Most people who work in any way with the media in China would probably agree that corruption in the industry is endemic. Most would probably also agree that the situation is growing steadily worse.
In October 2014, as a corruption inquiry reached into the ranks of China Central Television, the state-run broadcaster, media expert Zhan Jiang (展江), a professor at the Foreign Languages University, argued that China leads the world in media corruption. Media corruption, said Zhan, was “an outgrowth of political and commercial corruption.”
China Youth Daily reporter Liu Chang (刘畅), a former China Media Project fellow, has written that such practices as paid-for news and news extortion have become “institutionalised” in China. Here is how Liu describes the development of media corruption since the 1990s:

In its earliest stage, news extortion involved upfront demands for cash by journalists. But as this conduct came under fire, the practice was developed and refined and payments to journalists and media to make negative reports disappear were “whitewashed” as advertising buys, circulation income, publicity fees and all manner of things. As the practice evolved, cooperation between the people on the business side who handled advertising contracts and the reporters in the field became more and more intimate, until everyone was involved — with the editor-in-chief and president pulling the strings behind the curtain.
From what we can see of the 21cbh.com case, it seems to be a perfect illustration of how news extortion in China has become institutionalised and industrialised. The danger in this situation is that some media outfits engage in the practice without compunction, knowing that in most cases enterprises will simply give in just to avoid trouble.

[ABOVE: When power and money rule the media, where do ethics come in? Photo by Ryan McFarland available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]
Periodically, China’s leaders declare a war of attrition against the spectre of media corruption. They nibble at the monster’s heels, arresting a handful of regional bureau chiefs, or “fake reporters” operating without formal press credentials. They announce a new round of moral training for journalists in the “Marxist View of Journalism.”
The core causes go unaddressed. Chief among these is the inescapable fact that media and information are defined as tools of power. Look no further than the “Marxist View of Journalism,” which states that all news must serve the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.
When political power is given precedence — as opposed to accuracy, relevance and the public interest — the upshot is that all media are in a sense morally bankrupted. Those who possess sufficient power can exploit the media. Conversely, media, as extensions of power, can apply that power for economic gain in a competitive, commercialised media environment.
Another unfortunate consequence of the predominance of political power in the media is that campaigns designed to assert “ethics” and “discipline” can be distorted to serve narrow political ends. Threatened with negative reporting by newspapers or magazines, government officials can cast probing journalists as profiteering frauds.
All of these questions about the truth, ethics and power are now swirling around the recent case of the detention of three journalists in China’s northwest province of Gansu.
The three journalists, all from commercial newspapers registered under the Gansu Daily Newspaper Group and the Lanzhou Committee of the Chinese Communist Party — in other words, spin-offs of the official Gansu Daily — were detained by police in the Gansu city of Wuwei on January 7 and 8, and are now under criminal detention on charges of “extortion and blackmail.”
According to reports by Caixin Media, one of China’s leading professional news outlets, the three journalists had been pressured ahead of their arrests by unspecified interests who “wanted to see them driven out of Wuwei.”
Is this a case of poor media ethics? A case of the arrogance and license of unchecked power?
Perhaps, as so often, it is a case of both.
The following is a translation of a recent report by Caixin Media on the case of the three detained journalists in Gansu province.

