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).
Anger simmered on social media in China today as state media reported remarks made by Wang Zhonglin (王忠林), Wuhan’s new top official, during a video conference on the city’s response to the coronavirus epidemic. Wang, who was appointed in February to replace Ma Guoqiang (马国强) as Wuhan’s Party secretary, reportedly said that it was necessary to “carry out gratitude education among the citizens of the whole city, so that they thank the General Secretary [Xi Jinping], thank the Chinese Communist Party, heed the Party, walk with the Party, and create strong positive energy.”
A release reporting Wang’s speech reiterated Xi Jinping’s words earlier this month,
in which he said, “Wuhan is a heroic city, and the people of Hubei, the people
of Wuhan, are heroic people.” Xi referred to Wuhan as a key “battleground” in
the “war” against the coronavirus, in keeping with the central propaganda
themes the Chinese Communist Party has emphasized since February – of fierce
struggle, personal sacrifice and unity, all under the stolid leadership of the
CCP.
Wang Zhonglin said in his speech that the Party must employ various forms of propaganda and education campaigns to carry out “gratitude education” among the population of Wuhan. Echoing Xi, he said: “The people of Wuhan are heroic people, and they are also thankful people.” The story was reported in Changjiang Daily, the official newspaper under Wuhan’s Party committee, but was shared widely across social media.
The remarks, coming at a time when there is widespread concern about the real implications of the coronavirus epidemic and lingering anger over the government response, generated fury online, and were viewed by many Chinese as tasteless and disgusting. News of the remarks cameless than a day after video emerged online from Wuhan in which residents in a cluster of high-rise apartment buildings can be heard shouting, “Fake! Fake! Everything is fake!” as China’s vice-premier Sun Chunlan (孙春兰) makes a tour of the area.
In a post to WeChat called “Have a Bit of Conscience: It’s Not Time to Ask the People of Wuhan for their Thanks,” journalist Chu Zhaoxin (褚朝新) remarked on the release yesterday of the video taken during Sun Chunlan’s neighborhood tour, and suggested Wang Zhonglin’s timing was insensitive. “This is public opinion, this is reality,” Chu wrote of the video. “People who are not blind or deaf can see and hear, and those who are not blind can feel it.”
Chu did not know, he said, whether Wang Zhonglin’s words were a direct response to yesterday’s heckling of the inspection group led by the vice-premier, but in any case the suggestion that the Wuhan people required “gratitude education” was misplaced. “If this is Wang Zhonglin’s idea, I think he needs to educate himself. You are a public servant, and your job is to serve the people. Now the people you serve are broken, the dead are still cold, and the tears of the living have not yet dried. The sick have not yet recovered, and much of their dissatisfaction is completely reasonable. Rather than blaming the people in Wuhan you serve for not being grateful, you should reflect and be ashamed because you and your team are not working properly.”
Chu’s post was deleted by late morning on Saturday. But we have archived a version below.
[UPDATE: 8PM Hong Kong time]
A WeChat post on Wang Zhonglin’s remarks from the official account of the city of Wuhan, “Wuhan China” (武汉发布), has now been deleted. Clearly, there has been huge blowback on this, and the government fears a creating wave of negative opinion.
How do you ensure a story has a fairy tale ending? You write the ending yourself of course. In recent days, official state media in China have celebrated the publication of A Battle Against Epidemic: China Combatting Covid-19 in 2020, a book that compiles writing by official state media to paint a portrait of leadership resolve in the face of a major challenge.
So it seems that while we all wait to see how the Covid-19 fares in the rest of the world, the verdict is already out on the epidemic as a major show of resolve on the part of the Chinese Communist Party. The story has already been written.
According to the Xinhua News Agency release on the book, it “collectively reflects General Secretary Xi Jinping’s commitment to the people, his sense of mission, his far-reaching strategic vision and outstanding leadership as the leader of a major power.”
This is a narrative being pushed insistently in the People’s Daily
and other Party-state media in recent days. The idea that the Chinese Communist
Party, despite all evidence to the contrary, and despite the broad undercurrent
of popular anger on Chinese social media, has faced the epidemic with great wisdom
and effectiveness from the start.
Just look at page three of today’s People’s Daily, on which an article with the headline, “’China Has Shown Stunning Collective Action and Cooperative Spirit,’” is accompanied by another called, “How Has America Done in the Face of the Epidemic?” While the former, manipulating the remarks of the WHO’s Bruce Aylward, praises China’s readiness and speed of response, the latter accuses the U.S. of being more focused on anti-China smear tactics than on action to prevent the spread of the virus. This piece even manages to justify China’s recent decision to expel reporters from the Wall Street Journal: “They must be made aware that the dignity of the Chinese people must not be compromised, and China’s bottom line must not be touched. A few days ago, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the suspension of the credentials of three journalists from the Wall Street Journal, delivering a loud slap.”
Yesterday, too, the newspaper ran a prominent front-page piece on China’s epidemic response that characterized the entire crisis as a “test” that the country and its leadership had essentially passed with flying colors: “The results obtained in the epidemic control and response work are no small feat,” it read, “and many sides have undertaken many arduous asks, putting in great efforts, once again making clear the obvious superiority of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
China’s official nightly newscast Xinwen Lianbo reports on February 26 about the launch of the new book about Xi Jinping’s response to the epidemic.
CMP co-director Qian Gang wrote
recently about the puzzling and infuriating tone-deafness of the People’s
Daily through January and much of this month, how they were committed to
the point of absurdity to pre-arranged propaganda themes about the greatness of
Xi Jinping and the realization of a “moderately wealthy society.” He described
this inability to shift focus to the most clearly urgent matter at hand, the coronavirus
epidemic, as systemic. “The system of the CCP is like a great big elephant,” he
wrote. “It is difficult for the sudden and unexpected to force any change to
its huge and lumbering gait.”
The elephant has now changed directions. It plods confidently forward with a revisionist narrative of competence and collective victory. And these themes can now return us to familiar tropes, like the notion that China offers an inspirational political model that can better instruct the world. So the Xinhua release reports that A Battle Against Epidemic will be published in English, French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic editions, “the first book to date both domestically and overseas to follow and introduce China’s epidemic prevention and control work.”
Where is this nonsense coming from? The book is published, we are told,
by the Central Propaganda Department, the Information Office of the State Council
and the China Intercontinental Communication Center (CICC). In fact, these
three partners are essentially a single party. Trace CICC in China’s national enterprise credit system
and you find that it is listed as being fully run by the “Central Propaganda
Department (Information Office of the State Council).”
