This week the producers of the much-anticipated Chinese war epic The Eight Hundred announced through the film’s official Weibo account that its July 5 release had been cancelled. While the statement said that a future release date would be forthcoming, the news was quickly understood to signal that the film’s journey had ended before it began.

The film almost certainly fell afoul of unspecified authorities and other influential figures with the Chinese Communist Party because it depicts the heroism of soldiers in the National Army during the 1937 Battle of Shanghai — at a time when China’s ruling Nationalist party was allied with the Communist Party to resist the invading Japanese. Films in China dealing with this period of history generally emphasize the actions and sacrifices of the Communist Party, and downplay the role of the Nationalist party, a bitter enemy during the civil war that followed.

The film’s fate has angered and disappointed many Chinese, for whom the story of Xie Jinyuan, the famous commander of soldiers holed up in Shanghai’s Sihang Warehouse, is an inspirational example of patriotism that should transcend petty ideology.

The following is our translation of one post to WeChat that makes the sense of disappointment very clear.

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This Age of Ours Doesn’t Deserve the Heroism of Commander Xie

As I was browsing through Weibo this morning, I saw the news that the July 5 release of Director Guan Hu’s film The Eight Hundred had been cancelled — which means that the film has been formally blocked, and will now sink beneath the waves.

Ever since the cancellation of The Eight Hundred’s credentials as an opening film of the Shanghai Film Festival, I had some sense of foreboding about the film’s destiny. But actually coming to this day I still can’t help but feel a bit hurt.

For the vast majority of Shanghai people, the Sihang Warehouse (四行仓库) on Suzhou Creek is a name that can’t be wiped from our memories.

It was around the time I was in primary school that I read the story of the 800 hundred fighters in the publication Shanghai Stories (上海故事), which was popular at the time — and the way the regimental commander Xie Jinyuan (谢晋元) and the 400 men under his command stood alone constitutes my earliest impressions of the concept of heroism.

Decades have past now, and countless American-style heroes have crossed the screen and entered the entered the minds of the Chinese people, but there there have perhaps been no Chinese heroes of truly international influence.

This is one reason I felt really excited when I learned that Guan Hu’s film The Eight Hundred would be screened, and that it would, no less, be the opening film of the Shanghai International Film Festival.

But as everyone now knows, it was changed out on the spot on June 15, and then the July 5 screening was also cancelled completely. We heard all this claptrap about “technical reasons,” and how “negotiations are underway,” when everyone knows that the real accusation here was that the film “used fragments of history to disguise the basic truth of history” (用历史碎片掩盖历史的本质真实), and that it “showed signs of deviating from historical materialism” (偏离历史唯物主义的创作倾向).

What a joke this is. Is history not always formed from fragments? If we cannot even admit the fragments, or we are unwilling to face them, what kind of historical truth can we speak of at all?

But I’m afraid it’s not quite fair either to heap all of the blame for the fate of The Eight Hundred on the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT). As a film bound for the cinema, The Eight Hundred passed examination long ago, and it had received its permit for cinematic screening.

The reason the film ultimately cannot be seen by audiences, I’m afraid, has to do with interference from all sorts of mysterious actors we generally don’t see — from “old leaders” and “old cadres,” from “___ Friendship Society” and “____ Association,”

These people generally engage in no productive activities of their own, but just eat and drink all day, and then split hairs and nitpick. If you make a film about the National Army fighting the Japanese, they will pipe up and say you are combining historical fragments and have a hidden agenda. If you film something about the Communist Army fighting the Japanese, and if it depicts a victory, they’ll pipe up about how you are making an “anti-Japanese drama” that over-emphasizes heroism and is not sufficiently objective. (If you don’t believe me, just go into the BBS chatrooms and see for yourself all of the criticisms there from old cadres over the Drawing Sword series).

And if your film depicts defeat at the hands of the Japanese, this of course is even worse. How can you spread such a spirit of defeat?

The battle by the “eight hundred fighters” at the Sihang Warehouse on Suzhou Creek went on for four days and four nights, but the victory and heroism notwithstanding, it was but a tiny and relatively insignificant part of a much greater war.

The reason why Xie Jinyuan and the 400 fighters under his command (aside from the handful of turncoats who in the end murdered Xie) are revered as true heroes in the hearts of generation after generation of Chinese is because, more importantly, Xie and his regiment remained intact [and a source of morale] for the next few years even while imprisoned in the foreign Settlement.

Without heavy weaponry, boxed in on all sides, refusing all forms of compromise and capitulation, they persisted day after day with training and raising the flag, even in the face of pressure on all sides, maintaining the discipline and dignity of soldiers.

This unswerving determination in the face of desperation became an inspiration for the whole of China at that time. It was written into song, inspiring young people to join the war to save the country: “China will not fail, China cannot fail, just look at national hero Commander Xie!”

But today, when at last some are willing to invest vast resources of money and time to properly tell this episode in history through a film, it still faces this irrational and ridiculous accusation of “historical fragmentalism” (历史碎片论). It suffocates one to speechlessness.

Saving Private Ryan told the story of how, when Americans landed on the beach in Normandy, in a shower of bombs and bullets, eight people did their utmost to save a single man, and none of you said this was “historical fragmentalism.” Hacksaw Ridge told the story of a soldier who refused to bear arms and yet saved others on the battlefield, and none of you said this was “historical fragmentalism.”

But today, people go and tell this story of how more than 400 Chinese sacrificed out of deep love for their country, and you say it is “historical fragmentalism,” that it should not be screened, that it cannot be screened, that it is not permitted to be screened. Actually, I don’t think any of these people who nitpick over The Eight Hundred would actually have the courage to take up arms and sacrifice their lives defending our country if it came again to such a moment of foreign aggression.

