CHINA is not doubling down on the “nine-dash line” argument, which as I wrote yesterday has never been pushed insistently through the official People’s Daily. The term does not appear in the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper today, but the South China Sea issue is of course there — and the language over yesterday’s decision by an international arbitration court is resolute and angry.
There are three articles on the arbitration verdict on the front page of today’s People’s Daily, including a formal statement from the Government of the People’s Republic of China that has apparently not yet been translated into English. It reiterates many of the same points, going through the “2,000-year history of China’s activities in the South China Sea” and how it has established its sovereignty “continuously, peacefully and effectively.” It stakes China’s claims with emphatic bullet points.

On July 12, 2016, the Philippines South China Sea arbitration case, in defiance of basic facts, wantonly trampling on international law and the basic principles of international relations, announced a so-called “arbitration ruling” that seriously damaged China’s territorial sovereignty and its rights and interests in the South China Sea. The Chinese government and the people of China resolutely oppose this, and will neither accept nor recognise it.
The people of China have lived and produced for generations in the South China Sea, and they long ago become the masters of the South China Sea islands. Successions of Chinese governments have administered the islands through administrative exercise, military patrols, production and business, maritime salvage and other means, and China long ago established (确定) its unquestionable sovereignty over the South China Sea islands and the neighbouring sea area. For centuries, amidst the winds of change, even as the islands of the South China Sea were for a time suffered harm by invaders, China’s resolve in protecting its territorial sovereignty and its rights and interests in the South China Sea has never been shaken.
For this the brave sons and daughters of China (中华) have made continuous and substantial sacrifices. Since ancient times, China has said: “The strong must not oppress the weak, and the rich must not bully the poor.” As for that territory that does not belong to us, we do not claim an inch of it. But for that territory that does belong to us, we will not give an inch. China will take every necessary measure to protect its territorial sovereignty and ensure that its rights and interests in the South China Sea are not violated, and all thoughts of intruding on China’s territorial sovereignty and its rights and interests in the South China Sea are delusions.
The Chinese people are a people who ardently love peace, and the blood of peace flows through our veins. As the largest nation bordering on the South China Sea, China sets out from a general situation of peace and stability, and over many decades on the South China Sea question it has always maintained exceptional restraint, never taking the initiative in provoking dispute — nor has it ever taken any actions that might complicate or magnify the controversy. The Chinese side has adhered all along to the preservation of peace and stability in the South China Sea, continuing to resolve disputes through discussion and negotiation, continuing to control divisions through rules-based mechanisms, continuing to preserve freedom of navigation and flight in the South China Sea, continuing to achieve mutual benefit through cooperation. Through the efforts of various sides, the South China Sea region has left the shadow of the Cold War, maintaining long-term peace and stability, taking a path of booming development, and freedom of navigation and flight have been fully protected.
Still, with direct control and encouragement by external forces (外部势力), the government of Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III and the court of arbitration defied basic facts and departed from basic legal principles, acting with wilful disregard under the banner of principle and rule of law, under false government pretences and out of personal interest, seeking a twisted application of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea with the objective of denying China’s territorial sovereignty and its rights and interests in the South China Sea. As for this complete and utter political provocation, China of course will not accept it. This is a necessary act in preserving China’s territorial integrity and rights and interests in the South China Sea, and it is also about preserving the dignity and status of international law, in the interests of practicing justice in international law.
Many countries and organisations internationally, as well as many discerning people, have expressed support for China’s position. International legal experts have also come forward to express their concern over the abuse of this compulsory arbitration procedure, believing that the Philippine’s tribunal case on the South China Sea has damaged the integrity of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as a mechanism for dispute settlement, damaged the international seas regime established by the Convention, and that it threatens the current international order.
To satisfy the needs of the moment, the government of Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III has damaged international law and harmed the rights and interests of China. The tribunal’s decision, as a “puppet” (提线木偶) of external forces, is a pointless farce, and it will be rejected by history and by the times.
Whether the past, the present or the future, any conduct that purports to challenge China’s baseline will be like dropping stones on one’s own foot. The resolve of the Chinese people in protecting their territorial sovereignty and their rights and interests in the South China Sea cannot be shaken.