Police in Gansu Wuwei Detain 3 Journalists on Suspicion of Extortion and Blackmail
January 19, 2016
At around 11PM yesterday (January 18), late at night, an announcement through the official Weibo account of the Wuwei City Public Security Bureau in Gansu province reported that “police in Liangzhou District are legally investigating journalists for in a case of extortion and blackmail.” This [announcement] responded directly to a wave of public opinion concerning the “disappearance” of three journalists in Wuwei. The notice said that on January 18, police in the Liangzhou District of Wuwei had submitted a request to the procuratorate in Liangzhou Districtfor for arrest warrants for a certain Zhang and two other journalists, under charges of extortion and blackmail.
On January 7, the notice said, police from the Liangzhou branch of the Wuwei Public Security Bureau had looked into a criminal case involving a lawbreaker (违法人员) identified as Zhang (张某某). In the course of its investigation, the Liangzhou branch found that Zhang had worked with a certain Luo and another Zhang since 2011 to carry out acts of extortion for financial gain, using their identities as journalists and rationalising their actions as supervision by public opinion (舆论监督). According to Article 267 of the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China, Zhang and the others had been placed under criminal detention for extortion and blackmail by the Liangzhou branch.
According to reporting and verification yesterday by Caixin reporters (SEE “’Disappeared’ Journalists in Gansu Were Threatened to Leave Wuwei City Prior to Facing Extortion Charges”), the three journalists are work in the Wuwei bureaus of the Lanzhou Morning Post, the Lanzhou Evening News and the Western Economic Daily. All three are commercial newspapers that have strong influence locally in Gansu province and are registered under the Gansu Daily Newspaper Group and the Lanzhou Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.
This incident drew attention on the internet after a post made the rounds called, “Many Journalists in Gansu Detained for Extortion, Were Previously Digging Into the ‘Chocolate Girl’ Incident” (甘肃多名记者涉嫌敲诈被捕，曾深挖‘巧克力女孩’事件). Soon after this, police in Wuwei said the three [suspects] had not been detained in relation to the story of the suicide death of a female student after she was caught stealing chocolate in Jinchang City. Instead, [police said], the three had coordinated to “commit extortion against the government and individuals” while reporting in Wuwei, and had “already been criminally detained.” The police said that had notified the newspapers and family members.
According to the reporting of the Caixin reporter and official releases from the Wuwei police, the first to be taken was Zhang of the Lanzhou Morning Post, who was subjected to administrative detention on January 7. The other two journalists were taken on January 8. Family members of the journalist surnamed Zhang from the Lanzhou Morning Post told the Caixin reporter that Zhang was unreachable starting from the night of January 7, and on January 8 the police issued them a notice saying Zhang was being detained for five days under criminal suspicion. On January 14, after the expiration of this term, when family members arrived at the detention centre to meet Zhang, they saw that Zhang had been placed in handcuffs and was being transported to the prison. The family members received a formal notice from police saying that the journalist was being criminally detained on suspicion of acts of extortion and blackmail.
As the Caixin reporter was looking into the case yesterday, the Lanzhou Morning Post said that it had learned the news on the morning of January 18, that its leaders were in the midst of discussions, and that it had no information it could share at the moment. An employee in the office at the Lanzhou Evening News said police had come to the office on January 15 to confirm the credentials of its journalist. “I can tell you, first of all, that the journalist Luo is certainly one of our reporters, and second that all other information is to follow the lead of the Public Security Bureau.” This employee said that they had not personally seen the criminal detention notice, and that they knew nothing further. After checking with their superiors, an employee in the office of the editor-in-chief at Western Economic Daily told the Caixin reporter that so far the police had provided them with no formal documents in writing of any kind, and that if they wanted to learn more about the situation they should get in touch with Wuwei police as the paper was not in possession [of the facts].
Up to now police in Wuwei have released no details concerning the “numerous concrete cases of extortion and blackmail committed” by the three suspects. But one source familiar with Zhang, [one of the suspects involved], revealed to the Caixin reporter that prior to their arrest, the journalist, Zhang, had been singled out by police, and some had said they wanted to see them driven out of Wuwei. The source also said that in recent years, the Lanzhou Morning Post, Lanzhou Evening News and Western Economic Daily, all “provincial-level media,” had all done watchdog journalism [“supervision by public opinion”] about Wuwei.

On January 10, a query appeared on Zhihu (知乎), a Chinese question-and-answer community similar to Quora, in which a user identified as “Ant Grass” (蚂蚁菜) — and claiming to be the former moderator of China’s second-largest online forum for sufferers from haemophilia — said that the web services company Baidu had unilaterally cancelled their moderator status in Baidu Forum, dropped in an “official” moderator, and replaced the entire team of forum regulators. Seeking an explanation from Baidu, they had received no response.
Another user responded that the current moderator of a well-known haemophilia chat forum, “Haemophilia Expert” (血友病专家), was in fact an unidentified party that had paid to have executive moderation status. Now, the user said, it “took spending money” to become a forum moderator. This allegation generated a great deal of debate and quickly became a hot topic that spilled over into the news.