So in the end, The Eight Hundred will not be shown. . . .

Goodbye, The Eight Hundred. In this dog shit age of ours, we don’t deserve such a hero as Commander Xie.

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” declares Shakespeare’s Juliet, rejecting the notion that she and her lover should be torn asunder by the feud between their two houses. “‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy,” she says.
These days, names matter deeply in China. In an article published on June 15 in the official Party journal Seeking Truth (求是) and given the most prominent treatment possible on the next day’s edition of the People’s Daily, Xi Jinping declared that China’s cultural confidence, or wenhua zixin (文化自信), arises from three great cultural traditions: “Our cultural confidence is confidence in the organic integration of a culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics including China’s excellent traditional culture, revolutionary culture and advanced socialist culture.”
In practice in recent days, acting on this sense of “cultural confidence” means pushing a revolution in place names, expunging names that are excessively foreign, exaggerated, strange or redundant. When it comes to the West, in particular, it is about clearly distinguishing between the Montagues and the Capulets, between us and them — and so, out with the Hollywoods, Viennas and Victorias.

In December 2018, six Chinese ministries jointly issued a document called “Notice from the Ministry of Civil Affairs and Five Other Departments on Disposing of and Rectifying Irregular Place Names” (民政部等六部（局）关于进一步清理整治不规范地名的通知). The document stipulated that by March 2019 a list of so-called “irregular place names” should be determined and created. We are now beginning to see the process of “rectification” taking place in China.
Recently, the local civil affairs office in Hainan released its own “List of Irregular Place Names Requiring Rectification” (需清理整治不规范地名清单), demanding that place names in the province must be changed if they are “exaggerated” (大), “Western” (洋), “strange” (怪) or “repetitive” (重). Classic examples included places like “Victoria Gardens” (维多利亚花园), “Sunshine Baroque District” (阳光巴洛克小区), “Vienna Hotel” (维也纳酒店), and the “Diaoyutai Mansions” (钓鱼台别墅). All such place names must undergo a process of “renaming” (更名改姓).
Chinese media have also reported that structures such as bridges are being renamed. In Fujian province, for example, bridge names that include the word “big” or “mega” (大), are being downsized if they are not sufficiently large. This means that the names “Dongfeng Mega-Bridge” (东风大桥), “Meixi Mega-Bridge” (琯溪大桥) and “Nanshan Mega-Bridge” (南山大桥) will all have to be changed in light of the clear prohibition against “deliberate exaggeration of names” (名称刻意夸大). In these specific cases, then, the structures will be renamed simply “Dongfeng Bridge,” “Meixi Bridge,” and “Nanshan Bridge.”
“SOHO” as the name of a commercial complex has been deemed under the campaign as “weird and bizarre” (怪诞离奇). And even using letters of the English alphabet to denote buildings within residential complexes, with designations like “Block A” (A座) and “Block B” (B座), has been deemed unacceptable in places like Xi’an.
The city of Wenzhou in Zhejiang province has reportedly gone into something of a fever over place name changes. “European City” (欧洲城), a property complex, has been renamed “Aidengqiao District” (矮凳桥小区). “Central Park,” apparently too clear a reference to the famous park in New York City, has been renamed “Hongxi Garden.”
This nationwide purge of names could in fact have unforeseen consequences in a number of areas, such as for citizen ID cards, residential registration and even real estate registration. One chat thread on China’s Zhihu platform this month shared an official notice from Hainan on the necessary name changes and asked: “Is the name of your residential area safe?” Another post last Friday analyzed various place names, particularly for residential districts, as well as company names, and suggested that the implications of this movement from the top could be enormous if it is taken at its word.
One Chinese internet user ridiculed the name-change policy by creating a table showing the typical Chinese translation of foreign place names like “Queensland,” “New York” and “Red River Valley” alongside literal translations from English to Chinese, resulting in humorous variations such as the English-language “Hollywood” becoming “Jilin,” the same characters as China’s northeastern province of Jilin.

Jokes aside, the announcement of the national measures at the local level has already created a great deal of confusion, not least among hotels and other businesses making use of names that might be regarded as too Western.
After Hainan province released its official notice regarding name changes, seen below, the local “Vienna Hotel” made its own statement through its official Weibo account making clear that its name in fact is a registered trademark, successfully registered with the Trademark Office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, and was legally used.

Reached subsequently by a reporter for China News Service, Shi Qingli (石清理), deputy head of Hainan’s provincial office of civil affairs, clarified that as a trademark in this case, “Vienna” had not being used as a place name and so the designation “irregular place name” did not apply. But the confusion is sure to continue as the campaign unfolds.
A commentary on the name changes at China Business Online said: “Will this broad demand for a purge really be able to raise our sense of cultural self-confidence, and bring results in regulating place names? I’m afraid we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Ultimately, cultural self-confidence isn’t something that emerges from restrictions. Real cultural confidence should mean not viewing outside cultures with a sense of fear and foreboding.”

Back in May, there was a flurry of announcements from websites and social networking apps in China indicating that they would be suspending their interactive features – such as basic comment functions and so-called “bullet comments” proliferating across video in real-time – in order to carry out “upgrades.” In some cases, the suspensions were by all accounts permanent.
Users in China were quick to pick up on the fact that these were not at all about improving services, but rather pointed to a concerted effort by internet control authorities to restrict interactivity for the sake of convenience in exercising control over public opinion.

