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).
According to a well-traveled Chinese proverb, “If the people labor with one mind, even Mount Tai can be moved.” That may be an uplifting notion where mass mobilisation is concerned. But can it be applied to the highly individualistic enterprise of innovation? Yes, say China’s leadership elite. And they have a lot riding on the idea.
At the present moment, innovation is China’s Mount Tai.
Presenting his government work report to the National People’s Congress back in March — including his “Plan for Work in 2015” — Premier Li Keqiang laid great stress on innovation as the way forward. As China faces a “new normal” fraught with various “systemic, institutional, and structural problems” (which Li characterised as “tigers in the road”), the country has to become more inventive, he said.
“China’s economic growth model remains inefficient,” said Li. “Our capacity for innovation is insufficient.” He added: “As the force that has traditionally driven economic growth is weakening, it is imperative that we intensify structural reform, boost efforts to implement the strategy of pursuing innovation-driven development, and upgrade traditional engines while creating new ones for driving development.”
The keyword here (for Chinese discourse junkies) is not just “innovation,” or chuangxin (创新), but rather “innovation-driven development,” or chuangxin qudong fazhan (创新驱动发展). And if we map the term over the past year, we have an image of, well, Mount Tai:
The Mount Tai formed by “innovation-driven development” in China’s media allows us to visualise the deployment of “innovation” as political discourse. It’s no accident that the term crested the same month Li Keqiang presented his government work report. This is a familiar pattern we see in China around important leadership gatherings, where policies like the “innovation-driven development strategy” (or any number of other flavours of the month) are introduced or given higher profile.
Right now, “innovation” is reverberating through China’s media ecosphere. Entrepreneurship is being sold as a new national obsession (as property speculation was from the late 1990s). The start-up, it seems, is the new blast furnace, the blazing fire in which the masses are to melt down the old ways and forge a new “growth model.”
The vision of innovation outlined by the Chinese Communist Party is tied closely to information technology, and an important component is the “Internet Plus” (互联网+) plan Li Keqiang unveiled in his government report on March 5, which involves spurring economic growth through the integration of internet technologies with other businesses and manufacturing. As Premier Li said:
Emerging industries and new types of businesses are areas of intense competition. We will launch major projects to develop high-end equipment, information networks, integrated circuits, new energy, new materials, biomedicines, aero engines, and gas turbines, helping a number of emerging industries to become leading ones. We will develop the “Internet Plus” action plan to integrate the mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of Things with modern manufacturing, to encourage the healthy development of e-commerce, industrial networks, and Internet banking, and to guide Internet-based companies to increase their presence in the international market.
A preponderance of official hype does not necessarily mean innovative things aren’t actually happening. They certainly are, and we can expect to see interesting experiments at the intersection of information technology and business in China. But the hype reminds us at the same time of the relatively centralised nature of power in China, where policies are dictated from the top with the expectation that they are fulfilled below — a fact that could restrain innovation as much as spur it.
With that in mind, it behooves us to look at the rest of the discourse being reinforced alongside this horizon-less idea of “innovation” and Internet Plus: the discourse of control and limitation.
As it turns out, we are offered a crystal clear reminder of the tense pairing of development (“innovation”) and political control in the form of a recent inspection tour of Shenzhen media by Lu Wei (鲁炜), China’s cyber czar (as head of both the Cyberspace Administration and the General Office of the Central Leading Group for Internet Security and Informatization overseen by President Xi Jinping himself).
Shenzhen is symbolic because it has been singled out as China’s chief hub of innovation, on which basis it recently edged neighboring Hong Kong out of the top spot on a list of most competitive cities in China. Hong Kong lost out on the list, compiled by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, because it did not adequately support innovation.
One oft-cited illustration of Hong Kong’s failure on the innovation side concerns the eventual setup in Shenzhen of DJI, a company first established in Hong Kong that is now a world leader in the design and manufacture of Unmanned Aerial Systems, or drones, and has led Shenzhen in becoming a global centre for drone design. Interestingly, the image accompanying official media coverage of Lu Wei’s inspection tour of Shenzhen media last week shows him beaming as editors at Shenzhen News Online, the city’s top government-run news portal, unveil one of their new in-house drones, which presumably will be used to “innovate” news coverage.
The head of China’s Cyberspace Administration, Lu Wei, the country’s top internet control official, visits Shenzhen News Online earlier this month.