THE DEATH over the weekend of Zhu Tiezhi (朱铁志), 56, deputy chief editor at China’s official Seeking Truth (求是) journal, has prompted soul-searching in Chinese chat groups — touching on issues at once personal, cultural, psychological and political. Discussion of Zhu’s death, which has led some to speculate a connection to the corruption case against former Hu Jintao advisor Ling Jihua (令计划), has quickly been scrubbed from most Chinese websites.
Regarded as an accomplished essay writer, Zhu first joined the Party’s Red Flag journal after graduating from Peking University in 1982 with a degree in philosophy. He joined Seeking Truth after rising to a senior position at Red Flag. Despite his involvement with these strongly ideological Party journals, however, Zhu contributed from time to time to other publications, including Guangzhou’s more freewheeling Southern Weekly newspaper. He was also a recipient of the Lu Xun Literary Prize, considered one of China’s most prestigious awards for writers.

[Xi Jinping’s] speech was directly at the three mainstream [Party] media, but even more at the front lines of national propaganda thought, and it is a programmatic document that directs news, public opinion, ideology and propaganda work for the Party and the government for the era.
As a publication of the central Party, and as an important battle position of propaganda and ideology, we at Seeking Truth bear the great responsibility of propagating the spirit of the series of important speeches by General Secretary Xi Jinping, and of propagating and explaining the Party’s theoretical line.

And in a piece for Seeking Truth last year, Zhu Tiezhi wrote about how the profusion of information in the new media age was transforming ways of life and making news and public opinion more important than ever before. “Under these circumstances,” he wrote, “how to deal with the media, and how to channel public opinion, has become an important question facing leading cadres at all levels.”
Zhu’s out-of-the-package official position in this piece is that Party and government leaders must work actively with the media, which after all are there to work alongside them:

Fundamentally speaking, our media are all mouthpieces of the Party and the government, all mouthpieces of the masses. They propagate the Party’s position, and at the same time reflect the calls of the masses — this is not only not a contradiction, but in fact is entirely unified. The people of the Chinese Communist Party must not have their own special interests beyond the interests of the people.

It is immaterial whether or not these sentiments were truly shared by Zhu Tiezhi. The fact is, we might find a thousand identical screeds from a thousand Party hacks, all of them effectively bylined “Party.”
But here is Zhu Tiezhi writing in Southern Weekly back in 2004, in the long wake of the SARS crisis. Even as the essay deals with public issues, its tone is personal:

On the first day of the new year, as I turned through the ink-fragrant pages of Southern Weekly, the first thing I saw, which was also the thing I most wanted to read, was the exclusive interview with Doctor Zhong Nanshan (钟南山). What moved me most were not Doctor Zhong’s views on SARS per se, things with which we are all long since familiar — rather, it was his thoughts on the attitude that should be taken in dealing with epidemics. Doctor Zhong believes: In cases where dangerous diseases suddenly break out, there must be no exaggeration, certainly no concealment, and the more you can talk honestly and clearly about the ins and outs with the public and with the World Health Organisation, and about how to achieve prevention, the more the public will be at ease. It is not as certain people would have us believe: that the more transparency there is, the more chaotic society will be.

Zhu’s concluding remarks are hopeful, with just a note of admonishment:

The new year has begun. In their attitude toward dealing with various sudden-breaking incidents, our Party and our government are facing the world, the public and public opinion with a much more liberal, open and responsible attitude. Well then, shouldn’t our government officials at various level also fully advance with the times on these questions?

And here, finally, is an excerpt from Zhu Tiezhi’s essay “If I Should Die,” included in his 2012 collection, Diving Into the Human Sea (沉入人海).

If I must die of cancer, I implore the leaders of my work unit and my colleagues not to press on with hopeless treatments. Because I know there are certain cancers that, although called cancer, are called such because modern medicine is at present helpless to deal with them. So-called humanitarian treatments are essentially about perpetuating our physical lives — and that is tantamount to the perpetuation of suffering. I know that my name means “iron will,” but in fact my will is weak, and I don’t believe I could withstand the suffering cancer would bring. I don’t wish my life to be a struggle, and in the end to lose all of my dignity, bed-ridden with a tenacious illness, my body pricked with tubes. Nor do I wish my family members to suffer as I am caught between the impossibility of life and death.

