IN A NOTICE released yesterday, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the agency created in 2014 to consolidate control over the country’s internet, ordered websites not to repost material from Caixin Online, the multimedia site of one of the country’s leading professional media groups. Citing repeated violations of news and propaganda discipline, the notice announced a two-month suspension of Caixin Online’s credentials as “a news unit able to provide news for reposting to websites.”
The two-month suspension could hit Caixin Online in the pocketbook as syndication of its news content is an important source of revenue on top of advertising. The news syndication market is fuelled in part in China by restrictions on news reporting that prohibit commercial news portals, such as Sina.com and Sohu.com, from doing original reporting.
Speaking to the Chinese-language service of Radio France Internationale (RFI), an anonymous source “familiar with Caixin Online” said one likely reason for the disciplinary action was a recent report on opposition among Chinese lawyers to the newly revised Administrative Measures for Law Firms (律师事务所管理办法). The revised measures, released on September 6, expressly prohibit law firms from employing practices commonly associated with so-called “die-hard lawyers,” those who have sought in recent years to bolster their legal cases by leveraging public opinion and turning attention to deficiencies in the legal system.
Article 50 of the revised measures specifies six forms of conduct law firms must not permit, including “the manufacture of public opinion pressure to attack or disparage judicial authorities or the judicial system through joint petition signature campaigns, online gatherings, support statements, discussions around specific cases and other tactics.”
Caixin was one of the only media outlets in China to report on criticism of the revised measures within the legal profession. In a September 23 report, Caixin journalist Dan Yuxiao (单玉晓) quoted Peking University Law School professor Zhang Qianfan (张千帆) as saying that much of the conduct restricted by the revised measures should be protected under China’s Constitution and the right to freedom of expression. “Judicial authorities and law firms have no need to control the speech and actions of lawyers outside the scope of national laws,” Zhang said, “and in fact they have no authority to do so.”

[ABOVE: Article 50 of the revised Administrative Measures for Law Firms lays out six types of conduct that “must not be permitted.”]
In response to the new restrictions on “manufacturing public opinion,” Zhang added that progress on rule of law relied to a great extent on the impact of public opinion. “Right now China really needs its lawyers to courageously pursue their profession. If judicial authorities have done nothing wrong, they should remain free of the influence of public opinion — but they should not control lawyers to prevent them from exposing problems to the public.”
In a subsequent report on October 8, later removed from Caixin Online, Dan Yuxiao profiled a letter-writing campaign by 168 lawyers from across the country demanding that the newly revised Administrative Measures for Law Firms be rescinded. That report, “168 Lawyers Advise State Council to Rescind Administrative Measures for Law Firms” (168名律师建议国务院撤销律所管理新规), is now cited as possibly contributing to the CAC restriction yesterday.
According to another Caixin Online report, the Chongqing Lawyers Association held a meeting on October 10 to hear opinions on the revised measures. That report, “Chongqing Lawyers Association Hears Opinions from Lawyers on Repeal of New Law Firm Regulations” (重庆律协听取律师撤销律所管理新规意见), has also disappeared.
Whatever led to the notice from the CAC, the earlier report by Dan Yuxiao on the release of the revised measures, including criticism by legal experts, remains accessible online.

IN CHINA, it looks like the end of Consensus. No, I’m not talking about Xi Jinping fashioning himself as “the core,” or as the country’s COE, or “chairman of everything.” I’m talking about the sudden and complete eradication over the weekend of the website Consensus, 21ccom.cn, which long served as a respected platform bringing together writers and academics of various backgrounds to discuss more sensitive issues of social and political development in China.
An order for the closure of Consensus reportedly came from Beijing authorities on October 1, China’s National Day. According to the Chinese-language service of Radio France International (RFI), the site’s CEO said on the social media platform WeChat that Consensus had been shut down for “transmitting incorrect ideas” (传递错误思想).
Just over seven years old, the website was operated by Lide Consensus Media Group (立德共识网络传媒科技有限公司). Contributors to Consensus included university academics such as Zhang Ming (张鸣), a professor at Renmin University of China and a former CMP fellow, Tsinghua University professor Sun Liping (孙立平), and professional journalists such as Shi Feike (石扉客) and Xie Yong (謝泳).

[ABOVE: Popular writers appearing on the Consensus website at 21ccom.net prior to its closure on October 1, 2016. From left: Sun Liping; Zhang Ming; Shi Feike; Xie Yong.]
The Consensus WeChat account was still in operation as of October 3, but the last article posted to the account was dated August 15, 2016. The automated WeChat message for new subscribers to the account read:

Thank you for following the Consensus website and the Thinkers Blog (思想者博客). Here, we can explore together the other side not reflected in the history books, we can listen together to those voices that have disappeared in the mainstream media, and we can consider together that question still awaiting an answer: What direction is China heading?