The same sorts of suspensions had already been happening in April, likely in response to the approach of sensitive historical anniversaries, like the centenary of the 1919 May Fourth Movement, the 30th anniversary on April 15 of the death of reformist party chief Hu Yaobang, and of course the 30th anniversary of June Fourth.
The suspensions were likely extensions of a special cleanup campaign announced in January this year by the Cyberspace Administration of China, aiming to “resolve outstanding problems in the online climate.” Commenting in one chat thread on April 12, as someone asked about the seven-day suspension of commenting functions at Snowball (雪球), an investment information platform, one user said: “Technical upgrades are just an excuse; this is actually about speech prohibitions.” In some cases, public notices were made of suspensions with express mention of violations of China’s Cybersecurity Law and Regulation on Internet Information Service — as was the case with Jianshu (简书), a user-generated content platform similar to Medium, which in April underwent “a full and comprehensive rectification (全面彻底的整改) of its content starting April 19.
A number of sites and services announced in mid-May that suspensions of interactive features such as comments would last between several weeks and three months. On May 10, the Ding Talk (钉钉) mobile communication app, developed by Alibaba, and the Momo instant messaging app both issued notices saying that their “friend chat” services resembling the chat services offered by WeChat would be suspended for upgrades.
The animation-themed video site Bilibili (哔哩哔哩), which has been extremely popular, also announced that it would suspend “bullet comments” on its video service from May 29 to June 6. Tencent also reported in May that other services, including YY, Douyu (斗鱼) and Huya (虎牙) had suspended “barrage” comments.
On May 27, Qdaily (好奇心日报), a site offering current affairs and lifestyle content, much of it translated or summarized from foreign sources, announced that its website and app would suspend content refreshing from May 28 for a period of three months. During this process readers were encouraged to read existing content, the site said.
To get a clearer idea of just how disruptive these controls can be for media like Qdaily, just try visiting their site and having a look for yourself. Here is the site’s front page on June 21, three weeks into their suspension.

The headline under Einstein reads: “There is an app called ‘Very Strange’, come and see.” Click into the article and you find it is dated May 27, 2019. Another featured article, dealing with bluetooth earbuds, dates back to May 24.
Right below the feature slider, with its black-and-white image of Einstein, is the announcement of Qdaily‘s suspension, the publication’s logo set against a sunset backdrop. There is no talk of “illegal information,” or the need for a clean “online ecology.”

 
The notice, just four lines, reads:

From midnight on May 28, the Qdaily website and App will suspend content refreshing for 3 months.
During this time readers can enjoy our past content.
Reader comments and other interactive services will be suspended.
Interactive features for Qdaily Research will appear in another App called ‘Very Strange,’ and readers can participate there.

There is no indication in the notice that Qdaily is facing anything at all serious. Nothing fatal, at any rate. But how is that even possible? How can any for-profit media venture simply live in cryo-freeze for a period of three months and then wake to the  world again as a viable source of information?
In decades past, it was impossible in China to kill a publication or render it comatose without some degree of uproar. Just think of the international stink that ensued in 2006 when authorities ordered the shutdown of the respected Freezing Point supplement of the China Youth Daily newspaper.
But for propaganda controls, this is indeed, as Xi Jinping is so fond of saying, a “new era.” These days, an interesting, vibrant and cool platform like Qdaily could simply walk off into the sunset, without a fuss and without so much as a goodbye.
And who really cares? After all, there is always something new.

As trade tensions between the United States and China have escalated this week, we have seen a series of commentaries and signals from China in the state media, the most important of these appearing in the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, the People’s Daily. Today, we have another important commentary in the newspaper, and this time it gets more real estate on the front page, as opposed to page four, where most of these statements have lingered through the week. The piece this time is from “Zhong Xuanli” (钟轩理), a moniker that marks it as coming from the Theory Division of the Central Propaganda Department.
The piece, called “There is No Force that Can Impede the Chinese People as They Stride Toward Realization of Their Dream” (没有任何力量能够阻挡中国人民实现梦想的步伐), does seem (I say cautiously) to dial up the nationalist rhetoric just a bit in comparison to previous commentaries, which emphasized the irrationality of American actions and underscored Chinese readiness to endure, whatever comes.
Just to review, we  looked at the first “Zhong Sheng,” or “Voice of China,” commentary on Tuesday in this CMP post, noting that while the tone in official comments on trade tensions was resolute with a mind to projecting strength and shoring up domestic confidence, it was probably premature to characterize it as “nationalistic” as quite a number of international media seemed to be doing. The following day, we looked at the second “Zhong Sheng” commentary and related remarks on this Twitter thread, noting in particular the stress on the word “stability” as the Party again tried to project confidence. Finally, in another thread yesterday, we looked at the third “Zhong Sheng” commentary, which accused the U.S. of blowing hot and cold in trade negotiations, and painted a picture of U.S. as a quitter — “pulling out of the Paris Agreement, pulling out of UNESCO, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, pulling out of the UN Human Rights Council.”
Today’s “Zhong Xuanli” piece is the most direct invocation yet — at least in the pages of the People’s Daily — of trade tensions with the United States as an affront and challenge to the inevitable rise of the Chinese people, and the link to Xi’s notion of the “Chinese dream” is directly there in the headline. By comparison, much previous language was abstract. Think of the way, for example, the CCTC anchor on “Xinwen Lianbo” on Monday, starting off the week of accusations, spoke of how Xi Jinping had said that China’s economy is a “great ocean,” not a pond, and while winds and storms can trouble the pond, they cannot trouble the great ocean, and so on.
The language in today’s page-one commentary reads: “In the great journey toward national rejuvenation, the Chinese people are at one in their conviction to protect the interests of our people and the dignity of the nation, our resolution firm as stone and unyielding.”