WHAT IS IT about the number 19? Back in 2013, Xi Jinping delivered his first major speech on ideology, in which he spoke in hardline terms about a “public opinion struggle,” on August 19. This year, on February 19, Xi Jinping visited state media before delivering an “important speech” on “news and public opinion work,” in which he said that media “must be surnamed Party” and do the Party’s bidding. On April 19, Xi Jinping let loose on the now central issue of cybersecurity, outlining strengthened internet controls and saying that a “clear and bright online space, ecologically sound, is in the interests of the people.”
Is Xi Jinping obsessed with the number “19”? All three of his “important speeches” on media and information policy have been held on the 19th of the month. The character for “9” is a homonym in Chinese of the word for “long-lasting,” seen above.
The character for “9” in Chinese is a homonym of “long-lasting” (久), and as a result tie-ups, such as contracts (or marriages), are often formalised on the 9th, 19th or 29th of the month — an auspicious sign of sustained harmony.

News and public opinion work is an important task for the Party. Comrade Mao Zedong said that revolution relies on the barrel of the gun and the shaft of the pen, and that the Chinese Communist Party must hold pamphlets in its left hand and bullets in its right before it can defeat the enemy. Prioritising news and public opinion work is a fine tradition of our Party, and an important magic weapon that has brought constant victories in revolution, [national] construction and reform. Under the conditions of a new era, the cause of the Party faces an even more arduous and onerous task.

Such talk of guns and pens, of enemies and magic weapons, is the kind of hardline nostalgia we would expect to see on leftist forums in China. We generally would not expect to see such talk in the People’s Daily. In fact, the phrase “barrel of the gun and shaft of the pen” (枪杆子和笔杆子) has appeared just 17 times in the entire history of the newspaper, going all the way back to July 2, 1946. It has appeared in three articles in the Xi Jinping era, after a dormancy of almost 30 years:
1. Tian Jin’s piece on news and public opinion work — June 19, 2016
2. A profile of Ai Siqi, encouraging officials to be theory-minded and study up on their Marxism — August 13, 2015
3. A look back on Mao Zedong’s writings — February 28, 2013
Before these more recent instances, we have to go back almost 30 years to November 15, 1983, to find the last use of the phrase. In the five and a half years from May 18, 1978, to November 15, 1983, there were four pieces in the People’s Daily mentioning the phrase “barrel of the gun and shaft of the pen” — three of them in the context of roundly criticising the Gang of Four and the internal political strife of the pre-reform period.
1. “These counter-revolutionary activities strongly demonstrate intense collusion between counter-revolutionary gun barrels and pen shafts, banding together as traitors.” — May 18, 1978
2. [Mention on a list of books under investigation in Taiwan of a book called, Gun Barrels and Pen Shafts of the KMT.] — November 26, 1982
3. “Lin Biao understood that to engage in counter-revolutionary activities, he had to rely on the ‘two staves,’ namely the barrel of the gun and the shaft of the pen.” — January 31, 1983
4. “First of all, the reactionary rulers grabbed control of the seals [government power], the handcuffs [police power], the guns [military] and the pens [intellectuals], seeking to snuff out and suppress every spark of the revolution.” — November 15, 1983
When we go back beyond these four mentions in the early reform period, we have ten articles remaining, all of them published during the Cultural Revolution.
The 17 articles in the entire history of the CCP’s official People’s Daily mentioning the phrase “gun barrels and pen shafts.” The vast majority occur during the Cultural Revolution, or are used negatively in the early reform period.

Grasping the overall situation in the ideological struggle (把握意识形态领域斗争全局). Along with the acceleration of social transformation in our country, various tensions have grown more obvious, and ideas in society are diverse, varied and changeable — so that we see more frequent interchange, interaction and confrontation between various trends of thought. Internationally, the contest remains intense among different value systems and institutional models (制度模式), and hostile forces overseas have not relented in the plots of Westernisation and division directed against us, with no fundamental change to the status quo of a strong West and a weak China in terms of international public opinion. News and public opinion are on the frontiers of the ideological struggle, and various hostile forces are vying with us for public opinion positions, vying for people’s hearts (争夺人心), vying for the masses (争夺群众). Newspapers and periodicals, and radio and television networks, are the mainstream media trusted by the Party and the people, and they must maintain an active posture (必须主动作为), having the courage to “drive the demons out of our land” (玉宇澄清万里埃), playing the positive and upright main theme (主旋律) [of the Party], eliminating the negative impact of static and noise (杂音噪音), effectively channeling public opinion in society, and firmly grasping the initiative and leading position in the struggle in the ideological sphere.

