Now Executive Director of the China Media Project, leading the project’s research and partnerships, David originally joined the project in Hong Kong in 2004. He is the author of Dragons in Diamond Village (Penguin), a book of reportage about urbanization and social activism in China, and co-editor of Investigative Journalism in China (HKU Press).
In late March, one of China’s most outspoken media groups, Caixin Media, alleged in an investigative report that Guo Wengui (郭文贵), the chief shareholder of Beijing Zenith Holdings, had been involved in the ouster of former Beijing vice-mayor Liu Zhihua. According to Caixin’s report, followed up by other Chinese media, Guo Wengui allegedly enlisted the help of Ma Jian, a former vice minister in China’s Ministry of State Security now facing his own corruption investigation, to oust Liu Zhihua and in the process remove obstacles to a preferential land deal near Beijing’s Olympic Green park.
Guo Wengui, who is currently living overseas, quickly went on the offensive against Caixin Media, launching a vicious verbal attack on its editor-in-chief, Hu Shuli (胡舒立), one of China’s most respected veteran journalists and a former China Media Project fellow. Announcing its own decision to file lawsuits in Hong Kong against Guo and Beijing Zenith Holdings, as well as “certain media outlets” in Hong Kong (to which Guo had given interviews), Caixin Media alleged that Guo’s attacks had “undermined the professional credibility of Caixin Media and defamed the reputation of Hu Shuli, its editor-in-chief.”
But the Guo-Caixin showdown has also brought the issue of watchdog journalism — or what is known in China as “supervision by public opinion” — and press freedom into the spotlight. In its statement, the Caixin Media legal team alleged that Guo’s remarks about Hu Shuli were not only potentially libellous, but also “have severely damaged the climate for journalists as watchdogs and trampled on the fundamental principles of press freedom.”
This is a fascinating argument to hear from a mainland-based media group bringing a lawsuit in Hong Kong. What do Caixin’s lawyers mean by referring to these “fundamental principles of press freedom”? Fundamental where?
In China the notion of “press freedom” is itself a sensitive topic, used most often in a pejorative sense by Communist Party media to denote something alien and hostile (“so-called press freedom”). Freedom of expression may be enshrined — so far, impotently — in China’s Constitution, but the Party’s dominance of the news media is a point that admits no questioning.
The lawsuits are being filed, says Caixin, in the special administrative region of Hong Kong, which does guarantee press freedom in its Basic Law, which states in Article 27:
Hong Kong residents shall have freedom of speech, of the press and of publication; freedom of association, of assembly, of procession and of demonstration; and the right and freedom to form and join trade unions, and to strike.
Caixin Media, however, is a Beijing-based media group — steeped, for better or worse, in China’s tightly controlled press environment.
Caixin was founded by Hu Shuli in 2009 with a 40-million yuan investment from the Zhejiang Daily Press Group, the conglomerate linked to the official Party mouthpiece of Zhejiang province. In December 2013, the Zhejiang Daily Group sold its stake to China Media Capital (CMC), an investment fund run by Li Ruigang (黎瑞刚), who until January this year also headed up the state-owned Shanghai Media Group.
In China, all publications must be linked to the Party-state press structure through what is called a “supervising institution,” or zhuguan danwei (主管单位). This administrative relationship to the Party-state is necessary for a publication to publish at all, and the zhuguan danwei takes ultimate political responsibility for the activities of its publications. Until the December 2013 share purchase, for example, the supervising institution for Caixin Media’s flagship magazine, New Century, was the Zhejiang Daily Group. After the sale, the supervising institution was changed to the Chinese Literature Press (中国文史出版社), whose own supervising institution is the Office of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (全国政协办公厅), China’s nominal political advisory
body.
All Chinese news media are rooted this way in the Party-state system, licensing being one of the most important means of controlling the press.
So, if Caixin Media and all of its related publications are based in China, bound to the press licensing system, and subject to the dictates of the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department, how can Caixin’s legal team suggest Guo Wengui in particular has “severely damaged the climate for journalists as watchdogs and trampled on the fundamental principles of press freedom”?
The simplest answer may be that Caixin Media does regard press freedom as a fundamental principle, whatever the political realities on the ground in China. The introduction to Caixin Media Company Limited on the group’s official English-language website states that its editorial staff “are the torchbearers of professional journalism, known for providing high-quality, credible content.”
The legacy of Caixin’s editor-in-chief, Hu Shuli, is an important strand in the larger story of professional journalism in China over the past two decades. She has been instrumental in promoting professional reporting in the public interest, the kind of journalistic activity that, in any society, entails a belief in press freedom as a “fundamental principle.” Hu Shuli’s media, first Caijing magazine and now Caixin, have been crucial training and testing grounds for this kind of public interest journalism in China.
But the going has never been easy.
Which brings us to the other piece of the puzzle regarding the Caixin Media legal statement, the one that makes more immediate sense in a Chinese media context — the reference to “journalists as watchdogs.”
Media like Caixin have been able to conduct professional journalism in a difficult political environment thanks in large part to the Party’s political stand on watchdog journalism, or “supervision by public opinion” (舆论监督).
As China entered the reform era in the 1980s, there was considerable backlash against the monolithic propaganda tools of the pre-reform era, which had simply amplified the distortions of the political system and deepened tragedies like the Cultural Revolution. Chinese media began airing more critical perspectives. And finally, in 1987, media reform was given greater priority as the party’s political report to the 13th National Congress spoke of “letting the people know and discuss the larger issues.”
The 13th Congress report also included the CCP’s first high-level affirmation of the media’s watchdog role—a mandate for media to conduct “supervision by public opinion,” one of a number of recognised methods of monitoring power in China. [See my brief rundown of these events here, or go more in-depth with our book, Investigative Journalism in China.]
From the mid-1990s to around 2005, a process of rapid commercialisation in China’s media, combined with this mandate to conduct public opinion supervision, brought a period of relative refulgence for professional journalism in China. Since that time, however, watchdog journalism — by which I mean journalism of an in-depth or investigative nature — has been in constant retreat. A big part of this story is official policy. The Party has taken active steps to rein in more freewheeling media, the likes of Caijing, Southern Metropolis Daily, the Beijing News, Southern Weekly, and of course Caixin.
For 10 years now, there has been a formal ban on the practice of “cross-regional reporting,” which means media from one administrative area (say, Guangzhou) — where they have the most to fear immediately from Party leaders directly overhead — doing harder-hitting stories in neighbouring or more far-flung areas. As we also know from the Southern Weekly incident of 2013 and related stories, censorship (and particularly prior censorship) of news stories has become even more draconian by comparison to the past.
