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).
The following open letter addressed to officials and officers in the Beijing Public Security Bureau was written by former CMP fellow Zhai Minglei (翟明磊), a veteran journalist who has been an active independent writer and NGO activist since leaving Guangzhou’s Southern Weekly more than a decade ago. The letter, posted yesterday to the website of the New Citizen’s Movement, addresses the recent formal arrest of activist Guo Yushan (郭玉闪), and the sustained crackdown on intellectuals and activists in China.
Zhai Minglei, pictured in 2003 on a visit to the University of Hong Kong. The Law is Our Only Common Tongue
— a citizen’s letter to the Beijing Public Security Bureau
By Zhai Minglei (翟明磊)
Officials and Yamen Bailiffs (衙役) of the Beijing Public Security Bureau:
I address you in this way not with the intention of slighting you. I hope only to underscore the fact that you are not independent public servants in any modern sense, but obey the will of particular leaders.
However we might view things, you and I do not share a common tongue. You round up intellectuals in Beijing, lacking any restraint whatsoever. You shut my friend Guo Yushan (郭玉闪) away in a detention center. You shutter away Kou Yanding (寇延丁), so that even now her whereabouts remain unknown. Xia Lin (夏霖), [Guo Yushan’s former defense lawyer], has likewise been criminally detained.
Need we speak of He Zhengjun (何正军), [a young NGO activist], or Huang Kaiping (黄凯平), [the founder of a think tank called the Transition Institute]?
What a carnival it has been these months, a regular old-style purge(瓜蔓抄).
But I should explain, perhaps, what I mean an “old-style purge.” When the Hongwu emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋), the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and his son, the third Ming emperor Zhu Di (朱棣), pursued cases against those they suspected of treason, they began with the principal culprit and blazed their way down the list, from his colleagues to his classmates, from his clan members to his neighbors. A chain of gruesome tyranny.
So you go down your list until you reach Xu Xiao (徐晓), a well-known female editor who has no quarrel with the world, who makes no fuss about politics. Next, you get your paws on Xue Ye (薛野), a recognized publisher active in doing charity work. Then comes Liu Jianshu (柳建树), the chief executive officer of Liren University (立人大学), a non-governmental organization.
You roil up an atmosphere of terror, driving many public intellectuals in Beijing away from the capital. Under the clear ken of heaven, you leave a trail of broken homes and jobless workers. So dark is the fear now that even in the daylight people must raise their lanterns. We live, or so it certainly seems, through days absent the merest rays of justice.
Try reading this chronicle of violence against the minutes from the Beijing Forum on Literature and Art (北京文艺座谈会) and the contrast between candied rhetoric and bitter deed truly astounds.
All of these deeds leave the intellectual world, the legal world, the charity world, the world of conscience, the hearts of ordinary people, with an abiding sense of mourning. The work much of you do is in actual fact a blight on the Party and the government.
Rightness and wickedness, like ice and fire, cannot find common ground. Therefore, I have no real hope or expectation of true dialogue with you. But I find this recent slogan, “ruling the nation in accord with the law” (依法治国), so pleasant to the ear. The phrase awakes in me such a hopeful spirit of naivete. And having said that, perhaps our only common tongue is the notion of the law. So I’ll dispense with the other nonsense and try debating you on matters of the law.
In the midst of the jasmine revolution, I said to police here in Shanghai: There is no political movement in history that has not in due time been turned on its head. So, I said, abiding by the law protects not just me, but you as well. Before long, the tables turn. And lo and behold, the top cop who called the shots so viciously during that police campaign, Zhou Yongkang (周永康), has now become a national demon, a traitor to the people.
What should one do? I wonder if you realize, as you go about enforcing the law, that you might serve as policemen for life, as leaders come and go. According to international human rights law, carrying out the illegal orders of one’s superior does not constitute a viable defense against criminal responsibility. In the future, then, it might be you standing before the court.
Perhaps you believe no one has the power to prevent your gangster-like conduct. But the storm cannot last. Beijing will return to peace and reason. When that day comes you will be faced with the shame of what you have done.
