The following commentary, written by former CMP fellow Chang Ping (长平), was published in Chinese last week by Deutsche Welle. We offer our translation here to help shed light on China’s recent move to combine its three major state-run broadcast networks into a single super-network to be called, in its external dimension, “Voice of China.”

Under an institutional restructuring plan announced today by Xinhua News Agency, called Program for the Deepening Reform of Party and Government Organs (深化党和国家机构改革方案), China has announced a deep restructuring also of the institutions overseeing the media and film industries.
We will have further comments on these changes in due course, but for now we would just like to provide full translation of the portions of the Program dealing with media and public opinion.

Naturally, one of the changes now getting the most attention is the complete razing of three major national media platforms — China Central Television (China Global Television Network), China National Radio and China Radio International — and the formation from their ashes of a new super-network to be called the Central Radio and Television Network (中央广播电视总台). The Program makes clear that the resources of all of three of these networks will be referred to in their external incarnation as “Voice of China” (中国之声).
Just to quickly give readers an indication of what this change means in terms of direct Party control from the center, China Central Television was previously overseen by the General Administration of Press, Publications, Radio, Film and Television (previously just SARFT), a department under the State Council. The super-network will now be situated as a state-sponsored institution, or shiye danwei (事业单位), directly under the State Council, and directly under the supervision of the Central Propaganda Department.
The bear, in other words, will be hugging its “mouthpiece” media even more closely now. And that is largely the point that comes through here — the tighter, more centralized control of media and ideology.
The opening of the Program emphasizes: “The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party is the basic nature and character of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Party, government, army, society and education — east and west, south and north, the Party leads all.”

(Section 11)
The Central Propaganda Department (中央宣传部) has unified supervision over news and publishing work. In order to strengthen the concentrated and unified management of news and public opinion work, strengthen the management of publishing activities, and develop and invigorate the publishing-related undertakings of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the management responsibilities of the General Administration of Press, Publications, Radio, Film and Television in the areas of news and publishing will be transferred to the Central Propaganda Department. Externally, the Central Propaganda Department will bear the sign ‘National News and Publishing Administration (National Copyright Office’) [‘国家新闻出版署 (国家版权局)].
Following reorganization, the principal responsibilities of the Central Propaganda Department concerning news and publishing management will be to put into practice the Party’s propaganda work policies; draw up management policies for the news and publishing industries and supervising implementation; manage administrative affairs for news and publishing; overall planning, guidance and coordination for news and publishing activities; industry development; supervising and managing the content and quality of published materials; supervising and managing the printing industry; managing copyright issues; managing the import of published materials.
(Section 12)
The Central Propaganda Department has unified supervision over film work. In order to better develop the unique and important role of film in disseminating ideas and in culture and entertainment, and to develop and invigorate the film industry, the management responsibilities of the General Administration of Press, Publications, Radio, Film and Television in the area of film management will be transferred to the Central Propaganda Department. Externally, the Central Propaganda Department will bear the sign ‘National Film Bureau’ (国家电影局).
Following reorganization, the principal responsibilities of the Central Propaganda Department concerning film management will be to manage administrative affairs for film; guide and monitor film production, distribution and screening work; organize the censorship (审查) of film content; guide and coordinate major film-related events of a national nature; to assume responsibility for overseas co-productions, and cooperation and discussion on film import and export.
(Section 35)
The creation of the National Radio and Television Administration (国家广播电视总局). In order to strengthen the Party’s centralized and unified leadership of news and public opinion work, and strengthen the management of important propaganda positions (宣传阵地), firmly grasping the right of leadership over ideological work, adequately develop the role of radio and television as the mouthpiece of the Party (广播电视媒体作为党的喉舌作用), the National Radio and Television Administration, a department directly under the State Council, will be built on the foundation of the radio and television management responsibilities of the [former] the General Administration of Press, Publications, Radio, Film and Television.
Its chief responsibilities will be to implement the Party’s propaganda guidelines and policies; to draw up, supervise and implement policies and measures for the management of radio and television; overall guidance and coordination of the radio and television industries, and of industry development; to promote the reform of system and mechanisms in the radio and television sector; to supervise, manage and censor (审查) the content and quality of radio, television and online audiovisual programming; take on responsibility for the import, storage and management of radio and television programming; to coordinate the promotion of the going out [overseas] of the radio and television section.
The General Administration of Press, Publications, Radio, Film and Television will no longer be retained.
(Section 36)
The creation of the Central Radio and Television Network (中央广播电视总台). Adherence to correct guidance of public opinion (坚持正确舆论导向), placing a high priority on the building and innovation of dissemination methods (传播手段), raising the dissemination force (传播力), guiding force (引导力), influence (影响力) and credibility (公信力) of news and public opinion — these are the key starting points in firmly grasping the right of leadership in ideological work. In order to strengthen the Party’s concentrated development and management of important public opinion positions, in order to enhance overall strengthen in radio and television media, in order to promote the integrated development of radio, television and newly emerging media, accelerating the disseminating capacity of international broadcasting, China Central Television (China Global Television Network), China National Radio and China Radio International will be combined to form the Central Radio and Television Network, which will serve as an institution (事业单位) directly under the State Council, returning to the leadership of the Central Propaganda Department.
Its principal responsibilities will be to propagate the theories, political line and policies of the Party; to plan and manage major propaganda reports; to organize the production of radio and television; to produce and broadcast premium radio and television products; to channel hot social topics; to strengthen and improve supervision by public opinion (舆论监督), to promote the integrated development of multimedia; to strengthen the building of international broadcasting capacity; to tell China’s story well.
The organizational structures of China Central Television (China Global Television Network), China National Radio and China Radio International are now eliminated.
The original names are to be retained domestically, while externally they will now be all known under the name ‘Voice of China’ (中国之声).
 