Watchdog journalism is under immediate threat in China. At no point in the past 10 years have things been quite so impossible as they have been under Xi Jinping. To the extent that “public opinion supervision” is still a priority, or a possibility, at all for China’s media, this reporting is happening at a handful of outfits like Hu Shuli’s Caixin.
The Party’s hampering of more enterprising journalism, meanwhile, has emboldened businesses and other interest groups, who have intruded further on the media’s ability to report news in the public interest. It is in this context that Caixin’s allegations in its legal statement make the most sense. Caixin cannot tackle the CCP’s press control system head on, but it can push back against added encroachments on Party-mandated media supervision brought on by the likes of Guo Wengui and other powerful business interests.
As Caixin pursues its lawsuits in Hong Kong, this aspect will be an important dimension of the story to watch. Will this language about “fundamental principles” crop up again, and how?
Meanwhile, the Guo-Caixin showdown has prompted a number of editorials in China touching obliquely on the issue of interference in watchdog journalism. Among these is an editorial in the Beijing News, one of China’s leading newspapers, in which it reveals that it was inhibited in its earlier attempts to report on Guo Wengui’s property deals. The clear implication of the article is that restrictions on “supervision by public opinion” only perpetuate corruption and abuse of power.
A full translation of the piece follows. Enjoy.
“The Beijing News Reveals Intimidation Stemming From Its Probe of the Pangu Plaza” (新京报自曝舆论监督盘古大观时遭威胁)
March 31, 2015 Abnormal interference in watchdog journalism must breed tigers.
In recent days, Guo Wengui (郭文贵) has been the center of a national uproar, and the collusion between Party and government officials and business, and even the direct use of power to serve commercial enterprises, has caused shock. But this isn’t the first time doubts have been raised in the media about Guo Wengui’s fortune. Way back when there was a land dispute case over the Morgan Building (now Pangu Plaza), the Beijing News paid attention to the case, later doing watchdog journalism concerning the illegal construction of a courtyard home atop the building. But this [reporting] met with abnormal interference from non-official quarters, which even sent someone with a formal letter in the name of “national security” to threaten [the journalists].
It is in fact quite abnormal for a normal watchdog journalism report about purely corporate matters to meet with such abnormal levels of interference and resistance. While the facts about Guo Wengui’s business dealings still await investigation by the judiciary. But a question that deserves deep consideration is that if the normal conduct of watchdog journalism is protected, how is it that we heard nothing of the truth about Pangu Plaza before this time, when all the while the problem of collusion between business and power interests is becoming more and more severe? Guo Wengui’s losses of recent don’t stem directly from watchdog journalism, but if watchdog journalism had been allowed its due would we have come to this point of “shock” where we now find ourselves?
Clearly, interference in watchdog journalism through abnormal means is yet another expression of power/business collusion, the result being that certain people are beyond fear [of any repercussions] and illegal affairs are tolerated, with ever more serious consequences.
It’s of course not only Guo Wengui who eluded watchdog journalism in this way, nor just those departments and officials who backed him up. Back in the day, when there were many criticisms of Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun and their “singing red, striking black” campaign, the murmurs from Chongqing were all prohibitions against any criticism of these methods. Silence was the order of the day. The abuse of power to strike out [against criticism], resisting the normal process of watchdog journalism, meant that the actions of Bo Xilai and others in Chongqing were unbridled over a number of years, with untold damage to the country and to society.
The result of preventing watchdog journalism is to “foster the creation of tigers.” What we learn from these bitter cases, whether within officialdom or in corporate/government malfeasance, is that we must trust, treasure and respect the media’s right to conduct watchdog journalism, and allow the media to exercise and provide for the right to know and the right and duty to supervise as a matter of course. Only in this way can we prevent suffering from the outset, warning our society about risks before they become full blown crises.
The following post by the Chinese-language edition of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP_南華早報), which reports on corruption allegations against Henan businessman Guo Wengui (郭文贵), was deleted from Weibo sometime before 10:27AM today, March 31, 2015. The post was live on Weibo for approximately 12 hours. [Explore more deleted posts by using the Weiboscope, created by the Journalism & Media Studies Centre.]
Guo Wengui has been a center of controversy since a report from China’s Caixin newsmagazine alleged that China’s former deputy minister of public security, Ma Jian, who is currently facing a corruption investigation, aided Guo Wengui’s business interest while in his post. Guo, who is currently in the United States — where he says he is seeking medical treatment — has denied any wrongdoing.
A translation of the Weibo post from the SCMP follows:
[Guo Wengui: I am a Hong Kong citizen/and receive the protection of U.S. laws] The South China Morning Post today interviewed Guo Wengui, who is currently in the United States, and asked when he will return home [to China]. He responded: :”[This is] for sure! This is my country. Why wouldn’t I return? First of all, I haven’t broken the law; secondly, I haven’t committee any crime. so why wouldn’t I go back?” He also voiced his respect for former deputy head of public security Ma Jian, who is currently under investigation: “If it weren’t for him, I would be where I am today.”
Shi Lianwen (史联文), until 2012 the top executive at one of China’s most successful television networks, is cowed and contrite. Dark circles sag under his bloodshot eyes as he confesses his crimes.
But this is not a courtroom. Speaking against an ashen backdrop, the silver-haired former reporter, winner of numerous journalism awards, is framed in the lens of Communist Party corruption investigators. Clipped to the collar of his somber grey t-shirt, a black lavalier microphone registers his shame with pin-drop clarity.
“I see now where my problem lies,” he says, his weary voice rasping. “I feel great pain from the bottom of my heart, having failed to do what my leaders demanded.”
Former Liaoning TV executive Shi Lianwen confesses in a video produced by the CCP’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
A long-established practice in Communist China, the act of self-confession, or jiantao (检讨), is a psychological tool of power, about commanding deference and enforcing docility. In Notes of the Shamed, the essayist Mo Luo wrote that the ritual of self-confession — also known as “self-criticism” or “self-denunciation” — is about “exercising control over the spirit,” and “one of the principal means of [ideological] education and rule employed by those who wield power in China.”
For many Chinese, public acts of forced confession are relics of a bygone time, conjuring memories of the political turmoil of China’s pre-reform era. But over the past three years, as President Xi Jinping has consolidated power through an ambitious anti-corruption drive, combined with a “mass-line” strategy to cut down on extravagance, waste and bureaucratic inaction, the self-confession has enjoyed a resurgence in China. While Xi has talked about the need for rule of law in order to “shut power inside the cage of regulation,” the return of the Party confessional throws Xi’s unyielding exercise of power into sharp relief — and exposes the enduring supremacy of an internal politics of dominance.
On January 16, 2013, just over a month after the release of Xi Jinping’s new eight-points guideline on official conduct, a Party newspaper in Hunan province published two letters of self-confession on its front page. The letter’s were penned by fire safety officials who failed to attend a departmental meeting. “This economic work retreat . . . was an important 2013 conference, and my absence was unacceptable in the extreme,” the first official, Luo Boxian wrote. “Recently, I and other relevant comrades have made profound self-confessions on this matter.”