[ABOVE: The Beijing Youth Daily reports on the firestorm over for-profit health forums on January 12, 2016.]
Two days later, on January 12, Baidu issued a statement saying that haemophilia forums would no longer be sold to commercial enterprises such as hospitals and clinics, an admission that it had been profiting by offering for-profit healthcare providers unique control over health forums. Finally, moderators big and small who had lost control over their forums were informed that Baidu would cancel all forums that had been established through commercial deals.
The medical forum controversy prompted a response yesterday in the Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper, which said:
In recent years, some internet enterprises have joined hands with unknown “experts,” selling fake medicines, medical supplies and services online — and they employ a variety of tactics. Cheats have ridden on the broad shoulders of technology, and in this way the ruses have become more deceptive and more harmful. This gives all of us a new lesson, new demands and new responsibilities.
One could certainly argue that China’s leaders have set the bar when it comes to manipulating information and creating a bull market for falsehood. In a sense, what Baidu seems to have been doing is not at all different from the state-sponsored project of “public opinion channeling,” or from the way “online commentators” are routinely deployed to trumpet the Party-state agendas.
When truth is devalued to such a point in a competitive commercial landscape, does this not encourage everyone to capitalise on falsehood?
In any case, this is a very interesting example of how we are now seeing newer online services — aside from Weibo and WeChat — drive agendas in China.
Related News
“Haemophilia Forum Suspected of ‘Selling Out,’” Beijing News, January 12, 2016.
“Baidu Accused of Selling ‘Control’ of Baidu Forums,” YNET.com, January 12, 2016.
“Hot Topic Health Forums Can Be Bought? Baidu Responds: We Are Stopping All Commercial Cooperation,” Yicai.com, January 12, 2016.
“The Storm Over the Sale of Baidu Haemophilia Forums: How Many Other Forums Have Already Become Commercial Products?,” Tencent Technology, January 12, 2016.
“Notice from Baidu,” Sohu.com, January 12, 2016.
 

In Beijing this week, a senior-level meeting on internet policy pledged that 2016 would be a “year of innovation.” But this wasn’t about breakthroughs in technologies or services — the objective was information control, plain and simple.
Held on January 5 and 6, the National Online Propaganda Work Conference (全国网络宣传工作会议) was attended by officials from the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) — the agency now taking charge of internet censorship directly under President Xi Jinping’s Office of the Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs —the various CAC regional offices, and the heads of central-level internet sites such as People’s Daily Online.
According to state media reports, the conference focussed on the need to “innovate” the concepts driving “online propaganda work.” The ultimate goal was to “further seek out and improve the socialism with Chinese characteristics internet management path, so that the positions of the Chinese Communist Party become the strongest voice in the online space.”
Searching Chinese news archives going back several years, I find no previous reference to this phrase, “the socialism with Chinese characteristics internet management path” (中国特色社会主义治网之道). Under Xi Jinping — and his powerful internet czar, Lu Wei — China seems far more confident in asserting, without apology, its regime of internet censorship as a matter of national sovereignty.
Could we be witnessing, with this talk of unique “internet management path,” the birth of a new Party watchword? The buzzwords of the Chinese Communist Party come and go, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
Meanwhile, here is how the official People’s Daily writes about the National Online Propaganda Work Conference today. We should note that the piece concludes the list of must-do’s for internet propaganda officials with the need to “use Chinese claims and Chinese proposals to direct changes to the global system of internet governance.”
Enjoy.

“Letting the Positions of the Party Become the Strongest Voices in the Online Space” (让党的主张成为网络空间最强音)
People’s Daily / January 7, 2016, page 04
The National Online Propagaganda Work Conference, held on January 5 and 6, emphasised that 2016 will be a “year of innovation” for the Cyberspace Administration of China, [in which it] must energetically promote comprehensive innovation of the concepts, content, methods and team-building necessary for online propaganda work, further exploring and improving the socialism with Chinese characteristics internet management path, so that the positions of the Chinese Communist Party become the strongest voice in the online space, so that there is strong online public opinion support for the opening strides of the 13th Five Year Plan.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, there have been further improvements in the online ecology. The [Party’s] main theme has been louder and clearer, positive energy more abundant, and the online space has been clearer and brighter. There has been positive development in terms of the overall synchronisation of the online public opinion ecology with the full circumstance of the Party and the nation. Studies have indicated that 80.1 percent of internet users believe there has been a clear improvement in the online public opinion environment; 78 percent of internet users believe the outlook for a civilised web (网络文明) has improved; 85.6 percent of internet users believe that online positive energy information (网络正能量信息) has steadily increased; and 90.6 percent of internet users are full of confidence about the healthy development of our country’s internet.
The conference pointed out that since the 18th National Congress, President Xi Jinping’s series of important speeches systematically described a series of major theoretical and practical issues relating to internet development and governance, and raised a series of new ideas, new concepts and new judgements, drawing a magnificent blueprint for the building of a strong internet nation (网络强国).
The conference demanded that the national CAC network focus principally on adequately executing the following tasks in 2016: deepening online propaganda on the basis of the new ideas, new concepts and new strategies of the Central Committee of the CCP as set out by Comrade Xi Jinping as general secretary, so that the theoretical innovations and practical achievements of the Party become the lofty main tone and main theme of the online space; increasing the strength of positive propaganda online, surrounding the center and in service of the overall situation, creating a public opinion climate to enable victory in the creation of a society of comprehensive moderate wealth. Fully leveraging websites, online social organisations and internet users, achieving comprehensive [internet] management through multiparty execution of policies; comprehensively promoting rule by law in the online space, working to build and improve the rule by law system in the online space; using Chinese claims and Chinese proposals to direct changes to the global system of internet governance (用中国主张、中国方案引领全球网络治理体系变革).

