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).
As I noted yesterday, there have been some exceptional examples of reporting on the Tianjin explosions in the Chinese media, despite unrelenting efforts on the part of the Chinese authorities to contain the information fallout, what official media pundits in the social media age often like to call a “public opinion crisis.”
Some of these reports have (or perhaps soon will) disappear from the internet or from social media platforms. But it is important to note both the willingness and the ability of Chinese journalists to do real reporting and resist control attempts where opportunity gaps appear.
Writing at the Global Investigative Journalism Network, my colleagues Ying Chan and Karen Chang have detailed some of the early efforts of Chinese media “to probe the why and how of the tragedy”:
In spite of official efforts to control news coverage of last week’s deadly explosions in the Chinese port city of Tianjin, Chinese media have responded swiftly not only to cover the fast-moving disaster, but also to probe the why and how of the tragedy.
Within hours of the blast, leading Chinese media, both traditional and online, began investigating reasons for the toxic facilities to be built next to residential developments, the ownership of the storage, the failure of government oversight, and the botched response to the disaster. CONTINUE READING >>
In our rapidly evolving global news space, content is still king. But I confess at least equal devotion to the sovereign’s hoary (and so often ignored) envoy: context.
As media reported last week, following a Public Security Bureau “work conference” in Beijing, that China would now “embed internet police in tech firms” and priority websites — underscoring yet again the deteriorating information climate under President Xi Jinping — context cowered in the shadows of the court. Everyone, as a result, got the story wrong.
In every report I could find, in either English or Chinese, these so-called “cybersecurity police units,” or wang’an jingwushi (网安警务室), were presented as new and shocking developments.
This image posted in September 2014 to 3603.com shows the websites own cybersecurity police unit along with an introduction to its on-site officer.
On August 5, the Wall Street Journal reported that China’s government “plans to embed cybersecurity police units at major Internet companies and websites.” TechSpot followed suit by warning that China’s already overbearing internet restrictions were “set to become even more extreme, as the country’s Ministry of Public Security has announced that cybersecurity police will be placed into the offices of major internet companies.”
TechSpot’s source link, which I included in the quote above, was Reuters, which referred to the wang’an jingwushi as “network security offices,” and suggested these were new things the government was “planning to set up.” As in every other report, the context was “tightening control”:
The government published a draft cybersecurity law last month consolidating its control over data, with significant potential consequences for Internet service providers and multinational firms doing business in the country.
On Aug. 4, China’s Ministry of Public Security announced that it would embed law enforcement officers at major Internet companies, which appear to include China Mobile, U.S.-listed Alibaba, and Tencent, which owns WeChat, the country’s largest social network. The online press release did not specify a time frame, but emphasized that creating rooms for “web police” in each company’s offices would aid the timely discovery and prevention of evils like terrorism, fraud, the theft of personal information, and, of course, “rumors,” meaning whatever the government decides is a speech crime.
In fact, there is a very good reason why China’s top police official, Chen Zhimin (陈智敏), did not specify a time frame, and context might have supplied the answer had everyone — including the English-language side of China News Service — not relied on a single Xinhua News Agency release. The bottom line: one need not specify a time frame for something that is already happening.
The context is coming. But first, let’s look at how the language came across on the Ministry of Public Security website:
Chen Zhimin demanded that public security organs serve as the main force in [preserving] online social security, cooperating closely with internet management agencies, and actively innovate internet security management, mutually promoting the building of rule of law in online society. [We] must fully promote website information security and other protective work, raising prevention of illegal and damaging website intrusions, and protection of the personal information of web users. [We] must fully put into effect online public inspection and law enforcement by net police . . . . actively discovering and restricting various illegal activities. [We] must deeply advance the building of “cybersecurity police units” (网安警务室) at priority websites and internet enterprises, building “cybersecurity police units,” grasping illegal offenses online at the earliest opportunity, serving and guiding websites in raising their security management and prevention capacities.
What I have translated here as “deeply advance the building of” should be properly understood as calling for the expansion and/or improvement of an existing project — though admittedly that would have sucked the wind right out of those news ledes. (No one wants the headline context would suggest: “Police Official Urges Expansion of Website Police Unit Network in Place for Years Already.”)
From the outset, respect for the most generic context might have invited more scepticism about the significance of Chen Zhimin’s remarks. Anyone with a middling knowledge of information controls in China should know that the Public Security Bureau has always played a central role in internet control. Sources abound. Try Anne-Marie Brady’s Marketing Dictatorship, or trudge through the richness of other books, papers and primers.
The obvious question arising from that context: Given the PSB’s historic involvement in information controls in China, how are these “cybersecurity police units” actually new?
And once we’ve asked that question, the answer comes back simply enough, without even the need to get insiders on the telephone. They aren’t new at all. We can find close to 50 articles on these so-called wang’an jingwushi in China’s own media over the past four years.
As far as I can ascertain from Chinese-language news databases, the first instance of “cybersecurity police units” appeared in Jinan, the capital of Shandong province, on December 31, 2010 — nearly a full two years, incidentally, before Xi Jinping became general secretary.
Jinan’s local Party mouthpiece, Jinan Daily, reported that the city’s first cybersecurity police unit had been established in the provincial headquarters of China Unicom:
From this day forward, police will be stationed at the Unicom cybersecurity police unit, engaging in onsite direction of the installation of cybersecurity technologies . . . carrying out criminal investigations and handling emergency actions to deal with computer virus transmission and other sudden-breaking issues.
Page 10 of the December 31, 2010, edition of Jinan Daily carries a small article on the establishment of the city’s first “cybersecurity police unit,” inside the local telecom provider.