So of course, no surprise, this was a scheme that must have developed at the top of China’s propaganda apparatus at least a number of weeks ago, possibly from shortly after Xi commented publicly for the first time on the coronavirus epidemic.
Will this nonsense work? China has managed many times in the past to simply move on, brushing uncomfortable facts and even immense tragedies under the rug, and changing the topic of conversation. But there is still a great deal of anger being directed toward leaders, judging from activity on social media, and efforts like this new book to distract and redirect can themselves feed the embers.
Here is one image making the rounds today on WeChat, in which the cover of A Battle Against Epidemic is hemmed in on all sides by Chinese banners that read:
Shameless to the extreme.
Painting fine pictures on the bones of the dead.
Distilling essence from human blood.
Certainly, some Chinese may move on from this crisis and think it better to forget and to say nothing. Others, however, will no doubt remember the very real lives sacrificed for the sake of these political slogans, and these glorious fairy tales.
Czech writer Milan Kundera once wrote: “Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass.” Facing the enormous task of controlling and directing public opinion in the midst of widespread anger over the handling of the coronavirus epidemic, and serious questions about the priorities of the leadership, China’s Party-state media have turned to a tried-and-true formula: turning on the kitsch.
Kundera, as scholar Robert Solomon writes, is “concerned with a particular kind of political propaganda that intentionally eclipses harsh realities with emotion and uses sweet sentiments to preclude criticism.” This exploitation of human emotion, which strips it of the immediacy of felt experience and abstracts it as collective pathos, is an ancient art practiced by dictators. “In politics,” writes Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, “most dictators have attempted to reinforce their authority with the help of kitsch propaganda.”
In yesterday’s People’s Daily we can find a consummate piece of kitsch propaganda given position of prominence right below the masthead. The article, “Heroic City, Heroic People,” is an emotional hymn dedicated to front-line medical workers, officials and ordinary people. But the real objective of the article is to underscore the Chinese Communist Party as the enabler of miraculous human feats.
This is classic propaganda kitsch, and Kundera’s tears flow from
the very first lines.
“Doctor, please deep further away from
me.”
This
statement from a [coronavirus] patient in Wuhan reddened the eyes of the
doctor, and it brings tears to the eyes of countless people.
Even
as Chinese medical workers from the epicentre of the crisis in Wuhan issued
a call in one of the world’s most respected medical journals, The Lancet,
for urgent assistance from colleagues around the world as they face physical and
psychological exhaustion, the Party’s flagship newspaper transforms misery and
desperation into tear-inducing sacrifice. Look, for example, at its description
of Peng Yinhua, a 29 year-old doctor who died on February 20:
.
. . . 29 year-old Peng Yinhua, a doctor in the Division of Pulmonary Care and
Critical Medicine at the First People’s Hospital in Wuhan’s Jiangxia District, had
originally prepared for a wedding with his wife on February 1. When the
epidemic came, he threw himself onto the front lines. When the patients were
greatest in number, this meant working two days and two nights straight, taking
responsibility for as many as 40 patients. But who could imagine that this charge
into battle would lead to his eternal departure . . . .
In this passage the very human Peng seems not to die with real humanity, but rather to fade, as though he is exiting the stage in a drama.
And
of course kitsch propaganda must anneal the softness of personal tragedy into
the hard steel of sacrifice. So we are told that “more than
40,000 medical staff from 29 provinces, autonomous regions and cities . . . . were
deployed to assist Hubei and Wuhan,” that they “entered the battle as soon as
possible, racing against time, testing their strength against the demon of
disease, all to continue the relay of life!”
“In the history of the world’s fight against epidemic disease, to gather 40,000 medical personnel in one city over a few short days – this is to generate a miracle!”
But kitsch propaganda can backfire in the face of a public that is digitally connected, and far more savvy than in the past about the tropes used by the state-run media. Earlier this month, internet users responded with irritation to a video posted by the official Gansu Daily newspaper that showed nurses weeping as their heads were shaved before their deployment to treat patients in Hubei province. The video described the female nurses as “most beautiful warriors,” and made emotional fodder of their sacrifice.
As reported
by Quartz, a writer named Chen Mashu remarked in a WeChat post since
removed by authorities: “The coverage made me think: Why does our media
always like to use the sacrifices females make as a tool for propaganda? …for
women who don’t cut their hair, aren’t pregnant and are healthy, do they not
deserve to be mentioned?”
Chen clearly does not appreciate the finer points of kitsch.
_______________
[partial translation]
Heroic City, Heroic People:
Dedicated to the People of Wuhan in the Midst of the Struggle for Epidemic Prevention and Control
People’s
Daily
February
25, 2020
“Doctor,
please deep further away from me.”
This
statement from a [coronavirus] patient in Wuhan reddened the eyes of the
doctor, and it brings tears to the eyes of countless people.
Keeping
the doctor away is about the concern they might be infected, and it is the hope
that “they can protect the lives of more Wuhan citizens.“
“A
person holds up the sky, a heart warms a city . . . . “ Many people have left
messages like this.
In
this city, over these days, this kind of story has unfolded every day. This kind
and respectable patient is just one of millions of ordinary people in this
city.
An
epidemic that suddenly came has changed this city, and it is changing the spirit
of the people in this city.
This
outbreak with such urgency, has made of the country one community (疫情催人急，家国共同体).
Every day, white-clad and fearless warriors, the undaunted people’s police,
community officials keeping watch day and night, all are fighting on the front
lines; the people of this city come together as a city, keeping watch and
rendering mutual aid, seeing the overall situation facing all, conscientiously
cooperating with epidemic prevention and control [measures], showing perseverance
and a stolid fighting spirit, all writing together a chapter of great unity!
We
salute a heroic city, and a heroic people!
“Every
second brings hope to more people!”
Were
it not for this epidemic, the scene in Wuhan would be a different: Tourists weaving
their way toward the Yellow
Crane Tower, cars rushing across the Yangtze Bridge, busy scenes at the
Hankou Station, laughter and applause rising from Chu River and Han
Street, and bosses at the noodle shops along Hubu Lane greeting customers
with a “Good Morning!”
Normal
life has suddenly been interrupted by this epidemic.
On
January 23, Wuhan’s streets were closed, and the city of Wuhan entered “wartime.”
This
Virus is Dangerous, But Containment is Imminent
The
epidemic is a command, and our hospitals have become the battlefield!