One year ago, Lotus Ruan wrote on the TechInAsia blog that the website was “somehow bolder, less censored, more ‘sensitive’ compared with that in other online platforms,” possibly owing to its more circumscribed audience, confined largely to academics, university students, businesspeople and government officials. Ruan also noted that discussion of the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution, just a few months away at the time, was more visible on the Consensus site even as it was “consciously suppressed in Sina, Phoenix/IFeng, NetEast and other commercial news portals.”

The following post by Hu Nanjie (胡南街), a user from Shanghai’s Huangpu District with more than 800 followers, was deleted from Weibo sometime before 5:50PM Hong Kong time on Thursday, September 22, 2016. The post comments on the sentencing of lawyer Xia Lin (夏霖) to 12 years in jail for alleged fraud, a case that prompted alarm from many human rights advocates.
Xia Lin has represented a number of high-profile clients, including the artist Ai Weiwei (艾末末) and the human rights lawyer and former CMP fellow Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强). Xia’s own Weibo account, which has just under 19,000 followers, has not been active since August 2014. He was arrested for alleged fraud in November of that year.
The post from Hu Nanjie in Shanghai read:

Xia Lin, born in 1970 in Guizhou, a renowned lawyer. He has represented many sensitive cases, including the case of [migrant worker] Cui Yingjie (崔英杰), who murdered an urban management officer, the case of Ai Weiwei, and the case of Pu Zhiqiang. In November 2014, because he was the defence in the Guo Yushan (郭玉闪) case, which involved Occupy Central, he was taken away by police on charges of fraud. When Xia represented the Deng Yujiao (邓玉娇) case, he wept bitterly for what she had faced, and for the utter lack of conscience. Today, he has been sentenced to 12 years! And who will cry injustice for him?

The original Chinese-language post follows:

夏霖，70年生于贵州，知名律师。他代理过多起敏感案件，如崔英杰杀城管案，艾末末案，浦志强案。2014年11月，因担任郭玉闪辩护人，涉及占中， 被警方以诈骗罪从家中带走。夏代理邓玉娇案时，曾为她的遭遇痛哭，高呼丧尽天良。今天，他被重刑12年！谁来为他鸣不平？

Searches for “Xia Lin” on Weibo today, September 22, 2016, do return results. These posts tend to be straight reports of the verdict, comments supporting the decision, criticism of Western meddling in China’s affairs, or remarks drawing from Xia’s case lessons about the ills of gambling.
But there certainly are posts, like this one, that continue to raise questions about various legal aspects of the case. One question surrounds claims from Wang Xuelong (王学龙), the key plaintiff in the case, that he loaned money to Xia Lin’s wife, Lin Ru (林茹), out of sympathy for the family’s desperate circumstances, but on Lin’s condition that he formally declare no intention to seek criminal responsibility should Xia Lin be unable to repay the money.
On this question, Tong Zongjin (仝宗锦), a Harvard-trained professor of law with more than 100 thousand followers on Weibo, writes:

Looking at the verdict in the Xia Lin case, I deeply feel that the reasoning is coarse and crude. Let me try to give an example. The first image below says that the person [allegedly] harmed, Wang Xuelong, signed at Lin Ru’s request a statement that he would not seek criminal liability from Xia Lin. Then now he still says he hopes that Xia Lin can be handled in accord with the law and that he can quickly recover his loss. The second image is the court’s determination that the statement in question is not authentic, which is to say it is not admitted. The problem is: first of all, by saying that [he] hopes to handle this according to the law, quickly recovering [his] losses,” does this mean changing his previous statement [to Lin Ru]? So does handling in accord with the law mean pursuing the charge of criminal fraud? Secondly, concerning the authenticity or not of the statement, the court should also explore whether misunderstanding, fraud, coercion, deception or other specific motives were involved [on Wang’s part]. Looking that these images [of the verdict], it is clear that Wang’s sympathy and agreement not to pursue criminal liability helped induce acceptance of the funds. How can [he] now say that at the time he was not being true? Thirdly, when its clear that the parties involved had already come to an understanding, why is there a need for you, the investigating organs, to summon people and provide fresh evidence to support criminal accusations, saying that yesterday doesn’t matter and today does?

SEPTEMBER 11, 2016. A fine morning in Wukan, a fishing village on the coast of China’s southern Guangdong province. Once troubled by acrimony over the seizure of its collective land, the village is brimming today with goodwill. On Golden Harbour Avenue, and along New China East Street, members of the Public Security Frontier Defence Corps, a division of the armed police, are hard at work sweeping the pavement, pulling weeds and disinfecting public areas.
“By speaking through action,” says Wu Jianjun (吴建军), battalion chief of Lufeng’s Frontier Defence Corps, “we can better lead everyone in being environmentally conscious and making our home more beautiful.”

