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).

CCTV drops re-airing of investigative program under pressure from National Tax Bureau

China Central Television dropped a planned re-airing of a segment on its “News Probe” investigative program Thursday night after bowing to pressure from officials at China’s National Tax Bureau, media insiders said.
The program, which initially aired Monday night, was an interview with Li Wenjuan (李文娟), a former employee of the local tax office in Anshan, a city in Liaoning province, who blew the whistle on corruption among tax officials back in 2002 and paid dearly for it. The CCTV program avoided directly tackling the issue of official corruption, and focused instead on the need to protect those who come forward with information.

cctv tax

In a confidential letter to national tax officials in May 2002, Li Wenjuan offered physical proof of illegal behavior by tax officials in Anshan. The letter, which Li signed with her real name, was eventually leaked to local leaders, who had her taken into “criminal detention” in late 2004 on charges of “defamation”. There was never a trial, but Li spent more than a year in detention at a “rural education” program before finally being released.
Despite CCTV’s decision not to rebroadcast, the segment was still available Friday in video and transcript formats on the state-run broadcaster’s website. [If “Page Cannot be Displayed” Click Refresh].
While highlighting the challenges posed to China’s media by political power brokering, the airing of the CCTV program shows that so-called “watchdog journalism” (under state sanction), or supervision by public opinion, is moving ahead in the country despite the atmosphere of heightened control following the January shutdown of Freezing Point, a supplement of China Youth Daily newspaper.
What follows is a partial translation of the Chinese transcript available at CCTV.com:

The right to inform about illegal behavior is a right that belongs to every citizen, a right accorded by the Chinese Constitution. But ensuring someone is protected after they have informed, that the party informed against does not seek revenge against them, this requires a full-fledged informant protection system. Today News Probe’s featured personality is informant Li Wenjuan, who was previously an employee in the local tax office of Anshan City in Liaoning province. While carrying out her work registering tax revenues she discovered that some within the local tax office were aiding local tax dodging and doing other kinds of illegal behavior. After hesitating for five months, Li Wenjuan passed her information with full names to the National Tax Bureau. From this time forward, she experienced life changes she could never have anticipated.


Reporter:
If you had known everything you’ve now seen and experienced, would you still have informed? What would you have chosen?
Li Wenjuan: I wouldn’t inform, because after you inform the country has a hard time ensuring you’re protected and that your not singled out for revenge.
Reporter: So you mean that as an informant you don’t get the protection you need?
Li Wenjuan: Yes.
Reporter: And before you informed you had no idea how things worked, is that right?
Li Wenjuan: I had no idea.
Explanation: Li Wenjuan is 43 years old, college-educated. She started working in Anshan’s tax office in 1983. In 2000 she began working in accounting section of the Anshan office of the National Tax Bureau. She was responsible for registering tax payments. In the course of her work, Li Wenjuan felt she had found some behavior in violation of national tax laws.
Li Wenjuan: I saw our workers fudging with the tax figures and giving illegal rebates, changing forecasts, etc.
Reporter: What would have been the result if you hadn’t reported this?
Li Wenjuan: If I hadn’t reported it, this kind of thing would probably have kept going on. In one month a person could get several thousand out of doctoring the tax figures.
Explanation: Anshan has always been a famous industrial city in China, home to Angang and other central and provincial-level enterprises. Typically, tax payments from these enterprises go through the Anshan tax office of the National Tax Bureau, and Li Wenjuan was in this section of the office. She used this opportunity to make copies of registers of value-added tax for enterprises, and taking this evidence Li informed the National Tax Bureau in June 2002 that illegal activities were going on at the Anshan tax office.
Li Wenjuan: At the time I thought I was giving them a way to investigate.
Reporter: Giving whom?
Li Wenjuan: Giving the investigators a way to look into the case, letting them investigate according to the methods I gave and then providing other ways. I was thinking that by doing this I could reveal this [illegal] behavior and return the losses incurred by the state.
Reporter: What made you choose to use your actual name and not hide it when you informed?
Li Wenjuan: Because I knew if you informed anonymously that basically the issue wouldn’t be taken care of. So I wanted to use my own name and take responsibility for it and then let the appropriate officials solve the problem. At the same time, I had other problems I wanted to express to them.
Explanation: Aside from this, Li Wenjuan felt that if she used her real name, officials might be able to protect her in the event her identity as the informer got out and those informed on sought retribution.
Li Wenjuan: If you keep your name secret then there’s no way for others to help you if someone tries to harm you.
Reporter: So you’re saying you though carefully about these issues before going through with it?
Li Wenjuan: I never thought at the time that it would come to this. I had faith in our supervision officials.
[Posted by David Bandurski, March 31, 4:30pm]

China’s state broadcast overseer no longer to receive China Central Television revenues

