology.
In light contrast, a June 13 commentary in Hebei’s Dahe Daily hinted at soft enforcement of discipline and argued for a bit more “common sense” on the part of inspection officials:
Common sense would suggest that when an official holding substantial power is dissolute in his lifestyle, he is guilty also of graft and corruption, exchanging his position for profit or sex. So it is odd that for so many years, discipline inspection authorities have apparently not exercised such common sense.
An editorial posted the same day on People.com and called “Thoughts on the Removal of Beijing Vice-Mayor Liu Jianhua” said:
At the very least, these kinds of problems should cause us to think very deeply. Whether control has been lost over the supervision of those like Liu Jianhua, whether the power of those like Liu Jianhua is indeed being monitored at all, whether the problem of these Liu Jianhua’s has been adequately addressed by the relevant government offices.
Following up at the relatively outspoken Southern Metropolis Daily, commentator and former CMP fellow Yan Lieshan said the people should have a right to monitor their leaders on the basis of “unverified information or whispers” (捕风捉影), the clear implication being that people, and not just inspection officials, should have a greater role in scrutinizing leaders. While the historical use of this term, bu feng zhuo ying, is negative, Yan intentionally adapted it, saying the concept could play a positive role in allowing people to participate in checking the power of their leaders:
On the basis of evidence disclosed so far [in the official Xinhua release] its impossible for people outside the government to say whether Liu Jianhua’s so-called “decadence” occurred before or after he served as vice-mayor …
Now, according to China’s constitution, people have the right to participate in the management of public affairs and the affairs of the country, and the right to monitor government officials in accordance with the law. The “sanction of the masses” is also a basic principle in the ruling Party’s selection of cadres. Well then, the people have a right to monitor their leaders at whatever level on the basis of ‘unverified information or whispers’ – the only condition being that they do so within the scope allowed by the law and not by putting up big Propaganda Posters and setting off fireworks …
A commentary by China Business Times, available online via this personal blog, explored the “real intention” and “professed position” of the People’s Congress in dealing with Liu Zhihua, and expressed its doubts succinctly:
Vice-mayor Liu was fired because of his decadent lifestyle … But I find it hard to entirely believe this official explanation.

[Posted by Brian Chan and David Bandurski, June 16, 2006, 6:20pm]

China’s manipulation and control of its media is of course well documented. But one topic of some interest in the Chinese media lately has been so-called “media manipulation” by the U.S. government. The pot, obviously, is calling the kettle black, but the occasion is provided by a case that does beg real questions for U.S. media: the out-of-court settlement between major U.S. media and nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee on June 3. [Washington Post coverage here]. Coverage by Chinese media is particularly interesting because it drags in the issue of bilateral relations and the “China Threat” current in U.S. politics. And of course there are now new espionage cases pending against the Mak family in the United States. [China’s response via Xinhua in English].
Chinese media, including the central government’s People’s Daily, have criticized U.S. media for inadequate soul-searching in the aftermath of the Wen Ho Lee settlement. In the simplest sense, they have a point – not much has been written since the June 3 settlement about the media’s role in blowing Lee’s case out of proportion while it was still under investigation. It should be pointed out, though, that there was discussion after Lee’s release from detention in September 2000. The New York Times issued a page-two mea culpa that received a lot of press at the time, and media and j-schools have kept the topic alive [Click here for PBS News Hour on “sensational reporting” 2000 and here for a 2004 discussion of Wen Ho Lee and other stories at PressThink].
Anyhow, without in any way endorsing their views, we’ll let the Chinese media speak for themselves, beginning with People’s Daily, which is predictably snide about the West’s “so-called” news values and makes no pretensions, obviously, to the “impartiality” it ridicules:
A Lesson for American Media
People’s Daily, June 6, 2006

In recent days, nuclear weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee has once again become a news topic. On June 2, two U.S. government offices, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Energy, and five news media groups reached a settlement with Wen Ho Lee, agreeing to pay 1.64 million dollars in compensation for intruding on [Lee’s] right to privacy. This included payments totaling 750 thousand dollars from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, ABC and the Associated Press. These payments, however, were not made willingly, and [these media] said that although they had agreed to pay compensation, this was to avoid the jailing of their reporters for protecting their sources. It seems that these mainstream American media do not wish to learn the necessary lessons from this event.