 

“Entering a New Era, Achieving New Acts.” This is the bright gold slogan emblazoned this week across the top of the official website of the People’s Daily — right over the top of an image of President Xi Jinping, identified as “the people’s leader,” or renmin lingxiu (人民领袖).
Xi Jinping’s new act, the amendment of China’s Constitution to remove term limits on the country’s presidency, paving the way for his own indefinite period of rule, has been the subject of fevered discussion outside China. Inside China, the topic is virtually impossible to broach, unless privately and in person.

The authorities have actively policed social media, including private chat groups, ensuring networked citizens do not have an opportunity to comment or speculate en masse. China’s cowed news media, meanwhile, have drowned the issue in a parade of noise, glorifying “the amendments” without offering any clear explanation of what these are or what they entail.
This approach was on full display in the article pinned to the top of the People’s Daily website yesterday. The piece, “Web users hotly discuss the constitutional amendment passed by the NPC,” is a compilation of comments reportedly made to the Strong Nation Forum (强国论坛) and the People’s Microblog (人民微博) about “the amendments” . They purr with praise about “protecting the fruits” of reform, “realizing the organic unity of the Party’s position,” or “enriching the constitutional spirit.” But the only hints as to the content of the recent amendments to the Constitution, which formally passed a vote by more than 3,000 NPC delegates on Sunday, come in a pair of posts alluding to the constitutional creation of a National Supervision System and the inclusion of “Xi Jinping Thought” in the Constitution’s preamble.
Unsurprisingly, the published comments make no mention whatsoever of the removal of presidential term limits.
But as I read through China’s non-coverage of these constitutional amendments, it struck me how far we have come in the dashing of liberal hopes for constitutional change since these hopes were voiced in late 2012 and early 2013, just at the dawn of the Xi era.
Marking the 30th anniversary of China’s 1982 Constitution on December 5, 2012, just weeks after he became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping said: “We must firmly establish, throughout society, the authority of the Constitution and the law and allow the overwhelming masses to fully believe in the law.” He also emphasized that “[no] organization or individual has the privilege to overstep the Constitution and the law, and any violation of the Constitution and the law must be investigated.”
In the wake of the anniversary, political reform advocates in China drew inspiration from Xi’s remarks. For them, “firmly establishing the Constitution” could be construed, and seized upon, as a means to push deeper social and political change through a process of actualization. The Constitution, they argued, already formed a consensus about China’s direction for the future. If the country could just put into practice the rights laid out in the Constitution — rights like “freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration” —  this would be immense progress.
On January 2, 2013, the China Media Project published an English-language translation of the New Year’s Greeting that opened the January edition of the liberal journal Yanhuang Chunqiu. Called “The Constitution is a Consensus for Political Reform” (宪法是政治体制改革的共识), the article argued that divisions over how to promote political reform, a “task of pressing urgency,” could be bridged by turning to the language of the Constitution. “As this new year begins, we have a new group of leaders, and certain changes in the way these leaders operate have been cause for encouragement,” said the article. “In this new year, what we hope among a multitude of other things is that there can be real action to make our Constitution real.”
This week, China’s Constitution did indeed get more real — in ways that liberal intellectuals find impossible to accept. The removal of presidential term limits came as a kind of culmination of the illiberal march of Chinese politics, through the very document liberal intellectuals had hoped just five years ago to make the blueprint of meaningful reform.
One has to imagine the insult cuts deep. Xi Jinping, it turns out, is a constitutional reformer after all. And now that he has detonated term limits on his own position as head of state, he can continue to be.