Citing this year’s first bulletin from the office in charge of auditing government funds under the State Council, The Beijing News said annual revenues from China Central Television would no longer be appropriated by China’s state broadcast overseer, the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT). The announcement was major news concerning China’s state-owned television broadcaster, but its significance and full details were not yet known.
According to the bulletin, issued by China’s National Audit Office (CNAO), SARFT has lately appropriated roughly 400 million yuan (US$48.5 million) annually from CCTV. Beginning with the 2006 fiscal year, SARFT will no longer reap revenues from the state television group, but media insiders speculated the central government would make up the gap. “There’s no way they would just deprive the agency of such a revenue source without making it up,” said one analyst.
The Beijing News also said in its news report that CCTV would employ a “new management system”, operating as a government-sponsored institution with enterprise-style management (事业单位, 企业化管理). In fact, CCTV has effectively operated this way for years.
Since the 1990s a number of media in China have operated under “government-sponsored” status, which means in essence that they are fall somewhere between fully government-run entities and the private sector. Guangdong province’s Southern Daily is one example — an entity whose boss is not a Party leader and which is not private, but which introduces corporate-style management.
China’s budget year follows the normal calendar year, beginning on January 1 and ending December 31.
[Chinese coverage at Sina.com]
[Full text of CNAO Bulletin No. 1 here]
[Posted by David Bandurski, 10:30am, March 30,2006.]

“Thanking Japan”: Chinese Internet users voice mass anger over NetEase topic on loan assistance

Chinese nationalist sentiments against Japan boiled over on China’s Internet after Nasdaq-listed online portal and game services provider NetEase (163.com) posted a topic on its homepage on March 26 called, “Thanking Japan for loan assistance [to China]”. According to evidence from CMP sources within China, at least 900,000 Internet users posted messages speaking out against the NetEase topic and its editor’s note, which has now been removed, and threats have been made against the Website’s editor and his family.
The appearance of the NetEase column and fallout in the online community follow Japan’s announcement last week that it would temporarily freeze the awarding of new development loans to China amid a chilling of bilateral relations [more coverage at CNN.com].
“Japan announced on March 23 that it would temporarily freeze loans [to China] … The impact of this will have on Japan-China relations and on development projects in China is yet to be seen,” read the original editor’s note on NetEase. “But as Chinese of ‘ceremony and propriety’ we really must say a heartfelt thank you to the aid Japan has given over the years, particularly as we bid [Japan’s] aid to China goodbye”.
The suggestion Chinese should be grateful to Japan quickly whipped up enmity in China, where nerves are still raw over Japan’s invasion in the early 20th century. Japan’s alleged failure to apologize to China has harried Japan-China relations for years and tensions have heightened in recent months, centering on Prime Minister Koizumi’s controversial visits to a Japanese war shrine [Forbes coverage here].
By Tuesday morning [March 28] the NetEase column had been removed from the Website, but portions and commentary were already available on numerous other sites.
[Coverage at zaobao.com]
[Postings at military hobbiest bbs]
[Posted by David Bandurski, 11:44am, March 28, 2006]

China's Shadow Censor Commissars

When the Chinese government closed down Freezing Point, the highly regarded weekly supplement of the China Youth Daily newspaper, the world was shocked. What few outside observers understood, however, is that this move was not purely a throwback to a past era of censorship. Rather it was part of a relatively recent effort to reinforce the culture of self-censorship within an increasingly vibrant media sector . . . [Click here to access the full article at FEER.com].