The article, just to the right of the main image on page 10 of the newspaper, makes plain just how involved local police in Jinan will be in coordinating information control procedures in the city through the local telecoms provider. They will be present on the ground, directing the installation of hardware as well as dealing with “sudden-breaking issues.”
Can we suppose, then, that the installation of these cybersecurity police units began in 2010?
In the world of daily news, 2010 may be ancient history. But if it’s context that interests us, 2010 is an important year for the internet in China. Remember Google’s high-profile exit from China? Yeah, that was 2010. And China made the point in 2010 more emphatically than ever before that internet companies were welcome to do business in China, on condition that they operate “according to the law,” opening up their services to government and police scrutiny.
Crucially, it was also in April 2010 that China revised its Law on the Guarding of State Secrets, establishing must stricter standards for internet companies and telecom firms in abetting censorship and surveillance. In the context of that revision, the establishment of a cybersecurity police unit inside the Jinan operations of China Unicom makes perfectly devilish sense. We can also safely suppose Jinan was an isolated case of media reporting, not an isolated case of application of these “units.”
A report, bottom-left of the page, in the official Nanfang Daily newspaper in Guangdong details Public Security Bureau involvement in the policing of the internet.
On October 13, 2011, a report from Guangdong’s official Party mouthpiece, Nanfang Daily, offered a picture of the online enforcement activities of police in another major city, Guangzhou:
Recently, in the ‘virtual world’ of the internet, there are also ‘virtual police,’ and ‘virtual [police] kiosks’ . . . . According to statistical data, since Guangzhou’s ‘virtual police’ were established, they have responded to more than 8,600 cases, and have handled more than 3,000 instances of criminal activity online. Aside from this, ‘cybersecurity police units’ have been set up at a number of priority portal sites, directing information security personnel at these sites in handling harmful online information, carrying out information security prevention and treatment programs, and strengthening the practical management of the virtual online space.
This nearly three year-old passage from Nanfang Daily paints quite a vivid picture of the sort of direct police involvement on internet and information policy that the spate of news reports last week warned us to anticipate.
Fast forward to August 28, 2013. The official China News Service reports that authorities in Hebei province are making progress in “cleansing the online environment.” They have shut down 9 websites for “illegalities and violations,” have issued warnings to 75 websites, and have removed 14,435 items of “illegal information.” The news item makes special note of the establishment of cybersecurity police units:
Hebei province’s “cleansing the online environment” campaign has operated in concert with the Public Security Bureau’s special campaign of “concentrated strike and purge of online criminality” . . . with interactive and e－commerce websites as the focus . . . employing methods of self-cleansing and self-investigation, with police working 24 hours a day to conduct inspections . . . establishing cybersecurity police units at internet service providers and data centers, and building emergency management mechanisms at priority websites. . .
Fast forward again to September 28, 2013. Jiangnan Metropolis Daily, a major commercial newspaper in China’s southern Jiangxi province, reports plans by local authorities to establish cybersecurity police units in “priority internet service providers and priority websites, striking out in accord with the law against such illegal criminal activities as [spreading] online rumors, online fraud, online direct selling, online pornography, online gambling and infringement on the personal information of citizens.”
I could go on like this, fast-forwarding through 20 or so other articles. Until, for example, we reached the January 21, 2014, edition of the official Ningxia Daily, which noted the establishment of a cybersecurity police unit inside a middle school as part of its push for a “peaceful Ningxia.” Or to the July 11, 2015, edition of Guangxi Daily, the official Party mouthpiece of the Guangxi provincial leadership, which announced the establishment of a cybersecurity police unit in Pingnan County (surely not an isolated example) in order to “create a harmonious and secure internet environment in Pingnan.”
The upshot — aside from the editorial point that we should expect better context (which isn’t difficult or expensive) from our reporters — is that we need not wait for a “time frame” on China’s cybersecurity police units. They are already here, they have been for some time, and they are far more ubiquitous and intrusive than last week’s Xinhua report would have led anyone to imagine.
While it doesn’t quite have the newsy new-thing pop of reporting a fresh abuse, we can probably also suppose that the high-level mention of these “units” from Chen Zhimin signals that police are serious about using and expanding them — and that, of course, is not good news.
The China Media Project and the Journalism & Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong are pleased to announce the publication of a new book collecting the defence arguments of former CMP fellow Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强), a popular lawyer and public intellectual who has been held by Chinese authorities since May 2014 in the midst of a broad political campaign against rights defence lawyers.
Pu was indicted earlier this year on charges of “inciting ethnic hatred” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” the latter a charge frequently levelled in recent years against rights defenders in China.
The newly-released JMSC publication, A Collection of Defence Arguments By Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强律师辩词集), is a Chinese-language compilation of many of the most important legal cases in which Pu Zhiqiang has been involved over the past decade. The cases are organised into several categories, including “Defamation Cases” (Section 1), “Administrative Proceedings” (Section 2), “Political and Human Rights Cases” (Section 3), and “Due Process” (Section 4). The book’s fifth section gathers together a number of Pu Zhiqiang’s shorter commentaries and blog entries over the years.
In a blog entry written on March 29, 2004, ten years before his sudden arrest presaged an aggressive official campaign against rights lawyers and civil society in China, Pu Zhiqiang wrote hopefully (p. 363):
And so I have found that the awakening of civic consciousness and the rise of the rights defence movement might possibly provide an outlet, a way at least by which we might reach a point of well-being. If each person does their own business properly, bringing their own rights to a point of actualisation, if when they are cheated they do a bit more than lick their own wounds, if they bow their heads to nothing unless in death, then perhaps this society will slowly grow a bit better.
