Over the past three years, as the global pandemic and China’s strict lockdown policies closed the curtain on performances at live venues across the country, the spotlight turned instead to streaming platforms, which offered a new way for performing artists to be seen and heard. By June 2022, the audience in China for live online performances through streaming and short video platforms reached 469 million, more than double the audience at the start of the Covid lockdown just two years earlier.

Those numbers point to a market rapidly on the rise. But last week, a state-backed professional organization for the performing arts sector offered a more mixed assessment as it issued a set of new standards for live performance on streaming platforms.

“The rapid development of live online performances has played a positive role in boosting consumption, especially during the difficult period during the Covid-19 pandemic,” said the China Association of Performing Arts (CAPA), which doubles as a control and regulatory body for the performing arts sector. “However, it has also led to problems and negative events. The healthy environment for live online performance needs to be strengthened.”

In China, where content controls online have long been sold by the authorities as a matter of public health, this language is code for a tightening of political restrictions on livestreaming. CAPA and state media have argued that new consumer protections are necessary, but regulators are clearly keen to avoid breaches like that committed back in May by comedian Li Haoshi (李昊石), who offended the People’s Liberation Army by repurposing a propaganda slogan for a joke about his dogs. Read our in-depth analysis of CAPA and the Li Haoshi incident.

As China continues to emerge, sluggishly, from three years of Covid lockdown, the government is keen to ensure that live performances, both online and offline, adhere to political discipline — even as they contribute much-needed consumer activity.

The growth of digital platforms has opened up new space for a digitally empowered cultural creation, driving what official party-state media have called “the transformation, upgrading and high-quality development of the cultural industries.” The result has been a new online landscape of “digital performance products” (数字演艺产品) and “digital literary works” (数字文艺作品), including events like “online theater” (线上剧场) and “online concerts” (线上演唱会).

A Range of Censors Backstage

The new CAPA rules — which follow a set of definitions released back in March — broaden the association’s authority over livestreaming platforms and influencers, a reminder again of how the Chinese Communist Party leadership utilizes ostensible professional organizations (CAPA calls itself a “non-profit social organization”) to enforce its political line.

The rules make clear, first and foremost, that the content of live online performances on streaming platforms will be closely examined and regulated. This includes, according to a summary by the government’s official China Daily, the language online influencers use, how they present themselves (a broad standard), and the comments left by audience members. Comment moderation and deletion will also extend to the so-called danmu (弹幕), or “bullet comments,” scrolling on top of livestream performances.

Beyond platforms and influencers, the agencies that manage online performers will also be regulated and held responsible for managing the online influencers they represent. The net result of these measures will be greater caution on the part of platforms, agents, and influencers, which will be anxious to avoid running afoul of the authorities as they capitalize on a market that continues to grow as consumers emerge from the lockdown slump.

The fear that prompts such caution is the primary mechanism of political controls on media and content in China, and a strong case could be made that Li Haoshi’s punishment in May was a classic case of killing a chicken to frighten the monkeys (杀鸡吓猴) — a warning to a performance industry emerging from lockdown that the way forward to profit was the path of political discipline.

Offline Performances Make a Comeback

The new rules for live online performances come as livestreaming influencers face growing competition from offline concerts and events. In late March, China announced an end to a three-year suspension of concerts and performances from outside the country, signaling that the market was now open to (well-behaved) acts of all kinds.

During the first half of this year, there were a total of 193,000 live cultural performances in China — a number that does not include performances at so-called “entertainment venues” (娱乐场所) such as dance halls, karaoke establishments, and other locations offering popular entertainment. The number of cultural performances was up more than 400 percent from the same period in 2022, with total box office revenue reaching 16.8 billion RMB, or about 2.3 billion dollars (a nearly 700 percent increase), according to Henan’s Dahe Daily (大河报).

In a series of reports this month, Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily reviewed what it called the “concert economy” (演唱会经济). It noted that tickets for a concert performance by Jacky Cheung (张学友), the Hong Kong singer and actor, had been snatched up within minutes.

