Now Executive Director of the China Media Project, leading the project’s research and partnerships, David originally joined the project in Hong Kong in 2004. He is the author of Dragons in Diamond Village (Penguin), a book of reportage about urbanization and social activism in China, and co-editor of Investigative Journalism in China (HKU Press).
TWO YEARS AGO in Hong Kong, I sat around a conference table with some of the finest journalists to have worked in the Chinese media in the past two decades. Left and right of me were reporters who had broken major stories of corruption, malfeasance and cruelty, and who had, in the process, shaped the contemporary history of Chinese journalism — a history in which, from time to time, a broader notion of the public interest won out against the narrow interests of the Party-state.
Now, however, all of them were busy with start-ups (“innovation” being the buzzword of the day) having little or nothing to do with journalism. The low point for me came when one seasoned former reporter said with some bitterness: “I no longer think of myself as a journalist at all.”
Over the past few years, it has become increasingly clear that much of the experience the journalism profession in China has gained since the 1990s is being hollowed out by deeper economic, political and technological shifts in the media industry.
Many factors have driven an exodus of older talent from China’s media, from poor pay and the digital transformation of the industry — now hitting traditional Chinese media that for many years had seemed protected from the storms buffeting media elsewhere in the world — to the vagaries of censorship, which can sap the professional spirit. But the net effect of this shift is the progressive loss of professional journalism capacity in China’s media.
That capacity could take many long years to rebuild, particularly if the stringent controls we’ve seen under President Xi Jinping continue into the next decade, leaving few stories on which journalists can cut their teeth.
A 2016 survey on Chinese journalists by PR Newswire.
Falling pay (relative to cost of living) and rising pressure mean the entire journalism profession is skewing younger in China. A 2016 survey by PR Newswire showed that more than 80 percent of the “front-line journalists” reporting the news in China were born after 1985, meaning they were 30 years old or younger. By contrast, a survey of journalists in the U.S., conducted in 2013 by the School of Journalism at Indiana University, showed the median age had risen from 41 to 47 since 2002.
Just over 80 percent of the Chinese journalists surveyed for the PR Newswire study — 1,477 in all — reported monthly income below 10,000 yuan, or 1,450 dollars. To put these numbers in perspective, this means incomes for Chinese journalists haven’t budged from a decade ago, when Chinese media were heading toward the tail end of what had been a “golden decade” of journalism development, and when housing prices and other costs in major cities were a fraction of what they are today.
Last month, the youthfulness of China’s journalists became a topic of renewed debate on social media in China after former FT China editor-in-chief Zhang Lifen (张力奋) said at the Bo’ao Forum for Asia Annual Conference that while the journalism profession anywhere in the world must rely on cumulative experience, journalists in China treat the job as a “young rice bowl” profession — in other words, as something to be endured only for a few years early in a career before one moves on to a job with real pay and a real future.
Zhang noted how, during coverage of the annual National People’s Congress that same month, many young Chinese journalists had become distracted from the story at hand, pulling delegates (some of whom are celebrities) aside to pose for selfies. “Watching them, old journalists like us thought on the one hand that they were just having fun,” said Zhang, “but on the other hand that this was really not how journalists should behave.”
A reporter takes a selfie in 2016 with a famous singer Song Zuying, a delegate to the annual Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress. This photo appeared that year in a photo series featuring female journalists taking selfies at the NPC.
Is Chinese journalism, on top of all of its other problems, plagued with youth and inexperience?
These questions about journalism in China as a “young rice bowl” profession have been kicked around for a number of years now. Following the disappearance in March 2014 of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a story that drew intense interest in China, many internet users were appalled by the inability of Chinese journalists to get valuable scoops like those reported by the likes of CNN, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Columnist Sun Letao (孙乐涛), writing for the Guangzhou-based Time Weekly, noted that youth and inexperience in the media had become evident on a number of stories that spring:
The MH370 incident just happened to coincide with the two meetings [of the National People’s Congress and the CPPCC], generally a yearly highlight for serious traditional media. And what audiences witnessed were great numbers of young reporters, looking like they had just stepped out of college . . . diligently and firmly waving down delegates and stopping representatives to ask the same stereotyped questions, and writing the same stereotyped reports.
For Sun and many others, the failure of Chinese media to compete in reporting the MH370 incident, a story of core interest to the domestic audience, exposed the callowness and incompetence of the country’s journalists. These were not just days of disaster for the aviation world — they were “days of disaster for Chinese media.”
These “days of disaster” have persisted since 2014, as Chinese media have remained virtually silent on major breaking stories of the kind that in years past might have drawn more aggressive coverage. During this period, only the Tianjin explosions in August 2015 have offered a truly notable exception to the lull in quality reporting by China’s domestic media. The explosions were a story of such immense scale, unfolding in a highly populated urban area, that coverage was impossible to quell entirely.
A job ad from the Chengdu Evening News, looking for commentary writers under the age of 40, and reporters under the age of 35.
While broader political and industry trends are no doubt having an effect on the staying power of older professionals in the media, some point out that there is also a pre-existing bias toward younger professionals in hiring for media jobs. Many media in China, old and new, routinely advertise journalism jobs by prioritizing applicants “under the age of 35.”
In the wake of the comments by former FT China editor-in-chief Zhang Lifen, an article on a WeChat public account shared screenshots of a recent job placement from the Chengdu Evening News, a major commercial newspaper in Sichuan province, which was looking to hire 23 reporters, all “under the age of 35,” as well as six commentary writers “under the age of 40.”
Using age as a hiring standard, said the WeChat article, might seem understandable given the fiercely competitive nature of the news profession, which sometimes requires late or unpredictable shifts to cover breaking stories, or to get print editions out the door. The pressures of the media workplace can demand a great deal of journalists, and younger staff are better equipped — or so the argument goes—to handle that pressure.
Journalists taking selfies together outside the Great Hall of the People in 2016. Photo part of a series on female journalists taking selfies during the National People’s Congress.