Liu
Zhiming (刘智明), head of Wuchang Hospital in Wuhan, rushed to the fire. From January
21, to January 23, Liu Zhiming worked three consecutive nights transforming the
Wuchang Hospital into a designated hospital, transferring the 499 patients originally
under care there within just two days, and making 500 beds available. Today, more and more patients are being discharged from the hospital, but Liu
Zhiming’s life has been fixed at 51 years of age. [NOTE: Liu Zhiming passed
away from the coronavirus on February 17.]
. . . . 29 year-old Peng Yinhua (彭银华), a doctor in the Division of Pulmonary Care and Critical Medicine at the First People’s Hospital in Wuhan’s Jiangxia District, had originally prepared for a wedding with his wife on February 1. When the epidemic came, he threw himself onto the front lines. When the patients were greatest in number, this meant working two days and two nights straight, taking responsibility for as many as 40 patients. But who could imagine that this charge into battle would lead to his eternal departure . . . . [NOTE: Peng Yinhua passed away on February 20.]
The
epidemic sounded a rally call for all to face a test of life and death. From
January 23, medical staff from all over the country and from the army rushed to
Wuhan, and the scope of support expanded to the whole of Hubei province. More
than 40,000 medical staff from 29 provinces, autonomous regions and cities, as
well as from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and the entire military
system were deployed to assist Hubei and Wuhan. They entered the battle as soon
as possible, racing against time, testing their strength against the demon of
disease, all to continue the relay of life!
In
order to not impact the flow of their work, some doctors and nurses wore adult
diapers. In order to save protective gear [which can only be worn once], some extended
their shifts from 4 hours to 6 . . . . Their white outfits are war fatigues,
and they are the most beautiful resisters, the most adorable people of the New
Era!
In the history of the world’s fight against epidemic disease, to gather 40,000 medical personnel in one city over a few short days – this is to generate a miracle!
A notice issued yesterday by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the central agency for control of the internet and social media, provides a glimpse not just of the actions being taken now by the authorities to control information about the coronavirus epidemic, but also of the platforms and activities that have threatened the Party’s dominance of information in recent days.
The notice, for example, singles out a number of WeChat public accounts alleged to have “illegally carried out reporting activities,” meaning that they are accused of acting journalistically, pursuing their own information on the epidemic. It orders the removal from app stores of “Pipi Gaoxiao” (皮皮搞笑), a platform for the sharing of short videos, suggesting that material on the platform has “spread panic.”
An online link to the “Pipi Gaoxiao” app now yields a 404 error, page not found.
The notice also says that Sina Weibo, Tencent, ByteDance and other internet companies will now be under “special supervision” (专项督导), which means essentially that the companies operating many of the country’s biggest and most popular internet platforms and services have been put on notice and are subject to much more active supervision and management by the CAC.
Here is a translation of the notice:
In recent days, the Cyberspace Administration of China has, on the basis of reports from the masses, directed local CACs to seriously deal with such information and content as the “Pipi Gaoxiao” (皮皮搞笑) online social platform which has distributed harmful short videos about the coronavirus outbreak, and has spread panic, [ordering them to] remove the app from the app store immediately. Concerning certain products on the Baidu web platform posting information in violation of regulations to users and conducting lax management, and Huxiu and other online platforms illegally engaging in internet news information services in epidemic-related reports and other problems, [the companies] have been called in for discussions in accord with the law. They have been ordered to immediately stop all illegal conduct and to carry out comprehensive and deep rectification, and these relevant online platforms [have been ordered to] close down problem sections (问题栏目). Concerning Sina Weibo, Tencent, ByteDance and other internet companies, special supervision (专项督导) will now be in effect. Concerning [the WeChat public accounts] “Netease Finance” (网易财经), “Sina Weitianxia” (新浪微天下), “Guyu Laboratory” (谷雨实验室), “Jianmeow” (史上最贱喵) and other online accounts that have illegally carried out reporting activities (自采), broadcast untrue information and other problems, they will be handed in a timely manner.
The CAC continues to strengthen its direction of provincial-level CACs, demanding that online platforms strictly carry out their responsibilities [in regard to content controls], and that local CACs actively exercise their management responsibilities, creating a favorable online environment for winning the war for prevention and control of the coronavirus outbreak.
The notice issued yesterday by the Cyberspace Administration of China.
A notice released to Chinese media this week concerning the coronavirus outbreak suggests that in terms of information and media policy we have now entered a new phase in which propaganda authorities are making a renewed push to secure the source of information and wrestle back control of public opinion.
Over the past two weeks, as the scale of the epidemic and the attempted cover-up became clear, Chinese commercial media and “self-media” (自媒体) led the charge in reporting and commentary, and authorities found it difficult to restrain information — particularly in the face of public anger and insatiable demand. This pattern is very similar to what we saw in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the 2011 Wenzhou train collision, providing a narrow window of opportunity to more enterprising media.
That window now seems to be closing. The focus of the authorities is on controlling the source and then pushing reporting and framing by trusted Party-state media as “authoritative” information. The instructions are as follows:
Reports concerning the epidemic must take [information from] authoritative departments as the standard. Sources of articles must be strictly regulated (严格规范), independent reporting (自采) is strictly prohibited, and the use of non-regulated (非规范) article sources, particularly self-media (自媒体) is strictly prohibited. Without joint arrangements [with authorities], daring to use outside media reports is strictly prohibited. When distributing authoritative reports, the original meaning of the news must not be twisted, such as through “misleading headlines” (标题党). Pop-up means must not be used to push unregulated articles or information, unverified information and information that might have a negative influence. Do not render commentary on our global mobilization to purchase prevention and control materials, in order to avoid interference with our overseas purchasing work. Do not render commentary on the economic impact of the epidemic, resolutely preventing talk of the Chinese economy being undermined by the epidemic. On the extension of the Spring Festival holiday in various locales, do not collect [information], do not make comparisons, and do not relate this with hyping or commentary to the impact on economic development.
As China’s battle against the coronavirus outbreak continues, anger has spilled over online, testing the leadership’s capacity to achieve what it calls “guidance of public opinion,” or the control of society through information control. Users on WeChat, Weibo and many other platforms have shared stories, photos, video, or simply vented their rage at what many see as the inadequacy of the government’s response, particularly at the early stages of the outbreak.