China’s cultural heritage is no game, say Internet users and Chinese media

National sentiments ran high recently as a trademark debate raged in and outside China’s online gaming industry over a Japanese company’s effort to register a game brand called “Outlaws of the Marsh” (水浒传) after the revered Chinese epic. This is yet another case highlighting the uneasy triangle of commerce, culture and politics coming into play as China seeks to commercialize its cultural sector.
Japan’s Jumo (巨摩), one of the world’s largest online game makers, applied to register the “Outlaws” trademark on March 2, 2004. In the absence of formal objections from other parties the registration would have been finalized by China’s Trademark Office on March 28 this year, China Economic Times reported. But a demur made by a company in the southern city of Wenzhou on March 6 put the registration in doubt and sparked a fierce domestic debate over intellectual property and China’s cultural heritage. [Screen capture from Japanese online game based on Chinese classic Three Kingdoms].
“Chinese stories, Chinese dialogue, Chinese scenes, taking over the Chinese market …. But of course, it’s Made in Japan”, said the caption under a screen capture from a Japanese-made game on a popular Chinese bulletin board service.
Some Chinese now see the “Outlaws” trademark as the last line of defense for China’s cultural heritage in the online game industry. Japanese companies have already registered trademarks based on two other classics, “The Three Kingdoms” and “Journey to the West”.
“[China’s] gaming industry faces a ‘disaster'”, flashed the headline of the China Economic Times article. The article quoted Liao Junming, chairman of Beijing’s Hongwei International IP Firm (红徽国际知识产权事务所), as saying: “Can you imagine, no Chinese are registering [trademarks] for the four classics? … That ordinary Chinese have not objected to a Japanese company holding trademarks for the classics is forgivable, but it’s shameful and painful that our domestic online game industry has done nothing”.
In a strange twist, the Chinese company eventually contesting Jumo’s application was a Wenzhou-based manufacturer of furniture and household accessories (温州喜倍儿家居服饰有限公司). The company’s chief executive, Wan Hanhua (厉汉华), told Wenzhou Commercial Daily, one of the first to break the story, that Outlaws of the Marsh was part of China’s cultural heritage and should not become a means of commercial exploitation for any company, much less a foreign one. Wan said he was infuriated by the situation and decided to stand up against it. In his official objection to the Trademark Office, Wan said registering “Outlaws” as a trademark “did harm to Socialist morals” and could have other harmful effects.
This was just the latest in a number of recent incidents in which commerce has become entangled with culture and politics. Just last month Chinese officials said they would ban prime-time airing of foreign cartoon productions in an effort to encourage the growth of China’s domestic animation industry. But the policy had undertones of cultural protectionism. There were calls for the creation of truly “Chinese” works more palatable for Chinese viewers, despite the growing popularity of foreign-produced animation on the domestic market.
[Baidu.com search results on “game” and “four classics”]
[Coverage in Chinese at Sina.com]
[Legal Daily coverage in Chinese with brief timeline]
[Chinese bulletin board posting expressing anger over trademark issue]
[Posted by CMP Intern Loretta Yang, March 21, 2006]

Does the advent of the People’s Blog mean more government transparency in China?

Before and during the recent political meetings in Beijing, Internet discussion and official media coverage in China turned to the possibility of Weblogs as a tool for grassroots political participation, allowing the people to interact more directly with leaders. How much of this “grassroots revolution” was real and how much was official hype? Here’s a quick review of some of the hubbub.
Internet chatrooms bubbled with discussion on March 3 after Tian Bingxin (田炳信), an columnist for Guangzhou’s New Express newspaper (新快报) and a former reporter for the official Xinhua News Agency, made a modest proposal: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao should start his own blog to ensure better contact with the people.
Commenting on four discussion forums Wen Jiabao held from February 6 to 10 with people from all walks of life in China, Tian said: “To meet face-to-face in Zhongnanhai [China’s official enclave] with the premier is a chance that comes once in a blue moon … If the premier, department heads, mayors and county heads all set up their own blogs, policy decisions and directions, investments (expenditures), and all incomplete thinking on tough decisions could benefit from opinion from all quarters, the opinions of bloggers at all levels. The cost is minimal, the speed quick, the reach broad”.
“It’s very difficult for people to see the county head or the mayor, to say nothing of the premier,” New Express quoted one netizen’s enthusiastic response to the idea. “A blog from the premier would be the people’s fortune”.
In a move New Express said was inspired by Tian Bingxin’s suggestion, People’s Congress representative Deng Mingyi (邓明义) submitted a formal proposal that Wen Jiabao establish a blog ‘in the near future or by next year’s [2007] political meetings” in order that “to more widely and directly give ear to the people”.
During the recent political meetings [of the 10th People’s Political Consultative Conference and the National People’s Congress political blogs in general were the subject of some attention. People Online, the official website of the Party’s official paper, People’s Daily, set up a blog service for leaders on March 1, with message boards for Web users. Eight officials taking part in the meetings set up their own blogs via the Website.
“China’s bloggers are on the rise, and one the eve of the meetings, this Internet-based ‘grassroots revolution’ is opening a channel for the voicing of popular sentiments”, hailed the lead of a March 2 article by China News Service, one of China’s two official news agencies.
The same article also said the news centers of many Chinese web portals had set up online polls to hear the thoughts of average Chinese.
In light of China’s rigorous system of censorship, the burst of enthusiasm in state media over blogging and “grassroots” political participation, particularly from official mouthpieces like People’s Daily and Xinhua, suggested Chinese leaders wished to project an image of greater popular participation and transparency during the meetings.
Generally speaking, average Chinese have no way of influencing or participating in decisions at this level. The perception is still that China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s highest legislative body, is merely a “rubberstamp legislature” serving only as a symbol of participation in decisions made at the highest levels of leadership. Although this has changed some in recent years, with some members beginning to take a more active role in pushing certain policies, participation is still limited.
German news agency Deutsche Welle pointed out that while People’s Daily was hyping the political blog by saying that “by transmitting information about the meetings through blogs representatives could more conveniently communicate with the people and bring the two sides closer”, only eight of 5,000 officials at the Beijing meetings had set up blogs. Of the roughly 3,000 delegates to this years NPC, only two created personal Weblogs to communicate with average Chinese.
Despite the limited scale of political blogs in China, however, some officials expressed reservations. Li Weicheng, a National People’s Congress representative from Guangzhou, told Yangcheng Evening News that not all ideas expressed by bloggers were good or helpful, and officials were better off conducting inspection tours in person to gauge public sentiment. Moreover, said Li, the Internet could prove hard to control if Chinese were encouraged to express their views.
Whatever the long-term outcome of this year’s political blog mania online and in official media, there is little denying that the Internet, in the form of blogs, chatrooms and message boards, has served as an unprecedented platform for the voicing of public opinion in China. There are an estimated 16 million bloggers in China, running some 30 million blogs, and the numbers are on the rise.
In one recent case of Internet opinion concerning political decisions, netizens raised a cry for a national law against cruelty to animals after photos were published online showing the abuse of a cat [More coverage from Danwei].
[Posted by CMP Intern Loretta Yang, March 20, 2006]