Here we are in 2016. But before we leap headlong into what will certainly be a twelve-month roller coaster ride of China stories — we already have the probable abduction of (another) Hong Kong publisher, test landings in the disputed Spratly Islands, and a “wild ride” on China’s share markets — how do we make sense of 2015?
Fortunately, we can count on the creative energy of China’s mobile internet. One of my favourite year-end reflections is this darkly humorous one, shared across Chinese social networks since late last month. The piece, “2015: Whose Grief?”, was apparently posted first to Qzone Diary (QQ空间日志), a blog-like service added in 2013 to Tencent’s Qzone (itself developed in 2005). I first saw the post when Chinese friends on WeChat shared it, remarking that it was “an excellent summary.”
I share my feeble translation here.

2015: Whose Grief?
By “Fragrant Wu” (吾乃芬芳) / December 29, 2015
In just a few days, 2015 will be history. This year, I can say that I’ve been fortunate, and I’ve been unfortunate . . .
When the stampede occurred in Shanghai, I was fortunate — because I hadn’t rushed out to join the celebrations.
When the Oriental Star cruise ship sank, I was fortunate — because I hadn’t gone off on a holiday.
When the chemical explosion occurred in Tianjin, I was fortunate — because I don’t live in Tianjin.
When the “mountain of mud” collapsed in Shenzhen, I was fortunate — because there was some distance between me and Shenzhen.
Still, I don’t know how long my good fortune will last. I’ve managed to escape earthquakes and floods, to hide from [collapsing] “tofu dreg” developments. But is it possible to avoid such things as gutter oil, GMO foods or all those other potential misfortunes that might befall me, for which there is no responsibility or oversight?
This year, 2015, has afforded us so many memories, so many things that are impossible to forget, but which we have now consigned to oblivion . . .
For the big tigers [in the Chinese Communist Party], this year has been an unending nightmare . . .
We saw the death this year of [Xu] Caihou], who left behind a hefty pile of personal treasure. Had he passed away two years earlier, [his reputation and fortune] might have been saved. His death would have been a momentous occasion — conferring, perhaps, the title “great commander.” Xu’s death in 2015 saved the system instead. He died with grave dishonour, seen as a “national monster.”
[Zhou] Yongkang was sentenced this year too. Those television hosts with whom he once flirted — in whose beds are they gently panting now? The security chief who once commanded millions of armed police sits now behind bars. The very same man who once said, “We will not tolerate an iota of corruption!” I wonder at how much strength must it have taken to utter those words without cracking a smile?
This year [Ling] Jihua entered [a prison cell]. In the end, did he manage his get-rich plan with success? His only son died [in a high-speed crash], and still he managed to go on making reports just like nothing happened . . .
If we rely on human beings to oppose corruption, corruption will persist . . .
This was a year of major economic crisis.
The stock market tanked this year; the factories of the Celestial Empire shut down, falling like dominoes. The bigwigs of the middle class were slashed by what, 90 percent? [Migrant] workers got to go home early, and there was no need for them to scrabble for train tickets [as is generally necessary during the annual Spring Festival].
This year, the rich rednecks died from credit trusts, the middle classers died from “non-standardized debt assets,” and the lowest losers died from peer-to-peer lending. In 2015, more than 1,000 P2P platforms died. Meanwhile, those coal barons from Shanxi who used to hold lavish weddings for their daughters were crippled by debt.
This year, neither the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership nor the Trans-Pacific Partnership would have anything to do with us. When we’ve entirely exhausted our population advantage, when we’ve entirely exhausted our natural resources, can our economic brilliance continue? Here we are, still comforting ourselves. “We have such huge domestic demand,” [we say]. “We have our brothers in Africa,” [we say]. “Capitalism has not abandoned its will to destroy us,” [we say].
Our country is still throwing money around, throwing money around, money . . .
For the Chinese people, this has been the most wonderful of years.
As it was a race against the clock on the scene of disaster, as lives were buried suddenly under a mountain of earth, all in a flash, and [there on the scene] we had the most wonderful pledge [as firefighters made a pledge to the flag of the Chinese Communist Party].
That faithful servant of the people in Beijing, [Mayor Wang Anshun (王安顺)], made such a wonderful promise with those brave words that put his head on the line [NOTE: Wang said he would cut off his own head if he couldn’t solve the problem of air pollution], and this deserves to go down as the most wonderful joke of the year.
Around the dinner table, [television host] Bi Fujian (毕姥爷) acted out a different sort of Avenue of Stars [an altered revolutionary song making fun of Mao Zedong], and he suffered the most wonderful of secret filmings . . . honouring us with the year’s most wonderful lyrics.
Over the summer, in a Uniqlo changing room, a couple were locked in lovemaking, and [the resulting sex video] made Uniqlo known to the world, giving us the year’s most wonderful advertisement.
……
A friend once asked me: Why is it you can’t find any positive energy anywhere? In response, I said I found positive energy in the way lawyer Pu [Zhiqiang] kept on standing, the way he fought for the freedom of the people to resist, the way he never compromised or gave up, the way he stood up for others even as so many of us remained silent.
Chai Jing’s “Under the Dome” was also positive energy. All for nothing did she make a documentary about air pollution. Its shocking portrayal made Chinese sit up and take notice. She did what any responsible journalist should do, what any mother should do.
Regrettably, as 2015 comes to an end, I find all of a sudden that as big as the world may be, there is no escape whatsoever.

