Veteran Chinese journalist Gao Yu (高瑜), 71, was sentenced today to seven years in jail by Beijing’s No. 3 Intermediate People’s Court. She is accused of “illegally providing state secrets beyond [China’s] borders,” a charge stemming, many believe, from the leak in 2013 of the so-called “Document No. 9,” in which the Chinese Communist Party restricted discussion of a range of issues it regards as sensitive, including constitutionalism, civil society and press freedom.
According to Gao Yu’s lawyers, prosecutors accused her of leaking an unspecified document to Hong Kong’s Mirror Monthly (明镜), which in 2013 did publish a document identified as “Document No. 9.”
The sentencing of Gao, who began working as a reporter for the official China News Service in 1979, comes almost six months after her closed-door trial in November 2014. Shortly after her disappearance on April 24, 2014 — along with her son — video of Gao making an apparent confession appeared on state-run television in China. Gao has since maintained her innocence, saying the confession was made under extreme duress.

[ABOVE: Journalist Gao Yu is accused of leaking state secrets during a newscast on China Central Television, and appears to confess on camera.]
In it’s “Explaining the News” (要问解说) column yesterday, RFI Chinese ran an interview with one of Gao Yu’s defense lawyers, Shang Baojun (尚宝军), in which he explained the case and Gao’s present condition in custody.
A translation of the RFI interview follows:

Explaining the News: On November 21 last year, the Gao Yu case in the No. 3 Intermediate Court was not heard in public, and Gao Yu denied the related accusations [against her]. After that, two postponements of sentencing were granted. As her lawyer, have you been able to see her recently?
Shang Baojun: I see Gao Yu just about once a month, so I’ll first touch on the issue of her health and well-being. Gao Yu is already 71 years old, and she has many of the ailments that come with old age, such as high blood pressure, heart disease and Ménière’s disease, and she often falls ill. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ménière’s_disease]. In the time shortly after she was arrested in April, the interrogations were frequent and went on for extended periods of time. There were scores of interrogations over a period of less and two months, and she was basically subjected to about 10 hours of questioning every day, sometimes even for longer. The pressure was intense at that time. In the half year since the trial [in November 2014] she has managed only to maintain a state of equilibrium. The detention center provides her with blood pressure and heart disease medication, and her Ménière’s is basically under control. She says that her physical situation is quite worrying — after all, she is quite elderly.
Explaining the News: And what about Gao Yu’s case? One reason Gao Yu’s case has drawn attention is because after she was taken into criminal custody by police, Gao Yu appeared on May 8 on a news program on China Central Television, her face beaten black and blue, and admitted her errors and issue a confession. Although, Gao Yu later said that she had been pressure to save her son and made a confession of guilt against her will. She also denied any criminal wrongdoing. Has there been any change to her attitude?
Shang Baojun: No, there has been no change. Concerning her appearance on CCTV, Gao Yu had no idea about it at all. The so-called recording should be that made by investigators during her interrogation. No one told her at the time that this would be broadcast on China Central Television. When Gao Yu later learned about this, it was only because we informed her, and she was extremely shocked. She had been arrested together with her son, and the police investigators told her that she must cooperate, otherwise those closest to her would come to trouble or suffer unfortunate consequences. It was only after being threatened and intimidated that Gao Yu made the so-called confession.
Actually, her situation is quite simple, just one thing. They say that in June-July 2013, Gao Yu provided a document to He Pin (何频), the chief editor of Hong Kong’s Mirror Monthly (明镜). This is that issue. Very simple and very specific. At the time, Gao Yu admitted to these accusations because she had no choice. But she has since consistently denied them. The last time I saw her should have been sometime around mid-March. I imagine nothing has changed since that time.
Explaining the News: The crime she has been accused of is “illegally providing state secrets beyond [China’s] borders,” but can you really regard the Chinese Communist Party’s internal documents concerning ideology as “state secrets”?
Shang Baojun: This is something we’ve debated before. Investigative organs determined through the Beijing Municipal Office for the Protection of State Secrets (北京市保密局) that the document in question was a state document of a confidential nature (机密级). Of course, we don’t agree with this conclusion. And we’ve appealed for a new determination higher up from the PRC’s National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets, including on the question of whether [the document] can be construed as a “state secret” — and then further what, if any, level of “state secret.” China has three levels of secrecy: top secret (绝密级), confidential (机密级) and secret (秘密级). If any of these are leaked, there are subject to different sentences.
Regardless of what the determination is, we do not believe that a document from the Chinese Communist Party providing guidance on propaganda and ideology, or direction on the main theme (主旋律) can be construed as a “state secret.”

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.”

The original Chinese-language post follows:

【郭文贵：我是香港公民 受美国法律保护】《南华早报》今天专访了目前身处美国的郭文贵，追问他何时回国，他回复说：“（这是）一定的！这是我的国家，我为什么不回去。我一没犯法、二没犯罪，为什么不回去。”他还表示很尊重正在接受调查的国安部副部长马建：“要是没有他，我就不会有今天。”

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.”