Such public confessions, frightfully common during the political purges of the 1950s-1970s, have been rare in reform-era China. But in Xi Jinping’s China, it seems, they are par for the course.
Back in January a general meeting of China’s anti-corruption body, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, developed an anti-corruption “task list” that formally included the writing of “letters of regret,” according to a recent report by the official Xinhua News Agency.
On March 6, 2015, an article in Qiushi, the Party’s chief journal of theory, argued that acts of self-criticism were an essential means of assuring the cleanness and effectiveness of the Chinese Communist Party. “Surveying the Party’s history, criticism and self-criticism have been important parts of successive campaigns to clean up the Party and rectify work styles and thinking,” said the article. “If self-criticism is done properly . . . the effectiveness and quality of mass line education movement can be ensured.”
The January 16, 2013, edition of Hunan’s Shaoyang Daily includes two self-confession letters (bottom right of page).
The idea of the “self-criticism,” or ziwo piping, the origin of the “letter of self-confession” in China’s modern era, can be traced back to Soviet Russia. In his 1928 essay “Against Vulgarising the Slogan of Self-Criticism,” Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, wrote:
Self-criticism is a specific method, a Bolshevik method, of training the forces of the Party and of the working class generally in the spirit of revolutionary development. Marx himself spoke of self-criticism as a method of strengthening the proletarian revolution.
The method the self-criticism was adopted in China’s Communist Party-controlled areas during the 1940s. In his remarks during the Yan’an Talks on Arts and Culture, Mao Zedong said: “The masses too have shortcomings. These shortcomings must be overcome through criticisms among the people and through self-criticisms, and the process of such criticisms and self-criticisms is one of the most important tasks of arts and culture.”
As for what self-confession meant to generations of Chinese after the adoption of the practice, the playwright Sha Yexin (沙叶新) offers a good working definition in his essay “The Culture of ‘Self-Confession’.”
These self-confessions I speak of refer to ‘admissions of guilt’ and pledges to ‘reform oneself’ made against one’s will to superior leaders . . . in a centralised [power] system, in the midst of ideological brainwashing campaigns, in the midst of baseless political campaigns, in the midst of exaggerated internal Party power plays, and under intense authoritarian pressure.
In the 1950s, letters of self-confession became a widely-practiced means of subjugating China’s intellectuals and ensuring unity with the ideas of the Party and its supreme leader, Mao Zedong. But confession also became a way of life for all, inculcating a political mindset of conformity at every level of Chinese society. Even schoolchildren confessed to their teachers or headmasters for peccadillos real, imagined or fabricated — a writing exercise so pervasive it became, to a very real extent, the national route to literacy.
Facing wave after wave of political upheaval, poets, playwrights and journalists were often most prolific when chronicling their ideological failings. Facing a struggle session at the China Writers Association in October 1959, the poet Guo Xiaochuan (郭小川) wrote:
Looking at things now, it seems I can only express petit bourgeois and bourgeois feelings, and I am completely unable to express the feelings of the people. Those works of mine are a complete and total mess, and looking at them recently I couldn’t even stand to read them.
The renowned poet Guo Xiaochuan, like most artists of his time, was a prolific writer of letters of self-confession — enough to fill a published volume.
The letter of self-confession was one of China’s most defining genres of writing in the 20th century, a “language of torture,” as Guo Xiaochuan’s daughter, Guo Xiaohui, later called it, by which those in positions of authority consolidate their power and assert the supremacy of their ideas.
In 1967, while China was in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, Chen Zaidao, a ranking general in the People’s Liberation Army, wrote with apparent frankness of his crimes and cravenness as he faced allegations of misconduct:
My ideas were slowly corrupted, my life eroding, my [work] style becoming rogue. When I saw my female comrades or nurses, I acted like a hooligan. I pawed them, not even behaving like a human being. I was degenerate and promiscuous.
Only Mao Zedong, the “Great Helmsman” at the tip-top of the power pyramid, could escape the writing of self-confessions. Deng Xiaoping, later the architect of market economic reforms in China, wrote quite a number himself. They included this one, dated August 3, 1972, addressed to Chairman Mao:
I have made a great many errors. These are laid out in my ‘personal statement,’ and I will not set them out again here. The root of my errors is the fact that my bourgeois worldview has not been utterly eradicated, and the fact that I have become estranged from the masses and the truth.
Likening the act of self-confession to “a first-person ‘struggle session’,” the poet Shao Yanxiang (邵燕祥) suggested the Soviet origin of the tactic was just part of the story. There were also precedents, she said, in China’s ancient imperial system and in the Republican era after the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, evidenced in the way “advisors, eunuchs and various Ah Q’s would strike their own ears and say, ‘The servant must die!’”
In Xi Jinping’s new confessional movement, there are shades of the Party’s troubled political past. Questions of guilt and innocence are subservient to the imperatives of political power.
Shi Lianwen, the former television executive whose videotaped self-confession is now being promoted through the official website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, may not be innocent. He stands convicted of clearly specified acts of graft, including the acceptance of cash payouts of 11.4 million yuan, about US$1.8 million, while he was director of Liaoning Television from 2009 to 2012. (Corruption investigators, with their penchant for peppering corruption-related releases with lurid and colourful details, have also said Shi accepted a valuable piece of bloodstone.)
A new special feature section on the official website of the CCP’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection includes video of Shi Lianwen’s self-confession, as well as a full-text version.
But watch or read Shi Lianwen’s “confession” on the CCDI website, where it is part of a new multimedia feature series called “Records of Confession” (忏悔录), and it becomes clear that Shi’s primary crime is not the breaking of the law per se — rather, it is his betrayal of the trust and responsibility vested in him by the Chinese Communist Party.
The supremacy of politics and ideology over the law becomes oddly clear as Shi Lianwen confesses to having an overly commercial mindset in his management of Liaoning Television.
At the television station, I came to apply the “money” standard alone in determining the quality of the work produced by my comrades. I even put forward the slogan, “Not a cent can be lost within our business scope.” . . . While Liaoning Television did achieve influence, this was not by adhering to the cause of the Party but rather by serving the interests of various groups or individuals, through the service of small groups.
Media commercialization has been a part of de facto media policy in China since the middle of the 1990s. Over the past 20 years, Chinese media have moved boldly into the marketplace, spawning a whole new generation of magazines and tabloids that survive by being relevant to their audiences, and to those “small groups” of interest we call advertisers.