Even if all of the above were true — and there are plenty of arguments against — energy is no substitute for experience. If better, more professional reporting is the desired outcome, young journalists need the benefit of working with older and more seasoned colleagues.
The discussion inside China of the reasons for journalism’s flagging appeal among older — even just slightly older — professionals tends not to dwell on censorship, the elephant in the room. But the fact is that media controls, now more stringent and more effective than at any time in the past two decades, have a constraining effect on all aspects of the profession.
The Chinese Communist Party has no interest, ultimately, in more professional reporting. As President Xi Jinping emphasized in his speech on media policy in February 2016, the media must “sing the main theme and transmit positive energy” (唱响主旋律, 传播正能量). They must, in other words, be obedient servants of the Party and its objectives.
All three of the reasons cited in the recent WeChat article for journalism becoming a “young rice bowl” profession in China — poor pay, health and well-being, and murky future prospects — might be resolved if the industry was permitted to develop with a sense of professional purpose. The article, however, could only hint at this underlying malaise. “Before, we called journalists the ‘uncrowned kings,’” it said. “Now, they are just the temp workers of journalism.”
CHINESE MEDIA REPORTED on April 17 that White Deer Plain (白鹿原), the television drama adapted from the novel of the same name by Chen Zhongshi, had been shelved after the airing of a single episode. It is not yet clear what the reasons are for the pulling of the drama — whether, for example, it is a suspension ordered by the authorities, or a decision taken by the show’s distributors — and there is so far no indication of whether or when the series might air again.
While broadcast authorities in China often nitpick films and dramas, subjecting them to censorship throughout the production process, abrupt withdrawals from the broadcast lineup are rare, says Cai Yiming (蔡一鸣) at Media Internal Reference (传媒内参). One of the most recent cases was the suspension in January 2015 of the period drama The Empress of China, which was pulled to make additional cuts after officials said it contained “unhealthy scenes.” The concern in that earlier instance was plunging necklines and a surfeit of exposed skin, and the move from regulators drew widespread ridicule from Chinese online — sometimes in very creative ways — before and after the series re-aired.
In a pair of identical posts to their respective official Weibo accounts just before noon on April 18, the broadcasters of White Deer Plain, Jiangsu Television and Anhui Television, said cryptically: “In order to obtain better broadcasting results, the drama White Deer Plain will be broadcast selectively. Thank you for your attention!”
Media Internal Reference, a WeChat public account observing China’s media industry, offered two speculations making the rounds in China as to the reasons for the sudden pulling of the drama.
One possible reason observers have noted is that China Central Television, the state-run broadcaster, intends to “offer an olive branch” to Jiangsu Television and Anhui Television, two of its major competitors, working with them to broadcast the series. It is unclear, however, why such an arrangement would be to the advantage of either of the networks. Another possible reason, said Media Internal Reference, is that the distributors of White Deer Plain fear the immense popularity of In the Name of the People, the anti-corruption drama airing on Hunan Television, will be a drag on ratings for the show.
Political sensitives are of course a third possibility. The Global Times, a spin-off of the official People’s Daily newspaper, ran an English-language report late Tuesday on the show’s sudden disappearance. But that report is now missing, calling up a server error. A cached version of the article is available, but a cached version of the article is available and does discuss possible political pressure.
As of Tuesday afternoon, no other reasons have been provided for the takedown. Chinese netizens have speculated that it may have been due to the appearance of politically related content.
In his post on Tuesday, Du [Ren, a film director] speculated that one of the reasons behind the removal may be related to the main character’s political background and tragic ending. This post was removed later that day.
The original newspaper headline for the story in the Global Times was “Mysterious Disappearance.” In any case, the situation as it stands now is without clear precedent.
Just days before the first episode aired on April 16, Tsinghua University hosts cast members from the White Dear Plain series for a discussion.
In the past, the authorities have leaned on some television programs after receiving a high volume of complaints from concerned viewers. Such a scenario seems unlikely in this case, given the fact that White Deer Plain aired for only a single episode.
Chen Zhongshi’s novel, which sweeps across the end of the Qing dynasty, the Republican Period, the Japanese invasion and the early days of the People’s Republic of China, does contain sensitive political content and is said to have gone through several rounds of censorship ahead of publication in 1993 by the People’s Literature Publishing House. The book won the Mao Dun Literature Prize four years later, but only after Chen was asked to make further alterations.
FOLLOWING A DAMNING REPORT over the weekend by China’s state-run broadcaster, China Central Television, alleging the proliferation of vulgar content through popular live streaming apps, authorities in Beijing met yesterday with the operators of three popular apps, ordering them to fully submit to “rectification,” or zhenggai — a term that refers in Chinese to an overhaul of operations, possibly involving the removal or reshuffling of management staff.
The three app operators were reportedly “invited to discussions” with the Beijing municipal office of the Cyberspace Administration of China and ordered to immediately desist from unspecified violations of Chinese regulations. They include Toutiao (今日头条), an app that offers automated selection of news stories, and “Volcano Live” (火山直播) and “Pepper Live” (花椒直播), both social platforms for live video streaming. Toutiao was apparently included in the action against live streaming services because it began providing regular links to live streamed shows last year.
The “discussions” reportedly involved the municipal public security bureau as well as the Administrative Law Enforcement Corps of the Culture Market (文化市场行政执法总队), which often spearheads local campaigns in China against obscene or pornographic content.
The Administrative Law Enforcement Corps has already opened investigations against the above-mentioned live streaming services, state media reported, and will refer criminal cases against individual live broadcasters — presumably meaning users of the services — to the police. The next step, according to media reports, is for the three official agencies to take up the issue of content violations with Apple Inc., “demanding that it strengthen review procedures for live streaming services offered through its AppStore.”
The Volcano Live app as it appeared in the AppStore on April 18, 2017.
Live streaming apps emerged in China during the second half of 2015, developing rapidly. By the end of 2015, the country had close to 200 live streaming platforms in operation. The emerging industry experienced tremendous growth in China in 2016, reaching an estimated 344 million users by year’s end.