The Tianjin Daily reported on July 18 that as “the impact of the epidemic fades away,” there has been an eagerness on the part of the authorities and local governments across the country to reinvigorate the live performance scene, including with “policy guidance and incentives.” As Liu Kezhi (刘克智), head of CAPA and a focus of our in-depth look at the organization in May, told the Dahe Daily, large-scale concerts and music festivals have led the way in promoting local culture and tourism. When Taiwanese singer-songwriter Jay Chou (周杰伦) made a stop in Haikou on his 2023 World Tour, said Liu, this attracted more than 150,000 tourists to the city, at least 60 percent from outside Hainan province.

The Tianjin Daily raised the question of whether digital performances might face a dilemma as live performance venues roared back to life, or whether conversely, they might prove a competitive alternative, “ushering in a new chapter.”

Livestreamed performances are certainly here to stay, particularly for the small to mid-scale livehouse scene that filled a crucial gap online during the pandemic lockdown, and which has struggled to ride the post-pandemic wave in the midst of rising costs.

But once again, China’s leadership is setting the tone and turning up the volume on political and ideological controls. There is plenty of money to be made, and plenty of fun to be had — so long as everyone remembers who ultimately manages the stage.

With nearly constant notices these days of new rules, draft rules, and clean-up campaigns, these are busy times for the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the country’s top internet and information control body. 

In the most recent development, the Financial Times reported Tuesday that the CAC will require licenses for the release of generative artificial intelligence systems. This should not come as a surprise. As CMP wrote back in April, following the release of draft rules for AI applications and that emphasized “socialist core values,” the CCP has long prepared for the harnessing of AI developments. Just as was the case for traditional media outlets as they commercialized and developed in the 1990s, licensing is an obvious and crucial line of control for generative AI.

Released on Monday, the CAC’s list of 13 new rules to strengthen oversight of so-called “self-media” or “we-media” (自媒体), individual user accounts on social media platforms like WeChat that publish self-produced content, are more of a mixed bag. 

It might be easiest to think of this latest round of regulations as a set of upgrades to the existing regime of controls — like a set of patches or fixes. These fixes are both regulatory and political in nature. While some could be applied to curtail conduct in cyberspace that is truly harmful to the public, many work solely to enforce Party dominance of information. 

Let’s go quickly through a number of the regulations. 

The Power of Impersonation

The first of the 13 regulations concerns “imitative and counterfeit behavior” (假冒仿冒行为). It deals specifically with the problem of accounts that resemble or mimic official accounts operated by CCP organs, government agencies, official state media, and military offices. This type of behavior was specifically mentioned in the draft rules earlier this year, the CAC announcing at the time that it had shut down more than 100,000 fake accounts impersonating Party-state media and news anchors alone.

As we noted in “Fake News on the Front Line,” the astonishing extent of such fake official accounts, which probably just scratches the surface, can best be explained as an unintended result of CCP controls on information. As we wrote, “association with the institutions of power is really the only way to ensure that what one says, however false and self-serving, will be heard, perpetuated — and protected.” 

The new rules seek to curb this behavior by mandating “manual review” (人工审核) of any registered accounts on social media platforms that contain apparent references to official organs. It will likely be an uphill battle, given that controls themselves have created strong market demand for the privileges that come through association with official bodies. So long as the CCP and its institutions have a monopoly on expression, accounts seeking to profit and survive will find ways to join in that privilege.

Credentials for Containment

The second regulation offers a prime example of how what might at first seem like regulatory moves in the public’s interest are hobbled by a control mentality. This deals with the “strengthening of credential display” (强化资质认证展示). 

Specifically, self-media dealing with areas such as finance, education, healthcare, and the law which might be regarded strictly as professional fields are now required to be “strictly verified” (严格核验) by platform providers. This means that their “service qualifications” (服务资质), “professional qualifications” (职业资格), or “professional background” (专业背景) must be verified and clearly specified. 