The language of national rejuvenation and dignity underscores trade tensions with the United States as a direct challenge to  China’s rise. “We deeply know that the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people cannot be realized gently, or with the banging of gongs and beating of drums, but requires even more formidable and even more difficult efforts,” the commentary concludes. “We firmly believe that through the centuries and millennia, the Chinese people have stored up abilities of unmatchable strength, and that no force in this world can impede the progress of the Chinese people toward realizing their dream!”
The commentary makes a series of bolded key points, including that 1) the direct cause of escalating trade tensions has been “asking of sky-high prices” by the U.S., that 2) the basic reason for trade tensions is that “the American side respects only itself,” that 3) “the trade war cannot strike China down, but can only cause us to grow stronger on the whetstone,” that 4) the trade war will not result in a cheap deal but will only damage U.S. interests, and that 5) the trade war cannot earn popular support, but will only result in greater factors of uncertainty globally. These are the principal points made in the piece as it appears on the front page of the People’s Daily, and they continue on page four.
We should also note that we have a fourth “Zhong Sheng” commentary today on page three of the People’s Daily, this one ridiculing the suggestion by Donald Trump — though once again Trump is not named — that the U.S. “rebuilt China” by extending the country unfair advantages.
 

Responding to the escalating trade war between the U.S. and China, Stephen Collinson wrote at CNN today that this is getting personal, and is shaping up as “a personal duel between two rival presidents.” Today, however, it seemed that the People’s Daily, generally the best visible measure we have of the mood within the Chinese Communist Party, did its utmost to avoid personal attack.
In typical form, a front-page piece (with jump to page 3) attributed to “Zhong Sheng” (钟声), a byline for official commentaries on international affairs, does not mention Trump by name at all. Trump, rather, is invoked indirectly in the first line of the piece, which growls about “certain people in America who brood over the so-called ‘massive trade deficit’ between the U.S. and China, with things like, ‘The U.S. loses 500 billion dollars a year to China.'”
We all know that means Trump. So why not just say it?
I’ll come back to this commentary in a moment. But I want to note first that media reports outside China may be playing just a bit too freely with the language emerging from state media, noting a hint of truculence that is more precisely an attempt, out of some degree of unease, to shore up domestic confidence in light of recent events. It has been widely reported, for example, that the Global Times remarked in reference to the new round of tariffs that “this is a true ‘people’s war.” And the Financial Times has reported that China’s state media have responded to the tariffs with “a barrage of nationalist commentary.” OK, perhaps a touch more stridence. But weren’t we reporting the same thing back in July, and August, and September too?