But live streaming apps have also come under intense scrutiny. Earlier this month, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the internet control body created by President Xi Jinping in 2014, announced that it had shut down 18 live streaming apps operating illegally, saying “anchors,” or individual program hosts, had “spread illegal content, dressed in military or police uniforms or were scantily dressed and acted flirtatiously.”
“The online behavior of the anchors violated relevant internet information service or live streaming laws and regulations, offended socialist core values, and brought negative impact to the healthy growth of the young and teenagers,” the CAC said.
The agency has so far blacklisted close to 2,000 anchors it said had “severely violated relevant regulations,” preventing them from registering new accounts on live streaming platforms.
While the report from CCTV and campaigns against live streaming have emphasized the need to restrict indecent content for the benefit of Chinese youth, it is also clear that tightening restrictions are part of a broader effort to assert control over all forms of content finding space through these new services.
Back in January, an article in the People’s Tribune, published by the official People’s Daily, noted that streaming platforms made it difficult to control “guidance of speech” (言论导向), a reference to the overarching goal of social and political control through the media. The article also said some content on live streaming platforms disadvantaged the “correct channeling of public opinion,” a term denoting the Party’s control and manipulation of information.
“Owing to the fact that online anchors do not require examination of credentials to start working,” it said, “some anchors lack political literacy and media integrity. They take a shallow view of problems and wantonly criticize political events, inciting the sentiments of the people and demonizing public figures. Their inflammatory and severe language disadvantages correct channeling of public opinion, harms the development of general political literacy, and even unleashes irrational and extreme ‘patriotic’ behavior, doing damage to society.”
Soon after news of the “discussion” with the three apps went public yesterday, one of the companies concerned, Pepper Live, posted a notice online in which it thanked CCTV for its “attention to and monitoring of the live streaming industry,” and pledged to improve its oversight, helping to “clean up the live streaming environment.”
Noting that it already had 600 internal staff dedicated to content review on a 24-hour basis, the platform said it would “further expand the intensity of oversight” in light of “line-balls” — a reference to media content that falls just out of bounds or pushes the envelope.
“As an industry that is still very young, live streaming is in a period of rapid development, and a number of problems have emerged in this process,” read the notice from Pepper Live. “As we strengthen our internal controls, we also call on our colleagues in the live streaming industry to respect national laws and regulations, strengthening the oversight and management of live streaming content, and building a green and healthy live streaming environment.”
Half an hour ago, US President Trump sent out a tweet saying: 1, “I explained to the President of China that a trade deal with the U.S. will be far better for them if they solve the North Korean problem!” 2, “North Korea is looking for trouble. If China decides to help, that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them! U.S.A.”
The recent pageantry surrounding the fifth and final session of China’s 12th National People’s Congress — and all of the hubbub over growth targets, budgets and measures to curb (still) rising housing prices — was all in a sense window dressing for a far more important political message: the unassailable position of President Xi Jinping as “the core” of the Chinese Communist Party leadership.
As we draw closer to the crucial 19th National Congress of the CCP, to be held later this year, we can expect that message to intensify.
Since he came into power in 2012, Xi Jinping has managed to consolidate his position in a way we have not seen since era of Deng Xiaoping. By 2014 Xi was already being trumpeted in the official state media with a vigor we had not seen in a quarter century. According to CMP Director Qian Gang’s study that year of the names of past and present leaders in the People’s Daily, the CCP’s flagship newspaper, Xi’s name appeared both on the front page and inside pages of the paper with a frequency more than double that of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.
Xi’s status was elevated further in October last year at the 6th Plenum of the 18th National Congress. He was designated “the core” (习核心), something neither of his predecessors in the post-Deng era managed — although the term “leadership core” (领导核心) was sometimes used in official discourse during the Jiang era.
During the “two meetings” this month, as policies and prescriptions took center stage, Xi’s core status was the backdrop. In his report to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the country’s ostensible advisory body, Yu Zhengsheng mentioned the core status of Xi Jinping no less than six times. Well, you may wonder — whose counting?
But that is precisely the point. In the opaque world of Chinese politics under the CCP, words do matter. They matter so much, in fact, that one of the most crucial questions we must ask now, months ahead of the 19th National Congress, is exactly what word or phrase will come to symbolize the power of Xi Jinping and his governing vision?
Xi Jinping may be “the core,” but that core cannot remain empty. The question, then, is what “banner term,” or qizhiyu (旗帜语), will announce his political legacy to the world? How Xi is able to frame his legacy could tell us a great deal about how he plans to act — including, for example, whether he plans to seek a third term in 2022.
We are knee deep already in the esoterica of Chinese political discourse, in the “diction and doublethink” that are a living part — even if we choose to ridicule and dismiss it — of the way politics work in China. So allow me to recap.
Every leader of any consequence in the history of the Chinese Communist Party has had his own “banner term,” a concise (more or less) turn of phrase that is meant to sum up his contributions and, more importantly, his importance to that history itself. In the world of CCP discourse, the “banner term” becomes the coin of the realm — until another important leader comes along to mint a new one.
We have had “Mao Zedong Thought” (毛泽东思想), the original banner term under the CCP. We have had “Deng Xiaoping Theory” (邓小平理论), the phrase encompassing the ideas of the market reformer — and managing their continuity with the Party’s socialist orthodoxy. We have had the “Three Represents” (三个代表), the guiding theory of Jiang Zemin. And we have had the “Scientific View of Development” (科学发展观), Hu Jintao’s blueprint, in the broadest terms, for the creation of a “socialist harmonious society.” Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents” was written into the Party Charter (党章) at the 16th National Congress in 2002, just as he was stepping down. Hu Jintao’s “Scientific View of Development” was written into the Party Charter at his halfway mark, during the 17th National Congress in 2007. So what of Xi Jinping’s banner term?
Over the past few years, the amateur astronomers of Chinese political discourse — and in this field, we are all amateurs — have spotted a number of possible candidates. One of the favorites has been the “Four Comprehensives” (四个全面), encompassing the “comprehensive building of a moderately wealthy society, comprehensive deepening of reforms, comprehensive governing the nation according to law, and comprehensive strict governance of the Party.”