For all but a handful of core Party and government media — the likes of the People’s Daily and the official Xinhua News Agency — state support is a distant memory. The Party still places weighty political demands on the shoulders of the media, and censorship is a daily (or even minute-to-minute) concern. But without the “’money’ standard” for which Shi Lianwen is so contrite, without the succour of the market, media in China could not survive.
Does Shi Lianwen’s self-confession augur a change in the Party’s outlook on media commercialisation? Almost certainly not. The content of Shi’s confession, like the content of his alleged misdeeds, is largely irrelevent. It is the ritual and form of his confession that truly matters in the context of Xi Jinping’s mass-line reformation of the Chinese Communist Party.
As in the past, today’s culture of confession is not about accountability, clean government or a rules-based system. It is about dominance and submission.
Xi Jinping is China’s confessor-in-chief. You serve at his pleasure. Read our translation of Shi Lianwen’s letter of self-confession on Medium.
In China’s state-run press of late, there seems to be a renewed (though certainly not new) animus against things Western. The ideas, language and culture of the West — even the foodstuffs of the West — pose a threat, we are told, to Chinese identities, paradigms and physical well-being. Back in February, the Beijing Daily, drawing on the remarks of Taiwanese writer and critic Yu Guangzhong (余光中), warned of a “language cancer” (语言癌) ravaging Chinese literacy, owing to a sustained pattern of “malignant Westernisation” (恶性西化).
Earlier this month, the official Xinhua News Agency cautioned about the dangerous things Westerners stuff into their mouths — which now, as Chinese grow wealthier and more adventurous in their tastes, apparently also pose a threat to more salubrious Chinese diets. “Westernisation of Diets Must Be Moderated: Bad Life Habits Cause 3 Major Cancers,” the Xinhua headline warned.
In this illustration accompanying a Beijing Daily article on English language learning as the cause of a “language cancer,” fists fire out of a male speaker’s mouth, assaulting a distressed female.
Most dangerous of all, however, are Western ideas. This has been a consistent theme in the mainstream Party press since the People’s Daily and others emerged from the October 2014 Plenum on “ruling the nation in accord with the law” with their ideological fists swinging, anxious to brawl out the differences between China’s “rule by law” (as some have chosen to call it) and Western rule of law.
On February 25, four days after the Beijing Daily piece on “language cancer,” officials from China’s Supreme People’s Court stressed again that a clear line must be drawn between “the legal system under socialism with Chinese characteristics” and “Western ‘judicial independence'” and “separation of powers.” Not mincing words, the officials said: “[We must] resolutely oppose the influence of erroneous trends of thought and mistaken ideas from the West.”
This year, the Westernisation of higher education has become a particular focus of strategic concern for Party officials. The warning flare was sent up in November last year, when an ostensible investigative feature in the Liaoning Daily decried insufficient “political recognition” among college instructors: “Some teachers are wont to share their superficial ‘impressions from overseas study,’ praising Western ‘separation of powers’ and believing that China should take the Western path. Openly, they question the major policy decisions of the CCP’s Central Committee, or even speak directly against them.”
On January 19, the Central Office of the Chinese Communist Party and China’s State Council jointly issued an “Opinion” on the country’s system of higher education, which it called “the front line of ideological work.” Universities, said the document, “bear the important task of studying, researching and propagating Marxism, fostering and praising socialist core values, and providing intellectual talent and support for the realization of the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people.”
The “Opinion” was followed with an announcement earlier this month by education minister Yuan Guiren that the government would conduct an investigation into the use of foreign textbooks at Chinese universities.
The call for ideological retrenchment in China’s universities has led to a deluge of pieces like this one, about the need to uphold socialist core values. Universities across the country are now reportedly following up with ham-fisted measures, including bans on the celebration by students of “Western festivals” (过洋节). “These debates,” said the People’s Daily of new measures like these and the controversy they engendered, “concern the question of how to understand and deal with Western values.” The paper continued:
There are elements within Western values that comport with human civilisational progress, and these deserve to be adopted. But fundamentally, [these values] are determined by Western capitalist modes of production, and at their core is the imperative of maximising the interests of the bourgeoisie. In an era of economic globalisation and social information, it is not at all strange that Western values have appeared in our universities. However, our universities are about fostering the builders and successors of the socialist project, and we cannot allow challenges from Western values to continue unchecked . . .
The debate over modernisation and national identity is of course as old as the hills in China. And it’s no surprise to see old terms being dusted off — terms like “wholesale Westernisation” (全盘西化) and “take-ism” (拿来主义).
The former term was introduced in the 1920s, advocated by prominent cultural figures such as the philosopher and essayist Hu Shi (胡适), who equated the process of adopting Western ideas with what he also called “wholehearted modernisation” (全力的现代化) or “complete modernisation” (充分的现代化), the idea being that China was hampered by its “feudal culture” (封建文化). The latter term, “take-ism,” introduced by the writer Lu Xun (鲁迅) in a 1934 essay of the same name, is in fact a more selective approach than the wholesale or wholehearted borrowing advocated by Hu Shi, the sociologist Chen Xujing (陈序经) and others in the period before and after the 1919 May Fourth Movement.
On February 28, in what seems to me to be a serious misreading of Lu Xun’s essay on “take-ism,” the Party’s flagship journal of theory, Qiushi (求是), warned against both “take-ism” and “wholesale Westernisation” as it discussed the unique path of rule of law under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party:
The path of rule of law under socialism with Chinese characteristics does not indiscriminately imitate or model itself on Western things, but adopts beneficial elements of traditional Chinese culture, and references the excellent fruits of human civilisation, creating a path that endogenously evolves, principally through the self-exploration and self-innovation of the Chinese Communist Party . . . The Chinese Communist Party does not spurn the fruits of all human civilisations and institutions. But study and referencing does not mean “take-ism”, and we must prioritise our own [needs], and usefulness for ourselves, carefully identifying [ideas and trends] and being reasonable in their absorption, and we certainly must not just copy them. Even less can we pursue a ‘wholesale Westernisation.’
The February 28 edition of Qiushi emphasises that the “socialist path of rule of law” does not copy the West.
Read through all of the recent bluster in Party media about the need to uphold “socialist core values” and cleave to “China’s unique path,” and I think you have, for better or worse, a prime example (a textbook example) of “take-ism.” By which I mean that the Chinese Communist Party has selectively adopted/adapted one Western “ism” with such alacrity that it can behave — without the least sense of irony — as though Karl Marx, a German, is the quintessence of Chinese thought and identity.
There are many textbook examples of oddly “take-ist” (Marxist) critiques on “take-ism”, but one of the best and most recent is a piece on economics education in China written by Qiu Haiping (邱海平), a professor at Renmin University of China. The piece, published in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Journal, bemoans the fact that the teaching of “political economy,” which in this case refers narrowly to Party-approved Marxist theory, has fallen by the wayside in China.