The following post by Sina Weibo user “Zhang Wen’s essays” (章文的文章) was deleted from the social media service sometime before 11:01AM today, December 22, 2015, after being live for approximately 150 minutes. The post expresses support for jailed rights lawyer and former CMP fellow Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强), who today was given a three-year suspended sentence after being found guilty of “inciting ethnic hatred” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” on the basis of posts he made to social media. [For more deleted posts visit the HKU Weiboscope, created by the Journalism & Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong.]
This post is just one among many commenting on the Pu Zhiqiang case that have been deleted in recent weeks.
A translation of the post follows:

We are waiting for the verdict! But no matter what the result, to my mind he is guilty of nothing.

Here is the original Chinese-language post:

等待判决中！不论判决结果怎样，他在我心目中都是无罪的。

China’s World Internet Conference is last week’s news, but the event will likely reverberate for years to come, as China seeks international support for its notion of a “multilateral” approach to the governance of global cyberspace.
The piece that follows is one of the most informative I have read so far on the so-called “Wuzhen Summit,” attended this year by President Xi Jinping. Published in The Initium, a Hong Kong start-up that has done some very good reporting on China over the past six months, the piece is written by Fang Kecheng (方可成), a former journalist at Guangzhou’s Southern Weekly newspaper.

[ABOVE: President Xi Jinping addresses China’s World Internet Conference on December 16, 2015.]
Fang, the author of a book called Old Friends of China (中国人民的老朋友) about the history of China’s foreign policy, is currently studying for his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania.
My translation follows. Enjoy.