The phrase has a certain banner term bravado, but it lacks originality. It is similar in meaning to Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents” — and in intonation it is too much like both the “Three Represents” and the “Scientific View of Development.” Hardly the stern stuff of a leader who has, for the first time in generations, promoted himself as “the core.”
How about the phrase “the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s series of important speeches”? We’ve certainly seen a lot of this one since 2013. But, no. The term does not have that freshly-minted feel, and it is too long.
Banner terms must be pithy, in the Leninist sense of the word. They must be phrases of consequence, with the soaring gravitas of “isms” (主义), “ideas” (思想), “theories” (理论), “strategies” (战略) or “concepts” (观念).
In recent months, we’ve seen a new phrase glinting faintly among the stars of Chinese discourse — “. . . the new concepts, new ideas and new strategies of governance since the 18th National Congress.” This has the basic tone of the banner term, but it lacks intensity and is too verbose. But things may have shifted last Thursday night.
During the March 16 broadcast of Xinwen Lianbo, the nightly official newscast on China Central Television, a new phrase was introduced as the anchor remarked how the foreign press had reported on the National People’s Congress:
Every year, coming with the spring, the two meetings [of the NPC and CPPCC] bring a new atmosphere for China and the world. During the two meetings this year, many international media reports said that Xi Jinping governing concepts were threaded through the two meetings, and they believed that the two meetings created ‘global expectations’ . . .
And there we have a very sound candidate for Xi Jinping’s banner term: “Xi Jinping’s Governing Concepts” (习近平治国理念).
Lending further credence to this phrase is the fact that it appeared one day earlier in a large headline in Reference News (参考消息), the newspaper published by the official Xinhua News Agency that compiles the views on China revealed in the foreign press.
The phrase “Xi Jinping’s Governing Concepts” appears in a headline in the March 15, 2017, edition of Reference News, published by Xinhua News Agency.
According to CMP Director Qian Gang (钱钢), this new phrase, “Xi Jinping’s Governing Concepts,” is the closest we have come so far to a probable new banner term for the most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping.
Analysts have speculated, given Xi Jinping’s powerful profile, on whether his banner term might include his name — something that has not happened since Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. The question was whether Xi might be “name-crowned,” or guanming (冠名), through his designated banner term.
If this new phrase is indeed Xi Jinping’s banner term, then this is what we are witnessing: Xi’s crowning as a paramount leader to guide China through a new period of historical transition.
The hypothesis many observers in China have put forward — most of them quietly — is that Xi Jinping’s banner term would probably consist of his name plus a major concept idea. But this is a tricky game. “Xi Jinping-ism” (习近平主义) would be too lofty. Not even Mao dared add “ism” to his name, which would have put him on equal footing with Marx.
“Xi Jinping Thought” (习近平思想)? This is a possibility. When the Sixth Plenum of the 18th National Congress ended last fall, one scholar stated on Phoenix Online: “The articulation of the Four Comprehensives tell us that Xi Jinping thought is already mature.” It was a testament to Xi Jinping’s position and power as “the core” that such words could be spoken at all.
How about “Xi Jinping Theory” (习近平理论)? This is possible too. But there would be an overlap with “Deng Xiaoping Theory” (邓小平理论). And no leader worth his salt likes to share.
This leaves us with two distinct possibilities. We have “Xi Jinping Strategy” (习近平战略) and “Xi Jinping Concept” (习近平理念). Between the two, “concept” is slightly more elevated in status, more befitting a leader who feels little need to compromise.
The emergence Thursday of “Xi Jinping’s Governing Concepts” marks the first time we have, through important official Party media, a possible banner term perfectly suited to the above reading of China’s current political situation, and to the implicit laws of CCP discourse.
“Xi Jinping’s Governing Concepts” is not as soaring as either “thought” or “theory.” But an additional advantage may be that it has a more practical feel to it. It would be just audacious enough, while still in keeping with Xi Jinping’s down-to-earth public perception.
This could very well be our candidate. But there is another distinct possibility — that this could be just the first step in a two-step process leading to the ultimate crowning of Xi Jinping. The first step would be the deployment of “Xi Jinping’s Governing Concepts” for the 19th National Congress this year. This could then be shortened to “Xi Jinping Concept” in 2022, in time for the 20th National Congress.
And who knows? By that time, looking at his third term in office, no-nonsense Xi might qualify for the greatest nonsense of all — that coveted “Xi Jinping Thought” (习近平思想).
Writing last week in Guangming Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Central Propaganda Department, propaganda chief Liu Qibao (刘奇葆) urged journalists to work toward the constant innovation of “style” (文风), finding ways to make the Chinese Communist Party’s policies and positions palatable to the country.
Chinese leaders have long been exercised with the question of how to bring Party agendas down to earth from the heights of fustian jargon.
In a 1942 essay called “Rectifying the Party’s Style (整顿党的作风), Mao Zedong said that while the Party’s policies and achievements were “correct and without problems,” there were serious issues with the “style” employed by leaders and intellectuals. There were still some areas, Mao wrote, where “our stylistic expressions are incorrect.” And this could be seen particularly, he said, in the “defect of the Party’s stereotyped writing style.” To put it simply, the issue was rigid bombast, the parroting of Party language as a formalistic exercise, without any thought to the real content of one’s utterances.
Grappling with “the Party’s stereotyped writing style,” or dangbagu (党八股), was the subject of another of Mao’s 1942 speeches in Yan’an that was published as a special volume, Opposing the Party’s Stereotyped Writing Style.
Even in those early days before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong wanted to eliminate the scourge of formalistic Party style, ushering in a more lively form of expression. The dream lives on.
Deng Xiaoping too advocated for “shorter utterances, truer utterances and fresher utterances” (讲短话、讲实话、讲新话). Hu Jintao, who in 2002 advanced the media policy of the Three Closenesses (三贴近), the idea that media styles should be more direct and relevant to audiences, talked in 2007 about the need to “improve study styles and writing styles, simplifying documents at work conferences.”