My chief purpose in writing this letter is to show that there are still Chinese who do not fear the prison cell, who dare to face up against the mass of terror. Behind us stand legions of supporters. They pass along our calls. They raise funds in support. They hearten us with messages of encouragement.
In tested times, a scholar can die for a friend. Guo Yushan is a dear friend. And just as Yushan braved death to rescue [Chen] Guangcheng (陈光诚), how could fear stop my hand in coming to the aid of such a friend? I am willing to pay the price. Let us see if there is any true justice in this world of ours.
Friends have advised me against resisting in this Nazi age of ours. I don’t believe this is a Nazi age. Unlike Nazis, the evil forces working among you have no true convictions. They have only interests, and interests do not make fast friends.
We citizens do have convictions. Those convictions unite us, and they will continue to do so. You — by which I mean the wicked forces among you, and not all police — wield your power for only a time before it vanishes under the waves of history. You want to lock every intellectual of conscience behind bars, to bury them alive. You don’t realize we are only seeds. Your actions will not destroy us, but will only toughen our resolve.
In any age, principled struggle is meaningful. When the conscience of the people points the way, wickedness will be put in its place. The chief weapon of the citizen is the law, a weapon that is legitimate and reasonable and must be used. If we do not use the law, it becomes little more than scrap paper.
I will take up the law in this struggle, and I will pay whatever price.
In a rare homage yesterday to General Secretary Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party’s official theoretical journal, Seeking Truth (求是), ran a retrospective on its website summarising and linking to every article ever written for the journal by the current president.
Some suggested the tribute might be a sort of mea culpa by the journal, which on December 15, 2014, Issue 24 for the year, ran a piece by Ling Jihua (令计划), the former top Hu Jintao aide who is now under formal investigation for corruption.
Ling Jihua’s Qiushi article, bearing the copious title “Adhering to the Correct Path of Chinese Characteristics in Handling Ethnic Issues, Realizing the United Struggle for the Chinese Dream of the Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese People” (坚持中国特色解决民族问题正确道路 为实现中华民族伟大复兴中国梦团结奋斗), has since been removed from the journal’s online table of contents and expunged from the site, the original link now yielding a “deletion” notice.
The formerly active link for Ling Jihua’s article on the website of the official People’s Daily now leads to a cutsey 404 error in the shape of a red heart and the words: “Where has your page gone?” The notice then suggests readers might consider donating to the charity below.
Fortunately, a version of Ling Jihua’s Qiushi article is still available from The Paper, a Shanghai-based online media platform that has in recent months proved itself an essential daily read.
The blanket deletions of Ling Jihua’s piece, which was published just days before the announcement of an official corruption investigation against him, has led to speculation from the Hong Kong Economic Times that publication of the article had run afoul of senior leaders in the Xi administration －－ and that yesterday’s tribute was essentially “begging for mercy,” or qiurao (求饒), on the part of the journal.
Two days after the investigation of Ling Jihua was announced, Bo Zhiyue speculated in The Diplomat that Ling’s Qiushi piece had marked his attempt at “pledging loyalty to President Xi Jinping.” As Bo noted, Ling mentioned Xi Jinping no less than 19 times in his short article, running to just 4,231 words.
Just to give readers a taste of Ling Jihua’s language in the now missing Qiushi piece, here is a translated excerpt:
3. [We] must continue to protect the unity of our Mother Country. General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized that “properly handling ethic issues and doing a proper job of ethnic work concerns the major question of national unity and territorial integrity. Unity is the greatest interest of the nation, and the common interest of our various peoples. . . Unity is a blessing; unrest and separatism are curses. Only with national integrity and the unity of our people, only with social stability, is there a favourable environment for development. Only then can we grasp the important strategic opportunity for realizing the great rejuvenation of our people. The overall conditions for ethnic unity, social stability and national unification are good. And yet, the hostile forces of the West still seize on ethnic issues to carry out ‘westernisation’ and ‘separatism’ against us. The situation we face is serious and complex.