Diplomacy is the Point of China’s World Internet Conference
By Fang Kecheng (方可成) / The Initium
On December 18, the curtains closed on the three-day long 2nd World Internet Conference (WIC2), held in the town of Wuzhen in [China’s] Zhejiang province.
The event was lively: Chinese internet bosses attended the event, and quite a number of well-known [foreign] internet companies sent their representatives to attend the conference. The latter included a founder of LinkedIn, which has launched a castrated version for the China market. In addition, many domestic and foreign officials, representatives from international organisations, entrepreneurs, experts and others were on the guest list.
Observing from the virtual sidelines, ordinary [Chinese] internet users did Photoshop jobs on images emerging from the conference, their interest focusing chiefly on the likes of Jack Ma (马云), Pony Ma (马化腾), Robin Li (李彦宏), Lei Jun (雷军), Liu Qiangdong (刘强东) and Zhou Hongyi (周鸿祎) . . . . Without a doubt, these billionaires from China’s internet giants are celebrities in today’s China. But the Jack Ma’s and Lei Jun’s weren’t in fact the heart of the World Internet Conference. They were merely in Wuzhen as supporting characters for another. I‘m talking of course about Xi Jinping (习近平).
At this conference organised by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and the provincial government of Zhejiang, the Chinese government was the principal character at the very core. And the core objective of the Chinese government in holding this conference was to push out a core agenda — which was not to discuss those topics the commercial and tech media love to talk about, like the internet industry, or the “Internet plus” strategy, or internet banking, or intelligent manufacturing, or tech startups, or any of that.
Two words were at the heart of the World Internet Conference agenda: foreign affairs (外交). Everything else was meant only to serve these two words.
A Victory on the Eve of the Conference
In November last year, when the 1st World Internet Conference was held in Wuzhen, Xi Jinping sent a message of congratulations to the event. This year, Xi attended in person and made a speech, signalling clearly that China’s leadership was giving the conference high priority.
The topic of Xi Jinping’s speech was “promoting the transformation of the global system of internet governance” (推进全球互联网治理体系变革), for which he outlined “four principles” (四项原则) and made “five propositions” (五点主张). This was the core agenda of the World Internet Conference.
It is the hope of China’s government that a new concept for internet governance can be disseminated across the world, and the first and essential principle of this concept is the notion of “respecting cyber-sovereignty” (尊重网络主权). In more concrete terms this means, in Xi Jinping’s words, “respecting each country’s right to choose its own internet development path, its own internet management model, its own public policies on the internet, and to participate on an equal basis in the governance of international cyberspace — avoiding cyber-hegemony, and avoiding interference in the internal affairs of other countries.”
Not surprisingly, one of the most important diplomatic guests at the conference, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, supported Xi Jinping’s proposals in his own speech.
In fact, China and Russia have acted in close partnership to promote this principle of [internet] governance. And as chance would have it, the day before the curtain opened on WIC2, China, Russia and other allies achieved a limited foreign relations victory at another important conference on internet governance.
On December 16, the 10th meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS10) was held at United Nations headquarters in New York. As the name suggests, the chief task of this meeting was to review the implementation of WSIS work since the holding of the first summit 10 years ago in Geneva. While the results of the review are not binding on participants, it remains an important United Nations document, and it could have a strong impact on the future development of the global internet governance system.
Through a six-month process of negotiation [over the language of the WSIS10 document], China, Russia and other countries successfully lobbied for the inclusion of the term “multilateral” (多边) [in the final language of WSIS10]. This word had drawn fierce opposition from Western countries, companies and civil society groups throughout the summit.
Last year, representatives from nearly 180 countries attended another major conference on global internet governance called NetMundial, hosted by Brazil. At that conference, China energetically pushed the idea of “multilateral” internet governance. But the resolution emerging from that event did not ultimately include the word — resulting in the refusal of China, Russia, Iran, India and a number of other countries to sign the document.
In his speech to the 2nd World Internet Conference, Xi Jinping stressed the word “multilateral”: “[We must] build,” he said, “a multilateral, democratic and transparent governance system for the global internet.”
Why is this word so important? And why does the adoption of this language mean China has achieved a tentative victory in its foreign relations push over the issue of global internet governance?
Multilateral VS Multi-stakeholder
In the language of global internet governance, the word “multilateral” stands in opposition to the word “multi-stakeholder” (多利益相关方).
These words, while superficially similar, signal two radically different visions of internet governance.
The “multi-stakeholder” approach to internet governance has up to now been affirmed and accepted by the vast majority of Western democratic countries. Its core idea is to allow all parties with an interest in the internet to sit down together on equal footing, openly and transparently to mutually discuss the development of the internet. These interested parties include national governments, international organisations, private companies, members of the engineering community, academics, civil society groups and ordinary internet users — and no single parties are to have any decisive dominance over the process. For this reason, some have referred to this approach as a “distributed” (分散 or 分布式) approach to governance.
In contrast, the core of the “multilateral” approach is to position national governments as the leading decision-makers. Various countries can make their own isolated decisions about internet governance methods, and no country can interfere [in this right].
The Brookings Institution, [a private nonprofit organisation] in the United States, said in a report that while this approach to governance also allows for the participation of various side, it affords governments more special privileges (特权). As a report in the New York Times put it, “[m]ultilateral is code for states making the rules.”
In the guest makeup of the 2nd World Internet Conference itself we can see the shadow of the multilateral governance approach: state governments play the leading role, while the remaining seats are taken by foreign dignitaries friendly to China, internet business leaders and a selection of leading academics and engineers. Finally, overseas university students are bundled in to give the event a more lively appearance. As for civil society groups, they are left entirely out of the equation.
What result will either of these governance approaches have?
For one thing, we can say that if the multi-stakeholder approach had been truly and properly implemented in practice, then massive spying programs like that of America’s National Security Agency (NSA), [exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden], would not have happened, because other stake-holders could have monitored such conduct, other national governments and international organisations could have pressured the United States over these programs, corporations could have resisted demands that they be complicit, and civil society groups could have spoken out on the issue.
And what if a “multilateral” system had been in place instead? In that case, NSA spying would probably have been more reckless, because each national government could claim a leading role on questions of domestic internet governance, and civil society groups and ordinary consumers would be given inferior status. Other national governments and international organisations, meanwhile, would have not right to say a thing.
It is worth pointing out that the current system at the United Nations is at its very foundation a multilateral foreign affairs system. In the Charter of the United Nations, it says that the body “is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members,” and it explicitly mentions “non-intervention in domestic affairs” and other principles. For this reason, the Charter is often cited by China in its push for a multilateral system of global internet governance. In his WIC2 speech, Xi Jinping even singled out the document, saying: “The principles and spirit of the Charter of the United Nations should be applied to cyberspace.”
The 2nd Third World Internet Conference?
In order to advance the multilateral approach to internet governance, not only has China spared no effort in its related diplomacy at the United Nations and at other global events organised by other countries, but it has also created its own dedicated foreign affairs base back at home. For this is exactly what the World Internet Conference amounts to.
In the midst of this year’s event, there was some derision about the motives of the foreign dignitaries present — essentially, that it seemed they had attended in strong numbers only to queue up for economic assistance from China. A joke made the rounds on social media that went like this:

First, let me warmly welcome this lofty event, the 2nd World Internet Conference, which is attended by Uncle Xi himself! However, searching all around, it seemed to me that the title of the event must have been misreported. Only after careful consideration did I realise they left off a word: “third.” We should say that the curtain has opened on the 2nd Third World Internet Conference. China is being visited by representatives from this -stan and that -stan, testing my knowledge of geography. China must be mighty. From now on, when developed nations host conferences, let’s not even go.

In fact, DT Finance made its own accounting of the World Internet Conference and found that just 8 of the 21 major countries attending WIC2 ranked above the global average according to the ICT Development Index (IDI) of internet indicators in the recently released 2015 report by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the specialised UN agency for information and communication technologies, or ICTs.
This tells us that the vast majority of developed nations in the West have not bought into China’s multilateral program. On the other hand, it reveals the thread of China’s foreign policy strategy here: Begin by uniting around this idea all of those countries in the so-called Third World that seek economic assistance, or have deep misgivings about Western democracy. For their part, Chinese internet users came up with their own very vivid characterisation: “Buy a high-speed rail, we’ll throw in a national firewall free of charge” (买高铁送防火墙).
According to the above-mentioned report in the New York Times, China’s victory over the language of multilateralism at WSIS10 owed in part to this alliance of countries. Lately, the so-called Group of 77 (G77), a loose coalition of developing nations at the United Nations, has been in negotiations over support for the multilateral model of internet governance China has pushed so hard.
In his WIC2 speech, Xi Jinping said that, “The current rules for the governance of cyberspace made it difficult to reflect the hopes and interests of the majority of countries.” Now we understand what Xi means by the “majority of countries.”
Pro-government pundits at home have spared no effort in praising China’s foreign relations efforts on this front. Wang Yiwei (王义桅), director of the School International Affairs at Renmin University of China, wrote in the overseas edition of the official People’s Daily newspaper that Xi Jinping’s four principles of internet governance “remind us of the five principles of peaceful coexistence that China presented at the Bandung Conference in 1955. One is for today, the other for 60 years ago; one is for the virtual world, the other for the physical world; four principles, and five principles, both emphasising sovereignty and peaceful coexistence. [These principles will] take internet governance concepts to a new and elevated place, and will become the linchpin of global internet order.”
Wang is not entirely remiss in likening the 2nd World Internet Conference to the Bandung Conference that took place in Indonesia. The various national independence movements unfolding in the wake of the Second World War formed the backdrop of the Bandung Conference, and this World Internet Conference is happening against the backdrop of the growing penetration of the internet into these developing countries, so that they are now the chief source of new internet users globally. The Bandung Conference was directed toward colonialism, and toward the hegemonism of the United States and the Soviet Union — and there is no denying that for historical reasons, the internet today is still principally dominated by the United States.
But there are also very obvious differences between Bandung and the WIC. On the internet today, the United States does not have the kind of hegemonic status it certainly possessed 60 years ago. Colonialism is more or less a spectre of the past. The Cold War ended long ago. China today is in a far more powerful position than it occupied at the time of the Bandung Conference. It is no longer a weak player hoping desperately to find its place in the world, a newly born political power. It is a major power whose economy has risen, that itches for its chance politically. To give you one example of how this is already happening, the current secretary-general of the International Telecommunications Union is Zhao Houlin (赵厚麟). His election naturally has owes a great deal to the efforts of China’s government, and from his post Zhao will be sure to do his utmost to assist China’s efforts in pushing the multilateral internet governance model.
The finally difference we must note between the Bandung Conference and the World Internet Conference leaves us with what is perhaps the most important question of all. The Bandung Conference arose in opposition to colonialism and imperialism, and it was significant in supporting popular liberation movements and independence — with the support and sympathy of societies in the West.
But what, we should ask, does today’s World Internet Conference oppose, and what does it support?