In a 2010 address at the Central Party School, Xi Jinping spoke about the important challenge of speaking in language the people can understand.
In May 2010, two and a half years before he became General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping gave a speech at the Central Party School in which he said: “Writing style is no small matter. Comrade Mao Zedong once said that, ‘styles of study and styles of writing are expressions of Party style.’ Party style determines writing style, and writing style is an expression of Party style. From the state of writing style the people can determine the Party’s work style and evaluate the image of the Party — and from this observe the situation with respect to the Party’s realization of its goals.”
That’s quite a mouthful. Perhaps what Xi Jinping was trying to say is: How we express ourselves as a Party affects how the people understand us.
Liu Qibao’s most recent contribution to this growing corpus of writing about the Party’s style is suitably titled, “The Reform of Style, Ever on the Road.” It begins by parroting (plagiarizing?) Xi Jinping’s 2010 remark: “Writing style is no small matter.”
The following is just a taste of the abstruse jargon Party leaders employ to talk about the need to rid themselves of jargon.
The Reform of Style, Ever on the Road
改文风永远在路上
March 3, 2017 / Guangming Daily
Liu Qibao (刘奇葆)
Writing style is not small matter. Behind writing style are ideas, and writing style is an expression of Party style. From the state of writing style the people can determine the Party’s work style. It can be said that writing style concerns the image of the Party, the Party’s relationship to the people, and concerns the development of [the Party’s] work. General Secretary Xi Jinping places great priority on the question of writing styles, pointing out the we are always on the road of advancement of writing styles, and emphasizing that words must have substance and we must oppose the ‘long, empty and fake’ while promoting the ‘short, real and fresh.’” At the Party’s news and public opinion forum, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized particularly the need to rectify work and writing styles, and he pointed out that good news report must rely on good work style and writing styles. We must abide by the spirit of Xi Jinping’s important speech to further advance the urgent mission and responsibility of transforming work styles and rectifying writing styles. The News Frontline Must Adhere to the Rectification of Writing Style
The news frontline (新闻战线) are the advance soldiers in the rectification of writing style, and they have an important responsibility on the question of rectifying writing styles. [NOTE: “News frontline” here refers to Chinese journalists]. News reports with favorable writing styles can raise the attractiveness, appeal and accessibility of the Party’s theories, political line and policies, and they can promote good writing styles and practices among Party members. Since the 18th Party Congress, the news media has worked hard to advance writing styles, and has achieved clear results . . . But we must recognize that the news media has a long road ahead in the rectification of work styles, and to varying extents old expressions still persist, pretty but empty words are prevalent, and rigidly conventional expressions are common . . .
ZHU BINGKUN HAD THE SURPRISE of her life on Sunday. Imagine: you’re an animator for The Beijing News, one of China’s most (even now) respected commercial newspapers. Shortly after Spring Festival, you return to the office and find a new job waiting — to design a graphic video elucidating the government’s accomplishments since its annual work report last year.
You put in long hours with your design team, the bunch of you often dragging yourselves to breakfast as soon as you go off shift. You’re burning the midnight oil along with your colleagues at China Daily Online, because the client . . . Oh, did I mention your client? Your three-week project is for the General Office of the State Council — for China’s government, in other words. The client wants results “quite urgently.”
You do the job, of course. You’re all professionals. The result is a short mobile-ready video, two minutes and 50 seconds in length, including 32 slides that summarize the government’s accomplishments over the past year.
March 5 comes, a Sunday like any Sunday. You crawl out of bed, check the news on your mobile . . . And there it is, the animation video you worked so hard to get right. Only it’s not just anywhere. It’s being shared directly with delegates to the National People’s Congress and its advisory body — the richest 100 of which are all dollar billionaires (but let’s not talk about that) — through a scan code on the cover page of the government work report itself.
A scan code in the upper right-hand corner of this year’s Government Work Report from the General Office of the State Council takes delegates to a handy graphic representation of accomplishments.
As Zhu Bingkun explained her reaction to China Youth Daily: “So this is what they were for, the slides I had worked on over and over, having breakfast when I got off work, me and the team busy from 4PM to midnight!”
And what did the team think? “When they saw it, everyone was totally excited!” said Zhu.
From start to finish, Zhu told the newspaper — in a report that was shared through the Xinhua News Agency website and many other media — the team was unaware of how the graphic was to be used.
In the hubbub of the ongoing NPC, this story is grabbing headlines in Chinese media. Read the coverage and you could be forgiven for thinking the first ever appearance of a scan code in China’s government work report is indeed important news.
“First Time!” a headline declared enthusiastically yesterday in the politics section of Caijing Online, one of the country’s best-regarded media outfits. (Read the fine print, however, and you find that this article comes from Gov.cn, the official website of the above-mentioned client, the General Office of the State Council.)
The story makes the top of the media section today at People’s Daily Online, where the article notes that China’s premier, Li Keqiang, encouraged delegates yesterday to “scan the code.
The QR code, it seems, it being pushed this year as a symbol of sorts for the government’s professed openness and transparency. Also on Sunday, media reports said, codes were posted at the “Minister Channel” (部长通道) outside the entrance to the Great Hall of the People. There was no longer any need for reporters to “flag down” (拦) government ministers and patter them with questions — they could simply “scan-code” the ministers, submitting their questions over mobile.
A number of reports have noted Premier Li Keqiang’s words during last year’s NPC, as he met with foreign journalists: “Openness is the norm, and lack of openness is the exception,” he said. “For especially those matters of financing, budgeting or other measures directly concerning the public interest, we should increase the level of openness, so the public can be completely clear about these things at a glance, like scanning a QR code.”
In this case, though, the government, with its quick-scan approach, is being totally transparent only about all of the great things it has quantitatively done.
Want to know what the government did about construction of new housing in shantytowns. Well, its goal was six million units, and according to the graphic, China built 6.06 million units. Bingo. Mission accomplished.