Studying and implementing the important speeches of General Secretary Xi Jinping demands that we take national unification as the greatest interest of our various peoples, daring to struggle against the forces of ethnic separatism, the forces of religious extremism and the violent forces of terrorism. We must have a deep understanding that the basic principle of ethnic work is national unification. We must hold this line of unity as we handle ethnic issues, energetically praising the great national spirit with patriotism at the core, firmly crushing the separatist plots of hostile forces within our borders.
Beyond speculation about the reasons for the Xi Jinping Qiushi retrospective and its possible links to the Ling Jihua corruption investigation, the online list, which offers summaries and links to Xi Jinping pieces going all the way back to October 1996, is a fascinating look at the leader’s rhetoric over the past more than 17 years.
The language is — as always with official CCP hooey — tough to muddle through. But we recommend it nonetheless for China politics junkies and other masochists.
A few tidbits in translation follow.
What Has Xi Jinping Talked About in Qiushi? In recent years, Xi Jinping has published a series of important articles in Qiushi — about the deepening of reform (深化改革), about the mass line (群众路线), about reforming [official] work styles (改进文风), about socialism and other aspects. [He has] raised many new ideas, new concepts, new summaries, new judgements. What has General Secretary Xi talked about in Qiushi? Qiushi Online has brought together for the reader many important writings from over the years on subjects including reform, anti-corruption and historical responsibility.
1. He talked about a nation under rule of law (法治国家) Issue 1, 2015
Pull-out quote: “The deployments at this plenum concerning the comprehensive promotion of governance of the nation in accord with the law (依法治国) are about the self-strengthening and self-raising of our Party’s national governance (治国理政), and is not undertaken under pressure from others.” 2. He talked about deepening reforms (深化改革) Issue 21, 2014
Pull-out quote: “Our Constitution, as an expression of our basic law, is a reflection of fruits of the Party’s leadership of the people in carrying out revolution, [national] construction and reform, and it establishes the leadership position of the Chinese Communist Party emerging from history and the choice of the people.” 3. He talked about implementation of the “spirit” of the Third Plenum (三中全会) Issue 1, 2014
Pull-out quote: “And so this Third Plenum researched the comprehensive deepening of reform, not the promotion of reform in one sector, not the promotion of reform in a few sectors, but the promotion of reform in all sectors — this is a consideration made from the overall standpoint of our national governance system and governance capacity.” 4. He offered an explanation of the Third Plenum “Decision” Issue 22, 2013
Pull-out quote: “And so, we say that only socialism can save China; only economic reform and opening can develop China, develop socialism and develop Marxism.”
5. He talked about historical responsibility (历史重任) Issue 1, 2013
Pull-out quote: “Today, the baton of history has been passed on to us. History and the people have bestowed upon us a great responsibility, which will be tested by our actions . . . The basic theories of the Party, its basic policies and tenet and experiences, and its basic demands, define our direction and our long-term [goals]. Everyone must deeply abide by them, conscientiously carry them out, never relaxing in their determination, never fearing any risks, and never being subject to any interference.” 6. He talked about a program of action (行动纲领) Issue 23, 2012
Pull-out quote: “A vast body of fact tells us that if the problem of corruption grows more and more severe, it will by necessity destroy the Party and the nation! We must be alert! In recent years serious violations of law and discipline have occurred within our Party, of a very odious nature, with a damaging impact on politics . . . ” 7. He talked about the CCP Charter (党的章程) Issue 23, 2012
Pull-out quote: “Leading cadres at various levels must take the study of the Party charter as a compulsory course, and comrades taking up new posts must take the study of the Party character as their first course of study, taking the lead in compliance with the Party charter’s various stipulations. [They must] take the lead in doing what the Party charter says Party members must do; and they must take the lead in not doing what the Party charter says Party members must not do.” 8. He talked about the mass line (群众路线) Issue 15, 2012
In the era of revolutionary war, thousands upon thousands of Chinese Communist Party members acted not for their posts, not for money; they did no fear adversity; they did not fear prison; they faced hardship with stoicism, not fearing to give their lives; they truly sacrificed for their beliefs and faith . . . Today, the conditions for our ruling Party are much improved, and some Party members hesitate to press ahead in the face of tensions; they are pessimistic and lose hope in the face of difficulty; some even can’t resist the temptations of power, money and carnal desire, and they fall to become corrupt ones. The fundamental reason for this is that their political ideals (政治理想) and political beliefs (政治信念) have gone wrong.” 9. He talked about the purity of the Party (党的纯洁性) Issue 6, 2012
Pull-out quote: “To maintain the purity of the Party style, we must clear away salient problems in Party style building in a timely manner. Among these we must pay special attention to lazy governance, the creed of seeking good relations with all ( 好人主义) and other such bad trends. When all we seek is good relations [with other officials], we don’t point out problems, we turn a blind eye to errors . . .