The following post by Rongjian2001 (荣剑2001), was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 10:50am today, 16 December 2015. The post asks tongue-in-cheek where Facebook is and what kind of book it is — the popular US-based service of course being blocked in China.
The post answers its own question with a reference to the town of Wuzhen in Zhejiang province, currently the site of China’s World Internet Conference. It shares a screenshot of a Weibo post by Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP), which reports that guests at WIC can log on to Facebook and Twitter while in Wuzhen if they use special Wi-Fi accounts.

Rongjian2001 notes that China has the stated goal of fashioning itself as a global Internet power, or wangluo qiangguo (网络强国). The implication: Can it accomplish this if its closes itself off from the global Internet?
A translation of the post follows:

I used to have no idea where Facebook is and what kind of book it is. It turns out it’s in Wuzhen, China. China is going to build itself as an Internet superpower.

The original post in Chinese:

以前不知道Facebook在哪里，是一本什么书，原来就在中国的乌镇。中国现在要建网络强国了。

So far, there seems to be no English-language version of Xi Jinping’s speech to the World Internet Conference earlier today. To make matters more confusing, the WIC’s official website has promoted Xi’s “Message of Congratulations” from last year’s conference to the front page of the English-language side under “News.” So be careful NOT to confuse the two addresses.
There is a “Live Report” up (as of early afternoon) on the WIC website that seems to follow Xi’s address, as given in Chinese, quite closely. Some posts of versions of Xi Jinping’s speech on WeChat have apparently been blocked.
Basically, folks, the World Internet Conference this year is all about China’s attempt to remake global Internet governance, the international aspect of what Xinhua News Agency yesterday characterised as “Version 2.0” of China’s Internet governance. Look at the Chinese-language full-text version of Xi Jinping’s address today and there can be little mistaking this primary agenda.
I’m taking my cues from the online version available from Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po, which is available here.
I have no time at the moment to get the entire thing up in English. But what I do have follows. And I’ll add to it as time permits.

Full Text of Xi Jinping’s Address to the World Internet Conference
Wen Wei Po / December 16, 2015
[NOTE: I pick up after the point where Xi Jinping welcomes a series of important guests, beginning with Pakistan’s president, Mamnoon Hussain.]
First, in solemn representation of the Chinese government and the people of China, and in a personal capacity as well, I wish you the fondest of welcomes to all of you guests to the 2nd World Internet Conference! And I offer the warmest congratulations for the opening of this conference!
I worked in Zhejiang province for many years in my past, and I came many times to Wuzhen, a place of which I am very fond. The second time Wuzhen underwent regeneration, I was here assisting them with planning, supporting them with the preservation of historic architecture and with the development of the tourism industry. Coming here again today, it feels intimate and familiar, but at the same time so fresh. It’s been so many years since I’ve been here, after all, and my eyes still open wide.
[Xi talks here about the impact of the Internet on Wuzhen, as a microcosm of the influence Internet development has had across China.]
[Xi addresses the historic role of the Internet, the steady progress of humankind from agricultural revolution to industrial revolution, and so on to the information revolution. The Internet has enriched all of our lives, put information at our fingertips, etcetera.]
[Xi introduces the five key development concepts emerging from the Fifth Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the CCP: “innovation” (创新), “co-ordination” (协调), “sustainability” (绿色), “openness” (开放) and “win-win” (共享). He mentions the development of China as an “Internet power,” or wangluoqiangguo (网络强国), as an important strategy of the 13th Five-Year Plan.]
Guests and friends! In a world characterised increasingly by multi-polarity, globalisation, cultural diversity and social informationization (社会信息化), the Internet is an ever greater factor in driving forward the progress of human civilisation. At the same time, the uneven development of the Internet, the imperfect nature of the rules [governing its use], the unreasonable [situation with respect to] order [on the Internet], are all problems that are increasingly obvious. The information gaps between various countries and regions are being pulled closer together, and the current rules on governance of cyberspace cannot reflect the interests and wishes of the vast majority of countries; across the world, such things as [breaches of] personal data privacy, violations of intellectual property and online crime are happening all the time, and online surveillance, cyber attacks, online terrorism and other activities have become threats of a global nature. Facing these problems and challenges, the international community must, on a foundation of mutual respect and mutual trust, strengthen dialogue and cooperation, promoting a transformation of the global governance system of the Internet — working together to create a peaceful, secure, open and cooperative cyberspace, and to build a multilateral, democratic and transparent global Internet governance system (全球互联网治理体系).