If that sounds fair to you, and you imagine it might offer suitable protection for consumers who deserve reliable information, consider the recent case of 8am HealthInsight (八点健闻), a “think-tank-type media” (智库型媒体) specializing in health coverage that was shut down by the authorities earlier this month for unspecified violations. 

Launched in 2019, 8am HealthInsight was long known for its strong coverage of health issues in China, including planned reforms to national healthcare. In late 2022, the account, founded by former journalists working on the health beat, was named one of China’s “ten most innovative” information products. An introduction from Shanghai’s The Paper said the account “aims to provide professional and credible industry information for China’s medical and healthcare community.”

It is probable that 8am HealthInsight was shut down because it fell afoul either of the authorities directly, or of key vested interests in the healthcare industry in China who were unhappy with the account’s reporting. In either case, its closure is a clear loss for China’s public in terms of reliable health-related information and consumer protections. 

The CAC’s new “credential display” requirement does not at all guarantee that the public will have access to better information. What it does is remove the filter provided by professional journalism and information services more broadly. This is a typical autocratic move, one that has flourished in the digital era, allowing the party-state to communicate its “authoritative” information directly to the public.

8am HealthInsight and accounts like it will be disqualified because their reporting teams and content creators — however professional they are where it counts for consumers, in the reliability of information — will be unable to pass the strict verification test. The regulations will instead leave the field open only to licensed medical professionals and service providers in the healthcare industry, many of whom serve the government’s interests or their own commercial interests. 

Imagine, for example, a self-media account with healthcare service qualifications running misleading information about its treatments or other products. That is not a problem under these regulations, because what matters to the authorities is that the account is credentialed. Credibility and authority are subordinated to this credentialing process. Why? Because those who are credentialed can be trusted politically. That, in any case, is the operating assumption.

Requiring credentials, particularly for these sensitive areas, means those operating self-media accounts will already be within Party-controlled professional regimes. To understand how professional organizations in China work to control and restrain members, not to ensure professionalism, we recommend our recent analysis in “Comedy, Under the Watchful Eye of the State.” 

Sources of Contention

Related to this issue of the “authoritative” and credible as being about political trust, the third regulation from the CAC this week demands that self-media clearly label sources of information when releasing news related to domestic and international current affairs, public policies, and incidents in society —and that platforms insist on strict labeling standards. This is one point that Caixin Global mentioned prominently in its report on the rules, and this makes sense given the outlet’s own history with official restrictions on sourcing. 

In principle, being clear about the sourcing of information is a basic matter of professionalism. It makes sense, right? Knowing where your information comes from should be as essential as knowing where the food you put in your body comes from. But the treatment of this issue historically by the authorities makes it clear that the real priorities lie elsewhere. 

When the CAC, for example, issued its updated list in October 2021 of official authorized domestic sources for internet news providers that can be reposted and reprinted, Caixin was removed from the list despite the fact that it is generally regarded as one of the most professional and reliable journalism outfits. The real question dealt not with Caixin’s authority, but whether it could be trusted, when necessary, not to report the truth. 

The requirement on sourcing is likely to be applied in an expedient manner, with the assumption that official Chinese sources such as Xinhua News Agency and other state and provincial media (all licensed and connected to the system) are “authoritative” sources. If your source is a foreign news outlet such as the Associated Press, you are not going to label that source because accessing and using it at all is not permitted. You will have to avoid labeling the source, and therefore risk falling afoul of the regulation, or avoid posting the information at all.

If platforms strictly enforce this requirement on source labeling, this will strongly favor the use of official sources, which again will achieve the overarching political goal of reinforcing a party-state monopoly on information.

Who Decides? 

The question of authority again comes to the fore in the next three CAC regulations, which apply foggy content standards whose enforcement will be the prerogative of the content platforms hosting individual accounts. Because their primary interest is in compliance in order to maintain their business positions, we can safely assume that platforms will apply a sledgehammer approach as opposed to a surgical one. Making actual determinations to protect content that might not be a violation would be expensive, after all.