Qiu, himself an expert on Marx’ Das Kapital, paints a portrait of the progressive infiltration of Western economics and Western-trained economists in China’s universities. This has brought a shift and displacement of the “mainstream” in economics teaching, he says. That is important in particular because the word “mainstream,” in the context of the People’s Republic of China, refers generally to the ideas espoused by the Party and Party-controlled vehicles of media and culture.
Qiu’s piece is supremely dogmatic in its approach to economics education and its political goals. And yet one of chief reasons he gives for the need to control the trend of “severe Westernisation” is the risk of “dogmatism and atrophy” in economics education.
No more need be said. A translation of Qiu Haiping’s piece follows. Take it, or leave it.
“‘Westernized’ Economics Education Cannot Become the Mainstream” (“西化”的经济学教育不能成为主流) Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Journal (中国社会科学报)
March 20, 2015
By Qiu Haiping (邱海平)
As early as the 1980s, even though a small number of universities created Western economics classes, all economics degree programs in our universities had classes on political economy — and the vast majority also had socialist economic theory and on Das Kapital. Banking and finance courses created at the time, and other courses incorporating economics, were also guided principally by Marxism and used texts written by scholars in our own country. In those days, therefore, Marxist political economy studies was “mainstream economics” in universities in our country.
Beginning in the 1990s, the study of Western economics began returning to most universities in China, and more and more classes were created. Among these were not just Principles of Economics, but also intermediate and high-level microeconomics courses, macroeconomics, econometrics, new institutional economics (新制度经济学) and other such classes.
At the same time, political economics studies (政治经济学课程) was removed from the curriculum at more and more universities, and at some schools even courses on Das Kapital were ceased. Under this environment, political economics studies instruction teams in our universities seriously atrophied. This is especially true today, when in the makeup of perhaps all university economics programs, political economy instructors are far outnumbered by instructors specialising in Western economics.
In terms of the subjects covered in economics programs, business, finance and other courses have all opted to use texts underpinned by Western economic theory. Clearly, Western economics has already become “mainstream economics” in our universities, and political economy has been severely marginalized.
While the economics curriculum in our universities has undergone immense change, a major shift has also occurred in standards for the selection of papers for professional economics journals, and the assessment of research work. In terms of the selection of papers, some specialised economics periodicals, particularly those with substantial influence, have published masses of professional writing using Western economics standards (including theories, methods and tools) in the name of “the modernisation of economics” . . . and “not publishing articles about political economy” has already become a “clear principal” followed by some professional economics periodicals. . .
In recent years, in order to raise the number of papers published overseas and the level of so-called “internationalisation,” many universities have spent enormous resources in a “competition movement” to attract students who have gotten their PhDs overseas, and the number of “returning” overseas PhDs and foreign instructors is rising continuously at some universities. Therefore, we must carry out practical research on the severe “Westernisation” of economics education and research. On the one hand, we must fully recognise the serious harm this trend might result in; on the other hand, we must recognise the different statuses and mutual relationship between political economy and Western economics, and we must have appropriate policies to guide and adjust them.
This serious “Westernisation” trend is harmful first of all because it causes indifference or even resistance to political economics and all Marxist thought, leading them to doubt socialism, deny the legitimacy and rationality of the leadership status of the [Chinese] Communist Party. Secondly, it leads young students to a blind faith in the Western capitalist system and in individualism. Third, it leads to the partial failure of political and ideological classes at institutions of higher learning in our country.
Fourth, it leads young students to dogmatism and atrophy in their ideas and thinking, and stands in the way of students grasping the scientific methods by which they can reach a correct understanding of history and society. Fifth, it is not advantageous to the renewal and development of the economic theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Sixth, the severe “Westernisation” of economics education generates severely “Westernised” economics research, which means alienation from the real needs of socialism with Chinese characteristics, resulting in formalism and inapplicable research and the wasting of inordinate research resources.
Seventh, the most fundamental harm caused by the severe trend of “Westernisation” of economics education in our country is that this sort of economics education does not benefit the fostering of the successors of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Therefore, the Party and the government must give serious priority to the trend and phenomenon of severe “Westernisation” in economics education in our country, and must take various firm measures to correct this problem.
After 1949, everything bad in China was left behind by Chiang Kai-shek; in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, everything bad in China was caused by Lin Biao (林彪) and Confucius (孔老二); after the Cultural Revolution, everything bad in China was caused by the Gang of Four; since economic reform and opening, everything bad that happens in China is a conspiracy by Western hostile forces . . .
By all available official accounts, The Remarks of Xi Jinping (习近平用典), the latest addition to the Chinese president’s bookshelf of personal writings, is making big waves. Shortly after its release on the last day of February, the book — in which the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party applies to present-day governance the principles of the Chinese ancients — was called an exemplary work of “cultural soft power” in the official People’s Daily. Speaking recently to the China Youth Daily, Hao Zhen (郝振), the director of the China Editors Society (中国编辑学会), said that “the topic [of the book] is right on the mark.” “We can more deeply understand the general secretary’s ideas, and much better implement his strategy of the ‘four comprehensives,’ from a cultural angle,” he said. “We can see that the general secretary’s views on governing the country stem not only from Marxism-Leninism, and from the scientific view of development, but are also closely tied to Chinese traditional culture.”
So is the book hot? Or is it just . . . not?
With such things in China, of course, we generally guess but never know for sure — until the facade of propaganda crumbles. The 2010 film “Confucius,”a state-supported biopic that, not unlike Xi Jinping’s latest book, sought to shore up Party-state legitimacy with emotional and selective portrayals of Chinese tradition, was loudly touted as a success in China’s state media. But the illusion unraveled as Chinese internet users widely panned the film, revealing also that government offices, schools and state-owned enterprises had been block-buying tickets and handing them out in a desperate bid to drum up interest. Ultimately, the film was trounced by James Cameron’s “Avatar,” an embarrassment for China’s ambition to mix nationalistic propaganda with commercial viability.
Xi Jinping’s book is probably hot stuff in exactly the way “Confucius” was a blockbuster. As long-time China watcher Geremie Barme said recently: “The leader’s works never sell. They always have to give them away.”
Xi Jinping’s previous blockbuster book, The Governance of China, which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously plugged back in December 2014 when he was host to China’s internet czar, Lu Wei, sold three million copies in its first three months — that according to China’s official news agency, Xinhua. The book’s international sales hardly suggest such a high level of appeal when the bottom-line is choice, however. A button labeled “How to Buy” on the special page for The Governance of China at China.org.cn — the Chinese government portal site — takes readers to Amazon.com, where as of today the book’s sellers rank is #284,418. By comparison, Age of Ambition, by Evan Osnos (who was The New Yorker‘s correspondent in China from 2008 to 2013), is currently ranked #6,335.