But the strange ambiguity in China’s constitutional pledges still runs just beneath the surface, even in the Party’s propaganda.
One of the comments in the piece on the People’s Daily website, reportedly offered by an internet user writing under the alias “Welcoming Justice” (欢迎正义) said: “Encouraging the people to study the Constitution, standardizing words and actions, will lend even more vitality to the new era. Revering the Constitution, respecting the Constitution, studying the Constitution and cherishing the Constitution. Those serving as officials and cadres must practice [the Constitution] through their actions, establish themselves as examples, and lay down the constitutional spirit. Those cadres who don’t understand the law, the people don’t need. Those officials who don’t understand the law, the ordinary people don’t welcome.”
And what if the people do study the Constitution? What if they expect the document, and the rights it stipulates, to be taken seriously by their officials?
Not to worry. These questions, and all others, are now firmly in the hands of one man, and there really is no need to “hotly discuss” them.

Web users hotly discuss the constitutional amendment passed by the NPC
March 12, 2018
On the afternoon of March 11, “Amendment to the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China” (中华人民共和国宪法修正案) passed by a substantial margin, drawing the focus of internet users. The vast majority of web users on Strong Nation Forum (强国论坛) and the People’s Microblog (人民微博) expressed the major significance and far-reaching impact of this amendment and urged its endorsement and active implementation.
. . . .
Web user “Daigo” (津哲代后) said: “The passing of the amendment shows the heart of the Party and the sentiment of the people.”
Web user “Little Cutie” (小可爱) said: “The amendment of the Constitution helps with sustainable development, helps with the continuity of the system, and lets the ordinary people see hope and an objective.”
Web user “Ren Yiping” (任毅平) said: “The advancement of the Constitution with the times preserves the people’s management of their own affairs, strongly defends national integrity, ethnic unity and social stability, and protects the fruits of 40 years of reform. It provides a powerful protection for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people from standing up to becoming prosperous to becoming strong.”
Web user “Erlong’s Truth” (二龙实话) said: “I wholeheartedly support the constitutional amendment. The times are changing, society is progressing and there is always room for the innovation of theories.”
Web user “Ding Guisheng” (丁贵生) wrote: “Governing the nation according to the law establishes the basis for justice and fairness. This is an important choice in ensuring the peace and stability of the country. Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for the New Era (习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想) benefits the long-term stability and development of the country . . . .
Web user Xu Xiaolin (絮筱霖) said: “Elevating the great achievements and precious experiences created by the people to the national constitution, realizing the organic unity of the Party’s position, the national will and the people’s wishes, is a successful instance of our Party’s governing of the nation.”
Web user “Aiminmao” said: “The writing of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for the New Era into the preamble to the Constitution provides a safeguard for the course of realizing the Chinese dream of the Chinese people! The constitutional amendment of the National People’s Congress will surely bring health and well-being to China in the new era.”
Web user “15191221122” said: “The Constitution has not only force but warmth, and is closer and closer to our ordinary lives.”
Web user “Crying Bird” (啼鸟) said: “If there are no laws to govern a country it will slip into chaos, and if the laws do not change they will decline. We must resolutely protect the authority of the constitution, supporting changes that accommodate the new situation of the new era.”
Web user “Big Meat-Eating Rabbit” (吃肉的大兔子) said: “The constitutional amendment will have an important influence on the struggle against corruption, patching up shortcomings in supervision, and it can more effectively support the development of the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
Web user “Mu Yanhong 102” (慕艳红102) wrote: “The life of the Constitution is in its implementation, and the authority of the Constitution is in its implementation. The process of constitutional amendment is also an opportunity to spread knowledge of the Constitution, and a process of enriching the constitutional spirit. We must fully utilize the rare opportunity afforded by the constitutional amendment, raising the constitutional consciousness of all the people, achieving among the people a consensus about the Constitution. This is especially the case for leading cadres, who must be models in the study of the Constitution, in honoring the Constitution and in promoting the Constitution.”
Web user “Welcoming Justice” (欢迎正义) said: “Encouraging the people to study the Constitution, standardizing words and actions, will lend even more vitality to the new era. Revering the Constitution, respecting the Constitution, studying the Constitution and cherishing the Constitution. Those serving as officials and cadres must practice [the Constitution] through their actions, establish themselves as examples, and lay down the constitutional spirit. Those cadres who don’t understand the law, the people don’t need. Those officials who don’t understand the law, the ordinary people don’t welcome.”
Web user “Bluetooth Dream Release” (蓝牙放飞梦想) said: “As a discipline inspection official, I resolutely support the constitutional amendment. The establishment of a National Supervision System will enable full-coverage monitoring of all public officials who exercise public power . . . . ”
Web user “Yun Liu Yi Jiangnan” (云柳亦江南) said: “As a grassroots Party member and official, I must take the earnest study and respect of the Constitution as the base of my life and work. I must do my part, protecting the Constitution and respecting the law, contributing my energies to this great Mother Country of ours!”
Web user “Not Forgetting the Original Intention, Always Moving Forward” (不忘初心一直向前) said: “As members of the Chinese Communist Party, we must support the amendment of the Constitution, serving as good and law-abiding citizens, and as qualified Party members.”