On July 21, The Paper, an online news site based in Shanghai, ran a series of reports on the Three Gorges Dam, taking a comprehensive look at the social and environmental impact of this massive engineering project. The process of investigation for the series alone was the work of at least a full year, but after just seven hours online the series was pulled down by the authorities. As an official news outfit, The Paper certainly must have considered the challenges of managing political risk for such a topic. And yet, however that risk was calculated, there was no escaping the ultimate sensitivity of this issue.
The Three Gorges Dam is the biggest engineering project of its kind in China, and indeed in the world. The source of constant, yet mostly hidden, controversy at home, it is probably also the world’s most controversial dam project. Through much of the history of modern China, the project held attraction and courted controversy. One of the earliest advocates of the proposed dam project was the first president of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen. In the next generation, Mao Zedong was similarly a great advocate. Neither leader actually attempted the project, however. Not just because China had limited national resources at the time, but because the associated risks were difficult to fully assess.
Three Gorges Dam, photo by Michael Gwyther-Jones available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons attribution license.
The Three Gorges Dam finally made it onto the agenda in the 1980s, when it met with staunch opposition. Therefore, it was not until 1992, with Li Peng serving as Premier of the State Council, that the project was finally given the green light by the National People’s Congress.
China’s leadership made many beautiful promises in order to convince the Chinese people of the wisdom and necessity of the Three Gorges Dam. They insisted the project would bring vast improvements to flood control, hydroelectric capacity and shipping. Today, years after the project’s completion, these pledges remain largely unrealised. The promise that 10,000-ton vessels would be able to travel upstream from Wuhan to Chongqing, or that national power shortages would be a thing of the past, have proven little more than wishful fictions. In these later years, managing expectations, the government has suggested that the principal goal of the project was always flood control. And yet this too is a distraction from the facts. In 1998, the year after completion of the first phase, there were massive floods along the Yangtze. Again in June 2011, one month after the State Council formally announced the completion of the Three Gorges Dam, there was serious flooding along the downstream reaches of the river.
Alongside these failed promises has come greater and greater recognition of the (greater and greater) destructiveness of the dam itself — its ongoing impact on the climate, on the geological integrity of the area, and on the natural ecology, to say nothing of the relocation of millions of people and the destruction of countless historical sites. In recent years, the project has also been touched by scandal, including the exposure in February 2014 of corruption within the China Three Gorges Corporation.
For all of these reasons, the controversy surrounding the Three Gorges Dam has never rested. Certainly, controls on the media have ensured that voices of criticism are a raging undercurrent. But from time to time, these voices have surfaced, giving us a glimpse of the very real concerns involved. In 2011, for example, the Transition Institute, a Beijing-based independent think tank that has since been targeted by the authorities, ran a report by its founder, Guo Yushan, under the headline: “The Three Gorges Dam Will Very Possibly Come to Constitute a Major Disaster.”
The recent series from The Paper was quite possibly attempted because editors felt confident that the destructiveness of the Three Gorges Dam was a topic on which there was some level of consensus both inside and outside the system — and that the political risk, therefore, was minimal.
The facts now suggest The Paper miscalculated the risks. There is, without a doubt, some level of broader consensus over the destructiveness of the Three Gorges Dam. But The Paper‘s practical error was to underestimate the real political interests that remain behind the dam, and consensus does not necessarily translate into the level of political power needed to balance against these interests. You might say that the very existence of the Three Gorges Dam depends on the current political system, and while there is plenty of consensus too on the destructiveness of the system, this consensus does not prevent it from standing tall.
In fact, to a great extent the Three Gorges Dam is the most apt metaphor for China’s political system. The project is a product of systemic logic of the Chinese political system. It is a logic of supreme human dominance, in which nature exists only to be mastered by the directed wills of men. Put another way, the Chinese system is itself a kind of political Three Gorges Dam. Just as the dam stands in the face of nature, seeking only to constrain it, the political system fails to recognise society as another form of nature, requiring self-organisation, self-regulation, self-adjustment and self-improvement, as opposed to forceful, active shaping by political men.
Just as the success of the Three Gorges Dam is judged on the basis of how effective it is in taming nature, so is the success of China’s political system judged on the basis of how effectively it masters and contains society. This is not just about the containment and control of material interests, but also of social rights, moral resources and social credit. This system, a colossus of highly centralised control, is like the Leviathan about which Thomas Hobbes wrote in the 17th century. But today, as openness, diversity, self-reliance and open collaboration and sharing increasingly become the defining global values, this Leviathan looks more and more like those dinosaurs of old — a creature unseemly and absurd.
Our system is so rife with problems. And yet, and this is the most absurd thing of all, we are all uniformly helpless to deal with it. Sure, all systems in autocratic and authoritarian countries are Leviathans in their own ways. But just as none of these countries has ever managed a colossus to match the Three Gorges Dam, so have none ever managed to create a system as colossal as China’s, a system so massive it cannot be toppled. Just as the Three Gorges Dam is unique to China, China’s political system is unique.
The Three Gorges Dam must be dismantled, and China’s political system must be changed. That these days will come is beyond question, and the sooner the better. But the tougher question is how they are to be dismantled.
China’s political system is a monster on which a crucial number people in China have come to depend. According to official statistics, an estimated 57 million people in China were provided for by state finances in 2009 alone. Today, of course, that number would be even higher. National membership in the Chinese Communist Party now stands at around 87 million. And these numbers give us only a bare estimate of those benefitting directly from the patronage of the system. Meanwhile, those who do not enjoy the system’s patronage live under constant threat from the system, which legitimises the violent repression necessary to its self-preservation.
Herein lies the true complexity of China’s problems, the real conundrum facing meaningful transition, and also the true nature of so-called “Chinese characteristics.” The dismantling of the Three Gorges Dam would require relocation of tens of millions of people along the lower and middle reaches of the Yangtze River. The dismantling of the current political system would similarly require an appropriate action plan making arrangements for further tens of millions.