Yes, it’s certainly true that the language of “people’s war” hearkens back to Mao Zedong. It was famously used by Lin Biao in 1965 in an article called “Long Live the Victory in the People’s War” (人民战争胜利万岁) that commemorated the 20th anniversary of victory in the war against Japan. But the basic sense of the “people’s war” is that the people need to unite behind the leadership of the CCP to engage in struggle. The term has been used in recent decades to refer in a rather general way to challenges that require the full participation of society. For example, of the 16 articles in the Party’s official People’s Daily that use the term “people’s war” in the headline since 2009, going back 10 years, 11 deal with the combatting drug use in society.
In this sense, talk of a “people’s war” is of a piece with statements we’ve heard on CCTV and from the foreign ministry about China’s readiness to stand up. It is less a war cry than an implied statement to the public: Look, things are going to get tough, and you need to stand behind us.
The “Zhong Sheng” commentary in today’s People’s Daily is perhaps a better measure of China’s tone, and in it we hear the leadership treading a very careful line — trying to land punches and pull them at the same time. There is a need to signal resolve, displeasure, even anger of the righteous kind. But at the same time, it avoids directly antagonizing anyone.
Rhetorically, the piece does criticize the U.S., which it suggests has always behaved with global selfishness, viewing rules and norms only as tools to be cynically used. “Regrettably, the U.S. has always maintained an attitude toward the WTO and other multilateral institutions of ‘using them when it suits, and abandoning them when it does not’ (合则用、不合则弃),” the commentary reads. “Even where well-considered methods are concerned, it will not support them if it cannot first see the advantage to itself.” But the commentary quickly moves away from criticism of this broader U.S., the U.S. of “certain people,” to get more personal about the “American consumers, farmers and enterprises,” which have “become the victims of the trade tensions stirred up by the U.S., not victims of ‘unfair Chinese trade practices.'”
Another interesting and quite typical characteristic of this official commentary is the way it rallies American voices to its causes, with oblique references to various experts and authors, as though only quoting a Harvard professor (in this case, Carmen Reinhart, whose gender the paper gets wrong) can make an argument against U.S. actions convincing. The byline “Zhong Sheng” is a homonym of “China’s voice,” so it is interesting to consider the implications of this habitual, institutionalized deployment of foreign voices in China’s state media as a means of shoring up credibility.
In this vein, it is even more interesting to note the way the commentary talks about the need to move away from zero-sum thinking. It makes no reference at all to Xi Jinping’s catchphrase about building “a community of common destiny for humankind,” or renlei mingyun gongtongti (人类命运共同体), which is all wrapped up in this notion of win-win and a key part of China’s current foreign policy, even written into the Constitution in 2017. Instead, it cites journalist Robert Wright’s 1999 book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. It is as though Xi’s catchphrase is peeking out from behind the cover of an American author. Again, it seems the impetus is to downplay China’s assertiveness even as it tries to make its stand. State media have made a great deal of this catchphrase around the policy of the Belt and Road, but perhaps now is not the time to advertise the supposed uniqueness and world-transforming character of (imagined) Chinese alternatives.
So far, this “duel” between Trump and Xi is not visible in China’s official state media. This is a dicey time, and a dicey year, full of dicey anniversaries. The last thing China’s leaders want is for things to get personal. But we’ll keep watching the media space.
Meanwhile, a quick translation of the “Zhong Sheng” commentary in the People’s Daily. For questions of accuracy and phrasing, please refer back to the original, linked below.
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Who’s Worked Up About Neologisms: Enough With America’s ‘Doctrine of Loss’
Zhong Sheng (钟声)
People’s Daily
May 14, 2019
There are always certain people in America who brood over the so-called “massive trade deficit” between the U.S. and China, with things like, “The U.S. loses 500 billion dollars a year to China,” or, “The U.S. loses millions of manufacturing jobs to China,” hanging on their lips at every turn. Over the past year, this sort of “doctrine of loss” (吃亏论) has become the imagined evidence used again and again, hot and cold, to exercise extreme pressure on the Chinese side, flying in the face of Chinese sincerity.
The U.S. is the strongest economy in the world, and the maker of rules when it comes to the world economy. If we are to accept that the U.S. is the “loser” (吃亏者), isn’t this essentially saying that the rules made by the rule-maker have been harmful to itself? If this is the case, is it not the strangest thing. [But] if whether we talk about global trade or about the U.S.-China bilateral trade, not only is the U.S. not the loser — quite the opposite, it takes a lot of advantages. This is something about which American industries, consumers and economists are very clear in their hearts.
America’s massive trade deficit has not emerged because of China, and it will not come to an end because of China. On the one hand, excessing spending, insufficient savings and a huge fiscal deficit are the principal reasons for the deficit; on the other hand, the United States uses the US dollar as the main means of payment for international trade with the status of a reserve currency, expanding the trade deficit, and then it uses the dollar to purchase U.S. Treasury Bonds, obtaining massive amounts of cheap capital that it then invests in high-tech and other fields, making itself the biggest beneficiary of economic globalization. Carmen Reinhart, a professor of international finance at Harvard’s Kennedy School, believes that there is no sense at all in the U.S. pointing fingers at countries with which it has a trade deficit. His views represent the views of mainstream international economists [NOTE: The article uses the male pronoun here, though Reinhart is a woman].
The trade deficit with China is just an idea, and it cannot reflect the truth about America’s commercial interests in China. The world economy long ago entered the era of global value chains. Looking at production, [we see that] the U.S. is at the high end (高端)of the global value and global pricing chains, controlling patented technologies, core components, research and development and design, sales and other added-value segments, reaping huge benefits. The example of the iPhone is familiar to all. If we calculate surpluses only with the figures of those countries exporting end products, it is obviously impossible to reach an objective evaluation of value distribution in trade. In fact, from 2011, in order to [better] reflect a country’s true benefit within the value chain, the WTO and the OECD advocated the use of “global manufacturing” to approach international production, and introduced the method of “trade in value added” (贸易增加值核算). But regrettably, the U.S. has always maintained an attitude toward the WTO and other multilateral institutions of “using them when it suits, and abandoning them when it does not” (合则用、不合则弃). Even where well-considered methods are concerned, it will not support them if it cannot first see the advantage to itself.
Right now, U.S.-funded enterprises sell 700 billion dollars in China every year, earning profits of around 500 billion dollars. This is a benefit and opportunity reaped for U.S. companies as a result of China’s development. Low commodity prices in the U.S. are something known to all. For many years, as the central banks of many other countries have been busy trying to control inflation levels, inflation the U.S. has pushed below the target level of 2 percent. High quality and low-price Chinese products have flowed to the families of America, a great boon for consumers. As Time magazine journalist Robert Wright wrote in his book Nonzero: History, Evolution and Human Cooperation, the fate of mankind depends on understanding that we have moved from an era of “zero-sum” to an era of “nonzero.” Over the past 40 years, the scale of U.S.-China trade has expanded more than 230 times — if this [trade] was not win-win, but a “zero-sum” situation in which one side was the loser, how could it have produced such dramatic change?
China has always been a major importing country, and developing China has opened its doors to the world. China has today become the largest trade partner for more than 120 countries and regions. China has never sought trade surpluses, and it earnestly hopes to expand the import of competitive American products. According to the analysis of relevant U.S. institutions, if export restrictions for high-technology goods for civilian use were relaxed, the U.S. trade deficit toward China would contract by around 35 percent. And who is to blame for restricting the export of its own superior products?
This talk of the trade deficit with China resulting in the loss of American manufacturing jobs is also nonsense. For many years, the mainstream explanation emerging from academia in the U.S. has been that the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. is attributable to its own economic restructuring, and that automation and mechanization have caused rises in productivity in manufacturing. External trade results in the phasing out and transition of inferior industries, but also brings opportunities for the expansion of higher quality industries, achieving industrial restructuring. Research from scholars at the University of California has shown that saying the U.S. has lost jobs in the course of U.S.-China trade is less appropriate than saying that it has reaped greater benefits in terms of high-paying employment.
These simple facts and logic long ago proved that this talk of trade deficits and job losses in manufacturing cannot support this “doctrine of loss.” Insisting on this “doctrine of loss” may for a time provide a distraction from domestic contradictions, but before long the American people will become the true losers. In April this year, the National Association for Business Economics revealed in a survey of the economic environment that three-quarters of manufacturers responding said that the [U.S.] tariffs had had a negative impact on them, raising their costs and forcing half of these companies to raise their prices. American consumers, farmers and enterprises have become the victims of the trade tensions stirred up by the U.S., not victims of “unfair Chinese trade practices.”
Anyone who can see clearly will realize that this so-called “doctrine of loss” is about more than just putting on a sad face and seeking sympathy. There is more behind this inventing of despondent neologisms than meets the eye. It’s just that those encouraging this incorrect view [about the trade deficit] have miscalculated. China’s economy has great resilience and potential, and it fully has the capacity and confidence to encourage higher-level development through higher-level openness toward the outside and the expansion of domestic demand, promoting high-level economic development, hedging against the impact of trade frictions between China and the U.S., and achieving long-term stability for the Chinese economy.
The continued repetition of these patently false, untenable and detrimental views may not tire those who utter them, but they exhaust all who listen.