Freezing Point relaunches with letter criticizing history professor Yuan Weishi

Freezing Point, the weekly supplement to China Youth Daily whose closure in January sparked an international outcry, reopened as promised this week, without its acclaimed top editors, Li Datong and Lu Yuegang, and with an essay criticizing the article by history professor Yuan Weishi which first raised the hackles of state censors.
Yuan’s article, which appeared on January 11, took issue with secondary-school textbooks on the nineteenth century Boxer Rebellion (1842-1860) that, he said, taught the superiority of Chinese culture. The article prompted harsh criticism for propaganda authorities, who issued an order for the supplement’s closure on January 24.
The much-awaited critique of Yuan’s January article was written by Zhang Haipeng, a researcher in the Contemporary History Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The critique ran to over 10,000 words and covered the entire front page of the supplement.

“How we recognize the theme of contemporary Chinese history and the many important attending events, is not only an important topic for research in contemporary Chinese history, but a question concerning China’s future path of development and the theory and practice of educating our youth”, Zhang began.

Then came the attack: “The views expressed in the essay, ‘Modernization and History Textbooks’, published in Freezing Point on January 11, sought to deny the basic intellectual gains made by Chinese scholars under the guidance of Marxist research, and severely misguided the youth of our country.”
The article took issue with Yuan’s claim that it was wrong to rally nationalist sentiment among children around the Boxer Rebellion. “The battle against imperialism and feudalism was an important theme in the development of modern China. Only after they had been basically routed, and after the people grabbed their own rule of the country could China relatively smoothly move ahead with modernization”, he wrote.
Quoted in Hong Kong’s Ming Pao Daily, former Freezing Point deputy editor Lu Yuegang said the relaunch of the supplement had resulted from the concerted effort of many people. He read its quick relaunch as a sign times were changing for the better.
Others continued to read the event as an ominous sign. An Apple Daily report quoted a Web-posted article by Chinese writer Fu Guoyong, who said “forces of political criticism should not replace normal academic discussion and criticism”.
[More about Zhang Haipeng, author of the Yuan Weishi criticism. Zhang is 66 years old, and is now a researcher at the Contemporary History Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). He is a member of Executive Committee of Degrees at CASS, which decides on credentials for postdoctorates and other degrees, and is also deputy head of the Japan-China History Research Center at CASS. He is a delegate to the National People’s Congress (Source: Ming Pao Daily)].
[Link to Yuan Weishi article on Freezing Point]
[Scholar Lung Ying-tai’s open letter to Hu Jintao/discusses Boxer Rebellion]
[South China Morning Post on Freezing Point re-launch]
[Associated Press coverage via The China Post]
[2004 People’s Daily clipping with quote from Zhang Haipeng on Taiwanese history].

Freezing Point to relaunch minus star editors

After nearly five weeks of embarrassing international publicity following the closure of “Freezing Point”, a popular weekly supplement of China Youth Daily, Chinese officials announced the section would relaunch — but its star editors would not be running the show.
The section’s creator and editor-in-chief, Li Datong, and his second-in-command, Lu Yuegang, would be demoted to China Youth Daily‘s news research desk. Top Party leaders at China Youth Daily have also demanded the paper run an editorial on March 1 denouncing the article that reportedly set the controversy in motion.
“Freezing Point” was shut down by authorities on January 24 after printing an article by Yuan Weishi, a Guangzhou professor, who attacked the version of the 19th-century Boxer Rebellion in official Chinese textbooks.
The section’s closure set of a firestorm of international coverage as the most powerful sign yet of growing friction between propaganda commissars and a media with growing aspirations for independence. This week a letter signed by 13 former officials and well-known intellectuals expressed support for “Freezing Point” and asked authorities to relaunch the publication. [Reuters coverage of story].