The dismantling of these leviathans will require not just ingenuity, expertise or scientific know-how, but a great reserve of human spirit. Both will be matters, sooner or later, of global urgency. This article was translated from the Chinese original, first published at Storm Media on July 28.
I wrote last week about a recent forum in Beijing where government officials and internet industry representatives roundly praised media controls in the wake of the June 1 cruise ship tragedy on the Yangtze River. Using President Xi Jinping’s favoured term for non-critical reporting and public opinion, one of the forum’s participants remarked that there had been more “positive energy” on the internet this time than in the wake of any previous tragedy.
At the moment, when it comes to media control, the tone of Chinese officialdom is markedly self-congratulatory — one indication of just how successful (by the Party’s own estimates) controls on information have been under Xi Jinping.
On June 24, the Public Opinion Monitoring Center, a project established several years back at People’s Daily Online, released its latest report on the mobile internet: “China Mobile Public Opinion Development Report 2014” (2014年中国移动舆论场舆情发展报告). And once again it seemed the cat had swallowed the canary.
2014 coverage of Chinese government policy toward the internet showed a cleaner sweeping “rumours” away from a computer screen.
For more than a decade, Chinese leaders have worried themselves over changes to the process of agenda-setting resulting from the advancement of commercial media — and an attendant trend of rising journalistic professionalism — and the internet. Essentially, the Communist Party media traditionally envisioned as the vanguard of “public opinion guidance” were losing influence, their circulations plummeting. Meanwhile, commercial magazines and tabloid newspapers were gaining huge audiences of paying news consumers for their more relevant, and sometimes envelope-pushing, content.
By 2003, when Chinese media achieved huge breakthroughs on a number of stories, including SARS and Sun Zhigang, even Party pundits had to admit to the co-existence of two quite distinct fields of public opinion, 1) the “mainstream” field of official media, that aligned with the Party-state, and 2) the “popular” (民间) field of commercial media and the internet. Some warned that the rise of this distinct public opinion sphere was a danger to the political status quo.
In the simplest sense, the past decade of media policy and propaganda practice in China has been all about the Chinese Communist Party regaining control of public opinion, increasing its capacity to “guide” the agenda against the backdrop of social and technological change.
The recently released report on mobile public opinion suggests that — at least for now — the Party might be winning the battle for dominance over information and public opinion, thanks to tighter controls on commercial media and the internet.
As Yan Hongshuang (阎虹爽), at People’s Daily Online, summarises the report: “According to the analysis, since 2014 there has been strengthened integration of the mainstream public opinion sphere and the popular public opinion sphere, and both the degree of consensus in online public opinion and the level of approval of the government rose rapidly, so that [China’s] online public opinion ecology got on the right track.”
Yan also noted that “mainstream media internal to the system,” meaning state-run media as opposed to commercially operating tabloids and others, had become more active and now enjoyed greater influence than popular opinion leaders, meaning those intellectuals, lawyers, journalists and writers — like the so-called “Big Vs” on Weibo — who tend to voice more dissident opinions on social and political issues.
Translated portions of the People’s Daily Online release about the “China Mobile Public Opinion Development Report 2014” follow.
On the morning of June 24, 2015, a ceremony was held jointly in Beijing by the Journalism and Mass Communications Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Social Sciences Academic Press for the release of the “China New Media Development Report No. 6 (2015).” At the same time, the “China Mobile Public Opinion Development Report 2014,” written by Liu Pengfei (刘鹏飞), Zhou Yaqiong (周亚琼) and Zhang Li (张力), was also released. This is yet another important report to emerge from the People’s Daily Online Public Opinion Monitoring Center, resulting from the long-term observation of the internet, social media and the development of mobile public opinion in recent years.
The report points out that by 2014 the mobile internet in our country had already become the hottest public opinion sphere on the globe, with the rise of WeChat, news clients, HTML5 and other trends, and microblogs and mobile internet sites continuing to occupy the main position in mobile public opinion — and with new and old media working together to serve an agenda-setting function on sudden-breaking incidents and hot-button issues, gradually forming “latent public opinion” (潜舆论) and a decentralised new pattern mobile public opinion.
The government and the media have all made new arrangements in terms of “thumb discourse power” (拇指话语权) [in other words, dealing with an environment where expression is mobile and at web users’ fingertips], and the new media “national team” (国家队) [meaning the presence of social media accounts and platforms operated by Party-state organs] has had clear results, and there is greater maturity in terms of end-point coverage by new media for [handling of] government affairs and in terms of service functions [in other words, providing of access to various government services through mobile]. Our country’s internet experience and the international influence of its internet enterprises has strengthened. The “cross-border” (跨界) nature of the internet has presented new opportunities and challenges for the innovation of social management. There have been major breakthroughs for internet management, which has meant great strides for “the governing of the internet by the law” (依法治网).
In 2014, we saw the strong rise of WeChat, news clients and HTML5. WeChat, which has 600 million users, 8 million public accounts, and generate 1.6 billion posts per day, has already become the largest domestic mobile social media platform. WeChat has started to become the principal field of public opinion. Numbers show that users of Weibo have falled by 7 percentage points, but Weibo’s role as a mobile front and a gathering point for public issues remains prominent, and it continues to play an agenda-setting role during various sudden-breaking incidents. Our country’s mobile internet has already become the hottest “in the hand public opinion sphere” (掌上舆论场) in the world.
. . . .
According to the analysis, since 2014 there was a further strengthening of integration between the mainstream public opinion sphere and the popular public opinion sphere, and the degree of consensus in online public opinion and the level of approval of the government both rose rapidly, so that the online public opinion ecology go on the right track.