And as communities across China mobilize against the spread of the disease, they are naturally exercising one very creative (and often revealing) aspect of the country’s political culture – the ubiquitous “slogan,” or biāoyǔ (标语). Such slogans, which may deal with local or national policy issues as well as the personal — everything from (in the past) the one-child policy, to pushing basic social mores (like caring for one’s parents), to protests over the forced demolition of one’s home — are generally very simple in structure, direct (or even crude) and easy to understand.
Here we share a number of current slogans invented in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak that have appeared on social media (see link above) and are reportedly from communities across China. We provide in some cases only approximate translations for these clever and frightful creations, some quite difficult to fully convey.
[1]
口罩还是呼吸机，
您老看着二选一
A face mask or a breathing tube,
Make a
choice, it’s up to you.
[2]
带病回乡， 不孝儿郎
传染爹娘，丧尽天良
Returning
home with your disease,
Will not
make your parents pleased.
Infect mom
and dad,
And your conscience is bad.
[3]
省小钱不戴口罩，
花大钱卧床治病
Save money
not wearing a mask,
Spend big getting
cured in your sickbed.
[4]
不聚餐是为了以后还能吃饭，
不串门是为了以后还有亲人
Not gathering for a feast is so you can eat in the future,
Not visiting
others is so you still have relatives in the future.
As it
grapples with the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, China is now dealing with the most
serious infectious disease crisis since the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Many experts agree that China’s monitoring and response systems
have progressed a great deal since the cover up that year proved a major embarrassment to the
government and prompted a rethink of policies to deal with so-called
“sudden-breaking incidents,” or tufa shijian (突发事件).
SARS in 2003 and the window of relative openness that followed the humiliating revelations of a cover up, the first great challenge to face the Hu Jintao administration, offered a new generation of Chinese media opportunities to break out professionally. The year was in many ways the culmination of changes happening progressively in the Chinese media through the second half of the 1990s.
This year we can see the difference clearly enough if we visit the websites and front pages (and news apps) of major commercial media such as The Beijing News, Southern Metropolis Daily and The Paper.
Here is
what you see today if you visit the website of The Beijing News, for example. The coronavirus
outbreak is the top story, completely dominating the photo feature space with
scenes from Wuhan.
This is not
to say, of course, that the coverage is comprehensive, or that it necessarily
offers a full balance of perspectives. Official sources of information seem to
take precedence.
But in lieu
of a more detailed content study – which we’re not attempting here – we can say
that the story is front and center at The Beijing News. The story that
most concerns people right now is the story receiving the most attention.
The same is
true if we look at the front page of Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily
today. Sure, official sources dominate here, the focus apparently on reporting
the official numbers and official actions being taken. But all of the bold
headlines on the front page deal with the coronavirus outbreak.
At The
Paper (澎湃), the
headlines on the website and news app again focus on the coronavirus outbreak,
with scores of stories, national and local, dominating the page, to the point
it seems there is no other news to talk about.
But of course there is other “news” to talk about if your point of reference is the burning priorities of the Chinese Communist Party, and not necessarily the issues of clear and present concern to the public.
This most recent infectious disease crisis, with its echoes of SARS, once again exposes the basic nature of China’s Party media outlets, and their interest in “serving the Party” over the public interest – the domination of the “Party nature” (党性) over the “people nature” (人民性), to reference the debate over news values that raged in the late 1980s between then People’s Daily editor in chief Hu Jiwei (胡绩伟), a proponent of liberalization of the press, and the hardliner Hu Qiaomu (胡乔木).
If we look
today at central Party media, we can see the Party agenda obliviously playing
out right in the midst of this latest health crisis.
At the People’s Daily Online today, the epidemic appears but is pushed down below six other stories of quite questionable news relevance – unless one understands the way CCP leaders define priority and relevance.
The report
that gets top billing at the site today is about a gathering yesterday of
former senior officials ahead of the Spring Festival. It is essentially just a
list of names, including Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Zhu Rongji, that ends with expressions
of support for Xi Jinping: “The old comrades expressed their thanks and high
assessment of how the Party with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core had led the
whole Party, the whole army and all the people’s of the country in realizing
historic achievements, and they voiced their heartfelt support for Secretary Xi
Jinping as the core of the CCP and of the whole Party.”
Why would such a story be emphasized over a national health crisis? The reason is not necessarily distraction, though the leadership certainly wishes everyone could look away. This story is there to serve the paramount purpose of reiterating Xi Jinping’s power and status, one of the primary roles played by Party media.
Second billing goes to a story about Xi Jinping sending a congratulatory letter to the China-Italy year of culture and tourism in Rome, along with Italian President Sergio Mattarella. Again, there is little real news value for the public, but the chief objective here is to show Xi Jinping engaged internationally. The third story at the top of People’s Daily Online, a report about Xi Jinping’s visit to Myanmar, serves the same purpose, to show Xi as a leader engaged in the region. The report, full of Xi governing concepts, talks of the goal of “opening a new era of community of common destiny between China and Myanmar” (开辟中缅命运共同体的新时代), a reference to one of Xi’s core foreign policy terminologies.
Three more
stories follow these, about Wang Yang and religion, about Wang Huning and
culture, and about Han Zheng at the World Economic Forum, before we even get to
any acknowledgment whatsoever that China is facing a new disease outbreak.
The first
acknowledgment we have is a report about a press conference this
morning in Beijing
in which Liu Wei (李斌), head of China’s National Health Commission, spoke about the latest
situation and the government’s priorities. The second is a commentary in which the writer urges all
members of society to consider the common good in light of the epidemic, and
not to take actions out of personal interest that risk further spreading
disease. The commentary talks about a number of reports that have infuriated
some Chinese, like reports that even after the extent of the situation was
known tourism authorities in Wuhan had issued 200,000 free travel coupons to tourist sites around the city, effectively encouraging crowds that
could further spread the disease.
And what of
local Party newspapers and websites?
Here is the front page today of Tianjin Daily, the official mouthpiece of the municipal Party committee there. It is virtually identical to the People’s Daily, first emphasizing next to the masthead Xi Jinping’s visit to Myanmar, then a big headline about Xi visiting Kunming and offering his New Year’s greetings.
Two stories about the coronavirus outbreak are squeezed into the bottom one-fifth of the front page, the first on Xi Jinping’s instructions and the second, quite predictably, about the actions being taken by the top leader of the municipality, Secretary Li Hongzhong (李鸿忠). This is very typical Party treatment, focusing on official actions (and away from details and human stories) with sensitivity to national and local power dynamics. Mention Xi Jinping first, then the local Party leadership.