Tian Jin (田进), deputy director of China’s State Administration of Press and Publication, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT), unpacks Xi Jinping’s February 19, 2016, speech on page 5 of the People’s Daily on June 19, 2016.
Later on in his article, Tian speaks of the need for greater nuance in propaganda, putting out products “in forms the people of various countries will enjoy” in order to “have a positive influence overseas.” But at this point, we have spittle on our collars.
The Party’s goal is to dominate the message, both at home and abroad — and there is no need to beat around the bush. This is a life-and-death struggle for ideological dominance.
The reference to “static and noise” recalls an ideological controversy almost 12 years ago in China, when the Liberation Daily roundly attacked the idea of “public intellectuals.” That was in November 2004, after some of China’s more freewheeling commercial papers took up this sensitive issue in the wake of the August 2004 edition of the UK’s Prospect Magazine. After a snide rejection of the notion of “independent” voices — “Intellectuals are part of the worker’s class, part of the masses, and a group under the leadership of the Party.” — the Liberation Daily fumed:
Concepts like this “public intellectuals” are just static and noise, and cannot influence the main tone of our society’s public opinion. But nor can we take a casual attitude. As we face a diversified situation, it is most crucial to remain clear and firm — for only then can the leading position of Marxism be upheld, and only then can we not lose our bearing amid an abundance of ideas.
The Liberation Daily article was a worrying volley from the fringes, and it drew a great deal of scorn from many in China’s press. Tian Jin’s article is more significant. In this case, we have even denser hardline language employed by a senior media official writing in the People’s Daily — in a series, moreover, formally identified as an unpacking of Xi Jinping’s speech in the interest of putting it into practice.
Let’s go through some of the language further on in Tian’s article.
Under a section headed “adhering to the correct political orientation” (坚定正确政治方向), Tian stresses the principle of the “Party nature” of the media, which is of a piece with Xi Jinping’s insistence that the media be “surnamed Party,” and “love the Party, protect the Party and serve the Party.”
Adherence to the “Party nature” is at the core also of “strict propaganda discipline” (严格宣传纪律), a familiar media control concept in China essentially encompassing the idea that journalists must behave as the Party wants them to behave. But here, again, Tian’s hackles go up and we glimpse the fresh extremism that marks the Party’s approach to information under Xi Jinping.

We must throughout put propaganda discipline up in front, effectively enhancing firm and willing compliance with propaganda discipline . . . not offering any channel for the transmission of erroneous ideas and static and noise.

How will the Party accomplish this? Despite its grandiosity, Tian Jin’s piece differs from much propaganda claptrap in its relative specificity. We can hear in his language not just fury and determination, but an organised and directed will:

We must adhere to territorial responsibility, responsibility for [one’s] territory, ultimate responsibility for [one’s] territory (守土尽责), carrying out the strengthening of discipline throughout, strengthening channeling and management, strengthening comprehensive and strict checks — quickly discovering, firmly restraining and strictly handling certain programs that hype hot social topics, ridicule national policies (调侃国家政策), spread erroneous views (散布错误观点), advocate extreme ideas (鼓吹极端理念) and deliberately intensify contradictions, and conducting awareness education on classic problems through the entire system.

Tian is talking about amplifying the sense of urgency at every level of the media and propaganda ecosystem, and holding leaders and staff responsible for breaches the occur on their watch.
In other sections, Tian talks about “adhering to correct guidance of public opinion” (坚持正确舆论导向), and about “encouraging unity and stability, [and] emphasising positive news” (团结稳定鼓劲、正面宣传为主).
All of this is familiar. But once again, Tian is emphatic and absolutist in a way that seems remarkable. One of his sections is headed: “Correct guidance that is all-encompassing, without exceptions (正确导向全覆盖、无例外). After which, he writes:

We must connect the adherence to correct guidance to every aspect of our work, implementing it in every element, in every position, in every procedure, through every responsible person, absolutely without leaving any hidden dangers or dead ends (绝不留隐患和死角).

Moreover, we have every indication from Tian that the Party is following through on this absolutist approach to control, and that, in fact, it is just getting started:
In recent years, we have already implemented a series of policy measures in terms of the maintenance of guidance at news interview programs, entertainment programs, talent shows, legal programs, reality shows, etcetera.
Further on, in his section on “innovating management concepts, and unifying measures and standards” (创新管理理念，统一尺度标准):

Lately one focus has been promoting unification of measures and unification of standards for guidance and content management between traditional media and new media. For this, we have built a monitoring system (监看监管制度) for audiovisual programming, promoted the building of a network production and broadcast management system for online dramas (网络剧) and micro-films (微电影), introduced measures to strengthen management of overseas television dramas online, all of which have had a positive impact in regulating order in online audiovisual broadcasting, and in promoting the healthy development of the online broadcasting industry (网络视听业). The next step is the research, development and introduction of management measures for documentaries, animation and variety programmes, truly achieving [a situation in which] wherever new media technologies and businesses develop, management can develop in step, truly achieving not just control but also solid management (管得住而且管得好).