In recent years, the online public opinion ecology has changed [in China], with mainstream media internal to the system (体制内主流媒体) — [NOTE: this means state-run media as opposed to commercially operating tabloids and others] — more and more active and of greater influence than the traditional popular “opinion leaders” (民间“意见领袖”).
. . . .
Summarising the situation of development of the mobile internet, and new [related] issues, we can draw out the following in regards to management of the mobile internet in 2014, and make relevant new suggestions:
Clarifying judicial interpretations for the handling of internet-related cases, establishing a new order for the “governing of the internet in accord with the law.”
The [so-called] “Ten WeChat Regulations” (微信十条) and the real-name web registration system have important significance for raising socially responsible [behavior] among web users, for protecting the information security of citizens, and for their enjoyment of information rights.
The release of new regulations for internet account names [in late February 2015, taking effect March 1, 2015] mean that internet users can no longer act in an “unruly” manner. In the future, an even more complete system of internet laws will be issued and implemented.
The real social impact of new internet technologies will become more and more obvious. Online finance, rider apps [like Uber] and “cross-boundary” innovations will have an impact on traditional industries, and [related] reform will continue to offer the way forward.
Fake e-commerce goods have been a constantly hot public opinion topic. In this regard, not only to platform operators have a responsibility to strengthen oversight of sales of fake goods, but the government must also prioritise platform management and involve itself in this process; at the same time, online patrolling systems must be built, using internet technology to supervise buying and selling through online sales platforms.
The building of intelligent, geo-located early-warning systems for non-specific groups in public places (公共场所日常非特定人群地理位置信息智能化预警系统), and the building of intelligent mobile applications for citizens’ personal safety, would benefit raising our capacity to respond to and handle public crises.
[We must continue our] long-term and active development of Online to Office (O2O) e-government, facilitating connection online and facilitating services offline. One aspect of this is prioritising online public opinion channeling, while another is resolving real issues offline. The internet [can be used to] adequately resolve the problem of difficult handling of matters offline, and this must become the main trend in development.
As I argue in an upcoming piece for ChinaFile, Chinese media coverage of the capsizing of the Oriental Star cruise ship earlier this month offered us the clearest indication yet of how rigid restrictions on information are in China under President Xi Jinping.
While it is generally true, as international media have said, that Chinese authorities followed a “familiar playbook” of media control on the story, restrictions were in fact more effective this time than we saw during disasters under Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao — most notably the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the 2011 Wenzhou train collision.
But don’t take my word for it.
Participants in a recent forum in Beijing discuss the “spread of positive energy” online in the wake of the June 1, 2015, sinking of the Oriental Star cruise ship on the Yangtze River.
Two weeks ago, on June 12, communications scholars, internet industry executives and so-called “netizen representatives” gathered at a forum on “the spontaneous spreading of positive energy by web users” to assess how public opinion played out in the midst of the Oriental Star tragedy. Their conclusion — everything went very well in terms of public opinion guidance, the CCP’s official term for media control and censorship.
“Positive energy” is a new and emerging term in Xi Jinping’s press control lexicon, referring to the need to minimise dissident or negative voices in society in order to ease China through a period of tough social, economic and political transition. [Read this piece for more on the emergence of the term “positive energy”]. According to The Beijing News, Li Weining, the deputy director of the Internet Information Research Center at the Communication University of china, told participants at the forum that “more online positive energy was spread in this case [of the Oriental Star tragedy] than in any previous period following a natural disaster.”
The following is a translation of the June 12 piece on the “positive energy” forum in The Beijing News.
Many internet bigshots (互联网大咖) and internet user representatives gathered together at a forum on the spontaneous spreading of positive energy (网民自发传播正能量主题研讨会), where they discussed how after the “Oriental Star” tragedy internet users took it upon themselves to spread positive energy (自发传播的正能量).
Li Weining (李未柠), deputy director of the Internet Information Research Center of the Communication University of China, said of online public opinion during the “Oriental Star” tragedy that more online positive energy was spread in this case than in any previous period following a natural disaster.
Chen Lina (陈丽娜), deputy general manager of Sina Weibo, said that after the capsizing of the “Oriental Star,” there were close to one billion related posts on Sina Weibo. “The vast majority of web users looked at it through their own expertise or their own personal experiences,” [she said]. “There was no [widespread sharing of] public slogans (公众的口号), and there was no sensationalizing.” Chen Lina said that one ordinary user made a post late at night about precipitation around the Three Gorges Dam which didn’t at first get much attention, but then the next day reached more than 100,000 shares. Of these, more than 90 percent were shares by ordinary people, with positive discussion of 80 percent, neutral 10 percent and negative 10 percent.
Chen Lina said that in the case of this sudden-breaking natural disaster, the Weibo posts with the most interaction came from ordinary users, something unprecedented. Chen Lina believes that the positive energy of web users relies to a great extent on the timely release of information by the government and positive channeling of public opinion by the media. Only on this basis, [Chen said], can web users respond in a positive way.
After the tragic sinking [of the Oriental Star], Tencent’s [QQ.com] pushed out the news of rescues by divers, including news about more than 200 people diving down to search, which received more than 100,000 comments from web users, of which 80 percent were complimentary. Concerning this, QQ.com’s deputy editor-in-chief, Li You (李游), said that internet users really cared about positive energy.
When Xinhua News Agency reported on the incident, it created a “Q&A” section. Unlike previous expert interviews in the past, this section consisted entirely of questions and answers from web users themselves. Zhou Hongjun (周红军), deputy editor-in-chief of Xinhua Online, said that after the incident occurred web users expressed some doubts about the methods and intensity of the rescue effort. Xinhua Online selected and refined the comments and messages by web users and collected and arranged those hot topics most of interest to web users, introducing platforms for interaction on the basis of a whole series of topics.