If we turn
to Beijing Daily, the official Party mouthpiece of top Party leaders in
the capital city, we can find the most hard-headed example of focus shifting
and insensibility among official Party media outlets. The front page of the
newspaper today does not deal at all with the coronavirus outbreak.
The top
stories in the Beijing Daily are, in order of layout:
Xi Jinping’s visit to Myanmar and building of a “community of common destiny”
A story (with jump to page three) about Xi Jinping emphasizing a “strong military” during his visit in Yunnan province
Xi Jinping’s positive New Year’s message to people during his visit in Yunnan
A report about a city-level conference of the Party leadership
One might suggest that Party media at the local and national levels do not have their priorities straight. But these pages are clear declarations of priority, and they point to the very nature of the so-called “Party nature.” It is only that the sense of dissonance becomes more pronounced when the country faces a real and pressing crisis that should dominate the news.
Earlier this month, CMP looked at the recent resurgence of “people’s leader,” or renmin lingxiu (人民领袖), in China’s official Party media as a term signaling the strong position of China’s top leader, Xi Jinping. We showed how the term, which first emerged in reference to Xi in April 2017, peaked briefly in the first half of 2018 before waning again – most likely as a reflection of the difficulties facing China in the midst of the trade war with the United States.
Students of Chinese political discourse will know that the term “people’s leader” was used to refer to Mao Zedong, and it still has a strong association with Mao’s rule. But where did the term actually originate in Chinese?
We took a brief jaunt back through available digital media archives to see if we could answer this question, beginning our search in the People’s Daily, which CMP co-director Qian Gang has referred to as the Chinese Communist Party’s “dictionary of red speech” (红色词典). First published on May 15, 1946, the newspaper can provide a fairly clear indication of how and when “people’s leader” was used in the history of the Chinese Communist Party.
In fact, we find that within its first week, on May 20, 1946, the paper published an article in which “people’s leader” appeared.
The article refers not to Mao Zedong, but to Ulanhu, the Mongolian Communist commander who secured Inner Mongolia for the Chinese Communist Party during the Chinese Civil War, and who during his career was nicknamed the “Mongolian King.” Ulanhu served as China’s vice-premier from 1956 until his purging at the outset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966.
Mongolian Communist commander Ulanhu. Wikimedia Commons.
In 1946, at the time
of the People’s Daily article – which we should remember was more than
three years before the founding of the People’s Republic of China – Ulanhu was
known by his Chinese name, Yun Ze (云泽).
The article reported on the formation of the autonomous regional government,
and it called Yun Ze “the Mongolian people’s leader.”
Early uses of the term “people’s leader” in the People’s Daily indicate that its meaning was quite broad. The term could be used to praise figures past and present from all over the world. Among those referred to as the “people’s leader” in those early days, in fact, there was even American president Abraham Lincoln.
It is true that “people’s leader” was used most liberally in the history of the People’s Daily to refer to Chairman Mao Zedong, with Marshall Zhu De coming in a distant second. But for Mao Zedong, the terms “people’s leader” and “great leader” (伟大领袖) were both used, and after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, “great leader” was the term most often applied to Mao. In Chinese political rhetoric, there is a greater sense of respect and power vested in “great leader” than in “people’s leader.” So against “great leader,” we find comparatively few references to “people’s leader Mao Zedong” (人民领袖毛泽东).
Before the founding of the PRC, we can find references to Mao as the “people’s leader” in other publications run by the Chinese Communist Party. Below is an article appearing in a magazine published by the Party in Shandong province in 1946, the headline reading: “The People’s Leader Loves Us Deeply.”
In 1948, the official magazine of the Huabei Military Region of the People’s Liberation Army also used the term, with a headline that read: “People’s Leader Chairman Mao.”
We can even find the
term appearing in Hong Kong, as in the 1948 article below from the magazine Masses
(群众), published in the then British colony by the
Chinese Communist Party. “The Great People’s Leader,” the headline reads.
But to see how and when the term “people’s leader” might have entered the Chinese language, we need to go beyond the media and political culture of the Chinese Communist Party. So what about media from Taiwan and the Republican Era?
Looking further afield, we can find articles like this one in the June 3, 1955, edition of Taiwan’s United Daily News, which reports that a number of “anti-communist people’s leaders” had visited Taiwan. This use takes the term out of the revolutionary tradition (with Soviet echoes) of such leaders as Mao Zedong and Ulanhu.
Looking further back into media of the Republican Era, we can find other examples, like the following one dated to 1948 from Chinese-American Weekly, a magazine sympathetic to the Kuomintang Party that was published in New York. The headline you see in the article below refers to Nationalist military leader Fu Zuoyi as the “people’s leader.”
But the earliest example we could find of “people’s leader” in the Chinese language dates back to August 4, 1934, and appears in Central Daily (中央日报), a Kuomintang-run paper first published in Shanghai in 1924.
The news report that follows comes just three days after the death of German President Paul von Hindenburg, who had been Hitler’s only check on power, and reports that Germany is to hold a national referendum – referring of course to the August 19, 1934, referendum to merge the offices of president and chancellor, which would give Hitler supreme power.
The small headline immediately to the left of the largest headline reads: “Hitler Says He Will Drop Presidential Title and Be Called People’s Leader” (希氏表示废总统称号仅称人民领袖). This title, “people’s leader,” is familiar outside the Chinese language as the German word “Volksführer.”
Shortly after the
German referendum, Shanghai’s China Monthly (中华月报) reported the story and published a photograph of
Hitler. The caption under the photograph read: “Achieving a decisive victory
through referendum on August 19th, German people’s leader and
chancellor Hitler.”
So it seems the earliest references we can find in digitally available Chinese-language media sources to the notion of the “people’s leader” are translations of the German “Volksführer” dating to Hitler’s rise as supreme leader. This is certainly not an etymology China’s present leaders would welcome, particularly given highly sensitive references in the social media space to “Xitler” (习特勒).
But the end of the digital trail is certainly not the end of the trail. In his study of the vocabulary used to describe authoritarian leaders in the 20th century, Russian historian Boris Kolinitskii noted that Russian lawyer and revolutionary Alexander Kerensky was referred to as “leader of the people” as early as March 1917, predating the personality cults and related vocabularies used for Lenin and Stalin.