Working alongside these tireless “soldiers” of the armed police are local villagers who can rest assured that the problems they once had over village land rights are a thing of the past — resolved through negotiation among city officials, village leaders, developers, and independent “experts on land issues.”
Today is the perfect day for a clean sweep. In Wukan, all are one big happy family. “We see Wukan as our second native place,” says Wu Bo (吴波), chief of the village’s local armed police depot. “And the local people of Wukan see us as family too.”
Earlier that morning Wu Bo and several others had paid a visit to the home of an elderly villager, taking fresh fruit and moon cakes along for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Seeing that the old man suffered from rheumatism, Wu made sure he received proper treatment from one of the team’s doctors.
At a makeshift clinic set up across from an ancestral temple, medical specialists from the Frontier Defence Corps offer free testing and health advice to elderly villagers, another sure sign that local authorities take the well-being of Wukan’s residents seriously.
* * * *
THIS OF COURSE is not the Wukan most readers will recognise. On September 13, the day after the above details were reported prominently in Nanfang Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Party leadership in Guangdong province — right beside an interview in which the mayor of the city of Shanwei said the village’s land dispute had been resolved — the village erupted into open conflict.
Viewers across the world watched as online video showed tight formations of armed police firing tear gas and rubber bullets at villagers, who fought back with rocks and bricks. These police were presumably the same Frontier Defence Corps “soldiers” who two days earlier had swept the village’s streets and talked about building a “peaceful, harmonious, civilised and beautiful Wukan.”
[ABOVE: The story about the Frontier Defence Corps doing clean up work in Wukan village on September 11 appears in the digital version of Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily on September 12.]
In retrospect, the Nanfang Daily story — reprised elsewhere, including the tabloid Southern Metropolis Daily — seems a cynical and perverse ploy. Consider, for example, that around 3AM on September 13, the morning after the appearance of the aforementioned story, police conducted surprise raids on village homes, rounding up those suspected of organising fresh protests over dirty land deals. And then listen to Wu Jianjun, chief of the Frontier Defence Corps in the city of Lufeng, quoted in the harmonious Nanfang Daily story: “Our task today is mostly to do a major dragnet clean of Golden Harbour Avenue and New China East Street. Then we need to disinfect the flower plots, sewers, garbage cans and other key areas, ridding them of rodents.”
As we look back on the late night raids, and on the mass deployment of armed police witnessed later in the day on September 13, the phrase “major dragnet clean” becomes darkly poetic.
[ABOVE: Home footage taken by Wukan villagers on September 13 of armed police conducting a late night raid and making an arrest.]
Who was responsible for this psalm on the sacred relationship between armed police and villagers in Wukan? Was it, perhaps, a reporter from the provincial Nanfang Daily, visiting the village to witness personally the changes that had, according to the article, brought so much “positive energy” to the community? Was it a reporter for China’s official Xinhua News Agency, the wire service that routinely issues the first and final word on sensitive topics and breaking stories?
The byline on the story at Nanfang Daily is Li Qiang (李强), a bonafide reporter for the newspaper whose bylines regularly appear there. But beside Li Qiang is another name, “special correspondent” Chen Siying (陈思映). In the Chinese media, “special correspondent” is almost uniformly code for the person from a company or agency who supplied copy to the newspaper. Generally, the reporter from the newspaper — though “reporter” is in such cases a charitable title — files the copy with little or no change and adds their own name beside that of the “special correspondent,” without any mention of the latter’s affiliation. In many cases, the exchange also involves payment of the red envelope sort.
Chen Siying isn’t difficult to find. A simple search throws up scores of “special correspondent” results over the past few years, all dealing with law enforcement conducted by the Frontier Defence Corps in the Shanwei jurisdiction, which covers both Lufeng and Wukan village. Chen shares bylines and photo credits in many different media, as for example in this report from the Legal Daily website back in June, which includes credit for a photo taken after police confiscated more than 700 kilograms of drugs.
[ABOVE: This photo included in a Legal Daily website report in June 2016 is credited to Chen Yiwu, a member of the Frontier Defence Corps who took photos in the village of Wukan this month.]
In the version of Chen Siying’s report from Wukan appearing in the digital edition of the Southern Metropolis Daily on September 12, a black-and-white photo of members of the armed police clearing away shrubs and trees is credited to Chen Yiwu (陈奕武), who also happens to have a photo in the above-mentioned Legal Daily story. Chen Yiwu too is credited in numerous stories dealing with the work of the Frontier Defence Corps, especially in Shanwei and Lufeng. Here, for example, is a story from November 2015 in which he profiles members of Frontier Defence Corps’ anti-drug squad in Shanwei. Both of these “special correspondents” seem to be intimate chroniclers of the work, life and personalities of the armed police in Shanwei.