“Every Q&A was handled on the basis of grabbing the hot points, the focal points that really concerned internet users each day,” Zhou Hongjun said. “For example, the first installment was on the topic of what difficulties there were in the Oriental Star rescue mission and why the hull had not been cut open at the first opportunity. These questions represented the doubts harbored by many internet users.” Because we were using the language of the internet, said Zhou Hongjun, this effectively checked the spread of online rumors.
Xue Chenzi (薛陈子), the chief executive officer of Media Observer (传媒大观察), said that online rumors did not appear during the Oriental Star tragedy, and this was because in recent years authoritative [official government and Party] departments had struck out decisively against [rumors], and also because the mainstream [Party] media had openly and transparently reported [the story], channeling the development of public opinion.
Zhu Huaxin (祝华新), secretary of the People’s Daily Online Public Opinion Monitoring Center, said that recently internet users had been relatively reasonable, and the online public opinion climate had been clearer. Online public opinion, said Zhu Huaxin, offers a kind of feedback on the national mentality. “Since the 18th National Congress of the CCP and the hard collective work of the central leadership in fighting corruption and advancing reforms, the social psychology today is far more stable.”
Released yesterday by the State Council, China’s white paper on its “hard-won tangible results on human rights” in 2014 is an exemplary work of dissimulation. Unseemly social and political facts loom behind nearly every piece of hard data the report presents to construct a composite portrait of cherished progress.
Among my favorites is the statistic, plucked out in coverage by China Central Television, that the government received “2.72 million tip-off and complaint letters.” I don’t doubt that one bit. The number, in fact, is almost certainly a drastic underreporting. But almost every case running through China’s petitioning system is an exercise in futility — or worse, an invitation to monitoring by China’s security police.
Yu Jianrong, a respected Chinese social scientist, has written extensively about the failings of China’s petition system, and about the often violent interception of petitioners. Or you could watch Zhao Liang’s gripping documentary, “Petition.”
Screenshot of coverage of China’s human rights white paper on CCTV, an endless chain of statistics without story or context.
Well then, how about China’s courts? Section 4 on the “Right to Impartial Trial” deals with that issue. It begins: “In 2014 China’s judicial bodies at all levels enhanced judicial justice and openness, adopted multiple judicial reform measures and ensured impartiality in the trial of cases, thereby safeguarding human rights in the field of justice at a higher level.”
One huge problem there. “Judicial justice” is a term only recently introduced by the Chinese Communist Party because in only the past year it has developed a powerful aversion to the term “judicial independence.”
Freedom of speech is “better protected,” the paper says. How do we know that? Just look at the numbers!
*46.5 billion copies of newspapers
*3.2 billion copies of periodicals
*8.4 billion copies of books, with 6.12 copies of books per person
*650 million netizens
*Internet penetration rate was 47.9 percent
*508 million smart phone users
*433 million online video users
*249 million microblog users
“The public can air opinions, and raise criticisms and suggestions freely through the news media, and discuss problems of this country and society,” the report says.
Of course there is no glimpse at all of the news censorship that has now become so crippling that investigative reporting in China has been virtually extinguished in the space of five years — or of film censorship that aborts the creative process at every imaginable stage. There is no discussion of the criminalization of speech on social media, of the kind now being used to persecute the lawyer Pu Zhiqiang.
“Cultural services keep growing,” the report glowingly claims. How do we know that? X number of stations. Y number of programs. Z number of “cultural volunteers.” Another statistical Paint-By Number.
I could pick away at the 21,000-character report all day. But I just want to note that it made the front page of today’s People’s Daily. You can see it at the very bottom of the page, just left of the image.
The full text of the human rights white paper is also published in today’s People’s Daily, occupying all of pages 9 and 10. Page 11 includes other related coverage of China’s “new achievements” on human rights as it continues “on the voyage toward realizing the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people.”
A translation of the front-page coverage follows:
White Paper “China’s Progress on the Cause of Human Rights, 2014,” Released
The Cause of Human Rights in China Makes New Gains
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, June 8, Journalist Sun Tiexiang (孙铁翔) — The white paper “China’s Progress on the Cause of Human Rights, 2014,” released on June 8 by the Information Office of the State Council, provides full coverage of the various achievements China has made in the cause of human rights. The white paper says that, in 2014, China’s human rights benefitted even more definitely from the country’s development and progress, and the cause of human rights gained new achievements.
The full text of the white paper runs to 21,000 characters, introducing the achievements China has made on human rights through substantial data and facts on 9 different aspects, including: the right to development; personal rights; democratic rights; the right to fair trial; ethnic minority rights; the rights of women, children and the elderly; the rights of those with disabilities; environmental rights; and international dialogue and cooperation.
The white paper says that on the voyage toward realizing the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people, the Chinese Communist Party and the government of China doubly cherish these hard-won tangible results on human rights and the valuable experiences that have been gained, and they will work to develop various ventures for the benefit of human rights protection and realization, allowing all individuals to develop themselves and remain devoted to society, together enjoying opportunities in life, together enjoying the opportunity to realize their dreams, together enjoying the rights to equal participation and equal development.
(For the full text of the white paper and related coverage, see pages 9, 10 and 11)
Just a few Weibo posts you made were dragged before the court. The arm of the law has twisted with the leg of politics. This garland may not be something you’ve placed willingly on your head, but history or fate have chosen you. There must be a reason. And we believe that the you that will be free once again will be an entirely new you.
In a ceremony today attended by senior officials dealing with media and propaganda, China’s official Xinhua News Service launched the second edition of its news app for iPhone and Android. Cai Mingzhao (蔡名照), the Xinhua News Agency director who served previously as director of the State Council Information Office and editor-in-chief of the People’s Daily, told the gathering at Xinhua headquarters that the launch of the mobile app “provided the basis for Xinhua Online to become the main force in the national transmission of news and information through the internet.”