 

Seven years ago, the so-called “Wen Ho Lee Spy Case” was whipped into a frenzy by American media. Wen Ho Lee was accused of passing nuclear secrets to China while working at the Los Alamos National Labs, and for this he was detained for nine months. But the results of the investigation showed that Wen Ho Lee had merely mishandled computer data, and had not in fact been engaged in espionage. What is most surprising is that during the year the case was under investigation, the Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were too impatient to wait and exposed the case to the news media, a serious violation of Wen Ho Lee’s right to privacy and an attack on his reputation.

This case shows people once again the willingness of the U.S. government to manipulate the media. According to reason and the law, these government offices should not have, and had no right to, expose the case to the outside world. But what should not have happened did happen, and clearly these people [in the U.S. government] wished to use the media to whip up the “China Threat” for political ends. This case also lets us once again see clearly the sham of the so-called “independence”, “objectivity” and “impartiality” of the American media. Certainly, on internal questions, American media serve a definite role in checking and examining the power of government. But on international questions, they often toss away and disregard their own “principles”. As soon as the U.S. government points its lance to antagonize some country or leader, the American media rush to the story, add their own condemnation, characterizing this country as the “root of all evil” and its leaders as unpardonable monsters.

In recent years, American media have been singing in harmony with the “China Threat Theory” of the Pentagon. They sing about the “military threat”, the “economic threat”, the “scientific and technological threat”. Upbraiding China has already become a daily routine for many media and politicians – not hearing such vilifications, now that would be news. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said recently at a speech to the Asian leaders in Singapore [Link at Center for Strategic Studies] did not peddle the “China Threat” theory with his usual vehemence … When a reporter asked about this, Rumsfeld answered that had his views and policy on China had not changed. Actually, Rumsfeld’s not harping on the same string was entirely due to the fact that the “China Threat” theory he pitches does not garner interest in Southeast Asia …This is about twisting the facts through ideological prejudice, confusing black and white, and deviating from the professional methods news media should have. In the Wen Ho Lee case American media lost not only American dollars, but also the reputation that is so critical to news media. Does this not deserve a bit of soul-searching from the American media?
And this article comes from Jiangnan City Daily, a commercial newspaper in Jiangxi Province. It is written by Guo Shaobin, a scholar at the China Institutes for Contemporary International Relations. He says the Wen Ho Lee case shows “once again” the American media blowing up the “Chinese military threat”:
American Media Once Again Play Up “Chinese espionage” Cases
Jiangnan City Daily, June 12, 2006
In 2004, the American right’s Washington Times ran a story saying China’s 094 submarine was a threat. It is the relentless playing up of the issue by conservatives that has resulted in the release of “The Military Power of the People’s Republic of China” reports colored with the notion of a “Chinese military threat“ [Read the 2006 report here].
[Editor’s Note: The Department of Defense report says: “China’s leaders have yet to adequately explain the purposes or desired end-states of their military expansion. Estimates place Chinese defense expenditure at two to three times officially disclosed figures. The outside world has little knowledge of Chinese motivations and decision-making or of key capabilities supporting PLA modernization. This lack of transparency prompts others to ask, as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld did in June 2005: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases? Why these continuing robust deployments? Absent greater transparency, international reactions to China’s military growth will understandably hedge against these unknowns”.]
Moreover, the details of the cases have not been [properly] scrutinized. Lately, much of the technology and equipment approved for export to China has been exported to foreign enterprises, so is still actually in American hands. As for so-called silencer technologies [NOTE: The article might be referring to “quiet electric-drive propulsion systems” for submarines, involved in the ongoing espionage case against engineer Chi Mak, a naturalized U.S. citizen], China entirely has the capacity to develop [such technologies] on its own … Ni Shixiong, a professor at Fudan University’s American Studies Center, says these spontaneously generated cases actually point to an inevitable conflict lurking in U.S.-China relations. Since 2001, Los Angeles, the city with the second-largest Chinese population in the western U.S., has become in America’s eyes a breeding ground for “Chinese spies”. First there was the investigation of first-generation overseas Chinese Xiong Delong (熊德龙) by U.S. authorities, which eventually forced him to go into exile. Soon after second-generation overseas Chinese Luo Wenzheng (罗文正) was sought by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for “economic” issues, which forced him to leave his country.
Many Chinese in America believe these are people hostile to Chinese deliberately pushing coverage of “Chinese spies” in order to create the sense of a “China Threat”, or people railroading overseas Chinese into becoming so-called “spies” so they can play up these cases in the media … From the Wen Lee Ho case to the Chen Wenying case, all have been whipped into a froth by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. While it looks like there is conclusive evidence, this is just “lightning without rain” and in the end there’s not just no case, there’s a low-key setting free of the accused. Behavior like this from the United States not only puts overseas Chinese under a great deal of pressure, but also impedes regular dialogue and cooperation between the U.S. and China.
[Posted by David Bandurski, June 15, 2006, 3:15pm]