Want to know what the government did about highway construction? The “task,” or objective, was to invest 165 million yuan to beef up roads. China’s actual investment was just under 178 million yuan. Bingo. Mission accomplished.
But Premier Li, if I may. Does this number mean that the government was over budget on planned highway construction projects for 2016? What? Yes, yes, I’m sure it is complicated. Sure, I’ll just scan the QR code and submit my inquiry by mobile.
I’m sure you’ll get to my question whenever it’s convenient.
IT WOULD SEEM at first glance that Chinese media enjoy an abundance of good fortune. With the world’s largest consumer population, they have a market of nearly limitless potential. When it comes to breaking news stories, no other country on earth can match China. The choices are simply endless.
This week, media have pounced on news of the death of spiritual guru Wang Lin (王林), who before his shameful fall from grace in 2015 was sought after by political leaders and entertainment stars alike. The news that Wang Lin “died suddenly of illness” (因病突逝) on February 10 in a hospital in Jiangxi, reported in Chinese state media, has naturally prompted a great deal of speculation. With its indefinite whiff of scandal but safe distance from real political sensitivities, this is the perfect puff story, something that can be endlessly talked about — like the cases of disgraced former CCTV news anchor Rui Chenggang (芮成钢), exiled billionaire Guo Wengui (郭文贵), or tigers devouring people.
[ABOVE: Alibaba CEO Jack Ma (left) poses with spiritual guru Wang Lin, who was detained on tax evasion and other charges in 2015.]
In what should be an era of golden opportunity, the preponderance of stories like these points to the malaise suffered by Chinese media, which have been forced to abdicate any more meaningful role.
In democratic societies, the media are sometimes referred to as the “fourth estate.” They serve as a check on power, they monitor the political and social environment, and they record history. But in China, where media do not enjoy such independence, serving as a check on power is an impossible dream. There is no such thing as the media monitoring the political environment. Even monitoring the natural environment — such things as air quality — is a difficult proposition. And history? Well, today’s politics is tomorrow’s history, so if the lion’s share of politics can’t be talked about how can we talk about recording history?
China’s media have long been characterized by the Chinese Communist Party as “mouthpieces,” or hou she (喉舌) — the “throat and tongue” of the leadership. According to the political ideas set down by Vladimir Lenin, the proper role of media is to serve as the disseminators of the Party’s policies, to be political cheerleaders and organizers of the masses. In the era of economic reforms in China, this foundation never shifted, and yet, there were important adaptations that brought a toning down of the media’s mouthpiece role.
In the 1990s, we had the “theory of guidance” (导向论), emphasizing that the mainstream media —always meaning in China the Party media — should give top priority to correct political guidance in their reporting while market-oriented media enjoyed a degree of latitude, especially in areas of coverage that had little to do with politics.
By around 2002, we had the “theory of closeness” (贴近论). This was the idea that all media, even Party media, should strive to be more palatable to their audiences, that they should do their utmost to remain “close to life, close to the masses and close to the grassroots.” This entailed the idea still that the media were political tools cut off from the lives of ordinary people. But this was at least the stirring of a looser mindset focused on consumable and more effective propaganda.
More recently, at the start of the Xi Jinping era, there was talk again of media “moving at the grassroots, transforming work attitudes, and changing writing styles,” an elaborate way of saying that traditional Party newspapers should strive to be competitive against commercial media and newly-emerging social media. Very quickly, however, the talk changed again, and we heard about the urgency of “media being surnamed Party,” which essentially laid fresh emphasis on the old “mouthpiece theory” of the media. But now, rather than applying more exclusively to Party news outfits that, as we say, “eat the emperor’s grain,” this theory was broadened to assert strict control over commercial newspapers and websites, and over all types of content, including commentaries and even advertisements.
In China today there are basically three types of newspapers: 1) The various Party newspapers from the center all the way down to local Party committees, like the People’s Daily, Beijing Daily, Shanghai’s Liberation Daily and Guangdong’s Nanfang Daily. 2) The industry newspapers run by various government ministries and commissions, like China Education Daily, China Women’s News, China Petrochemical News, and China Insurance News. 3) The metropolitan and evening newspapers in various locales across the country that rely on advertising and circulation to survive, and which, though operated through the Party newspaper system, can be less political in nature, doing more social and entertainment news.
In the era before the dawn of social media, commercial newspapers had a huge lead in the competition over traditional Party newspapers. They were able to win over readers and advertisers, and their circulations developed rapidly. As the internet became more and more prevalent, the assumption was that things would become equally tough for Party and commercial newspapers. In fact, Party newspapers, which benefitted from state subsidies and policies of forced circulation (in which state enterprises and other companies, for example, were pressed to take out subscriptions), were more insulated from the shock that came with the internet boom. Commercial newspapers were the hardest hit. And now some, like the Beijing Times and Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post, are already closing up shop.
Unable to speak up under strict political and economic pressures, Chinese media stuck somewhere in the middle these days, talking without substance about changes in housing prices, or about remote international issues.
They don’t speak about power, nor do they dare talk about rights — whether the political rights of the citizen, such as the right to vote, or the economic rights of the taxpayer. The only arenas of relative safety left to them are finance, economics, and of course entertainment.
Beyond that, there are outfits like the Global Times, a commercial spin-off of the Party’s official People’s Daily, which inspire nationalist fervor by kicking up a stink over international issues, and which find a ready audience among those readers who, to quote a running joke, “remain loyal though doomed to eat gutter oil.” These readers cannot dream of defending their own rights and interests, but they can at least fantasize about China’s rise to great nation status as a kind of psychic payback.
So this is where we are today. The people of China, and the media of China, are unwilling and unable to discuss domestic politics. They feed instead on the vagaries of international affairs. They can’t get enough of Donald Trump, Shinzō Abe or Park Geun-hye, or of the disfunction of the Philippines.
Finance. Entertainment. International news. Together they constitute the glory of the China’s media, and together they mark its shame. This column was translated from the Chinese original, which appeared at Hong Kong’s Oriental Daily News.