Platforms are required under the fourth regulation to “strengthen truthfulness management” (加强信息真实性管理). What does that mean? They are to crack down on practices such as “making something out of nothing” (无中生有), “interpreting out of context” (断章取义), “distorting the facts” (歪曲事实), and (this has to be a favorite) “patchwork editing” (拼凑剪辑).

The first three of these concepts have routinely been applied in China as sledgehammer attacks on information that is authentic and factual. In the Global Times, for example, it is Western media and the US Congress that have “made something out of nothing” in the case of human rights abuses in Xinjiang. In May last year, the CCP’s flagship People’s Daily attacked the American magazine Foreign Affairs for “distorting the facts” and “interpreting out of context” regarding the status of Taiwan — the terms appearing side-by-side in the report. 

In the right environment, in which the principles of professionalism and accuracy are upheld, such terms might point to a real debate about fake news and misinformation. But the CCP’s primary interest, salient in every declaration of media policy, is to uphold what it calls “correct guidance of public opinion,” meaning that information must follow the Party line. We have to assume, therefore, that it is the Party’s standard of the truth that platforms will be pressed to enforce.

Similarly, regulations five and six deal with “false information intended to mislead” (争议信息), and with rumors.

The CCP has a long history of using the accusation of “rumor” to target inconvenient truths, when in fact, as the communications scholar Hu Yong (胡泳) wrote more than 12 years ago, controls on information are one of the primary reasons why rumor runs rampant on the internet and social media. “Under the policy of ‘correct guidance of public opinion,’ the traditional media only selectively report major social and political events, and the standards are entirely within their hands,” Hu wrote. “Whatever is regarded as negative, destructive, causing chaos, or smearing is not permitted, and everything that is regarded as positive, constructive, encouraging and praising is openly proclaimed.”

The regulations on “false information” and “rumors” are certain to fall into the same political trap as the stipulations in the fourth regulation, to the detriment of real protections for information consumers. 

The vagaries of CAC regulation continue in the seventh item on the list, dealing with the “regulation of account business activity” (规范账号运营行为). This seems a particular area where a regulator, as opposed to a political actor, might do some good to protect information consumers. But the language is again hopelessly vague. Platforms must prevent accounts from “gathering negative information” (集纳负面信息), “hyping hot incidents in society” (蹭炒社会热点事件), and “commercializing disasters and accidents” (消费灾难事故).

Any one of those might describe some form of real abuse detrimental to the public. But their real intent is in fact to criminalize any genuine interest the public might have in consuming independent information on news stories and broad issues of social concern. If audiences show a keen interest in a given topic, or if they crave information on a breaking story, why shouldn’t self-media accounts compete to gather information on these “hot incidents”? Why must related reporting or opinion be seen as “negative”?

The answers to these hypothetical questions are surely obvious to our readers. When China’s cyber chieftains muddle the issue, however, it’s important to be absolutely clear: These regulations are hopelessly entangled with strict political controls on information, the overriding objective being to defend the Party’s interests — and this fact subverts any value they might otherwise have as regulations to protect the public interest.

This year marks the 10^th anniversary in China of the annual “media social responsibility reporting system” (媒体社会责任报告制度), instituted at the start of the Xi Jinping era by the Central Propaganda Department (CPD) and the All-China Journalist’s Association. The system obligates media organizations to make annual self-assessments of their work in the interest of enforcing self-discipline.

While the nominal objective is “social responsibility,” the reports make clear that the primary duties of Chinese media are political in nature.

Begun on a trial basis in 2013, with the first reports appearing from a small number of media outlets the following year, the media social responsibility reporting system encompassed 40 media organizations by 2018, including six at the central level. In the latest reporting cycle, more than 500 media outlets from the central level down to the county level submitted social responsibility reports — more than 100 new outlets added since the last cycle.

The reports offer a revealing glimpse into the enforcement of political priorities in China’s official media, including commercially-run spin-off publications, and even a number of local “convergence media centers” (融媒体中心), which have in recent years supplanted party-state print and broadcasting outlets at the lowest levels. The chief message emerging from all of these reports is that social responsibility is a matter of political conformity.