Western media were working with a very narrow news window when they covered the fortieth anniversary of China’s Cultural Revolution last month — the story bounced to the top for a few days before disappearing entirely. Many Western media remarked the “silence” of Chinese media on May 16, the actual day of the anniversary, which CMP showed to be an oversimplification. But in fact Chinese newspapers have continued to run features and profiles about the Cultural Revolution long after their counterparts in the West lost interest. [PHOTO: Mao Zedong greets writer Jin Jingmai in 1967. Jin is jailed less than a year later (see story below). Image from China.com].
Part of the impetus for continued Chinese coverage, arguably, was a press conference statement by China’s cultural minister, Sun Jiazheng, on May 25, in which he said the National Museum of China and the National Library of China had been gathering Cultural Revolution materials that might “assist in research of this period in history”. Some media pounced on this statement as an opportunity for more coverage in defiance of the official ban. But a certain degree of bolder coverage, of course, should naturally be expected as the immediate anniversary fades safely behind.
To give our readers an idea of the kinds of Cultural Revolution coverage we are seeing in the wake of the anniversary, here are excerpts of a June 6 story from Southern Metropolis Daily, the newspaper that urged revolution veterans in a May 26 editorial to tell the “truth about what the Cultural Revolution was”. This story is about a writer named Jin Jingmai (金敬迈) who rose to prominence in the early days of the Cultural Revolution but was later imprisoned for almost a decade. It appeared on page A44, in the “Guangzhou News” section of the paper:
By virtue of his book, “The Story of Ouyang Hai”, writer Jin Jingmai had become popular throughout the whole country. In 1967, he was appointed to take charge of the “Division of Cultural Revolution Literature”. Four months later he was packed off to jail. He returned to Guangzhou after being released from prison in 1976.
In April 1962, The Communist Party approved the Central Propaganda Department’s “Eight Rules for Literature”, which urged [the people to] “let a hundred flowers blooms” [NOTE: This is the “Hundred Flowers Campaign”]. During the Tenth Party Congress in 1962, Mao Zedong reminded the citizens not to forget the class struggle. “The Story of Ouyang Hai” nicely fulfilled this purpose …
“I developed the image of a brave soldier of Communism [in my book]. I wrote a lot about class struggle and the spirit of Communism. The book finally became material for Chairman Mao in the education of younger generations [of Chinese]”, [Jin Jingmai says]. …
“In 1966 and 1967, my situation was still secure because the Cultural Revolution had not yet engulfed me. Almost all the books of that period were regarded as ‘poisonous weeds’ while my own, ‘The Story of Ouyang Hai’, was still very popular and under no restrictions.” …
“Two members of our team were interrogated by the Central Government, asking who had ordered the gathering of unfavorable materials about [Mao Zedong mistress] Jiang Qing’s darker days in Shanghai in the 1930s [when she was an actress there]. I told them I had given the order and would take full responsibility. That was the reason for my downfall.” …
“On April 11, 1967, I was summoned to Beijing for a meeting with the Chief. In the meeting room of the Jingxi Hotel, Jiang Qing didn’t wait for me to sit down. She shouted, “‘Jin Jingmai, What is this?! You refuse to follow my comments in making your revisions? You assume the airs of a big writer!'”
“Jiang Qing kept saying, ‘I tried to protect you, not informing on your staff to the Red Guards, all because you served in the military. If I had told them, they would already have caught you and burned all your books!'”
[Posted by David Bandurski and Brian Chan, Juen 14, 2006, 11:41am]