FOR WEEKS NOW, cities across China have been shrouded in hazardous clouds of haze. It’s an issue that hits people where it counts. Can their kids breathe normally at school? Is smog knocking precious years off their life expectancy?
Ineffectual promises to tackle air pollution, settling layer upon layer over the past decade, have worn the public’s patience thin. Even the staunchly loyal Global Times, a spinoff of the Party’s official People’s Daily, warned recently that “heavy smog has also been corroding the government’s credibility.”
Cut through the smog problem and a slew of others wait behind: signs of economic stagnation; persisting currency weakness; stock market softness.
In the midst of these uncertainties, Chinese leaders are pushing to clear up their messaging and consolidate their hold on information. In an executive meeting of the State Council on January 4, Premier Li Keqiang offered hints of tremors underfoot as he instructed the heads of government ministries, according to a widely-shared report by The Beijing News, to “offer timely and active responses to the concerns of the public, giving society an expectation of stability.”
The day after the meeting, Premier Li reportedly issued written instructions urging departments to “make their voices heard in a timely and active manner” on issues such as air pollution, “being practical and realistic in explaining the situation.”
According to state media reports, it was from Li’s remarks on January 4 that a new column on the Chinese government website called Ministerial Voices was “expeditiously born.”
[ABOVE: Ministerial Voices, a new column on the Chinese government website featuring the latest gripping press releases and transcripts from State Council departments.]
Ministerial Voices is apparently intended as a fast-tracking — by the glacial standards of Chinese government disclosure— of the release of prepared transcripts from press conferences. Shortly after Chinese Finance Minister Xu Shaoshi closed his press conference on January 10, offering “the latest ‘authoritative reading’ on China’s economy,” a transcript of the event was made available through the new column.
But this is so far the first and only rapid response. The previous entry on Ministerial Voices was a prepared transcript, posted on January 7, of the January 6 press conference by Chen Jining, China’s environmental minister, on the vexing pollution issue. And despite the wave of official media plugs this week for Ministerial Voices as a “fast lane” for government communication with the masses, it’s worth noting that the Chen Jining transcript posted to the column came in fact from the official WeChat account of the Ministry of Environmental Protection. By the standards of the social media age, in other words, Ministerial Voices was light years behind the curve.
Over the past decade, the Chinese Communist Party has grappled uneasily and with the lightning speed of information on the mobile internet. The task of controlling public opinion was complicated for much of this period by a relatively diverse media landscape in which hundreds of commercial newspapers and magazines competed to a certain extent to report relevant news.
In June 2008, after China lost control of a string of damaging domestic and international stories, President Hu Jintao outlined a new approach that encouraged the reporting of breaking news stories with trusted state media taking the lead. The strategy, “public opinion channeling,” was commonly dubbed “grabbing the megaphone.” But the advent of microblogs in 2009 tossed a wrench into Hu Jintao’s plan.
Since coming to power in late 2012, President Xi Jinping has accomplished what his predecessor could not. He has aggressively constrained social media. He has brought propaganda broadsheets and commercial tabloids alike to heel, stressing the need to “love, protect and serve the Party.” Last July, he redoubled restrictions on the reporting of original news by commercial internet sites.
Timing has also been in Xi Jinping’s favor. His strategy to control and consolidate the Party’s message is rolling out just as the so-called “metropolitan,” or dushilei (都市类), media in China — those that have typically pushed the envelope, kindling stories that then blaze across the internet— face a painful transition.
We are witnessing the tail end of the revolution in commercial media publishing that began in the mid-1990s. And over the next few years, we can expect to see the Party capitalizing on the golden opportunity to consolidate its hold on the media landscape in China as traditional newspapers and magazines fall by the wayside.
In the most recent example of consolidation underway, Xinhua News Agency reported this week that it would, with approval from the State Council, merge three major state-run economic media — Shanghai Securities News (上海证券报), China Securities Journal (中国证券报) and the Economic Information Daily (经济参考报) — to create a new financial news unit called China Fortune Media Group.
According to Xinhua, the aim of the merger, which has been in the works for several years, is to “put into practice the central leadership’s arrangements on the deepening of cultural system reforms, and to raise the impact of mainstream media in the arena of financial and economic information.”
A Xinhua News Agency notice announces the merger of three major state-run financial publications under the Xinhua banner in order to create “a modern financial news group.”
Note that “mainstream media” here refers to Party and state-run media and their role as framers of dominant opinion in China, and is not interchangeable with dominant notions in the West about the mainstream media, or MSM.
The final edition of Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post runs on December 31, 2016.
This merger, then, is about consolidating the message and about more efficient use of resources.
Traditional media brands will continue to merge and evaporate. January 1 this year brought the quiet end of two newspapers that were giants of the commercial media era, Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post — the paper that broke the poison milk scandal back in 2008 — and the Beijing Times, a tabloid spin-off of the People’s Daily. The Oriental Morning Post will be folded into The Paper, the digital platform launched in July 2014 (and visited ceremoniously shortly after by then chief of the Cyberspace Administration of China, Lu Wei).
These closures will not be the last. Digital destruction is the zeitgeist of the Chinese media space today. In its final message, the Oriental Morning Post insisted this was not farewell, but full steam ahead: “Today, we do not say goodbye, because our publication is adapting to serve our audience in another form — from an ink-fragrant newspaper to full-fledged online communication.”
The million-dollar question, for those who feel nostalgic about the heyday of Chinese print journalism more than a decade ago, is what sort of creation will come in the wake of extinction.
Will there be room for voices that surprise us? Will there be room for real and substantive reporting on issues ranging from air pollution to the economy?
Or, when China’s leaders have finally cleared the air, will we be left with only Ministerial Voices?
WHEN THE 19TH PARTY CONGRESS rolls around next fall, it will mark the ten-year anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s first inclusion of the term “soft power” in its crucial political report, perhaps the truest crystallisation we have of thinking at the highest levels of the country’s leadership. That official introduction of the term marked a new level of recognition that China needs more than just hard power to project its influence around the world. [A correction has been made to this story. See below.]