. . . . 24. He talked about economic structures (经济结构)
Issue 4, 2001
“Structural adjustment as the main line has already become a consensus within our Party. How to formulate ideas about structural adjustment on the basis of local resource situations is the crux of whether or not structural adjustments can be handled properly. In the case of Fujian, the focus of structural adjustment must be the optimising of industrial structures . . . 25. He talked about liberation of thought (解放思想)
Issue 1, 1999
“The liberation of thought and seeking truth from facts are the intellectual line of our party. They are the intellectual treasure that has allowed our Party to move from victory to victory in our socialist reform and construction — and they are the spirit of Deng Xiaoping Theory.” 26. He talked about economic development (经济发展)
Issue 10, 1996
Pull-out quote: “Transitioning our form of economic growth is one crucial step in our goal of realizing socialist modernisation; it is an objective demand of our national economic and social development. Judging from economic development in Fuzhou over the past few years, insisting on the seeking of truths from facts, and proceeding from real circumstances, is crucial to promoting the transition of economic growth methods.”
The following post from “Zhou Yan 310” (周燕310), which includes a list of 18 “bans” in 2014, was deleted from Weibo sometime before 10:47AM today, December 31, 2014. The post was live for just 25 minutes before being removed by censors. [Explore more deleted posts by using the Weiboscope, created by the Journalism & Media Studies Centre.]
The post simply includes a tag that reads, “#Goodbye2014 #18BansIn2014” (告别2014#2014十八禁), with a shortened link to another Sina Weibo account.
But the substance of the deleted post, a list of 18 bans in China in 2014, is included as a jpeg. A brief summary of the first 12 items on the list follows:
1. Ban on Religious Freedom. On April 3, Yongjia County in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, issued a notice saying that the ‘Sanjiang Church’ (三江教堂) in the area was an illegal structure. The church was demolished on April 28. 2. Ban on American Sitcoms. On April 26, the General Administration of Press Publications Radio Film and Television (GAPPRFT) issued a ban on The Big Bang Theory, The Good Wife, NCIS and The Practice, demanding that they be “taken off the shelves” on the internet. 3. Ban on the Use of LINE. Beginning on June 2, many users in China of the LINE application reported that something was wrong. Beginning on the night of July 1, users of the application in mainland China suddenly could not access it. 4. Ban on Press Freedom. On June 18, the General Administration of Press Publications Radio Film and Television issued a notice prohibiting news reporters from reporting across industries and cross-regionally. It prohibited reporters from reporting negative news storeis without the prior consent of their news organizations. 5. Ban on Press Freedom (2). On June 30, GAPPRFT issued a document called, “Professional Conduct Information Management Guidelines for Members of the Press” (新闻从业人员职务行为信息管理办法), which banned journalists from posting “information about professional conduct” on blogs, Weibo, public or private WeChat accounts, or other social media, as well as on online forums in public lectures or in any other forums. 6. Ban on Instagram. On July 7, media reports said that Instagram had been removed from most third-party app providers in China. The reasons for the removal were unclear . . . From September 28, 2014, onward Instagram was completely blocked inside China, the reason being that photos had been circulating of the Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong. 7. Ban on Internet TV. On June 24, GAPPRFT shut down third-party video content channels for internet TV. On July 8, GAPPRFT forced the installation of their own proprietary TVOS Smart TV operating systems for internet TV boxes. On July 14, GAPPRFT again ordered that all internet TV boxes must stop providing time-lapse and replay functions. 8. Ban on Religious Freedom (2). Between August 4 and August 20, as the 13th Xinjiang Athletic Games were held in Karamay, the government banned the wearing of veils, headscarves or large beards on public transportation. 