For anyone interested in hardline CCP discourse, Tian Jin’s piece offers an embarrassment of riches. It does not bode well for Chinese media or content of any kind for the foreseeable future, suggesting the Party will continue to tighten restrictions — and to make concerted changes to institutions, regulations and other mechanisms that can further this core objective.
The focus, so clear in Tian’s language, is on the challenges posed by the internet and mobile-based media. Which is why, beyond control and regulation, he stresses the need to “accelerate the building of new mainstream media (新型主流媒体), in the process raising the influence and transmission power of [the Party’s] news and public opinion work.” He talks about “actively developing and utilising differentiated, segmented and directed content across websites, Weibo, WeChat, apps and other communication channels.”
Behind Tian Jin’s language, we can hear the clarion call of Xi Jinping’s ambition — the building of a new and all-encompassing information management system, one that will allow the Party to control public opinion through the unforeseeable future of 21st century media.
The barrel of the gun belongs to the CCP, and so must the shaft of the pen, whatever the promise of new media holds. Or, rather, the Chinese Communist Party understands that to defeat the enemy of uncertainty, it must hold the bullets in its right hand and the smartphones in its left.
 

During a forum following high-profile visits to core state media back in February this year, President Xi Jinping stressed the Chinese Communist Party’s dominance of the media. In terms more explicit than at any time in the past three decades, he said all media “must be surnamed Party,” and must “love the Party, protect the Party and serve the Party.”
One of the most illuminating lines in Xi Jinping’s speech on “news and public opinion work” dealt with the notion of “supervision by public opinion,” or yulun jiandu (舆论监督)—a term that for many years has been synonymous with the most enterprising journalism that can be found in China’s complex media landscape.
Essentially the idea that the media represent the public (or the “masses”) in monitoring the government with critical reporting, “supervision by public opinion” has generally been poles apart from the notion of “positive news,” the sort of brown-nosing coverage we expect to find in China’s bland Party newspapers. In his speech, however, Xi Jinping subverted the distinction entirely: “Supervision by public opinion and positive propaganda are unified,” he said.
Thirteen unlucky characters: 舆论监督和正面宣传是统一的. But with these Xi Jinping nullified the idea that the media might play a monitoring role with any semblance of initiative or independence. Just as all media, from traditional newspapers to WeChat, are subordinated to the Party’s will according to Xi Jinping’s all-dimensional vision of media control, so is the practice of “supervision by public opinion.”

In our country, the media run by the Party and the government have always been the main force in supervision by public opinion. However, in recent years, with the steady emergence and development of new media, and as competition between domestic and international media grows ever more dramatic, certain media have engaged in the one-sided exercise of supervision by public opinion power — and a good number of journalists have fallen into the trap of the West’s so-called “freedom of the press,” the “fourth estate,” the [idea of the journalist as the] “uncrowned king.” This has been extremely damaging to the Party’s news and public opinion work.

Unpacking Xi Jinping’s statement about the unity of supervision and positive propaganda, Xiao Zhitao says media must “have a correct grasp of the timing, intensity and effect of supervision by public opinion.”
Most crucially, though Xiao stresses the importance of “accuracy,” his explication makes it clear that factuality in reporting is subordinate to the larger fact of the Party and its priorities. The Party’s dominant position as the final arbiter of truth leads Xiao along corkscrews of absurd logic: “The facts must be described according to the facts,” he writes. “In other words, with accurate reporting of separate facts, along with a grasp of the whole picture of things in terms of the macro.”
What does this mean, a “grasp of the whole picture of things in terms of the macro”? It means that the Party’s status is the fact to end all facts. Why, otherwise, is there any need to use facts to describe other facts?
But there are points when Xiao borders on directness. Like this one:

At the current stage, what to supervise [through reporting], and how to supervise, must be tested by the Party nature and the people nature of the Party media, and a view to the overall [political] situation.