Which is to say, both the writer and the photographer behind the Nanfang Daily feature on the cordial relations between armed police and villagers in Wukan are members of the Frontier Defence Corps — the very same group we saw firing tear gas and dragging away villagers in those online videos shared right across the world.
And what about the article appearing right next to Chen Siying’s report on September 12, the interview with the mayor of Shanwei, Yang Xusong (杨绪松)? This article, in which Yang says that land issues in Wukan have “already been resolved in accordance with laws and regulations,” is also bylined by Li Qiang, the Nanfang Daily reporter. In this case, however, no “special correspondent” is credited, and it appears that the Nanfang Daily, the official organ of the provincial Party leadership, assigned its reporter to do this interview.
[ABOVE:Page five of the September 12 edition of Nanfang Daily, with two articles on Wukan.]
Side by side, this pair of articles suggests two important things. First of all, it appears that there was strong vertical coordination in Guangdong over the issue of Wukan, with endorsement through the provincial newspaper of the approach taken by the Shanwei leadership. Second, it appears that authorities at the city level were given a free rein not just in handling unfolding events in Wukan but also in doling out the facts.
This second point is an especially interesting one in light of the larger politics under President Xi Jinping. Within the sphere of China observation, we often talk about Xi the “strongman” consolidating his grip, Xi “as the core,” or Xi as the COE, the “chairman of everything.” Xi’s centralising grip on the media, which must all be “surnamed Party,” is a crucial part of this consolidation. And yet it seems, in the case of Wukan, that local leaders are being empowered to conduct “public opinion warfare,” to borrow a phrase from the most recent commentary from the editor-in-chief of the Global Times.
Could it be that control of information on sensitive and sudden-breaking news stories is devolving to local authorities under Xi? If that is the case, this would have serious ramifications for his stated objective of combatting corruption, effectively giving officials in places like Shanwei an ace card in covering up malfeasance.
* * * *
AS ARCHIVED by the WiseNews database (300+ mainland newspapers), a total of 58 newspaper, wire and web stories on “Wukan” appeared in mainland Chinese media from September 1 to September 20 (beginning on the 8th). There are substantial overlaps in these stories, meaning that the number of unique reports is far lower. For example, roughly a third of the total (16 articles) is accounted for by the official release on September 8 reporting that Lin Zulian, Wukan’s democratically elected village committee head, had been sentenced to more than three years in prison for accepting bribes. The next four stories on Wukan, all appearing on September 11, the day before the pair of stories about the mayor of Shanwei and the Frontier Defence Corps, were a single Nanfang Daily story offering the most in-depth summary to date of the ongoing land dispute in Wukan from the perspective of the authorities.
An article in the September 11 edition of Guangdong’s official Nanfang Daily lays out the efforts of local authorities in the city of Shanwei to resolve land disputes in Wukan and surrounding villages.
The timing of this sweeping historical look at land issues in Wukan and the government’s goodwill in addressing them, just as tensions were escalating inside the village following the jailing of Lin Zulian, suggested it was intended by provincial authorities as the definitive word on the root nature of problems in the village. More importantly, the report signalled to villagers that they should avoid escalation of the dispute, accepting instead the compromise position of the Party leadership. The article gave a supportive nod to local authorities. “With the verdict in the Lin Zulian case, Wukan village has once again come into people’s view,” it said. “Recently, a portion of villagers in Wukan have raised various demands through different means. On this, the Party leadership and governments of both Shanwei and Lufeng have not equivocated or avoided [the issue], but have promoted a negotiated resolution according to laws and regulations of the problems raised by Wukan villagers.”
The article talked about a hitherto unreported local “platform” called “1+7+N,” or alternatively “17N,” created, it said, by authorities in Shanwei to mediate disputes over land-use rights in the vicinity of Wukan. The platform was meant to “resolve land disputes, assign rights to land already returned [to villagers] and allocate household plots” through a panel of negotiators that included representatives from Wukan and its seven adjoining villages as well as representatives from the Shapu Tree Farm (沙埔林场), “experts on land issues” and “relevant government personnel.”
The article concluded by driving a nail into the coffin of Lin Zulian’s legacy as a faithful representative of the people:

In 2012, the villagers chose Lin Zulian to serve as their representative on the village committee to resolve problems of land and corruption. But most unfortunately, Lin Zulian has stepped down from the “altar” for his nonfeasance and his careless conduct as a “fly of corruption.” At his open trial on September 8, Lin Zulian offered this confession to the court: “I will learn my lesson, to personally abide by the law, to do things in accord with the law, and to trust in the judgment of the court.”

With the previously mentioned pair of reports appearing in Guangdong media the next day, September 12, the official narrative on Wukan was firmly in place, crafted by Xinhua News Agency, Nanfang Daily and local authorities in Shanwei. The “soldiers” of the Frontier Defence Corps were by now of course also firmly in place, having evidently used their charitable “dragnet clean” as a pretext for embedding themselves in the village.
The late night raids followed, and after them open conflict between Wukan villagers and the men of the Frontier Defence Corps. It was at this point, halfway through our 58-article body of mainland coverage of Wukan, that the narrative shifted dramatically, and control was handed over to local authorities in Shanwei.
On September 13 and 14, a total of 11 articles appeared in the WiseNews database, essentially just two reports repeated across Chinese media. The first 9 articles were accounts from Nanfang Daily and Xinhua News Agency of the arrest of 13 suspects, noting that “police in Lufeng received the support and cooperation of the masses in the September 13 strike against a small number of people who had illegally gathered in Wukan village.” The accounts, based entirely on information from police in Lufeng (in some cases from an official Weibo account), were virtually identical.
The last two articles were a single release from China News Service, republished the next day in the Southern Metropolis Daily, quoting police authorities in Lufeng as saying they were on the hunt for people who had spread “fake information” about Wukan on the internet.
Lufeng’s stranglehold on information continued over the weekend as several major newspapers in Guangdong, including Nanfang Daily and Guangzhou Daily, the mouthpiece of the Guangzhou leadership, ran another story ostensibly reported from the streets of Wukan. An unidentified “writer” witnessed that “within the village production and life were going on in a peaceful and orderly manner.”
The kicker quote for the article — which bore the headline “A Peaceful Village With Villagers’ Hearts at Ease” — was supplied by a local merchant:

Mr. Wu, who operates a seafood products store at the pier, said that in recent years business had been good during the Mid-Autumn Festival, but sales for several months this year had not been as good as in the past. “The ordinary people all want to peacefully live their days, and those few who want to make a fuss don’t represent the people of Wukan.”

In fact, the report, which can also be seen here in the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily, was sourced from Lufeng Online, the official news portal of the Lufeng city government. (The site’s URL, http://lufengshi.net/, means “Lufeng City.”)
On September 20, the top of the Lufeng Online website featured another article that has been given prominent play in China’s media, responding to allegations that Hong Kong journalists were roughed up by Lufeng police on September 14. The article, filed by the official China News Service, is again sourced entirely from the Lufeng police and the city’s information office.
“Lufeng police said . . .”
“According to the Lufeng police . . .”
“According to the Government Information Office of Lufeng City . . .”
* * * *
OVER THE PAST few days, the “dragnet clean” in Wukan has focused on removing foreign and Hong Kong media, and on countering unwanted narratives. The facts on Wukan are still very much the exclusive domain of the local leadership in Shanwei and Lufeng — as evidenced by this September 19 story by China News Service, again sourced from Lufeng Online.
The dominant official narrative is now the familiar scapegoating of “outside media” as troublemakers bent on China’s destruction. A commentary earlier this week in the Global Times argued that, “While the Wukan issue is basically an ordinary case . . . stemming from land compensation, it has been hyped by foreign media and given a political label.” This, the paper said, is precisely how foreign media misbehaved the last time Wukan entered the spotlight: “In 2011, scores of outside media entered Wukan village to ‘do reporting,’ but that ‘reporting’ in fact added fuel to the fire of the situation in Wukan.”
The deeper problem, according to the Global Times, isn’t corruption or the lingering question of land rights but rather the meddling of foreigners and Hong Kongers:

How to avoid excessive interference by outside media, clarifying the facts in a timely manner: this is a problem facing Chinese society.

Wukan has now gone quiet, as much as we can glimpse the village from media inside China. No articles for “Wukan” appear at all today in the WiseNews database. Select for Chinese-language coverage in Hong Kong, Taiwan and other regions and things are nearly as quiet — just four articles, two each in Ming Pao Daily and Apple Daily.
The clean sweep, it seems, is complete.

THE following post by Renmin University of China professor and former CMP fellow Zhang Ming (张鸣), was deleted shortly before 11PM on September 9, 2016. The post comments on China’s policy toward its neighbour, North Korea, in the wake of yet another North Korean nuclear test earlier that day just 50 miles from the Chinese border. The post was made at 7:20PM on September 9, and was public for more than three hours before being removed.

North Korea ignites one nuclear explosion and we are firmly opposed, resolving the problem through negotiation. After a second explosion, we are firmly opposed, resolving the problem through negotiation. Now we have a fifth explosion. We are still firmly opposed, and talk of resolving the problem through negotiation. The problem gets bigger and bigger, and we are more and more firmly opposed. But there is only firmness, nothing else.