Politics First

The Table of Contents of the social responsibility report released by Xinhua News Agency, a ministry-level agency directly under the State Council acting as the country’s official newswire, provides the basic line-up of priorities that is generally followed in responsibility assessments across the board.

When it comes to form, there is little room for creativity in these reports, most of which are archived online at the official website of the All-China Journalist’s Association, an ostensible professional organization whose primary role is not to represent media professionals but to regulate and control them.

The preface first sets out the ideological positioning of Xinhua News Agency, and this section is virtually identical in all reports, regardless of the administrative level of the media outlet in question. Xinhua affirms that its work is led by the political thought of Xi Jinping, and by the “Two Establishes” (两个确立), the concept that defines Xi Jinping as the unquestionable “core” leader of the CCP, and his ideas as the Party’s bedrock.

Further, the preface affirms the principles of “Party spirit” (党性), and the Mao Zedong-era notion of “politicians running the newspapers” (政治家办报), essentially the notion that the CCP must directly control the media as opposed to allowing private outlets. This phrase, as we note in our CMP Dictionary, has made a dramatic comeback under Xi Jinping, and it is featured in all of the responsibility reports we reviewed (See the Nanfang Daily report here, for example).

Also of note are the mentions in the Xinhua preface of the need to maintain “guidance of public opinion” (again, media control), to “transmit China’s voice” (传播中国声音) — about the priority of external propaganda and the development of soft power — and to “propagate the Party’s ideas” (宣传党的主张).

The preface makes the political nature — or, more accurately, Party nature — of Xinhua explicit from the start. The first section of the report that follows immediately after, called “Political Responsibility,” is the outlet’s opportunity to sound off about all of the good work it was done on the CCP’s behalf.

It is immediately clear that the top priority at Xinhua News Agency is the power and personality of Xi Jinping — and this is mirrored across the board in these responsibility reports. The first line of the section reads: “We took the proper handling of propaganda on the ideas and image of General Secretary Xi Jinping as our top matter of priority and our number one work.”

The news agency notes — this is an assessment, after all — that it published “more than 17,000 reports” altogether on Xi Jinping throughout the year, including domestic reports that were picked up 52,000 times by other media outlets inside China, and “external reports” (对外报道) that were picked up by 7,400 media outlets overseas.

Xinhua touts several special features and columns, such as “Xi Jinping, Leader on the New Path” (新征程领路人习近平) and “Xi Jinping Stories” (习近平的故事), all of which, according to the news agency, “fully demonstrated the truth power and practical greatness of the General Secretary’s thought.”

The “Political Responsibility” section also covers “major topical reports,” which is Xinhua’s opportunity to praise itself for going all-out on the major story of 2022, which of course was the 20th National Congress of the CCP, where Xi Jinping was handed a third term as general secretary.

Serve the Sheeple

Beyond the prescribed propaganda themes of Xi Jinping and the 20th National Congress, both foregone conclusions well before 2022 dawned, Xinhua congratulates itself on the role it played in “channeling public opinion” (舆论引导), a concept formally introduced by Hu Jintao in 2008 that is about combining proactive news controls (such as keeping more freewheeling commercial media away from the scene of breaking stories) with the active release of state-sanctioned information.

The point of “channeling” is to direct public opinion on sensitive matters toward themes and questions that are more palatable for the leadership. Think of it as the shepherding of public opinion, one of the primary roles of the party-state media. Xinhua notes, for example, with not a whiff of the troubles that plagued China’s economy in 2022, that its coverage of the Central Economic Work Conference (中央经济工作会议) focused on the positives, “boosting confidence” (提振信心).

In a short section on “public opinion supervision” (舆论监督), which refers to the exposure of social and policy ills, Xinhua says that it “cleared up rumors” over the infamous case of the woman found chained in a shed in the city of Xuzhou, which had China’s internet in an uproar in January 2022. In fact, through the course of that case, Xinhua was one of the chief disseminators of official government information that continually dissatisfied and angered the public.