In 1918, at a period when Lenin was busy consolidating power with his inner circle of Stalin and Trotsky his close confederates, Russian poet Osip Mandelstam wrote in “Twilight of Freedom“:
Let us praise the momentous burden that the people’s leader assumes, in tears. Let us praise the twilight burden of power, its weight too great to be borne.
Li Yuzhuo (李玉贞), a historian specializing in the Soviet era, wrote for the journal Yanhuang Chunqiu about Yefim Alekseevich Pridvorov (pen name Demyan Bedny), the Soviet poet and satirist, as one of the earliest figures in Soviet literature to “fix the image” of Stalin, and perhaps the first to refer to him as “people’s leader” in the 1920s.
It makes sense that the term “people’s leader” would have currency within the political culture of the Chinese Communist Party as an import from the revolutionary tradition of the Soviet Union. One can imagine there must have been references to the “people’s leader,” drawn from Soviet newspapers and from contemporary literature appearing in Chinese translation in newspapers, magazines and journals in the years around the founding of the CCP in July 1921 — references that were simply beyond our fingertips for this brief search.
In any case, while the term “people’s leader” has appeared in various contexts throughout its history in the Chinese language — even in reference to Abraham Lincoln, various Asian leaders and Republican anti-communists — its century-long association with authoritarianism and the personality cult should be clear. This is the history that rattles the nerves of many Chinese, both inside and outside the Party, who caution that the line was drawn back in 1982 when the Party’s Charter was amended to prohibit personality cults.
We don’t yet know of course whether Xi Jinping will work to further blur the lines, or cross them. For now, it seems, he is attempting to consolidate his image and position around the notion of the “people’s leader,” the term’s history hidden to most. If he can manage to consolidate this position and title, could Xi Jinping reach for greater rhetorical and real heights — like status as “great leader”?
The history of CCP political discourse shows us that titles and honorifics can be difficult to hold.
A quick search of “people’s leader” over the past week suggests Xi might not even be holding this title in the short term. One of the only references to the term in the past week comes from Tianjin, which seems to be one of the most vocal local leaderships in support of Xi. In his speech to the third plenum of the municipality’s 17th local congress, Party Secretary Li Hongzhong (李鸿忠) spoke of “bathing in the warm sunshine of the care of the people’s leader” (沐浴着人民领袖亲切关怀的温暖阳光).
In an era of digital information, how effectively can such echoes of the past century be sold to savvy and often cynical consumers? We shall have to see.
In recent days in China a buzz of speculation has surrounded an article published on January 10 by the Study Times, a publication of the Central Party School, the training academy for Party leaders. At issue is the suggestion in the article that Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, has “an aristocratic character” (贵族气质). Such language apparently shocked many readers, judging from comments on social media.
Called “Comrade [Xi] Jinping Stresses that We Must Be People Who Flow With the New Era” (近平同志强调要敢做时代的弄潮人), the article in question was an interview with Lin Bin (林彬), the former deputy head of the government office in the city of Fuzhou, corresponding to Xi Jinping’s time in the leadership there in the early 1990s. Lin is currently the CEO of The Straits Publishing and Distribution Group, a state-run company.
In
the interview, Lin relates a story of how several friends, knowing he had served
with Xi Jinping in Fujian province, had asked for his impressions of the leader.
I said: “Do you want
the long version, or the short version?”
My friends asked: “What’s the short version?”
I said: “The short
version is that I can sum up my impression of him in eight words — the
feelings of the people, an aristocratic character. I’ll just say that, and you
can glean what you will.”
Why would this word, “aristocratic,” cause such a buzz of speculation?
First of all, we have to understand that within the political culture of the Chinese Communist Party, language is not at all flippant or incidental. There is no such thing (not if one is disciplined) as off the cuff, though leaders with sufficient strength might have greater latitude in toying with language – like Mao Zedong and his poetic reference to flatulence. While the Party’s discourse may be fluid to a certain extent, there is an unmistakable orthodoxy, reflected clearly in the Party media and in official documents. Second, we need to understand that the word “aristocrat,” which suggests distance and differentiation from the people, is not a word of praise within CCP discourse.
And so people had to ask: Wasn’t it an act of scarcely veiled criticism for a high-level official to praise Xi Jinping as having an “aristocratic character”?
In Chinese, this question surrounded what we refer to as “high-level black” (高级黑), this being a political term meaning to satirize in a guarded or euphemistic manner, sometimes through overwrought praise. A close cousin of this act of poor discourse discipline is “low-level red” (低级红) – referring essentially to acts of sycophantic ingratiation (to borrow from John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman) that are so overwrought as to become humorous or invite disdain, undermining the Party’s credibility.
When Chinese in the context of the CCP’s political culture talk about “aristocrats,” this means something very different from the word in a Western context. It is political terminology that is tantamount in most cases to an accusation of “confusion” (混乱), or fundamental problems in attitude or conduct.
Over a century ago, in 1919, 26 year-old Mao Zedong wrote a short essay of around 2,000 characters called “The Great Union of the Masses” (民众的大联合) in which the word “aristocrat” appeared 14 times. “Since ancient times,” he wrote, “there have been various forms of union including the union of those in power, the union of the aristocracy, and the union of capitalists.”
The People’s Daily wrote back in 1966 that: “Chairman Mao published many splendid revolutionary essays in the Jianghu Commentary magazine that he launched and edited in Changsha, and he raised many slogans of struggle and full-fledged revolution about striking down the old world, and making the aristocracy and the capitalists quake before the people.”
If we search back over the 74-year history of the People’s Daily, we can see many different types of “aristocrat”: the “decadent aristocrat” (没落贵族); the “feudal aristocrat” (封建贵族); the “aristocratic landlord class” (地主贵族阶级); the “capitalist aristocrat” (贵族资本家); the “children of aristocracy” (贵族子弟); the “elite aristocrat” (精神贵族); the “imperial aristocracy” (皇室贵族); the “aristocratic class” (贵族阶层); the “aristocratic serf masters” (贵族农奴主); “aristocratization” (贵族化); “aristocratic dictatorship” (贵族专政); the “aristocratic caste system” (贵族等级制度); the “aristocratic hereditary system” (贵族世袭制), and so on.
The bottom line is that
none of these are appellations any leader would wish for within the mainstream
political discourse of the Chinese Communist Party.
Let’s consider just a couple of examples that were used quite frequently in the history of the CCP. One of the most prominent is “aristocratic grandfather” (贵族老爷), a term that was equivalent in the eyes of the Party to “the exploitative classes” (剥削阶级).