Zhang Ming currently has more than 870,000 people following his Weibo account.
Zhang’s original Chinese-language post follows:

朝鲜核爆一次，我们坚决反对，以谈判解决问题，核爆两次，我们坚决反对，谈判解决问题，现在第五次了，我还是坚决反对，以谈判解决问题。问题是越来越大了，我们也越来越坚决了。但是，只有坚决，没有别的。

 

ON JANUARY 23, 2009, the Chinese Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper published its coveted list of “national civilized villages,” selected on a three-year basis by the Central Commission for Guiding Cultural and Ethical Progress. These were villages that had, according to the commission, shown strong leadership, done “solid and effective work,” “maintained social order and stability,” and provided quality social services. From the thousands of villages in China’s southern province of Guangdong, just 25 were chosen for this exceptionally rare honour. Among them was Wukan, an unknown fishing village on the outskirts of Lufeng, a small but growing city on the province’s central coast.
Three years later, as the selection process for the next raft of “national civilized villages” was no doubt kicking into high gear, protests erupted in civilised Wukan, exposing local anger over dirty land deals that had long festered beneath the surface. The uprising, stemming from the death in police custody of a popular village leader, quickly became global news as villagers erected barricades against armed police equipped with tear gas and water cannons. Wukan became a village under siege.

[ABOVE: The “Documents” section of the January 23, 2009, edition of the People’s Daily includes a list of “national civilised cities” and “national civilised villages.”]
In fact, isolated protests over corrupt land deals had already begun in Wukan in 2009, the year it was honoured as a “national civilized village.” What, one must ask, was this “solid and effective work” being done by Wukan’s Communist Party leaders, who had fled the village in the early hours of the 2011 protest movement?
Was civilized Wukan nothing more than a cynical deception?
Months later, after the protests gave way to negotiations with provincial officials on the principles of “fairness and openness,” and after democratic elections were held for a new village committee, there emerged another myth of civilized Wukan.
Wukan was a model this time not of “sound and effective work” or solid social services, but of conflict resolution in a China plagued by social tensions at the grass roots, particularly over the thorny issue of land reclamation and appropriation.
“The Wukan incident has again confirmed that democracy and supervision are effective weapons in controlling and preventing corruption,” said an editorial in the People’s Daily almost three years to the day from its hailing of civilized Wukan.

The chief cause of the corruption occurring in Wukan was the lack of democracy and supervision. The lesson from this is that we must fully preserve as the core the exercise of democratic and supervisory rights by villagers, solidly advancing democratic management and democratic politics in the countryside.

Wukan seemed to be an illustration, moreover, of the responsiveness of the Party leadership. But few asked the tougher questions about this supposed new paradigm of civilised governance at the village level — not least how such a civilized village could resolve its thorny land issues as an uncivilised and hostile Communist Party bureaucracy loomed overhead.
The news cycle moved on. Villagers returned to their fishing boats. Wukan was forgotten.
But Wukan’s troubles, it seems, never ceased. Earlier this year, as the village’s democratically elected leader, Lin Zuluan, called for renewed meetings over still unresolved land disputes, he was detained and charged with abuse of power and accepting bribes. Protests broke out afresh, with villagers professing Lin’s innocence even as his alleged confession was aired on national television.
“We villagers don’t believe it,” one woman told National Public Radio, “because in our hearts, we think of Lin Zuluan as a good party secretary.”

[ABOVE: In grainy footage aired on state television in June 2016, Wukan village leader Lin Zuluan confesses to bribery and abuse of power.]
Lin Zuluan’s awkward and halting confession, of a piece with other apparently forced public confessions by lawyers and human rights activists in recent years, raised serious questions about the motives behind his arrest. This looked suspiciously like yet another attempt to reign in political activism under a hardline Chinese president who blacklisted such topics as “civil society” and “constitutional democracy” in 2013, during the first year of his administration.
Was this the proverbial “settling of accounts after the autumn harvest” (秋后算账)? Were these the ripened yet bitter fruits of Wukan’s democratic revolution?
In recent days, a true settling of accounts has come to the village of Wukan. Tensions have spilled into open conflict, with video circulating online of villagers hurling bricks at tight rows of armed police. Thousands of police have reportedly pushed into the village, placing it under lockdown and arresting scores of villagers.
A new myth of Wukan is emerging. In fact, says the Global Times newspaper, while “a majority of Wukan villagers have calmed down,” a troublemaking minority, urged on by “foreign media,” are “unscrupulously inciting, planning, and directing chaos.” This is a familiar theme, in which calls for democracy, transparency or even basic fairness, are a great deception perpetrated by “foreign forces” hoping to uncivilize China and drag it down into darkness.
For Xi Jinping, the Wukan model is a dangerous precedent that must be not just crushed but discredited. This time, it is Wukan’s failed experiment in engagement and democracy that will be mythologised, and Lin Zuluan’s shame that will be paraded before the public.
Only China’s Party leadership has a rightful claim to the civilized. This much was clear in the official news release last week on Lin Zuluan’s conviction and sentencing to three years in prison:

In his final remarks, the defendant Lin Zuluan expressed his deepest repentance, thanking judicial officers for their civilised and fair handling of his case.