The overwrought coverage of The Remarks of Xi Jinping in official Party media, generously seasoned with servile remarks from various ministerial officials, hardly suggests bestselling confidence in the work’s broader appeal.
But whatever the case, I heartily recommend The Remarks of Xi Jinping. The book offers important insight into the way the Chinese Communist Party has in recent years progressively turned to traditional Chinese culture — or in fact, a myopic reading of traditional culture — to shore up its own legitimacy. A must-read. Five stars.
But don’t take my word for it. Here is the People’s Daily.
“Delegates Hotly Discuss ‘The Quotations of Xi Jinping‘: Positive Energy Flooding Between the Lines” (代表委员热议《习近平用典》: 字里行间充满正能量) People’s Daily
March 15, 2015
During the two meetings [of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference] the book The Quotations of Xi Jinping (习近平用典), compiled by the People’s Daily Publishing House, has garnered widespread attention from various quarters of society. At Xinhua-operated book selling stations situated at the NPC Conference Center, the Beijing Conference Center, the Jianyin Hotel, the [People’s Liberation Army’s] Xizhimen Hotel, the Yuanwanglou Hotel and many other NPC locations, this journalist saw a few delegates pausing to purchase and read them.
On the afternoon of March 7, after small group discussions ended, Li Dongdong (李东东), Wu Shulin (邬书林) and five other CPPCC delegates from news and publishing engaged an intense discussion of the book in the conference room of the hotel where they were staying. Everyone said that when they read The Sayings of Xi Jinping it felt very cordial, and that, as a work describing and transmitting the governance ideas of the General Secretary from a cultural angle, the book should be promoted to readers.
Delegate Wu Shulin (邬书林), deputy director of the Publishers Association of China, hit the nail on the head. “This is cultural soft power,” he said. “This book is very profound in its ideas, and its publication is timely. We’ve seen our leader inheriting from and carrying forward the ideas, culture and traditions of our people and employing these in [his own] classic [formulations], and finding wisdom and sustenance in the words of the ancients as he faces head on serious issues that await resolution.”
[Two delegates from the Inner Mongolia Delegation staying at the Inner Mongolia Tower read through ‘The Remarks of Xi Jinping’. Photo by Bai Jianping/白建平.]
Delegate Li Dongdong (李东东), director of the China Media Culture Promotion Association (中国新闻文化促进会) said that reading the book she felt it was cordial, down-to-earth and profound. The general secretary, [she said], drew wisdom about national governance from traditional Chinese culture, and at the same time raised demands intimately linked to current economic reform and opening. The promotion of this book will have a good effect on the continued reform of work style [within the Party, she said]. [NOTE: The China Media Culture Promotion Association is an ostensible “non-profit social organization” devoted to media research and training, but Li Dongdong, its head, is also a senior press official in China, as former director of the General Administration of Press and Publications and former propaganda chief of Ningxia.
On the 10th, an employee at the Xinhua Bookstore sales station at the Beijing Conference Center said the book was selling well, and that quite a number of delegates at various hotels where NPC groups were staying were giving the book a great deal of attention. Yan Aoshuang (闫傲霜), director of the Beijing Science and Technology Center (北京市科学技术委员会), said as she read the book: “This is what it means to be confident about Chinese culture! This book systematically lays out cases showing how the general secretary has used [traditional] phrases, from ‘respect for the people‘ (敬民) to weizheng(为政) [a portion of the Analects of Confucius], to the ‘cultivation of character’ (修身) and ‘appointment by virtue’ (任贤), etcetera. This demonstrates the profound reverence the general secretary has for the greatness and profundity of traditional Chinese culture, and his confidence in the deep foundations of our civilization and the knowledge it offers about social governance. It tells all of us, each and every son and daughter of China, that only by having respect for and passing on traditional culture can we develop into the future!”
Wu Zhengxian (吴正宪), director of Mathematics Education Office of the Basic Education Research Center, Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences, said: “What we see here is the leader of a great nation uniting in feeling with the ordinary people, every word and every sentence dealing with the fate of the nation and linking closely with the hearts of the people. It’s down-to-earth, it deals with the actual situation, and positive energy floods between the lines.” [Wu said] that The Quotations of Xi Jinping is profound, incisive and full of feeling, with a philosophical bent — a good book that deserves engaged enjoyment by all. The book, [he said], isn’t at all ‘preachy’ or ‘full of hot air.'”
. . .
The reporter noticed that The Quotations of Xi Jinping had been placed in the most prominent position at the book sale kiosk. The employee [on duty there] said that this was because, first of all, the hope was that delegates would prioritize attention to this book, so it had been put in a clear position so the delegates would purchase and study it, and secondly because this book was selling best.
Hah hah . . . Responses and comments have been turned off at Netease (163.com)// “Owing to Xu Caihou’s death, according to Article 15 of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Military Procuratorate has decided not to prosecute [the case against Xu], and the related bribery case will be handled according to the law.” Here is the news from Netease: “Xu Caihou Dies of Incurable Cancer of the Bladder” http://t.cn/RwkUFpO
Last Friday, as the curtain closed on the annual session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC), China’s mostly nominal political advisory body, the group’s chairman, Yu Zhengsheng (俞正声), arrived at the Hunan Room (湖南厅) of the vast Great Hall of the People to meet with “journalist representatives” (记者代表) from core Party-state media.
Organizations in attendance included the usual suspects: the People’s Daily, Xinhua News Agency, China Central Television, Guangming Daily, the Economic Daily, China National Radio and the English-language China Daily. And as the CPPCC chairman always does, Yu Zhengsheng praised state media for their “cooperative” and “positive” coverage of the meeting, where a dizzying 6,000 proposals were reportedly submitted.
It hardly seems newsworthy to note that press controls in China continue unabated. Nor is it newsworthy any longer to note that the press remains more cowed under Xi Jinping than perhaps at any time under his predecessor, Hu Jintao, when in-depth and investigative coverage was being progressively reined in but still stood a better chance of slipping through.
Politburo Standing Committee member Yu Zhengsheng, chairman of the CPPCC, praises China’s state media on Friday, March 13, for their “cooperative” attitude.
But we can note, at least, that Xi Jinping’s notion of “positive energy” — by which he means positive and helpful news coverage and online opinion as opposed to critical and unhelpful news and views — continues to exert its influence alongside the old notion of “public opinion guidance.” Here is the summary of Yu Zhengsheng’s remarks that appeared in the official People’s Daily on March 14:
Central news units cooperated closely with, and tightly adhered to, the agenda of the meeting, maintaining correct guidance of public opinion, prioritising new methods of reporting, and fully reporting the fruitful results of the CPPCC in promoting the full building of a moderately well-off society, the comprehensive deepening of reforms, comprehensive rule of the nation according to law, and comprehensive efforts to implement strict administering of Party discipline. [The media] widely propagated the opinions and recommendations of the CPPCC Standing Committee on major questions of reform, development and stability as well as real issues of concern to the people, fully evincing the favourable impression that the CPPCC works for the good of the country and the people, and that it is doing its utmost. [The media] condensed the broader consensus [in their reporting], praised positive energy, and showed up the unified and democratic climate of the CPPCC.