One story in the People’s Dailydating back to October 1979, right as the cusp of the reform era, tells how the military commander Peng Dehuai, known for his spartan style of living, once learned of several villas in a scenic area outside the capital that had been given over to the use of certain senior officials, but sat empty most of the year. After he learned of this, Peng went off in the middle of the night to keep watch over the villas. His personal secretary urged him to get some sleep, but Peng refused. “He ignored him and said to himself, ‘There are those who would have us become aristocratic grandfathers, like ministers serving the monarch. I’m afraid people don’t realize that these are temples built for the new imperial ministers of today!”
Another common term was “aristocratic classes” (贵族阶层). At the Second Plenum of the Eighth Party Congress in 1956, Liu Shaoqi warned: “Given the situation in several socialist countries, it seems national leaders could become a special class, a new aristocratic class.” At the same Party meeting, Mao Zedong said: “We must be alert against fostering a new bureaucracy, a new noble class separated from the people.”
Within
the mainstream political discourse, the term “new aristocracy” is often used to
refer to the emergence of a new elite class within the CCP owing to problems of
corruption, which you can see in the headline of the following People’s
Daily article.
The
references above should suffice to show that the “aristocrat” is not a term of praise
within the dominant political discourse in China, but rather is quite categorically
a word with negative associations. But now, puzzlingly, we have this word being
applied to Xi Jinping.
In
February 2019, the Central Committee of the CCP issued a “New Opinion on the
Strengthening of the Party’s Political Building” (关于加强党的政治建设的意见), which made a point as it elucidated the
so-called “Two Protections” (两个维护) – protecting General Secretary Xi Jinping as
the “core,” and protecting the unified central authority of the CCP Central
Committee – of clarifying several instances of “incorrect language” (错误言行). The
document emphasized that, “[Party members] must not engage in any form of ‘low-level
red’ or ‘high-level black,’ and absolutely must not act in a two-faced manner
toward the Central Committee, engage in double-dealing, or engage in
‘pseudo-loyalty.’”
For leaders inclined to
comment on Xi Jinping’s “aristocratic character,” this might be a time for
reflection.
For months now, fires across Australia have drawn the attention of the world, demanding people sit up and take notice of climate change and ecological crisis as well as hard questions about disaster response and readiness.
Meanwhile, in the Chinese social media space, an article comparing Australia’s unprecedented crisis to a major forest fire that occurred in China in 1987 itself fanned a wildfire over the weekend – raising questions about factual news reporting over self-aggrandizing propaganda.
The article, called “Without this Australian Fire, I Wouldn’t Know the Awesomeness of China 33 Years Ago!” (没有澳洲这场大火，我都不知道中国33年前这么牛逼!), characterized the 1987 Daxing’anling Wildfire, a devastating tragedy that had bitter lessons for China, as a moment of great heroism. All of the failings, pain and loss of the 1987 fire were twisted in the article into evidence of the “awesomeness of China 33 years ago,” contrasted with the supposed incompetence of the Australian government.
An excerpt of the article on WeChat criticizing Australia’s response to recent wildfires, and praising China: “Perhaps certain countries are more developed and more advanced than we are in certain areas. But I don’t see in them the responsibility and action that a country should have. They say pretty things about ‘freedom and democracy,’ but they do nothing about refugees.”
Despite the distressing level of ignorance the article showed toward history, it quickly attracted more than 100,000 views, and an image from the backend of the WeChat platform shared in private chat groups showed that by Sunday afternoon the article had been read 23 million times, and “liked” 300,000 times. These numbers are still climbing.
As a researcher of journalism and mass communication, I am
familiar with the 1987 Daxing’anling Wildfire because the reporting of this
story was a major event in Chinese media history. I still remember sitting in a
classroom at Peking University and listening to news editors who had been involved
in the story discussing the event.
A Human Disaster
On May 6, 1987, Daxing’anling prefecture in China’s northeastern Heilongjiang province experienced the most serious large-scale forest fire in the history of the People’s Republic of China. The fire raged for close to a month, swallowing up more than a million hectares of forest, a fifth of the total forest area in the prefecture. Close to 200 lives were lost in the fires, and more than 50,000 people were displaced.
On May 14, after the fire had raged for a week, the China
Youth Daily newspaper sent a reporters to the scene to report the story. China
Youth Daily, a paper published by the Chinese Communist Youth League, had
substantial credibility and influence at the time. Before the paper’s
journalists set out for Heilongjiang, they made a solemn promise
to themselves: “We must remember not to take this tragic song and sing it
as a hymn of praise!”
Why would they make such a promise? The reason, as the
newspaper later made clear in its own summary of its reports, was that up to that
time disaster reporting in China had been all about “handling funerals as happy
events, greeting small misfortunes with small hymns, and treating major tragedies
and great victories.”
“In the magical writings of journalists, the catastrophe often
becomes a triumph of communism,” they wrote. “This was at the time the
entrenched way of doing things in disaster reporting.”
But in the new climate of reform and opening, as respect grew for the value of factual reporting, a number of aspiring professional journalists were unsatisfied with this way of working. Yang Lang (杨浪), the domestic affairs editor at China Youth Daily responsible for the Daxing’anling reports, said at the time: “Everyone recognizes that a disaster is a disaster. Turning a disaster into a triumphal hymn is heaping disaster on top of disaster.”
Following these principles, journalists on the front lines
in Daxing’anling went in search of the facts and tried to report the truth.
Through the reports they filed, we saw clearly that the origin and spread of
the fires had much to do with local officials and with bureaucratic work styles.
We saw how local country leaders in the area of the fire had sent out
truckloads of people to sweep and tidy up the streets to ready them for
visiting officials from Beijing, even as the fires were raging. We even saw,
amid the rubble of the county seat of Mohe, a single red-brick building standing
alone, miraculously saved from the devastation. This was the home of the county
chief and the fire department head, and local residents had told reporters that
the home had been spared because the fire department head had dispatched fire
trucks and a bulldozer to the scene to protect it.
These reports, the newspaper said in its own assessment, relayed
to the public with a deafening sound that this was not just a natural disaster
but a human disaster (人祸). “This
is us—our severe bureaucratism and our rigid system have made us bureaucratic. Even
as we are spared, this fire consumes us.”