 

The following Weibo post by former Phoenix TV journalist Luqiu Luwei (闾丘露薇), who also keeps a popular blog on Sina.com, was deleted shortly after 7AM today, September 5, 2016. The post, which comments on elections in Hong Kong, was posted before midnight, lasting for around seven hours before being removed. [Click HERE for more deleted posts from the JMSC’s Weiboscope.]
The Weibo post was accompanied by a photograph of crowds waiting late at night outside a polling station in Hong Kong, which has logged record participation in this year’s election.
A translation of the original Chinese follows:

Voting ended at 10:30 tonight. As of 8:30, 1.8 million people had casts their votes, representing about half of all registered voters. This is a line of people waiting waiting outside one polling station. Perhaps next time, they should get out a bit earlier?

Here is the original Chinese-language post:

投票在晚上十点半结束。截止晚上八点半，180万人投票，相当全部合资格选民一半。这是截止前不同票站前等投票的人龙。下次投票，是不是该早点出门？

 

FIVE YEARS AGO, as Weibo and other platforms were shaping breaking news in China, it was possible to imagine new possibilities for an engaged digital citizenry. Netizens, activists and journalists spoke hopefully about “the surrounding gaze” and the coalescing of “micro-forces” as tens of thousands, even millions, became actively involved with social issues online, often impacting the government response.
Those days are gone. Since 2013, the Chinese Communist Party has moved to reassert its dominance over the message. Not only has General Secretary Xi Jinping, using the strongest language in decades, re-staked the CCP’s longstanding claim to media control — saying all media, from traditional newspapers to mobile platforms, “must be surnamed Party.” He has also moved aggressively against influential Weibo users, effectively muzzled the more outspoken commercial press, and placed himself at the helm of a powerful new Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs.
These days, it is the Party bureaucrat, as much or more than the netizen, who can look at the changes convulsing the world of media and information and see a world of infinite possibilities. As the media landscape is being reshaped globally, China’s leaders glimpse an opportunity to climb back to the top of the hill. The Chinese Communist Party, they say, can lead the innovation charge, ensuring the brave new world of new media defends and energises its own dominant position.

[ABOVE: Screenshot of a Xinhua News Agency multimedia project released in June this year to celebrate the anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party.]
On September 1, a page four piece in the People’s Daily, placed right beside a report on a bland speech by propaganda chief Liu Qibao (刘奇葆), outlined the immense opportunities that come with media innovation. The piece, called “Innovation, Making the Main Theme Even Brighter” (创新，让主旋律更响亮), was written by reporter Zhang Yang (张洋).
At one point, Zhang Yang’s article notes with evident pride the changes and innovations the People’s Daily made to the front page of its print edition on August 22, in the midst of of the Rio Olympics.
Basically, the newspaper, which is infamous in China and beyond for its dull and obsessive focus on meetings, tours and speeches by senior Party leaders, decided on that particular day to lead with — wait for it — sports news.
The photo at the top right of page one was not of Xi Jinping striding down a red carpet with a visiting dignitary. It was of a member of China’s national women’s volleyball team, which took gold in its match against Serbia, spiking the ball over the net. The photo accompanied a soaring commentary called “Strength, the Female Volleyball Spirit!” that had, according to Zhang Yang, “stirred the feelings of the public.”
For the staid People’s Daily, this front page may qualify as innovative. But that, as staffers at the newspaper would probably readily admit themselves in private, is an exceptionally low bar. However, before we roll our eyes at the inherent absurdity of the People’s Daily innovating, we should look more seriously at the innovation happening beyond the printed page, appreciating the immense resources the media group has at its disposal.
Zhang Yang’s piece quickly moves beyond this very limited notion of breakthrough to the group’s attempts to broaden its reach for the benefit of the Party’s “main theme,” an old buzzword referring to its political line.
How have state media tried to sex up coverage of Xi Jinping while keeping it serious? Well, Zhang Yang can tell you.
A partial translation of the People’s Daily piece is below the jump. I have not translated substantial portions including the specifics of how the People’s Daily, Xinhua News Agency and China Central Television have approached coverage in the digital era — but they are worth a look in Chinese for anyone interesting in learning more in this area.
For those who wish still to relish the hokey nature of much of the CCP’s propaganda material, however “innovative,” we commend this video produced by Xinhua News Agency, also mentioned with praise by Zhang Yang. One-dimensional messages and cheap emotions aside, it is impossible to deny that productions like this one demonstrate much better technical skill than many productions in the past.