In its English-language coverage of Yu Zhengsheng’s speech, in fact, CCTV America noted right in the lead that Yu had “called for continuing efforts to pool ‘positive energy’ to contribute to the country’s development.”
In China’s media, things are looking positively “positive.”
On February 9, 2015, China’s internet czar, Lu Wei (鲁炜), the director of the Cyberspace Administration of China, hosted a Chinese New Year banquet at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse. At the event, attended by foreign dignitaries and representatives from internet companies, Director Lu delivered an address in which he reiterated the need for global internet governance that respects the “internet sovereignty” of various countries.
Repeating his frequent theme that freedom and order must work hand-in-hand, Lu imagined an international internet woven together from sovereign national internets — connected with a mind to respective national security interests.
“We live in a common online space,” Lu Wei told his guests. “This online space is made up of the internets of various countries, and each country has its own independent and autonomous interest in internet sovereignty, internet security and internet development. Only through my own proper management of my own internet, [and] your proper management of your own internet . . . can the online space be truly safe, more orderly and more beautiful.”
A separate news piece posted to the website of the Cyberspace Administration of China quoted several guests at the banquet as praising Lu’s remarks and the work of his office.
“2014 was a year in which China’s internet saw an explosion of positive energy,” said Liao Hong (廖玒), the president of People’s Daily Online, referring to Xi Jinping’s emerging propaganda concept. “Under the guidance of the Cyberspace Administration of China, the internet space grows clearer and brighter every day.”
“The Cyberspace Administration of China has played an instrumental role in terms of internet governance,” Cuban Ambassador to China Alberto J. Blanco Silva reportedly said.
A full translation of Lu Wei’s address to the Chinese New Year banquet follows.
Honored envoys from various nations, respected guests:
Ladies, gentlemen and friends:
And so we come to another year. As China’s Lunar New Year approaches, we are honored to invite everyone to gather here at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse (钓鱼台国宾馆), to meet the season with cheerful friendship. On behalf of the Central Working Group on Cybersecurity, the Cyberspace Administration of China, and in my own capacity, I solemnly offer you all a warm welcome. The new year is the Year of the Goat. I wish you all warmth and radiance in your hearts.
2014 was a year of accelerated internet development in China, a year of greater openness and deep integration with the world. China created the Central Working Group on Cybersecurity, with Chairman Xi Jinping himself as leader, and [he] raised the international cyber governance concept (国际治网主张) of “building a multilateral, democratic and transparent system of international internet governance, building in common a peaceful, secure, open and cooperative online space” — [an idea] that won great favor and widespread agreement in international circles. Through common efforts on various sides, the international online space is now entering a new era of shared benefit and shared governance.
All of you, foreign envoys, company bosses and friends from the media, are the bridges and bonds developing China’s relationship with the world, and you’ve made important achievements in promoting dialogue and cooperation between China and the world in the online space. We often say mutual interaction brings mutual understanding . . . The web connects us and brings us together. In traditional Chinese culture, the character for “net” [or “web”] has multi-layered meanings, but there are at least three angles from which we can consider these meanings: 1. The “net” means to harvest gains and results. This is like the frequent saying Chinese have, that “the net gathers all under heaven” (网罗天下). Over the past year, China’s internet development has been striking, with the number of internet users reaching 649 million, websites surpassing four million, total online transactions topping 13 trillion yuan. Of the world’s top 10 internet businesses, four are Chinese, and the internet economy has become the greatest growth point in China’s overall economy. The world too has profited from the development of China’s internet. Many foreign enterprises have relatively high market shares in the Chinese market, and they have drawn in substantial earnings. These achievements and returns fully demonstrate the openness of China’s market and policies, that the environment is favourable. Moreover, they show to the fullest extent that we are correct in adhering to the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics. They fully attest to the strong, determined and correct leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. 2. The “net” means connecting and interacting. This is like what Chinese mean when they say, “As tightly woven as a net” (密如织网). Lately, the internet truly has turned the world into a global village, making it so that international society is more an more a place where I see myself in you, where we share a fate as a common community. For China and the world the internet has also created a friend groups with a global reach. We have actively created platforms for conversation, holding the first World Internet Conference and other major international events, making friends across the world and sharing intelligence and innovation, ultimately working toward a consensus to create a win-win situation for all. 3. The “net” means law and order. Chinese often talk about the “dragnet” (法网恢恢). In the online space, people all enjoy freedom, but freedom and order are inextricably linked and cannot be separated. Order is the guarantee of freedom. If we part with order, freedom does not exist. The more we move in the direction of freedom, the more we need order. Find a place without order, and that place will surely lack freedom. We [in China] actively study from the advanced experiences of various nations, promoting rule of law in the online space. Through legal means we preserve online freedom and order, resolutely protecting our internet sovereignty (网络主权) and our internet security (网络安全). We reiterate that China’s policy of openness to the world has not changed. So long as China’s laws are respected, so long as the national interests of China are not harmed, so long as the interests of Chinese consumers are not harmed, we welcome companies from other countries to develop in China, to invest here for a win-win future.
Ladies, gentlemen and friends . . . .
We live in a common online space. This online space is made up of the internets of various countries, and each country has its own independent and autonomous interest in internet sovereignty (独立自主的网络主权), internet security and internet development. Only through my own proper management of my own internet, your proper management of your own internet, and the proper interlinking of these respective internets, each preserving their own respective internet security — only then can the online space be truly safe, more orderly and more beautiful.
What we need its mutual support, not stepping over lines and meddling in the affairs of others. What we need is mutual respect, not attack and censure. The 1.3 billion people of China, open and confident, are now traveling along a correct path of their own choosing. They are realizing the great project of the Chinese dream. They are seeking a path of internet management with Chinese characteristics (中国特色的治网之道). We are ready to strengthen our dialogue and cooperation with the nations of the world, unleashing the pioneering creative force of the internet and promoting the “one road, one belt” strategy. [We are ready to] promote the shared governance and mutual benefit of the internet, better serving the countries of the world, particularly developing nations, and creating a better tomorrow for humankind.
Ladies, gentlemen and friends . . .
Let us raise our glasses,
for a better world,
for sincere friendship,
to the health of all,
for our mutual internet dreams in the Year of the Goat.
Cheers!