As the Beijing Winter Olympics kicked off, the authorities in China were keen to ensure that the story of the poor and neglected woman in Xuzhou did not turn attention to questions of government negligence. At institutional media, including central party-state media outlets such as Xinhua, there was a notable absence of reporting on the case. Information sources were almost entirely limited to “we-media” accounts on platforms like WeChat.

Eventually, Caixin Media did publish a more in-depth report on the story, but public doubts still lingered. Official government releases, meanwhile, failed to provide plausible explanations for the plight of the chained woman, and the gaps between official releases were often long, leaving an information vacuum that in this case was filled by “we-media” posts and internet discussion.

The Struggle for Global Opinion

One of the final points Xinhua notes on “political responsibility” are its active efforts to conduct international communication, disseminating a “credible, lovable, and respectable” image of China to the world — this being a reference to Xi Jinping’s remarks at a collective study session of the Politburo in May 2021.

Xinhua claims to have logged 15.6 million downloads of its English-language news app, and to have reached a total of 270 million fans globally for its various accounts on foreign social media platforms, including those such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube that are banned inside China.

In its 2022 responsibility report, the China Daily, an English-language outlet published by the Information Office of the State Council expressly for the purpose of conducting what the CCP still refers to as “external propaganda” (外宣), places a strong emphasis on overseas work. In its “public opinion channeling” sub-section under “political responsibility,” the paper begins by saying: “Based on the requirements of foreign propaganda, we effectively engaged in public opinion struggle and conscientiously safeguarded national interests.”

The term “public opinion struggle” (舆论斗争) is a hardline reference, reminiscent of language from the period of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), that suggests that the CCP is locked in a bitter battle for global public opinion with Western governments, media, and critics. The phrase was introduced by Xi Jinping in his first speech on ideology in August 2013.

In fact, the China Daily responsibility report takes a more overtly confrontational approach to the West than many other reports, saying that it “profoundly exposed the slandering and smearing of China by the US and the West.”

The report praises the work of “Media Unlocked Studio” (起底工作室), an affiliated social media brand active on domestic platforms like Douyin and shared through China Daily‘s account on YouTube and other platforms. It also mentions “Weihua Talks” (卫华有话说), a social media product that consists of regular interviews with Chen Weihua (陈卫华), China Daily‘s European bureau chief, who is well known for his antagonistic takes on Twitter, which have often included personal attacks on foreign journalists and China experts.

In its sub-section on “external communication,” the China Daily notes that its international edition “was distributed to 63 countries and regions around the world, strengthening the coverage of key populations.” The outlet also remarks that it “strengthened cooperation with overseas mainstream media, publishing more than 500 special editions in major media in 26 countries.” In fact, like most Chinese state media conducting “external propaganda,” the China Daily applies the word “cooperation” broadly, including arrangements that are purely pay-for-play, and generally involve the placement of advertising supplements in foreign newspapers.

When CMP looked at the financials for China Daily USA as reported under filings to the US government for the period from June-October 2022, the latest on record, it was clear that the newspaper is supported almost entirely by outlays from the Chinese government. Advertising accounted for just two percent of revenues. [Read more from CMP in “The Ins and Outs of China Daily“].

More than 40 years after its founding, the China Daily continues to rely almost entirely on the use of borrowed channels for which the Chinese government pays immense sums of money every year — or in other cases on the provision of free content to willing partners around the world. In its 2022 social responsibility report, the outlet says that it “strengthened online cooperation and dissemination, landing 17,000 multilingual reports in more than 320 mainstream media worldwide.”

The purpose of this year’s social responsibility report is not, of course, for China Daily to actually reflect on the limitations of its influence or the reasons why it has failed to draw advertisers, operate sustainably, or achieve wider credibility. The point is to signal that the leadership’s priorities are priorities it shares. And these priorities are applied across all media, regardless of size or relevance.

Since Xi Jinping came to power in late 2012, the CCP’s emphasis on external propaganda has strengthened notably around the concept of “telling China’s story well.” The manufacture of global discourse power has become an obsession with the leadership, and media and officials at every level of the country’s vast bureaucracy must scramble to demonstrate that they are doing their part for what is now a whole-society effort.