The China Youth Daily series contained three reports in all. The headlines were: “The Red Warning” (红色的警告); “The Black Sigh” (黑色的咏叹); and “The Green Sorrow” (绿色的悲哀). People referred to the series at the time as the “three color reports” (三色报道). They were widely praised, and they earned the newspaper a special award that year for best national news reporting.
“The Black Sigh,” one of three reports put out by China Youth Daily on the Heilongjiang wildfires in 1987.
One reader in Hubei province wrote a letter to China Youth
Daily saying: “In the past, I always thought that journalists in our
country were just in the business of pretending everything is fine, but after
reading these reports I strongly feel you reporters are worthy soldiers of our
times.”
In Chinese media history, the “three color reports” occupy
an extremely important position. They are a milestone in disaster reporting,
marking the return of disaster reports to the plane of factual reporting, respecting
news values.
In fact, China Youth Daily was not the only newspaper
at the time to report the Daxing’anling fire in a new spirit of thoughtfulness.
Even the Party’s official People’s Daily published reports of this kind.
As veteran People’s Daily journalist Zhu Huaxin (祝华新) has recalled, “the People’s
Daily published 64 consecutive news reports and commentaries [on the fire],
and within one month 22 news articles on the fire appeared on the front page.”
One of these reports directly questioned the idea that the
disaster had been inevitable: “Many facts suggest that the fire was not a
natural disaster whose containment was beyond our powers, and that this terrible,
heart-wrenching misfortune should not have happened; or if it indeed it had to
happen, it should not have resulted in such calamitous losses.”
The People’s Daily also addressed the question of the
red-brick house belonging to the country chief and the fire department head. Journalist
Wei Yanan (魏亚南)
filled in a key detail of this story – that two homes to the right and left of
the chief’s red-brick house had been demolished in order to help protect it.
A disaster is a disaster, as Yang Liang said. And turning a
disaster into a hymn of praise is heaping disaster on top of disaster.
Reporting Against the Odds
Under the circumstances of that time in China, it was not
easy to make breakthroughs in reporting. While there was talk of the need for liberation
of thought, there were also of course very real restrictions and difficulties
to work through for news media.
Jia Yong (贾永),
a journalist who took part in reporting at the time as an intern at China
Youth Daily, later continued to work as a journalist, serving for a time as
director of the People’s Liberation Army desk at the official Xinhua News Agency.
He later said in
a piece looking back on the Daxing’anling fire that in fact the whole
reporting process was extremely difficult, because many local leaders and offices
worked with a “news control” mentality.
But the China Youth Daily reporters did not give up
in the face of these restrictions. “With the exception of Lei Shumai (雷收麦),
who was almost 40, the other three of us were young, had experience reporting through
adversity on the front lines, and we were up to the challenge,” Jia Yong said. “We
worked hard and with full confidence to get first-hand materials – at the scene
of the fire, at the cemeteries, in the ruins, from local broadcasters, hose
operators, bulldozer operators. During the day we toughened our skins and
visited local government offices, and at night we were together with those who
had been displaced by the disaster, sleeping together in cold tents with 40 or
more people.”
Jia Yong said they felt they had to face danger and
difficulty to get to the story “in order to protect the people’s right to know
about this major event.” And their efforts were repaid: “More and more affected
people who at first did not dare voice their anger opened up to us and told us
the real situation,” he said.
Ye Yan (叶研), a
reporter who later won China’s Fan Changjiang News Award, recalled that he had photographed
a group of people at a local dining hall eating a meal together, and as a
result was stopped in the road by a group of about 20 officials, including the
head of the tourism office. He and several other reporters we set on and beaten
by the group. “It was nothing for them to attack people,” he said. “And we were
taken in by the Public Security Bureau for two days of questioning.”
After more than a month in Heilongjiang, the journalists
returned to the newsroom to write their stories. This was at the height of the
hot summer in Beijing, and an article in China Youth Daily later recalled
the lengths the reporters had gone to to finish their stories. “Lei Shumai and
Jia Yong were living in an underground room near the China Youth Daily
newsroom that cost 35 cents a night, and together they consumed 40 bags of instant
noodles. To make sure they didn’t have stomach problems, Jia Yong used a grain
coupon to buy five kilograms of garlic.”
Twisted Histories
The WeChat public account that ran “Without this Australian
Fire, I Wouldn’t Know the Awesomeness of China 33 Years Ago!” this past week is
called “Youth Courtyard” (青年大院).
In fact, this is the new name for an account that was previously shut down on
the platform.
If we click into the “Youth Courtyard” account and go into the information section, we can see that the operator is “Beijing Fuguang Yuejin Cuture and Media Company Limited” (北京浮光跃金文化传媒有限公司). And when we click the name of this company we find that the account is the new name for the previous account “90s Tonight” (今夜90后). In fact, it does not really hide this fact. In fact, at the top of the article itself and in the subhead, you can clearly see mention of “90’s Tonight.”
Screenshot of the “90s Tonight” public account article praising China’s handling of wildfires in Heilongjiang province in 1987 and criticizing Australia and the West.
For some readers, this may not ring a bell. Others will know
that “90s Tonight” is the same outfit that published another controversial
article in 2018 about teen idol Yang Chaoyue (杨超越) that drew over 100,000 reads, and
later faced accusations of fabrication along with a detailed analysis from Newslab.
Later, this same public account ran an article with the headline, “That 17
Year-Old Shanghai Youth Decided to Commit Suicide by Jumping off the Bridge” (那个17岁的上海少年决定跳桥自杀),
in which it engaged in pure speculation about the facts behind the
suicide in April of a teenager who jumped from the Lupu Bridge. The public
account was subsequently shut down.
Searching job search websites we can see that this company behind “90s Tonight” proudly declaring recently that it is “starting up again as a completely new public account.” But while the account is a new one, it seems that the tactics and flavor are the same ones we are familiar with.
What should particularly distress us all is to see that this
attitude of “greeting small misfortunes with small hymns, and treating major
tragedies and great victories,” which was rejected by Chinese journalists 33
years ago, is now, in the traffic-oriented social media environment of the 21st
century, being plucked off the garbage heap of history by this “90s Tonight”
public account.
To the team behind “90s Tonight,” I wish to say: The
professionalism with which journalists like Yang Lang, Lei Shumai, Li Weizhong,
Ye Yan, Jia Yong, Wei Yanan and others worked to dig out the facts and get at
the truth, exposing our maladies – therein lies the true awesomeness of what
happened 33 years ago. And to employ cheap emotional language to cynically draw
traffic is a most irresponsible exploitation of that tragedy.