CMP reported last week on an administrative lawsuit brought by Liberation Daily reporter Ma Cheng against Shanghai’s City Planning Bureau for “nondisclosure of government information”. The Legal Daily reported the next day, June 8, that Mr. Ma had suddenly and unexpectedly withdrawn his case. “The plaintiff … suddenly withdrew his lawsuit, citing as a reason that [he had] ‘given up his application for an interview [with the planning bureau]’. Ma Cheng’s mobile phone was switched off, and even his colleagues had no way of reaching him”, the paper reported in a story picked up only by Fujian’s Strait News. We will continue to post information on the case and Ma’s reasons for withdrawal as they become available. For now, the only sign of life surrounding the case, which Southern Metropolis Daily hailed last week as a “historic” test of openness of information in China, was an editorial in today’s Legal Daily by Li Wujun (刘武俊), a legal scholar with the Ministry of Justice and assistant chief editor of Judicature of China magazine:
According to a June 8 report in Legal Daily, plaintiff Ma Cheng suddenly withdrew his lawsuit [against the Shanghai City Planning Bureau] … Still, I don’t believe we are finished with the issue of government disclosure of information, which was raised by this case.
This reporter’s lawsuit against Shanghai’s City Planning Bureau for “government non-disclosure of information” reveals first of all the awakening of ordinary citizens to government affairs and a growing appeal to their right to know. In a very true sense, public administration according to law (依法行政) means employing rights to restrain power. There is an inverse relationship between citizen’s rights and government power, and the abuse of administrative power often goes hand in hand with a weak sense of citizen’s rights. Experience has shown us that once citizens fully exercise their legal rights, they can be an inestimable force in checking government power. For citizens and other organizations standing on the opposite side from government bureaucracy, administration according to law goes hand in hand with using the law to protect one’s rights. Let’s take government disclosure of information as an example. For a long time, files, documents, regulations and other forms of government information were closed or semi-closed, and were generally not made available to ordinary people. This convention of government non-disclosure is linked, in fact, to a lack of public awareness about government affairs. It can be said that government non-disclosure and the mysterious rules of government secrecy [in China] have been fostered and helped along by a persistent popular mindset that holds that government secrecy is an unalterable principle. Today, as we talk about administration according to law, breaking through the mysterious rules of government secrecy demands government offices act with the law in mind. It requires also that the people become conscious of government affairs as quickly as possible, acting on their right to know.
There is a clear “asymmetry of information” between the government and the citizenry [in China]. The government has a wealth of public information on the national economy and other issues relevant to the popular livelihood, but the citizens themselves find this information impossible to obtain. This “asymmetry of information” means it is imperative the government put disclosure into practice.
When we talk about openness of government affairs, we have to mean also that government information should be disclosed [to the public]. This requirement is implicit in the very idea of administration according to law. Generally speaking, aside from [matters] touching on state secrecy, commercial secrecy or personal privacy, government information should in principle by open to the whole society. Disclosure of information is a task and responsibility administrative organs should bear themselves. Shanghai was first among provincial-level governments in China to set down rules on disclosure. According to “Shanghai Municipal Government Ordinance on Openness of Information”, all government information about the administration of society, the economy and public services should be make public, excepting information belonging to one of six categories of state secrecy. Citizens, legal persons and other organizations may request such information, demanding government offices make it available. Information not to be disclosed includes that which is classified as state secrets; commercial secrets or cases where disclosure might results in the leaking of commercial secrets; personal privacy or cases where disclosure might cause undue harm to a person’s privacy; cases under investigation, or being discussed or otherwise handled; cases involving execution of the law where disclosure might affect the exercise of law or endanger personal safety; other cases where laws or regulations prevent disclosure. I understand that a national “Ordinance on Government Information Release” is now being framed and has made it into this year’s legislative calendar of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.
In an important sense “nondisclosure of government information” is about specific instances of nonfeasance on the part of government offices. The most effective way of dealing with such nonfeasance is, like this courageous reporter [in Shanghai], to take up the weapon of administrative procedure law, saying ‘No’ to this form of administrative nonfeasance by suing the government as citizens and making government offices with no reason not to disclose information accept the examination and sanction of the law.
The problem of government non-disclosure cannot be solved once and for all simply by enacting laws. We have to exercise the power of the law to ensure information is disclosed. We have to exercise the law to protect the just and legal right of citizens to be informed about the affairs of government. I hope this case in Shanghai of a reporter suing the city planning office for “nondisclosure of government information” will serve as a judicial reference promoting government disclosure of information.
[Posted by David Bandurski, June 12, 2006, 5:30]