But setting aside for a moment the prickly issue of how China conceives of soft power as state-led public diplomacy as opposed to the more spontaneous effluence of culture, how is its soft power project going?
According to some experts, China is making real inroads in places like Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Others, most notably Joseph S. Nye, the Harvard professor who coined the term soft power, say that while China’s substantial investments in soft power — possibly 10 billion dollars a year — have had some results, its “soft power ambitions still face major obstacles.” According to David Shambaugh, who has written extensively on the subject, “China’s favourability ratings are mixed at best, and predominantly negative, and declining over time.”
On the Soft Power 30 index for 2016, compiled by Portland Communications on the basis of objective metrics and international polling data, China ranked 28th in the world, just behind the Russian Federation and edging ahead of the Czech Republic and Argentina. The United States nabbed the top spot, pulling ahead of Great Britain.
For Chinese leaders, who still see soft power, and in particular what they call “cultural soft power,” as an outgrowth of Party and state power, one crucial aspect of the country’s “strategy” (a word revealing in itself) is “developing the vehicle or the mechanisms by which China can project this soft power.” Much of China’s official discourse obsesses over the idea that the West, and particularly the United States, monopolises “discourse power” internationally and that China must work to revamp the global information order (perhaps with Russia’s help).
The formal launch this month of China Global Television Network (CGTN), bringing the international channels of China Central Television (CCTV) and its digital presence under a new branding effort, should be understood as the latest push to develop an international broadcast infrastructure allowing China to advance its messages and flex its “discourse power.”
As bold and virile as this sounds, however, even a casual look at what CGTN currently has on offer indicates this is probably another misguided venture that will line the pockets of China’s state broadcaster while offering little in the way of globally compelling products.
Speaking to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, CCTV official Chen Lidong said the network’s domestic operations would not be affected by the change, “But the international-facing makeover will be extensive.”
How extensive? Well, let’s take a look.
The brand-new CGTN has already released a pair of mobile apps for news and live broadcasts. Inexplicably, however, the albatross drapes still from the neck of this new brand, and “CCTVNEWS” is placed prominently just under “China Global Television Network” on both of the offerings in the App Store — next to a drab, pea-soup logo with the banal acronym.
After years of apparent soul-searching about the need to entice, and to understand foreigners and their interests, do we get a new approach to news reporting, writing and selection?
No.
The mock-up for the news app features a story about a Chinese naval vessel — hastening non-Chinese readers to thoughts of realpolitik. Two of the three stories coming on its heels are about Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visiting Latin America, betraying that all-too-familiar habit state media have of reporting the news as though interesting and significant things are done only by Party and government leaders.
Has CCTV really learned nothing about the human element? Isn’t that what the attraction at the core of soft power is ultimately all about? Could they not have featured a story instead about the Chinese soccer club offering Real Madrid 300 million Euros for Christiano Ronaldo?
Is it so difficult to stand in the shoes of one’s target reader?
CGTN’s pitch for its news app comes across as callow: “New Reading Experience — different tabs to meet your various needs.” Are we supposed to marvel at the ingenuity of tabs? (And how dyspeptic will I seem if I complain that the font advertising my “New Reading Experience” isn’t fresh or edgy, but a lacklustre cursive?)
Then again, perhaps my exasperation is heightened by the unfortunate fact that Apple has succumbed to Chinese pressure and pulled both the English and Chinese-language apps for the New York Times from the App Store. Hard power hard at work.
What about CGTN’s new website, to which all of CCTV’s international content has been directed?
With all due respect to CCTV’s Chen Lidong, anyone who turns to the first page of this extensive makeover will see the cracks and wrinkles.
When I first visited the new CGTN.com global website yesterday, the featured story suffered from strange breaks in both the headline (“Turkish authorities identify Istanbul nightclub attacker but”) and the teaser.
These evidently stemmed from basic kinks in the platform design — the kind of things one supposes should be ironed out before the president offers his felicitations on the front page of the official People’s Daily. [NOTE: The italicised text below speculates that a byline on the CGTN site might be spurious owing to the fact that it is a politics report written by a reporter whose name, Dang Zheng, is a homonym for “Party and government.” In fact, there is indeed a reporter at CGTN named Dang Zheng. This is a delightful coincidence, but I apologise nevertheless to the reporter for the misunderstanding.] Beyond the technical and design issues, there are basic journalistic concerns. The next politics story, my second experience with the platform, dealt with the former mayor of Tianjin, who has been expelled from the CCP for serious violations of political discipline. The report was written, we are informed, with “inputs from Xinhua News Agency.” But the writer, apparently, is a journalist named “Dang Zheng.”
“Dang Zheng” happens to be a homonym for “Party and government,” and while we can’t rule out the possibility, however remote, of a reporter on the politics beat who is actually named Dang Zheng, this is probably a liberty taken by the editors at CGTN.
Just as you could find at the old CCTV website, or at Xinhua’s English-language site, the occasional story to entertain or enlighten, there are odd stories at CGTN that surprise — like this little unpolished gem about a villager in Guangxi whose free outdoor film screenings have been curtailed by local officials.
But this does not look — not yet — like an extensive makeover. It looks like an ill-conceived web re-design alongside a simple acronym change. And as China, despite tightening controls, is in the midst of an exciting era at least in terms of technical and design innovation for the mobile internet, the CGTN platform seems to fall even flatter.
Why not find inspiration in the likes of The Paper or Jiemian?
In his recent well wishes to CGTN, Xi Jinping said that the platform should “fully seek closeness with its audience,” “using rich news and information, a clear Chinese perspective, and an expansive global way of looking at things in order to tell Chinese stories properly, transmitting China’s voice, allowing the world to see a colourful and three-dimensional China, and creating a favourable image of China as a builder of peace in the world, as a contributor to global development, and as a protector of the international order.”
Faced with such a medley of impossible expectations from those in power, is it any wonder that CCTV — I’m sorry, that CGTN — is confused?