The app’s launch comes amid a renewed focus in China’s top leadership on innovation combined with a more robust mobile internet-based economy, under a formula Premier Li Keqiang recently called “Internet Plus.” Responding enthusiastically to Premier Li’s overtures on innovation back in March, an English-language article on the website of the state-run Global Times newspaper said Internet Plus “will bring about the fourth industrial revolution for manufacturing.”
The mobile internet, which we are told is set to revolutionize the Chinese economy, is already transforming the project of information control in China. Against the backdrop of rapid technological change, the Party continues to regard information control, or “guidance of public opinion,” as a crucial foundation of social and political stability.
There is no question that the mobile internet is now the key focus and priority in the overall project of information control. In that sense, Xinhua’s new — and, we are told, improved — app for news and information is a strategic project in the Party’s efforts to dominate and drive coverage of important news stories at home. This is what Cai Mingzhao means when he talks about the enhanced mobile version of Xinhua Online becoming “the main force.”
In a nation where the very word “mainstream” refers to the political culture and agenda of the Chinese Communist Party, the motto of the new Xinhua News Agency app, “New Mainstream, New Experience,” is perhaps the clearest articulation of its motivation and purpose — creating new platforms and tools by which to drive and control public opinion.
It remains to be seen how enthusiastically Chinese web users will take up the Xinhua News Agency mobile app over sexier competitors like, say, Today’s Headlines (今日头条). But if history is anything to judge by, Xinhua has a steep uphill climb if it hopes apps like this one will make its news and information more competitive outside China.
Since its launch on March 14, 2012, the English-language Android app for Xinhua News Agency has received just 21 recommendations and 46 reviews on Google Play. Compare that to the Associated Press mobile app, which in the week since its launch on May 27 has received 3,134 recommendations and more than 32,000 reviews.
The distinction of being the world’s loneliest news app may go to the French edition of the Xinhua News Agency app, which has garnered just two reviews and four recommendations over a period of more than two and a half years.
Perhaps CMP can give Xinhua a little bump. Those China watchers wishing to download the Xinhua News app can do so simply by scanning its QR code.
A partial translation of the launch ceremony at Xinhua News Agency headquarters this morning follows.
[Xinhua News Agency]
On June 8 at 10AM, the latest version of the “Xinhua News Agency” app for iPhone and Android will be formally released in the Multi-Function Room of Xinhua News Agency Headquarters. Xinhua Online will broadcast the event live, and we ask you to tune in! [2015-06-08 06:52] [Moderator, Xinhua News Agency Deputy Director Shen Haixiong (慎海雄)]
Respected leaders, VIP guests, comrades and friends: Good morning! [2015-06-08 10:02] [Shen Haixiong]
Today, we solemnly announce the release of the new version of the “Xinhua News Agency” mobile app for iPhone and Android. The presence of you all brings light to these proceedings! First of all, I would like to introduce to you the leaders and VIPs who are presiding today over this release. We have comrade Jiang Jianguo (蒋建国), deputy propaganda chief and director of the State Council Information Office; comrade Ming Lizhi (明立志), chief of the news section of the Central Propaganda Department; comrade Jiang Jun (姜军), News and Information Broadcast Office of the Cyberspace Administration of China; comrade Wang Yibiao (王一彪), secretary of the People’s Daily; comrade Fang Zhenghui (方正辉), deputy director of the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration; comrade Yuan Zhengmin (袁正明), deputy director of China Central Television; comrade Wang Xiaohui (王晓晖), editor-in-chief of China News Service; comrade Jiang Haiqing (姜海清), deputy editor-in-chief of China National Radio; comrade Ding Shi (丁士), deputy editor-in-chief of the Economic Daily; comrade Yang Xiaowei (杨小伟), deputy general manager of China Telecom; comrade Jiang Zhengxin (姜正新), deputy general manager of China Unicom; comrade Zhang Xuan (张轩), general manager of China Mobile; and comrade Fan Cheng (樊澄), Party secretary of Air China. [2015-06-08 10:04] [Shen Haixiong]
Leaders of Xinhua News Agency present at the event include: comrade Cai Mingzhao (蔡名照), director and Party secretary of Xinhua News Agency; comrade He Ping (何平), editor-in-chief of Xinhua News Agency; comrade Long Xinnan (龙新南), deputy director of Xinhua News Agency; comrade Li Xi (李熙), director of the Xinhua News Agency office of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection; comrade Zhou Shuchun (周树春), deputy director of Xinhua News Agency; comrade Peng Shujie (彭树杰), deputy editor-in-chief of Xinhua News Agency; and comrade Liu Zhengrong (刘正荣), secretary of Xinhua News Agency. [2015-06-08 10:04] [Shen Haixiong]
[More guests are introduced here.]