Two stories in particular this week underscored the growing challenges to the conduct of professional journalism in China.  The first is a firestorm surrounding the reporting and release by Southern Metropolis Daily, a paper historically in China associated with more liberal (and perhaps professional) press conduct, of an audio recording that seemed aimed at discrediting the account of a Chinese student who alleges that she was raped last year by a prominent Chinese business executive. The newspaper shared the audio without, many said, providing proper context or looking more carefully into its origins. Media scholar Fang Kecheng wrote that Southern Metropolis Daily‘s actions more closely resembled those of a social media-based public account, or “self-media” (自媒体), than those of “institutional media.”
The second story is the news that Liu Wanyong (刘万永), a veteran investigative reporter with more than two decades’ experience, has left the media profession to pursue a new career with an asset management company. But Liu made clear that pressures on journalism were a major factor in his decision. “[Leaving China Youth Daily] isn’t just because of financial considerations,” he wrote on WeChat. “I had originally thought that I would spend my whole life as a journalist, but slowly it became impossible to write anything I wanted. This environment has already changed.”
With intense controls on China’s media now having been more or less consistently applied for more than six years under Xi Jinping, and dating back, some might argue, as far as 2010 or even 2008, a compelling argument can be made that the country is facing a generational crisis in journalism. Most of the critical pockets of professional resistance within traditional media outlets have closed, and editors and reporters with experience that might be shared with younger journalists have moved on.
Also, don’t miss our discussion here of the Belt and Road News Network.
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This Week in China’s Media
April 20 to May 3, 2019
➢ Implication of Chinese pharmaceutical boss in U.S. college admissions scandal prompts commentary on admissions corruption in China
➢ China initiates “sunshine comment” action movement to strengthen political guidance of online discussion
➢ Xi Jinping sends letter of congratulation to Council of the Belt and Road News Network: Do participants know what they’re getting into? 
➢ Southern Metropolis Daily faces firestorm of criticism after released of audio recording purported to be of JD.com CEO Liu Qiangdong
➢ Investigative report Liu Wanyong reveals the reasons for his departure from the media: The environment has already changed

[1] Implication of Chinese pharmaceutical boss in U.S. college admissions scandal prompts commentary on admissions corruption in China

According to reports in the Los Angeles Times, the Daily Mail, the Stanford Daily and other publications in the West, the president and co-founder of the publicly listed Chinese pharmaceutical giant Shandong Buchang, Zhao Tao (赵涛), has been implicated in the ongoing scandal over college admissions in the United States. According to news reports, Zhao Tao paid 6.5 million dollars to get his daughter “Molly” Zhao Yusi (赵雨思) admitted to Stanford University. Zhao Yusi, who was a sophomore at Stanford, allegedly admitted with false credentials for the sport of sailing, has reportedly been expelled by the university.

As news of Zhao’s implication in the scandal reached China, the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper noted that this scandal, perhaps the largest admissions scandal ever to hit higher education in the U.S., implicated not just fraudulent intermediaries but also the parents of students. The paper noted that while China has itself uncovered numerous cases in recent years of falsified college entrance examination scores and athletics records, these cases have not, in clear contrast to the U.S. case, focused attention on the role played by parents, and few if any parents involved have faced repercussions.

Commenting on the U.S. scandal, the Beijing News suggested that the wealthy in China should recognize that they have a greater responsibility as people of means to set a positive example through their conduct. The paper said that “the distorted outlook on life and on right and wrong brought on by wealth is not uncommonly found in China. For some of these wealthy people, the degradation of spirit is definitely connected to the larger social environment. But the wealthy differ from ordinary people in that they have a degree of influence that ordinary people do not have, and have an ‘advantage of resources’ that ordinary people cannot hope to match. In other words, they have the ability to avoid the tide of corruption, and even to take on greater responsibility in terms of changing the society and creating an even brighter and even fairer social environment.”

KEY SOURCES:
The Beijing News (新京报): 花巨资买进斯坦福，也是为富不“端”
Beijing Youth Daily (北京青年报): 严惩招生舞弊就是要“揪”出家长
Chengdu Commercial News (成都商报): 花650万美元送女儿进斯坦福？步长制药董事长卷入美高校招生舞弊风波

[2] China initiates “sunshine comment” action movement to strengthen political guidance of online discussion

On April 29, the Online Commentary Work Office of the Cyberspace Administration of China (中央网信办网络评论工作局) held what it called the “2019 Sunshine Comments Action Meeting” (阳光跟帖行动推进会) in Beijing. Addressing the internet censorship personnel present at the meeting, Yang Xiaowei (杨小伟), deputy director of the CAC, said that advancing “sunshine comments” — by which he meant comments left by internet users on various types of online content that were “positive” from the standpoint of maintaining social and political control — meant ensuring three basic points. First, cyberspace authorities should “strengthen ideological and political guidance, broadly achieving consensus” (meaning around the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party). Second, authorities should ensure that websites and other online platforms are actively involved in the process of pushing “sunshine comments,” “properly serving their role as guards” (当好把关人) and “properly safeguarding comment ecology”(维护好跟帖生态). Third, authorities must encourage “rational” online conduct by users, “ushering away online pollution through positive energy” (通过正能量驱散网络的雾霾).