“To err is human,” Deng Yuwen, the former editor of Study Times, wrote in the South China Morning Post today. “And a leader who tolerates no checks on his power is even more likely to err, because power can make one arrogant and impervious to other views.” As the National People’s Congress opens tomorrow, one crucial focus will be a proposed change to China’s Constitution removing term limits for the presidency. As many commentators have warned this week, such a change would pave the way for Xi Jinping to rule for an indefinite period, and would undo a key political reform measure introduced by Deng Xiaoping. Potentially vesting great power in the person of Xi Jinping, as opposed to collective leadership, it would also raise serious questions about whether Xi’s leadership can be sufficiently adaptive, or whether it will, as Deng Yuwen said, be “even more likely to err.” There has long been reason to wonder, in fact, whether Xi Jinping isn’t sealing things up so tight that the system is gasping for air. In late 2015, one year before his elevation as “the core,” Xi Jinping put his foot down on “improper discussion of [the policies] of the central Party,” or wangyi zhongyang (妄议中央), a phrase that was added to the Party’s updated Disciplinary Regulations. Don’t chatter about the Party’s business, he seemed to say: Just follow my lead. Visiting key Party media a few months later, Xi gave a speech in which he stressed that the media “must be surnamed Party” — meaning that they must do the Party’s bidding. In the same speech he mingled oil and water by stating that “positive propaganda,” which has traditionally signalled suppression of critical news coverage, is at one with “supervision by public opinion,” the phrase that has long been synonymous with more probing, and even investigative, coverage. “Supervision by public opinion and positive propaganda are unified,” Xi said. Yikes. So where, then, does China’s Mr. Personality get his information? Some technologists argue that new technologies have already presented authoritarian states like China with a solution, making possible “a big-data dictatorship.” Those in power can count on endless streams of information, from social media sentiments to credit information, all harnessed through artificial intelligence. “Given that many dictatorships collapse as a result of poor information,” Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on Project Syndicate this week, “digital technologies could become an even more powerful prophylactic against bad decision-making than term limits.” In fact, the Chinese Communist Party has long dealt with the delicate balance between information controls it sees as imperative, and the need to ensure restricted flow of valued intelligence. We can see this tension in one of the Party’s oldest systems of official intelligence, the insider news briefs and journals known as “internal references,” or neibu cankao (内部参考). Cheng Li, a senior fellow at Brookings, noted in his book The Power of Ideas that these internal references are produced by a range of actors, from think tanks and government departments. They can sometimes circulate only at the most senior levels — for example, among Politburo members — and at other times may be available to provincial or county-level leaders. During the heyday of the commercial press in China, from the mid-1990s through around the Beijing Olympics, internal references were often tip sheets used by enterprising reporters, clueing them in to potential stories. A journalist for a major Party-affiliated newspaper in Beijing once told me that his paper produced internal reference documents only on an irregular basis, whenever there were critical stories that editors or their Party superiors determined could not be made public. When they did produce an internal brief on a story, this could circulate at quite senior levels in the capital, sometimes even getting an endorsement from a member of the Standing Committee. Other media may produce internal references on a more regular basis. Systematic study of the internal reference system would present obvious challenges. But it would be fascinating to discover how the system might have changed, or is now changing, in light of the explosion of big data. My guess is that internal references remain as much or more relevant today. Despite the faith of technologists, there are plenty of facts and observations that must still derive from good old-fashioned reporting. In any case, the news media in China remain very much involved in the manufacture of internal references — a reminder of how the Party regards media as arms of intelligence gathering as well as propaganda. Earlier this month, a commentary in The Beijing News voiced concern over the abuse of two local news journalists in Hebei province who had been investigating a pollution case. According to media reports, journalists from the Internal Reference team of Hebei Television, the province’s official television network, had gone to Quzhou County (曲周) in southern Hebei to follow up on reports of pollution by a local enterprise. The journalists were mobbed and seriously beaten by assailants who also stole their filming equipment, wallets and mobile phones. At some point, one of the journalists was bound by the assailants, who threatened to throw them down a well. A subsequent investigation showed that the enterprise in question had identified itself as a goat breeding cooperative, but in fact was manufacturing industrial plastic sprays, and flouting environmental laws. The commentary in The Beijing News portrayed the case as a worrisome disruption by local thugs (with the possible involvement or negligence of county officials) of a necessary process of supervision by the media — not as an agent of the public interest per se, but as an indispensable arm of the provincial leadership. “The undercover journalists had a special mission,” the paper wrote, “to represent the Hebei Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in conducting an undercover investigation, performing a supervision role.” The paper continued in its affirmation of the role of Internal Reference-related investigations:

Undeniably, if it had not been for the investigation by these journalists, this illegal workshop would have continued to illegally pollute. . . . Protect the journalist’s right to report, and allow them to carry out their work with ease, with the courage to expose problems in society, and they will uphold the social and public interest. If the opposite occurs, and the environment for reporting grows serious, and certain people can use violence to prevent reporting, beating and threatening journalists with impunity so that they feel a general chill, then this will necessarily mean the loss of the front line in news supervision (新闻监督), and the greatest loss will be the social and public interest.

It is fascinating to note what this passage reveals about mainstream official views of the role of the “journalist.” There is clearly a righteous tone about the value of their work — and yet, there was never any real expectation of exposure in this case, not public exposure anyway. The point was internal exposure to provincial leaders, who apparently tasked the reporters with the investigation. In this case, the “social and public interest” is to be served only in secret. In fact, the “general chill” of which the writer speaks has already happened to the media in the broader sense. Nothing makes this point more clearly than Xi Jinping’s conflation of “supervision” and “positive propaganda.” In the face of severe restrictions on news reporting, one might imagine the internal reference system offering some relief in the form of premium restricted access content. But one substantial weakness of the system is that it maps right on top of the Party-state bureaucracy, meaning that provincial officials, for example, who have direct control over outfits like Hebei Television, have an incentive themselves to remove or tone down reporting of potentially damaging stories. By contrast, one reason that the investigative reporting carried out (largely) by commercial newspapers from the end of the 1990s was so effective was that it utilized “cross-regional reporting,” or yidi jiandu (异地监督), meaning that papers from one administrative region would report on malfeasance in another. A paper in Guangzhou could report on corruption at the city level in a neighboring province without immediate fear of reprisal from its Party bosses in Guangdong. Xi Jinping does not seem to have much interest in this sort of intersectional supervision. He has brought to heel China’s once unruly (by today’s standards) press. His leadership has been marked across the board by greater centralization and a top-down approach. We might suppose that information is not getting bottlenecked, that it is filtering up to Xi, and to others who make the key policy decisions — that they are not “arrogant and impervious.” But the reality is that we have no way of knowing. No one does. And that has to tell us something.