During his tour, Lu Wei gives Shenzhen News Online “a high degree of recognition” for breaking new ground in recent years, and notes that Shenzhen will play a “leading role” in the Party’s Internet Plus strategy. But Lu emphasises that the site’s success also derives from its “firm grasp of guidance,” a reference to the propaganda policy that has held sway in China since June 4, 1989, the notion that all media must adhere to the Party line in news coverage in order to ensure social and political stability. Lu Wei also links innovation to the “spreading of positive energy,” now one of the core concepts in Xi Jinping’s treatment of media, arts and culture.
Most telling, however, is Lu’s reversion to one of the oldest terms in the Chinese Communist Party’s media control lexicon, the principle of “politicians running the newspapers,” or zhengzhijia banbao (政治家办报). This is a phrase first used by Mao Zedong in 1957, when he said: “The writing of articles, and especially of official editorials, must take into account the overarching interests of the Party, being closely united with [the necessity of] political circumstances; this is what is meant by politicians running the newspapers.”
The bottom line in media policy, in other words — for Lu Wei as for Xi Jinping — is that media must serve the interests of the CCP. This was true in 1957, when the print media of which newspapers were representative had primacy. And it is true in 2015, as the Party defines internet technology as its path to economic “innovation.”
Internet Plus is only half the equation. Party control is the balance.
Lu Wei Visits Shenzhen Newspaper Group and Voices Hope Shenzhen Will Play Leading Role in the ‘Internet Plus’ Strategy”
Yesterday afternoon, Lu Wei, deputy minister of the Central Propaganda Department and director of the Internet Security and Informatization Leadership Group of the CCP Central Committee, made an inspection tour of the Shenzhen Newspaper Group, where he gave a high degree of recognition to the development of Shenzhen Newspaper Group’s flagship website — Shenzhen News Online (深圳新闻网).
Shenzhen, he said, is a priority city for internet development, a place where technology, funds, talent and innovation consciousness were all concentrated — and it should play a leading role in the “Internet Plus” strategy, becoming a model for smart city (智慧城市) development.
The city’s deputy Party secretary, Dai Beifang (戴北方) took part in the inspection tour.
. . .
Lu Wei used the phrase, “Good team dynamics, multi-innovation in work, a firm grasp of guidance, strong development potential” (队伍状态好，工作创新多，导向把握牢，发展潜力大) to in his assessment of Shenzhen News Online. Coming to Shenzhen News Online, he said, he felt that this was a place full of dynamism and passion, a force of vitality and progress. “It is because of your innovation,” [he said,] “that there has been an increase in the spread of positive energy, and a rise in influence, ensuring that Shenzhen moves more fully toward the whole country, and to the world.”
Lu Wei said that Shenzhen News Online’s successes were inseparable from the Shenzhen Newspaper Group’s ideas about constantly promoting the integrated development of traditional media and internet media, and from the Shenzhen Newspaper Group’s persistence in upholding the [principles of] the politicians running the newspapers (政治家办报) and a firm grasp of correct guidance of public opinion. [He] hoped that Shenzhen Newspaper Group would continue to innovate, putting effort into multimedia across the industry, putting effort into [developing] penetrating power (穿透力) and influence, putting effort into [developing] new technologies and new methods, using language and forms loved by the masses to constantly innovate and advance the formats and content of news reports, fashioning Shenzhen News Online as a leading national website providing more online positive energy (网络正能量).
In China’s highly centralised system of discourse deployment, we can think of the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party as the country’s pronouncer-in-chief. Whatever consensus has massed within the CCP — through a process less centralised and far messier — emanates like heavenly light from the man at the top.
To parse this political discourse, we must observe the light as it gleams down — from Party congress and plenum reports, from the People’s Daily, China Central Television and other core Party media, and from the “important speeches” of the general secretary himself.
But we can also observe how the light, how political discourse, is reflected back from the lower echelons of power. We may see a fresh buzzword, slogan or phrase emerge at the apex. But has it trickled down? Has it become institutionalized to the extent that Party inferiors must pay it lip service?
When it comes to political discourse in China, Xi Jinping is pronouncer-in-chief. Image by Day Donaldson, available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.
In a series of posts over the past seven months, we’ve followed “positive energy,” or zhengnengliang (正能量), as a favoured new phrase in the sphere of news, culture and propaganda in China.
The term is now regularly in use among Party officials at all levels of the bureaucracy, suggesting it is a term of currency in China’s political discourse. When it comes to media policy, Xi Jinping is Mr. Positive.