9. Bans on Independent Film Forums. On August 23, the 11th Beijing Independent Film Festival was forced into cancellation by police in Beijing’s Tongzhou District. Film critic and artists Li Xianting said on WeChat that they came under police scrutiny on August 18 after a posting an announcement online of the films to be shown. 10. Bans on Overseas Dramas. The General Administration of Press Publications Radio Film and Television issued a notice saying that overseas television dramas were not to be broadcast online without either a “Film Performance License” or a “Television Drama Distribution License.” 11. Library Bans. On September 18, a Chinese pro-literacy non-profit operating 22 branch libraries in the countryside in 12 provinces and cities for more than seven years announced that it had been ordered to shut the libraries down, and that it would no longer be receiving citizen support for the initiative. 12. Ban on Books. On October 10, GAPPRFT announced a list of authors — including Xu Yingshi, Liang Wendao, Xu Zhiyuan, Mao Yushi, Ye Fu, Zhang Qianfan and Chen Ziming — whose works could not be published inside China.
As we come to the end of 2014, we can say that this year has brought a “hardening” (板结) of China’s political discourse. It’s been a year of cleansing in the ideological sphere, and we find now that virtually all of the terms related to political reform, ones we might previously have classified as “light blue” (浅蓝) — not part of the official Chinese Communist Party discourse but still tolerated — have entered the taboo zone of the “dark blue” (深蓝).
Meanwhile, the “light red” terms (浅红) favored by those in power have undergone a complete shake-up (全面重组). To top it all off, a number of “deep red” keywords associated with the Maoist pre-reform era have made a comeback.
China’s political discourse is at least as enigmatic today as it was in the era of Mao Zedong. Is China heading forward, or back?
What follows is my 2014 Report on Political Keywords in China. Let us begin with the most troubled term of all, the embattled concept of “constitutionalism.” The Term “Constitution” (宪) is Battered About in the Winds
The biggest discourse incident of 2014 was the disappearance for a time of a pair of phrases President Xi Jinping gave some degree of emphasis soon after becoming the General Secretary of the CCP. Those terms are: “ruling the nation in accord with the constitution” (依宪治国) and “governing in accord with the constitution” (依宪执政). The terms re-emerged in September this year, following many months of chilly in-fighting over constitutionalism and its relevance for China.
This pair of terms, which appeared in Xi Jinping’s December 2012 speech to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Constitution’s implementation, descended into a valley of obscurity in the midst of a full-frontal attack on the notion of constitutionalism in 2013 — best illustrated by the “seven don’t speaks” (七不讲), instructions issued by the Party leadership banning coverage and discussion of 1) universal values, 2) press freedom, 3) civil society, 4) civil rights, 5) the historical errors of the CCP, 6) oligarchical capitalism, and 7) an independent judiciary.
In my report on political discourse at the end of last year, I had already noted how the phrase “governing in accord with the constitution” had slipped into obscurity, disappearing altogether from official Party media. In 2014, I discovered that Xi Jinping’s speech to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Constitution had been omitted from a volume of collected speeches by Xi Jinping published by the Central Propaganda Department, A Primer of Important Speeches by General Secretary Xi Jinping.
The same omission reported occurred ahead of the Fourth Plenum in November this year. A revealing interview with one of the drafters behind the Fourth Plenum’s important “Decision” clued us in to the fact that a draft earlier in 2014 had included Xi Jinping’s pair of Constitution-related phrases, but these were subsequently removed at the request of unspecified interests. The phrases were, according to the same source, added back into the “Decision” on the very last day of the Fourth Plenum at the direction of “a certain leading cadre.”