At the meeting, Hua Qing (华清), head of the Online Commentary Work Office, revealed six basic activities planned for the “comment action” (跟帖行动) in 2019. These include: 1) fully discussing experiences and outcomes in recent years in terms of “sunshine comments” in order to properly mobilize action; 2) opening special areas concerning “sunshine comments” and proper conduct on such platforms as Guangming Online (光明网), China National Radio Online (央广网), Tencent (腾讯). This would include specific pointers and reminders about “sunshine commenting” directed toward users during the process of registration to make online comments (跟帖); 3) the production and promotion by platforms and companies like the above of special video messages about “sunshine comments” in order to reach users; 4) push participating platforms to produce special audio and video content around the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, highlighting positive voices among web users; 5) to use the China Federation of Internet Societies (CFIS) to advance propaganda events and push platforms to do propaganda reports, actively soliciting user involvement, thereby expanding the reach and influence of the “sunshine comment” action; 6) to hold a dialogue conference at year’s end to offer reward and encouragement to the organizations and individuals involved in the campaign.

In August 2015, a “sunshine comment” movement was initiated by the Cyberspace Administration of China jointly with the Chinese Communist Youth League Central Committee and the China Youth New Media League (中国青少年新媒体协会), an organization within the Chinese Communist Youth League. The current “sunshine comment” action is being led by the China Internet Development Foundation (中国互联网发展基金会) and the China Federation of Internet Societies (CFIS), in principal cooperation with 10 major media organizations, including Guangming Online, China National Radio Online and Tencent, and participation from 16 major internet platforms, including TikTok (抖音), Kuaishou (快手) and Miaopai (秒拍).

KEY SOURCES:
WeChat public account “China Cyberspace Administration” (网信中国): 2019年阳光跟帖行动推进会在京举行
Guangming Online (光明网): 阳光跟帖行动推进会在京举行
Baidu public account “Observer Online” (观察者网): 关于跟帖评论，这3点要求很重要！
China Youth Daily Online (中国青年网): TFBOYS任“阳光跟帖”行动大使：别让鼠标键盘跑过理智

[3] Xi Jinping sends letter of congratulation to Council of the Belt and Road News Network: Do participants know what they’re getting into? 

On April 23, the first council meeting of the Belt and Road News Network (一带一路新闻合作联盟) was held in Beijing at the People’s Daily, with the Party’s flagship newspaper designated as the organization’s directorate general (理事长单位). In a formal letter to the meeting, President Xi Jinping said he hoped that various participating news organizations from around the world could “tell the story of Belt and Road well, creating a favorable public opinion environment for the building of Belt and Road.”

At the opening ceremony for the event, the organization’s official website, www.brnn.com, was formally launched by People’s Daily Online, providing, according to official Chinese sources, a platform for “interaction and discussion, article upload and download, content sharing, copyright exchange and other services.” The website is currently available in Chinese, English, French, Russian, Arabic and Spanish.

Typical of such broad-brush initiatives advanced by Chinese agency but cobbling together supposed groups of decision-makers and partners — one prominent example in recent years being the World Media Summit and its “presidium” of international media bosses — the Belt and Road News Network seems sloppy and unserious when one takes the most cursory further look at its online presence.

For example, under the section “Database,” which one might expect to provide information of real value about BRI, a link on “BRI Countries” simply lists out all MOU signatories in no apparent order, which repeated explanations under each that are not even clickable, unlinked to further information, such as when the countries signed with China.

The section on BRI data includes just two articles, both posted on April 20, five days before the opening of the forum, that are propaganda pieces done by Xinhua.

State media are claiming that 40 media organizations from 25 countries participated in the first council meeting of the BRNN, and that 182 media organizations from 86 countries have so far joined the network. One must did around a bit, but a list of BRNN “council members” is given within the council’s first joint statement, as follows:

The council members include influential media organizations from Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. They are: People’s Daily (China), The Financial Express (Bangladesh), Belarus Today Publishing House (Belarus), Xinhua News Agency (China), China Media Group (China), Guangming Daily (China), Economic Daily (China), China Daily (China), China International Publishing Group (China), Science and Technology Daily (China), Workers’ Daily (China), China Youth Daily (China), China Women’s News (China), Farmers’ Daily (China), Legal Daily (China), China News Service (China), China Intercontinental Communication Center (China), Al-ahram Newspaper (Egypt), Ethiopian News Agency (Ethiopia), La Provence (France), The Jakarta Post (Indonesia), Kazinform International News Agency (Kazakhstan), Maekyung Media Group (Republic of Korea), Lao Press in Foreign Languages(Laos), Notimex (Mexico), Confederation of Mongolian Journalists (Mongolia), Democracy Today Newspaper (Myanmar), RNW Media (Netherlands), Thisday Newspaper (Nigeria), Jang Media Group and GEO Television Network (Pakistan), AgênciaLusa (Portugal), Russian News Agency TASS (Russia), Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia), Independent Media (South Africa), Agencia EFE (Spain), Alintibaha Daily Newspaper (Sudan), The Guardian Limited (Tanzania), Emirates News Agency (U.A.E), Associated Newspapers Ltd., DMGT (U.K) and Zambia Daily Mail (Zambia).

The council member listed from the Netherlands, RNW Media, is a non-profit organization whose mission is “to identify young people’s needs and to bring young people together in user-owned digital communities where they can safely engage on taboos and sensitive topics and generate strong stories for advocacy to unleash their potential for social change.” The group subscribes to the Partos Code of Conduct 2012, which it says makes “clear agreements regarding integrity, manners, good governance, quality, use of social media and independence.” The Global Times newspaper also ran an interview with the CEO of RNW Media, in which she spoke about the need for neutrality.