In its 2022 social responsibility report, the media convergence center for Haixi Mongol and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in the remote northwestern region of Qinghai — which has a population of just 500,000 over a territory almost the size of Germany — also notes its efforts in the area of external communication. But in the case of Haixi, external communication is chiefly about getting local news and propaganda seen at the national level, the closest it can hope to come to broader influence. The report boasts that “nearly 1,600 articles” were picked up by national and provincial-level media platforms, including People’s Daily Online, Xinhua News Agency and Qinghai News, the official site of the provincial government.

The same claims are made by China Space News (中国航天报), a national industry publication, and by Xinjiang’s Urumqi Evening News (乌鲁木齐晚报), the official CCP mouthpiece of the region’s capital city. The latter, after noting its efforts to “tell Xinjiang’s story well” and “communicate China’s voice well,” explains that 20 of its reports were picked up by the People’s Daily news app, and another 768 by Xinjiang Daily, the region’s official Party newspaper.

Only China Banking and Insurance News (中国银行保险报) seems to have neglected to sing its own praises in the area of external communication. The sub-section is left out of its 2022 report. But the newspaper notes in its “Political Responsibility” section that it actively promoted the 20th National Congress of the CCP and Xi Jinping’s governing concepts “in accordance with the requirements of the Central Propaganda Department.” It shares an image in the report of the front page of its October 17, 2022, edition — a page that looks identical in layout and treatment to thousands of other pages that appeared across the country that day.

We Could Have Done More

For Chinese media under Xi Jinping, the quickest path to social responsibility is one of uniformity and conformity. For all the talk in this annual reporting exercise of opening up new channels and reaching the hearts of the Chinese people, everyone in China’s board rooms and news rooms understands that the most important audience in this process is the same gigantic presence who stands at the center of all news and propaganda. Every assessment turns on the question of how well you have gratified the assessor.

Through their almost ritualistic acts of ingratiation, self-dealing praise, and political narcissism, the social responsibility reports filed by Chinese media across the country offer an illuminating glimpse into one of the most basic flaws of China’s political system, a flaw that has been amplified as Xi Jinping has seized ever greater power at the commanding heights of the CCP.

At the outset of the reform period, China’s media and Chinese society more broadly sought to move away from the “falsehood, bluster and emptiness” (假大空) that had caused so much pain and chaos during the Cultural Revolution [More in the CMP archives]. But in China today, “falsehood, bluster and emptiness” are once again the fuel that feeds politics and the media.

Perhaps the clearest illustration of this comes as the various social responsibility reports in this latest assessment round turn to the obligatory question of how they fell short in their work in 2022. In all reports, this is a simple section, usually a single line, called “Insufficiencies” (不足).

The inadequacies reported by the media outlets are nearly uniform in their lack of introspection, most suggesting in a self-complimentary way that there needs to be more of the same — more strong and persuasive articles, and greater influence in international communication. “Some work still needs to be further strengthened, so that news reports better reflect the hopes of the masses,” the Xinhua report says blandly. “In promoting the deepening of [media] convergence and strengthening of external communication there is also need for constant effort.”

“Thoughtful, insightful, and persuasive high-quality masterpieces need to be even greater in number,” says the People’s Daily, noting also that “there is still a lot of work to do in enhancing the effectiveness of international communication.” China Media Group, the conglomerate that encompasses giants like China Central Television and China National Radio, says much the same: “There are still certain insufficiencies in 2022 work. There is still room for improvement chiefly in the building of international communication capacity, and innovation-driven and creative development.”

In this mind-numbing context, innovation seems an impossible ask. And yet, in the era of generative AI, one has to wonder whether these bland statements — and possibly entire social responsibility reports and other documents — might be created through more efficient and innovative means. After all, in a political culture where praise and criticism alike have the uniform purpose of elevating the ruling Party and its leading men, is there any point in taxing human minds with the machine-like process of ingratiation?

Can we not imagine the great new era of ChatCCP?