The notion of “Party nature,” or dangxing (党性), returns us to the basic and inescapable fact of the Party’s dominance of media and public opinion, to the assertion that “being surnamed Party is the fundamental principle of news media work.”
Hasn’t the Party always dominated the media? And hasn’t it always been terribly hostile to criticism? No, not at all.
While Xiao Zhitao imagines encirclement by Western ideas of the media supervision role — “so-called ‘freedom of the press’ — his argument elides the fact that supervision (as at least a semi-independent exercise of criticism) is no more Western than the entire Marxist framework on which the CCP has based its rule. In fact, criticism and “supervision by public opinion” have a long history in China, reaching back to the first decades of the 20th century, and to the beginnings of the Chinese Communist Party.
Well before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party were preoccupied with the question of criticism and regime legitimacy. In July 1945, as the Second Sino-Japanese War was coming to a close, Chinese educator and politician Huang Yanpei traveled to the mountainous CCP stronghold of Yan’an to meet with Mao Zedong.

This decision demands that newspapers and periodicals include the broader masses in the regular and systematic supervision of our work, turning attention to shortcomings and errors in our work in order that they are corrected, and that we are able to make steady progress forward. This is a serious step in greatly promoting the democratization of our country, and in improving the work of Party committees and governments at various levels.

From the outset, the “Decision” made clear that acts of criticism and self-criticism were to be made “publicly in newspapers and other publications.” Moreover, they were to be made “freely,” without government interference or the necessity of prior approval. “Responsibility for criticisms appearing in newspapers and other publications,” said the text of the decision, “is to be taken on independently by journalists and editors.”
The idea that the media should take the initiative in doing critical reporting was unfortunately short-lived. In July 1954, a new document, “CCP Central Committee Decision On the Improvement of Newspaper Work,” decisively overturned the post-facto discipline system at the heart of the 1950 decision on criticism and self-criticism. It sent a clear warning to journalists that exercising their own discretion in doing critical reporting could prove a fatal error of judgment. The CCP decision blandly maintained the principle that newspapers are “the most keen weapons the party uses to conduct criticism and self-criticism,” but it stressed the point that newspapers suffered from a “weak sense of party nature.”
By now, this should sound eerily familiar. Following on Xi Jinping’s words in his February 19, 2016, speech, Xiao Zhitao argued that critical reporting, or “supervision,” “must be tested by the Party nature.” Media must be surnamed Party.
The spirit of media criticism re-emerged in China in the reform era, a direct response to the evils of the post-1954 historical hole that had brought such nightmares as the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Cultural Revolution.
Significantly, soon after the 1978 Third Plenary Session of the 11th CCP Central Committee that instituted the path of economic reforms, News Frontline, a communications journal run by the People’s Daily, republished in full the text of the April 1950 decision on criticism and self-criticism. The return of criticism marked a new era of reform, not just for the country but for its media.
An introductory note for the 1950 decision as it was printed in News Frontline in June 1979 read: “For a brief time in the past, this decision from the Party, promoted the exercise of criticism and self-criticism in newspapers and periodicals across the country. Today, turning up the heat on this decision, propagating and implementing its spirit, can still have an extremely important function for the news work of our entire party.” The new wave of debate and criticism encouraged by the “spirit” of the 1950 decision was also to be inclusive in nature: “We hope that various news units, and particularly the editorial departments, editors, journalists and correspondents of our newspapers, as well as the readers, can all participate in this discussion, sharing their opinions, demands and suggestions.”

What does it mean to emphasise positive news? Does it mean 99 percent positive news? How about 98 percent, or 80 percent? Wouldn’t 51 percent still be acceptable? Most programs are all about propaganda results, and just one or two point out problems occurring in the course of our forward progress, mobilising the full force of the party in dealing with these problems. This is a far more effective way of doing things than purely looking at propaganda results. Without programs like yours, the voices of the masses could not be expressed. And how then could we talk about democracy? How could we talk about supervision? Everyone must get used to this sort of criticism.

The Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping cannot “get used to this sort of criticism.” When Xi Jinping launched his “mass line” effort to grapple with corruption in June 2013 — telling officials to “gaze into the mirror, straighten their outfits, bathe, and treat their illnesses”  ——  his “mirror” was not the media, and certainly not contentious media. His mirror was the CCP Constitution.
Supervision under Xi Jinping is to be an internal matter, a backstage ritual. Criticism must be managed, supervision supervised. We might say that the PRC’s second era of critical reporting is at its end, at least as a matter of policy.
The gap is closed. Positive propaganda and supervision are unified.
Welcome to 1954.