The Secretariat of the BRNN, however, is located within the headquarters of the People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, and all contacts are directed there. All Chinese media participants in the council, without exception, are operated by the Central Propaganda Department of the CCP.

The Spanish participant in the council is Agencia EFE, a Spanish international news agency.

KEY SOURCES:
People’s Daily Online (人民网): 习近平向“一带一路”新闻合作联盟首届理事会议致贺信
Xinhua Online (新华网): 黄坤明出席“一带一路”新闻合作联盟首届理事会议开幕式并致辞
People’s Daily (人民日报): “一带一路”新闻合作联盟章程

[4] Southern Metropolis Daily faces firestorm of criticism after released of audio recording purported to be of JD.com CEO Liu Qiangdong

On April 24, Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper faced a firestorm of criticism for releasing an audio recording the previous day purporting to be of “a woman demanding money from Liu Qiangdong” (女生向刘强东索要钱财). Liu, also known as Richard Liu, is the billionaire founder and CEO of JD.com. He faced accusations last year that he had raped a Chinese student in Minneapolis, but prosecutors in Minnesota decided last December not to press charges against him in the case. The audio in question, which seemed to have been intended to support counter accusations against Liu’s accuser, was apparently provided to the paper through an anonymous e-mail, and some critics said the newspaper had acted unprofessionally and against ethical standards in releasing it.

The release of the audio recording came just after a series of video clips emerged online through a Weibo account called “Mingzhou Shiji” (明州事记) showing surveillance camera footage of Liu Qiangdong and his accuser together on the night of the alleged incident.

Media scholar and former Southern Weekly journalist Fang Kecheng (方可成) wrote that the Southern Metropolis Daily had in this case ignored its professional obligations as an “institutional media” organization — conducting fact-checking, comparing the audio recording against statements from the accuser in the original case filings, etc. — and had behaved instead like a “self-media,” or zimeiti (自媒体).

KEY SOURCES:
WeChat public account “Jiu Wen Pinglun” (旧闻评论): 只谴责南都是不够的 | 据扯
WeChat public account “Fang Kecheng’s Journalism Lab” (方可成的新闻实验室): 刘强东案音视频：机构媒体的堕落与溃败

[5] Investigative reporter Liu Wanyong reveals the reasons for his departure from the media: The environment has already changed

On April 25, China Youth Daily journalist Liu Wanyong (刘万永) shared a message in his personal chat confirming he had already formally left the journalism profession, as he had indicated was his plan back in January this year. He wrote in his personal chat group: “It’s been a difficult journey. I’ve left, and even more now do I admire those who are still persisting.” On the same day, Japan’s Asahi Shinbun (朝日新闻) reported that Liu Wanyong was headed for a position at an asset management company, his wages expected to be 5 or 6 times what he earned at his newspaper. Liu clarified: “[Leaving China Youth Daily] isn’t just because of financial considerations. I had originally thought that I would spend my whole life as a journalist, but slowly it became impossible to write anything I wanted. This environment has already changed.”

Liu Wanyong graduated from Hebei University in 1996, going on to study at the China Journalism School at Renmin University (中国新闻学院) in 1998, and in the same year beginning work at China Youth Daily. He was later deputy editor of the special reports and in-depth reports department at the paper. He is a recipient of China’s Yangtze Taofen News Prize(长江韬奋奖), considered one of the country’s top journalism honors, as well as a China Journalism Award (中国新闻奖). In 2012, Liu was chosen as a delegate to the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. His investigative reports have included “The Business Dealings of a Retired High Official” (一个退休高官的生意经) and “A Public Security Official’s Daughter Attends College Under a False Name” (公安局政委女儿冒名顶替上大学). Liu made international headlines in 2006 after he was attacked by thugs at a courthouse in Liaoning province in apparent retaliation for the first of these two stories, published in May 2005 — which exposed the dirty dealings of the retired former mayor of the city of Fuxin city, Wang Yachen, who had essentially stolen a company and jailed its owner after first joining the company as an advisor.

KEY SOURCES:
WeChat public account “Media Jianghu” (传媒江湖): 刘万永透露离职原因：环境变了！现工资是中青报的五六倍
Dujia (独家): 调查记者刘万永宣布告别媒体：事非经过不知难！
WeChat public account “New Journalist” (新记者): 人物|刘万永：“不管是传统媒体或是自媒体，有人报道出来就是好事”

Today, on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, the political movement that arose out of student protests in Beijing in response to the Treaty of Versailles, “the youth” figure strongly in official propaganda. But as China’s leadership walks a tightrope, acknowledging this crucial anniversary while seeking to drain it of all hints of sanguine insurgence and youthful opposition (we are just weeks away from the anniversary of June Fourth), the story’s real protagonist is not China’s youth, but rather President Xi Jinping and the Party he leads.

The two most famous figures at the core of the “spirit” of the May Fourth Movement, Mr. Democracy and Mr. Science, are conspicuously absent.

“Chinese youth of the new era must continue to make full use of the spirit of May Fourth,” Xi Jinping told his audience at an official event last Tuesday to commemorate the anniversary. But what is that “spirit”? In Xi’s articulation, its essence is nationalism, a force that must be focused, moreover, through the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. The youth, said Xi, must “[take] as their task the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people, not failing the hopes of the Party, the expectations of the people, and the great trust placed in them by all people of Chinese ethnicity.”

If we ask what values — aside from the narrow ideology of nationalism and fealty to the Party — should guide Chinese youth today, we are again told that the answer lies with Xi Jinping and the Party. An official commentary placed prominently at the top of the front page of today’s edition of the People’s Daily bundles the entire question of the May Fourth Movement into the political ideology of Xi Jinping and his recent articulation of his “Six Hopes” for the youth of China.