“Innovation, Making the Main Theme Even Brighter” (创新，让主旋律更响亮)

Touchscreen reading (触屏阅读) has not only changed our means of disseminating knowledge, but has revolutionised the way we live. Digital media have not only accelerated the rate at which information is refreshed, but have also changed our social mentality. The public opinion environment, media patterns and modes of transmission — all have undergone profound changes, demanding that the Party’s news and public opinion work face the task of strengthening innovation.
At the Party’s News and Public Opinion Work Forum on February 19 this year, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasised: “As circumstances develop, the concepts, content, styles, forms, methods, industry formats, systems and mechanisms that drive the Party’s news and public opinion work must change, so that the direction and effectiveness [of our work] is raised.” These words clearly and concisely point the direction for raising the quality and efficiency of the Party’s news and public opinion work. Only if we constantly advance as we resolve problems, and aggressively innovate as we face challenges, can we constantly strengthen and solidify mainstream public opinion, better promote the main theme (弘扬主旋律), transmit positive energy (传播正能量), grasp discourse power (掌握话语权) and raise influence.
The Battleground Is Where the Audience Is: Building a New Pattern of Public Opinion Channeling

At around 9:11 p.m. Beijing time on August 21, when China’s women’s volleyball team won gold [at Rio], reports about the match were everywhere. The People’s Daily showed great originality, not limiting itself to just one approach, resolutely deciding to no longer make constant repetitions of its text reporting. It tried a new approach with layered headline, image and commentary. When the front page came out on the 22nd, the headline “A Super Gold, Never Forget Your Heart” stood out on its own, and the [accompanying] commentary, “Strength, the Female Volleyball Spirit!” stirred the feelings of the public. As the newspaper innovated in terms of content and layout, [our] new media platforms worked in concert, and within an hour of coming out, the commentary had logged 380,000 views.
Wherever the audience is, that is the battleground for news and public opinion. Lately, the People’s Daily has already developed from a newspaper into a media group with more than 400 end products (终端) spanning more than 10 media types including newspapers, magazines, websites, television, radio, electronic displays, mobile papers, Weibo, WeChat and apps — encompassing an audience of more than 350 million. At the same time, we have created a Media Hub (中央厨房) operational system, encompassing both domestic and international [markets] and connecting the entire [media production] chain, thereby achieving resource sharing (资源共享), platform sharing (平台共用), joint collaboration (创意共生) and mutual output (成果共推). [In this way, we have] tentatively achieved convergence of planning (融策划), convergence of [content] gathering (融采集), convergence of production (融制作) and convergence of distribution (融传播).
On June 20, Xinhua News Agency released its micro-film multimedia product, “Red Temperament” (红色气质), made for the 95th anniversary of the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party, which gathered more than 200 million views. This is just one example of the the innovation of news products by Xinhua News Agency. Beginning from last year, Xinhua News Agency, emphasising innovation of content, advanced all at once new innovations in terms of its channels, mechanisms, personnel and technology, working hard to realise “three major transformations” (三大转变) in its news products and its supply services, making the transition from supplying traditional media demands to supplying multimedia demands . . . .
Enriching Styles and Methods, Fully Utilising the Advantages of the Development of Convergence

The demands of audiences are now much greater than ever before, and their ideas and concepts are more diverse than ever. Patterns of dissemination have been fragmented and differentiated. Relevant departments and the media have actively accommodated the change in circumstances, steadily diversifying their styles and methods, energetically promoting convergent development (融合发展), working to achieve a broadly encompassing dissemination through a multi-layered reporting system.
. . . . .
Innovation is an embodiment of the Party nature (党性); innovation is the realisation of guidance; innovation is a commitment to responsibility. Right now, “newness” is the objective before us, “newness” is what spurs us on, making innovation a normal state, and steadily strengthening the transmission, guidance force and influence of the Party’s news and public opinion.

Three long years ago, liberals and human rights advocates in China took heart from the idea that basic rights such as freedom of speech might be secured by fighting for the legal application of their country’s constitution. In January 2013, just weeks after Xi Jinping offered a hearty defence of the constitution on the occasion of its 30th anniversary, an influential pro-reform journal wrote that “making our constitution real would mean real progress toward political reform.” Moreover, the journal argued, full and serious implementation would stem rising social discontent by providing basic rights, to be ensured by “related institutional guarantees.”
Today, these constitutional hopes are being turned on their head by the serious application of more ideologically extreme language contained in this “fundamental law of the state,” first adopted on December 4, 1982.
Praising the recent verdicts against four legal rights advocates, all of whom were found guilty of “subversion of the state” in cases stemming from the arrest last year of more than 300 lawyers and activists, an August 6 commentary in the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily newspaper said:

“Our nation’s constitution points out in a clear-cut manner, that, ‘The Chinese people must carry out struggle against domestic and foreign hostile forces and hostile elements that antagonise and damage our country’s socialist system.’”

The deployment against human rights activists of this constitutional passage about “hostile forces” is a sobering reminder of a contradiction that lies deep in the political DNA of the Chinese Communist Party — the notion that the flesh-and-blood people of China are ruptured into two struggling camps: those who willingly submit to the will of the Party, and those “enemies” who oppose “the people” and the “socialist transformation.”