[2015-06-08 10:05]
. . . . [Shen Haixiong]
So, where is this new version of the “Xinhua News Agency” mobile app? Everyone please watch this short video. [2015-06-08 10:06] [Xinhua Online]
A video [advertisement] is played for the “Xinhua News Agency” mobile app Version 2.0. [2015-06-08 10:06] [Shen Haixiong]
Next, let us put our hands together and welcome comrade Cai Mingzhao, the director of Xinhua News Agency. [2015-06-08 10:09] [Cai Mingzhao, director and Party secretary of Xinhua News Agency]
Respected ministers, VIP guests, comrades and friends: Good morning! Allow me first to welcome everyone to Xinhua News Agency to share this important occasion. In this multi-functional meeting room, I’ve attend two events that had great significance for the development of Xinhua’s internet business. The first was on November 7, 1997, when we held a ceremony for the comprehensive shift of news and information at Xinhua News Agency to the internet. From that time on, Xinhua News Agency shared its news and information with web users through Xinhua Online, and that provided the basis for Xinhua Online to become the main force in the national transmission of news and information through the internet. [2015-06-08 10:11]
The second occasion is today, for the release of the new version of the “Xinhua News Agency” mobile app for iPhone and Android. From this day forward, important news from Xinhua News Agency will be delivered directly to web users through this client. This means that Xinhua News Agency has taken a crucial step toward the mobile internet. [2015-06-08 10:12]
In order to release the new app today, our comrades in Xinhua News Agency’s New Media Center (新媒体中心) have labored night and day for more than two months. The average age on this team is 33 years old, and the youngest member is just 23. They have grown up in stride with the process of media convergence. They are brimming with energy and vitality, and they have rich knowledge and experience. [2015-06-08 10:13]
Our comrades at the New Media Center told me that the new version has in total 118 improvements and innovations over the previous version. I think that, in fact, all of these 118 improvements and advancements are based on a more important innovation, and that is an innovation in ways of thinking and consciousness. It is thanks to the hard work and exploratory spirit of this young team that we have these results we can celebrate today. [2015-06-08 10:13]
This is an app characterized by its authoritativeness (权威性为特色). It organically combines the aspects of authoritativeness and newsworthiness (资讯性). As the most authoritative news dissemination platform in China’s mobile internet sphere, the “Xinhua News Agency” app releases more than 1,000 original pieces of news on a daily basis, on every important news event in China and overseas — current affairs, the economy, military affairs, sports, there is nothing left out. And it also includes interviews, analysis, commentaries and the rest of it, everything you possibly need. [2015-06-08 10:14]
A bit of context can sometimes cast away the monsters and calm one’s pounding heart. Business Insider wrote yesterday that a “chilling memo” had been released by the People’s Liberation Army, informing everyone that, “at least on the internet, China is at war.”
Before you hide under your bed, here is the context.
First of all, there is no “memo.” The text in question was an editorial running yesterday on page six of the People’s Liberation Army Daily, a newspaper that serves as the official mouthpiece of China’s Central Military Commission but does not reflect decision-making at the innermost core of political power in China. Promoted to the front page, such an article might occasion deeper reflection (of the “hmm” sort), but would hardly be a sign of anything profoundly significant.
This is a drop in the bucket of hardline sentiments we have seen from official media in China in recent months (and now years, unfortunately) — over “judicial independence,” the “public opinion struggle,” “constitutionalism,” or the “Western hostile forces.” Think of them as recurring abdominal pains, a nagging dyspepsia that might (or might not) signal a more serious condition.
Nor is this sort of churlishness over the issue of internet sovereignty something new at the People’s Liberation Army Daily.
There was the piece last week, on May 13, bellyaching about how “certain Western militaries” had already “brought the online struggle into their national defense and military strategies.” The crowning line of that diatribe: “Only by steadily engaging, standing at the front and making strong counterattacks can our army preserve ‘online sovereignty’ and build an ‘online Great Wall’!”
The page-six editorial in yesterday’s edition of the People’s Liberation Army Daily (top left) that Business Insider described as “chilling.”
Two weeks before that, on May 2, a strongly-worded piece in the paper vowed to purge those who spread “online rumors” about the Chinese military — about, for example, “military umbrellas of protection for crime syndicates,” or “internal struggles among the PLA elite.” At one point, the piece said ominously: “Certain hostile forces are trying in vain to use the broadcast power of the internet, in projects of online ‘Cold War’ and ‘political modification,’ to drive a wedge between the Party and the military.”
Or we can go all the way back to December 22, 2014, when the People’s Liberation Army Daily ran an article headlined, “Hostile Forces Frantically Manufacture Online Rumors to Defame and Vilify the PLA.” “In the Internet age,” that article concluded, “national security means securing one’s ideological core (心防即国防).”
But it’s coverage today that provides the clearest context to yesterday’s jeremiad. The front page of today’s People’s Liberation Army Daily tells us that yesterday was the first full session, held in Beijing, of the “All-Military Internet Security and Informatization Expert Consultation Commission” (全军网络安全和信息化专家咨询委员会).
I can bet you’ve never heard of this group before, because until now virtually nothing whatsoever has been written about it, in Chinese or in English. Today’s report gives us the basic lay of the land:
The All-Military Internet Security and Informatization Expert Consultation Commission is an organ for strategic consultation and technical support for the Central Internet Security and Informatization Leading Group, and it plays an important intelligence and strategic role in the strengthening of internet security, in raising the scientific nature of informatization strategies and decision-making, and in promoting the acceleration of informatization in the military.
The Central Internet Security and Informatization Leading Group to which this passage refers is the new strategic information security body established by President Xi Jinping in February 2014, with the General Office run by Lu Wei (鲁炜), China’s new cyber czar (who also heads up the Cyberspace Administration).
Others may disagree with me, but I don’t believe the PLA’s new Expert Consultation Commission is anything to get excited about, much less up in arms about. Its formation most likely mirrors, on the military side, the priority assent of strategic internet and information technology control we have seen already within the Chinese Communist Party, in the form of Xi Jinping’s new Leading Group.
PLA officers take part in the first full session of the “All-Military Internet Security and Informatization Expert Consultation Commission” on May 21, 2015.
Now, imagine. It’s May 20, 2015. China’s military is holding the first session of its brand new, high-level “commission” dealing with the internet and information technology. The whole point of the commission, its raison d’être, is to grapple with internet security as a core component of national security.
Is it surprising at all that the army’s flagship newspaper should run an editorial on precisely this issue to mark the opening of the inaugural meeting? Is it surprising to find that editorial whirring with the same combative tone that has defined most others before it?
There now. Let’s all calm down.