As I’ve said before, shouting the idea of “governing in accord with the constitution” for all to hear does not necessarily signal full love and respect for the Constitution or constitutional politics. However, the deletion of such language and the active suppression of related ideas does clearly signal the actions of strong forces that fear and oppose constitutionalism.
On the very day the brief communique was released at the Fourth Plenum (in advance of the full “Decision”), a number of important websites in China ran an article with the headline, “‘Governing in Accord with the Law’ Cannot be Confused with Western Constitutionalism” (依宪执政与西方「宪政」不容混淆). The article set the rather subdued tone for understanding the notion of “governing in accord with the law.” A search on Baidu shows that 106 websites ran this particular article, which was clearly propagated under direct instructions from propaganda authorities.
The article was run under the byline Guo Ping (国平) — not in fact a person, but rather the official nom de plume of the Information Office of the State Council.
The People’s Daily can be regarded as an important weathervane, or fengxiangbiao (风向标), of official Party discourse in China. In 2013, as the crusade against constitutionalism went into high gear, the People’s Daily remained extremely cautious. Only two articles openly criticizing constitutionalism were published in the paper through the entire year.
In 2014, looking at the ten months prior to the opening of the Fourth Plenum, there were five articles in the People’s Daily criticizing constitutionalism. However, in the two months since the Fourth Plenum (from October 24 to December 23) there have been 13 such articles.
Among these 13 articles was a November 13 piece called “China’s Governance in Accord With the Constitution Differs From Western Capitalism Constitutionalism” (中国依宪执政不同与西方资本主义宪政), marking the first time in the history of the People’s Daily that the paper gave negative treatment to “constitutionalism” in the headline of a piece dealing with domestic political questions.
Using Baidu News search, we find that in the ten months leading up to the Fourth Plenum, there were 120 articles using “constitutionalism” in a negative sense in the headline. In the two months since the Fourth Plenum, that number has catapulted to 689.
On the left, total articles in the People’s Daily in 2014 criticizing “constitutionalism,” 28% before the Fourth Plenum and 72% after. On the right, the same in Baidu News, reflecting online Chinese coverage, with 85% of negative coverage appearing after the Fourth Plenum.
No sooner had the Fourth Plenum with its stress on abiding by the Constitution concluded than Party media were let loose to carry out a full disinfection of the phrase at the heart of the question, “governing in accord with the constitution” (依宪执政). The propaganda surrounding the “spirit” of the Plenum, which should have been all about a full explanation of what “governing in accord with the constitution” meant, became all about what the phrase wasn’t, what the phrase could never be.
This strange situation reflected how various forces within the Party leadership were struggling for the right to define what is meant by “ruling the nation in accord with the law” (依法治国).
“Rule of the nation by law means, first and foremost, ruling the nation in accord with the constitution; the crux in governing by laws is to govern in accord with the constitution” (坚持依法治国首先要坚持依宪治国，坚持依法执政首先要坚持依宪执政). This phrase in the “Decision” of the Fourth Plenum places the Constitution at the very core of what it means to govern the nation in accord with the law, or yifa zhiguo (依法治国).
Governing the nation in accord with the law must entail the question of whether China will have rule of law (法治) or rule by men (人治). It must entail the question of delineating the relationship between the Party and the state. The implementation of the Constitution (宪法实施), enforcement of the constitution (宪法监督) and constitutional review (违宪审查) are all necessary components of governing the nation in accord with the constitution (宪法监督).
There was once a consensus inside and outside the Party over what governing in accord with the Constitution meant, which was the “checking of power, and protecting of rights” (People’s Daily, May 14, 2012). And this is generally the sense in which constitutionalism is understood.
What we can read very clearly in the anti-constitutionalism backlash from Party propaganda organs in the wake of the Fourth Plenum is the dread with which they regard the very idea of checking power. These pieces loudly reiterate the Party’s leadership of the process of so-called rule of law. They speak of the positive role of state power. They speak of “constitutionalism” as a conspiracy by hostile forces (敌对势力) to subvert China. They suggest that “constitutionalism” has its own special colors, not suited for use by the Chinese Communist Party.