We can look, for example, at a recent front-page story in Liaoning Daily, the official Party mouthpiece of Liaoning’s provincial leadership, to see how the term is deployed and with which other familiar faces from the realm of news and ideology. At one point in the piece, Liaoning’s top leader, Wang Min (王珉), who is on a media inspection tour, notes Hu Jintao’s concept of the “Three Closenesses,” which dates back to 2002-2003. But in the articles crowning paragraph, we have three terms packed altogether: “guidance of public opinion” (舆论导向), which has been central to media control since 1989; the “main theme” (主旋律), a reference to CCP orthodoxy; and “transmitting positive energy” (传播正能量).
Wang Min makes clear that the media must uphold these principles “for the sake of revitalizing development.” This fits with how “guidance of public opinion,” and media control in general, have been conceived in the past — as maintaining stability, which sets the stage for development. But there seems also to be a new urgency under Xi Jinping to the idea that the message must be controlled, and refracted through the prism of positivity, in order to ease China through this period of economic transition he has repeatedly referred to as the “new normal.”
It seems for the moment that “positive energy” is here to stay.
A translation of the Liaoning Daily piece on Wang Min’s media visit follows:
“Firmly Grasping the Correct Direction and Public Opinion Direction in Order to Promote the Theme of Revitalization and Development and Cohere Positive Energy”
April 29, 2015 Liaoning Daily
On April 28, Wang Min (王珉), provincial Party secretary and chairman of the standing committee of the provincial people’s congress, visited publishing and broadcasting units in the province to conduct a special investigation on how to adequately handle cultural propaganda and public opinion guidance under the new situation (新形势), in order to vigorously develop a positive and healthy climate for public opinion and ideology
During his tour, Wang Min first arrived at Liaoning Television, going deep into the control center for programming (深入电视节目播控中心), the HD news studio and the No. 1 Studio for on-the-spot observation. Television, he said, reaches the multitudes, with wide-reaching audiences and huge influence. Relying on the richness of our historical and cultural resources, and upholding the [concept of] “content as king,” [we must] work hard to create excellent programs and products that stand out for their special character and which [people] love to see and hear — and we must push the integration of old and new media, so that multiple screen platforms [or devices] work together. [We must] further accelerate technological upgrades, accommodating and leading deeper changes to the media ecology (媒体格局), and we must fully inspire and motivate people in order to raise the propagation force, credibility and influence of traditional media, at the same time serving the [positive] image of Liaoning.
Entering the office building of the Liaoning Newspaper and Media Group (辽宁报业传媒集团), Wang Min came to the newspaper history museum and editing platform, learning in depth about the history and development of Liaoning Daily as well as its editorial copy flow process (采编流程). To those comrades working on the front lines of news and editorial, Wang Min expressed his thanks, urging everyone to carry on the great traditions of the older generation of news workers, constantly raising their political consciousness (政治意识) [i.e., of the Party line], their consciousness of the overall situation (大局意识) and their sense of responsibility [to the Party]. [They must] mind the major events of the moment, reach down to the grassroots, and report more on the practical results of reform and innovation and on topics of immediate interest to people’s lives, ensuring that news and propaganda are ever closer to actuality, to
life and to the masses [NOTE: This is Hu Jintao’s “Three Closenesses” formula]. In terms of content, channels and platforms, [the media must] deeply promote the integration and development of the media, actively holding the “high ground” (制高点) in online public opinion [NOTE: The “high ground” here refers directly to control, or strategic dominance, as in a military situation].
. . .
The front page of the April 29, 2015, edition of the official Liaoning Daily runs a piece of propaganda policy above the fold.
Wang Min pointed out during his visit that this year is a critical year in the deepening of reforms, the opening year of promoting rule of the country in accord with the law (依法治国), and also an important year in implementing the first round of promoting the revitalised development of industrial bases. The situation is encouraging, but the tasks are immense, [he said]. The question of whether or not the broadcasting and publishing units on the ideological front lines could properly carry out the work of public opinion channeling (舆论引导) concerns the path and direction [of the Party and the nation], concerns human minds and spirits, concerns the center and the overall situation [politically], and it is the core and basis of all types of work. Various news units must deeply study and implement the spirit of the 18th National Congress of the CCP, the Third and Fourth Plenums and the series of important speeches made by General Secretary Xi Jinping, energetically publicising and promoting social core values. [They must], around the strategic deployments of the provincial Party leadership and government, firmly grasp the correct political direction and [correct] guidance of public opinion, even more energetically and effectively carrying forward the main theme (主旋律) and transmitting positive energy (传播正能量) for the sake of revitalizing development.
We wrote recently about a rising tide of animosity in China’s state press against the “infiltration” of Western ideas in Chinese education and scholarship — and provided a full translation of a hard-line essay decrying the “westernization” of economics education.