The following piece, published on Monday this week on the website of the official Party journal Seeking Truth, arguably speaks to the heart of China’s current political and ideological ethos. The piece pulls together quite disparate threads — an article from the Financial Times‘ Beijing bureau chief Jamil Anderlini, and a report almost a year ago from Bank of America Merrill Lynch — to paint a stark picture of foreign “hostile forces” colluding with domestic “agents” to foment a color revolution on Chinese soil.
The Seeking Truth piece, written by Hou Lihong (侯立虹), identified as a local government employee from Henan, speaks well enough, and colourfully enough, for itself. So I’ll avoid the temptation to say more.
Readers not new to hardline bombast of this kind will recognize the teeth-grinding, vitriolic tone. Hou writes at one point of “evil collusion between [overseas] master and [domestic] servant, and of “hostile forces working within China.” Voices like Anderlini and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are “flies flicking against the wall, droning on and on.”
Please enjoy.
“Defiling China’s Anti-Corruption Drive is Like an Ant Trying to Shake a Tree”
The extraordinary measures employed in China’s anti-corruption drive, and the brilliant achievements it has so far made, have already astonished the entire world, becoming a focus of international media coverage. For example, the Times of India, Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao and Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, . . . have all done positive coverage of the campaign against corruption in China’s government and military . . . Even certain [media in] some countries in Europe and America, like United Press International’s web-based report called, “Internet Users Help Expose Corruption,” and “Life and Death Struggle” in Britain’s Economist, have reported on the actions and attitudes of China’s leaders toward corruption . . .
Yet still certain Western countries and media, for whatever reason, with whatever goals, voice concern over China’s anti-corruption [campaign], and moreover take a hostile attitude, even conjuring things out of thin air, making conjectures, dragging the name of China’s anti-corruption effort through the dirt. This is outrageous. In its 2013 Human Rights Report, the United States, while giving a nod to China’s achievements in punishing corrupt officials, made groundless accusations about the selectivity of the anti-corruption drive, casting doubt on our Party’s internal discipline procedures. As I understand it, the United States has always prioritized its human rights reports, wielding them as clubs with which to beat other countries. For it to play the part of backseat driver in this way, in such an important government document, clearly violates the convention in diplomatic relations of not interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.
A cartoon on a Chinese website depicts corruption as a swarm of flies. The fly swatter, of course, represents China’s anti-corruption campaign.]
Even more cause for thought is the fact that this country’s Bank of America Merrill Lynch stated strongly that the anti-corruption drive had borne an economic cost running into hundreds of millions of US dollars, “perhaps equivalent to the entire economy of Bangladesh.” And with malice it said that “even clean and uncorrupt officials don’t dare right now to begin new projects, worrying that this will be construed as corrupt conduct, and so they simply stash their funds away in the bank.” Next, it made a great fuss over how “Beijing’s bans on consumption with public monies and mandated decreases in administrative spending had caused a dramatic drop in domestic consumer spending.” . . .
The implication in these statements . . . is that China’s anti-corruption drive has negative side effects. And if this is still rather obscure, well then, Britain’s Financial Times is undisguised [in its statements]. An article in this magazine attributed to [Jamil] Anderlini misrepresents outright, making crazy and ridiculous claims about China’s top leaders, labeling China’s anti-corruption campaign “authoritarian anti-corruption” (独裁式反腐), slandering determined anti-corruption as “a [political] movement,” in “Cultural Revolution style” (文革遗风). . .
Anyone with a bit of common sense knows that corruption is already a common enemy around the world. All countries, even those with reputations for clean governance, have corruption — and all should fight corruption, as successive world declarations against corruption have fully made clear. What is strange is that when corruption is raging in China, this draws attack from public opinion in the West. And now, when China is dealing resolutely with corruption, they are still spewing calumnies. This exposes their true faces, as determined at any time to set China up as the enemy.
It goes without saying that China’s anti-corruption drive is China’s own business, not something they need to say anything about. And yet these eminent Westerners (洋大人) not only oppose it but maliciously spread rumors with a mind to doing harm, labeling it in all sorts of [prejudicial] ways. This has reached the point of madness. Is it possible that China’s anti-corruption drive has set off their central nervous systems, jabbed at their sore spots, dug their graves? Clearly, for Western hostile ones (敌对分子) to oppose China’s anti-corruption campaign so vigorously, to so boldly blacken China’s leaders, demonstrates that our anti-corruption drive has already logged achievements that have left our enemies frightened. It demonstrates that China’s leaders are men of conscience who make our enemies jealous and fearful. It demonstrates that the anti-corruption momentum in China will root out the infiltrators hiding in their nests behind the curtain, that it will defeat the conspiracy by Western countries to change the color of China. So naturally anti-China forces in the West will stamp in rage.
The faces of the people of China are wreathed in smiles to look at today’s anti-corruption drive, and to think back on those years when the anti-China chorus was so loud. This certainly puts corrupt officials and hostile ones in a state of constant anxiety . . . so they must, like so many flies flicking against the wall, drone on and on . . . Like ants shaking the tree, their calumnies are doomed to fail.
When you compare the slanderous statements of Western hostile forces about China’s anti-corruption actions to certain domestic statements inhibiting or opposing anti-corruption, you can’t help but notice a similar stink about them. Concerning economic development, for example, there are some in China who say that anti-corruption has impacted economic development, and overseas there are others echoing them, saying China’s anti-corruption drive has cost 100 billion US dollars. Then, for example, you have some people saying domestically that anti-corruption is about eliminating opposition, and then right away overseas they slap on the label “authoritarian anti-corruption.” . . .
How, all in all, are we seeing such things of a similar nature? For this chorus to sing in such unison, like a seamless heavenly robe — if this is not foreign-domestic collusion, what then is it? If it is not evil collusion between master and servant, what then is it? We have always been alert to infiltrants; we have always been aware of hostile forces working within China to carry out a color revolution (颜色革命). We never thought these dangerous elements would be working right at our side, corrupt officials and “elites” (精英) making trouble. Their collaboration with forces from the outside demonstrates even more the necessity of the anti-corruption drive, and demonstrates even more the necessity of carrying the anti-corruption project to the end.
Western hostile forces and their domestic agents seek right now to use public opinion to launch crossfire from the inside and outside, attempting to kill the anti-corruption drive. In the future, they will employ even more base and insidious means to attack us. We must remain increasingly alert to this. . . If only the entire Party and all the people of our country are resolutely united around the Central Committee with Xi Jinxing as General Secretary, millions united as one man, can we surely carry the anti-corruption struggle through to the end, creating a brightness that raises the eyes of the world, and soon bringing to realization the Chinese dream.
(The writer’s office: Science and Technology Bureau, Xinxiang City, Henan province)