The latest target, it seems, is historical scholarship.
In a high-minded article posted on Monday to the official website of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences — and published in its official journal, Chinese Social Sciences Today — Li Zhiting (李治亭) of the National Qing Dynasty History Compilation Committee (国家清史编纂委员会) attacked a handful of American sinologists, ridiculing their work in the field of “New Qing History” as “pseudo-academic.”
American historians Pamela Crossley, Mark Elliot and James Millward are singled out for abuse in a recent essay from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The following is the concluding paragraph of the essay:
“New Qing History” is academically absurd, and politically does damage to the unity of China. It is necessary to stir all scholars with a sense of righteousness to fiercely oppose it. We entirely reject “New Qing History.” Moreover, we expose its mask of pseudo-academic scholarship, eliminating the deleterious effect it has had on scholarship in China!
The final exclamation point in the above paragraph is in fact exclamation point number 88, making for an average of just under ten exclamation points per online page. Most readers of the piece could not fail to note the clear political bias at work — not to mention the unwarranted (in academic discourse) aggression. The essay, in fact, is not about historical scholarship at all, but about China’s current ideological climate.
A translation of the first online page follows:
“Scholars Assess ‘New Qing History,’ an Instance of ‘New Imperial History’”
April 20, 2015 Editor’s Note: Scholarship is the refined expression of the spirit of an age. Scholarship can only radiate vitality and have far-reaching influence if it is rooted in the era in which it is situated and responds to the major issues of the day. The problem comes when academic researchers hold the wrong positions, and serve the wrong ends . . . then no matter what results they have, or how loud they are, they can only be noise and static (噪音杂音) — and they can only stand in the way of history rather than push it forward. As to which category “New Qing History” belongs to, this essay from the “Contention” column of Chinese Social Sciences Today can help us decide.
In recent years, a certain saying about Qing history has emerged among academic historians called “new Qing history.” This was not invented by Chinese historians but in fact comes from overseas — created together by several American historians!
The American scholars who support “new Qing history” view the history of China from an imperialist standpoint, with imperialist points of view and imperialist eyes, regarding “traditional” China as an “empire,” regarding the Qing dynasty as “Qing dynasty imperialism.” Their theory and discourse are shot through with imperialist arrogance. Differentiating their work from 20th century studies of imperialism, they call it “new imperial history” (新帝国主义史学). “New Qing history” is one example.
Screenshot of the April 20, 2015, CASS essay attacking the notion of “New Qing History.”
In order to show the true face of “the historical study of new imperialism,” we must break down the fabrications of “new Qing history.” 1. The Name “Qing History” Does Not Reflect Reality
The so-called “academic breakthrough” of “new Qing history” does not reflect the reality. At its base it is a false and counterfeit good! Absent any academic breakthrough, it has lost the basis for survival. The whole range of views they express are cliches and stereotypes, little more than dusted off versions in a scholarly tone of the Western imperialism and Japanese imperialism of the 19th century!
First, we must address the origins of “New Qing History.” In 1996, American scholar Evelyn Rawski (罗友枝) gave an address called Reenvisioning the Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese History, in which she challenged Ping-to Ho [of Columbia University]. She accused Ho of the “sinicization” of Manchurian [studies], arguing instead that the Qing dynasty could not be confused with “China.” She said that a “Manchu-centered view” was needed through which to reassess Qing history. This was the beginning, after which we saw scholars like Pamela Crossley (柯娇燕), Mark Elliot (欧立德) and James Millward (米华健) coming out with their own works along Rawski’s line. The most representative is a collection edited by Millward and Elliot called New Qing Imperial History: The Making of Inner Asian Empire at Chengde.
So-called “New Qing History” . . . has become the trademark of these scholars. They publish articles in America and China, produce academic reports, take part in academic forums, accept interviews from journalists, all the time beating the drum of this so-called “New Qing History.”
As these American scholars spare no effort in selling this “New Qing History,” there are various scholars in China who assist them in pushing it, but the world of Qing research [in China] has paid it little attention, and even less can we say it’s caught on. The “cold shoulder” some scholars have given [the idea] is the true feeling [most share]. . . . When they promote this “New Qing History” to subvert China’s Qing history or even Chinese history, we must take this seriously, looking at the true face of “New Qing History”!
As one scholar has already questioned: Where exactly is “New Qing History” new? The innovation of scholarship is a necessary condition of its development, and it is also the life of scholarship. But what innovations has “New Qing History” made?
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.”
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.