The term “constitutionalism” was once a positive one within the CCP lexicon. During the Sino-Japanese War, Mao Zedong talked about the idea of “new democratic constitutionalism” (新民主主义的宪政). In 2008, the head of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, Wu Bangguo (吴邦国), said that the “entering of human rights into the Constitution” (人权入宪) had been “an important milestone for constitutionalism in our country” (People’s Daily, March 22, 2008).
In general, national Party leaders before the 18th National Congress in 2012 were cautious about the term “constitutionalism,” never using it lightly. But use of the term in society and in the media was tolerated. Like so many terms the CCP favors today, including the “market economy,” “rule of law” and “human rights,” “constitutionalism” hails from the West. But this was never a problem.
Before the 18th National Congress, “constitutionalism” could be discussed as an academic topic. It was frequently seen in a positive sense in the commercial media. And this meant also that China’s leader had sufficient space to discuss and consult over the question.
In 2013, “constitutionalism” and “civil society” were tossed over to the other side of the red line. And in the immediate aftermath of the Fourth Plenum, another storm of criticism whipped up.
The anti-constitutionalist craze has been resisted by a handful of scholars within the Party ranks. For example, Lin Zhe (林喆), a professor at the Central Party School, has said, as others have: “Constitutionalism is not a great scourge” (China Youth Daily Online, October 24, 2014). Gao Shangquan (高尚全), the former head of the China Society for Economic Reform, has said: “Constitutionalism is not the sole province of capitalism” (Sina.com, November 15, 2014).
But the voices of dissent on this issue have been swallowed up by a raging sea of official invective. The Ups and Downs of Party Discourse
Given this discourse environment, the political language of the Chinese mainland has undergone many changes recently. In 2014, the term “judicial independence” (司法独立), which former Premier Wen Jiabao once championed as a positive concept, was also added to the list of terms thoroughly rejected a negative by Party media.
At the same time, the discourse employed by recent top leaders has continued to undergo change has well. At the end of 2013, a host of terms associated with Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao had reached their lowest points of relevance in 10 years. These included: “Deng Xiaoping Theory” (邓小平理论), the “Three Represents” (三个代表), the “scientific view of development” (科学发展观), “harmonious society” (和谐社会), “people as the base” (以人为本), “political civilization” (政治文明), “democratic politics” (民主政治) and “intra-party democracy” (党内民主). The term “political reform” (政治体制改革) had reached its lowest point in official Party media in 7 years. As of December 29, 2014, all of these but “democratic politics” and “political civilization” have continued their downward slide. As for “political reform,” it has reached its lowest point since 2002.
“Political reform” in the People’s Daily, 2002-2014
It is not all that surprising to see the banner terms (旗帜性用语) of previous leaders, such as Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, drop in relative importance under a new administration. What is worth noting, however, is that “political reform” and related terms underwent quite an extraordinary change in 2014.
“Political reform,” or “political system reform,” is a term we have seen in every political report since the 13th National Congress of the CCP in 1987. While we have seen words without deeds on this count, and the term has become empty talk, it has nevertheless remained an important discourse facade. It was raised again at the Third Plenum in 2013.
As I’ve said, the main stated purpose of the Fourth Plenum was to tackle the issue of “governing the nation by law” (依法治国). That stated purpose is of course inseparable from political reform. And yet, the term “political reform” does not appear anywhere in the “Decision” emerging from the Fourth Plenum.
The term “political reform” appeared in just 43 articles in the People’s Daily this year. But over the same period, another new phrase, “the modernization of the national governing system and governing capacity” (国家治理体系和治理能力现代化) rapidly became red hot, used in 457 articles for the year in the People’s Daily. For comparison, consider that the height of the term “political reform” in the People’s Daily was 1987, the year of the 13th National Congress, when the term appeared in 348 articles.
In the Jiang Zemin era, political reform was mostly talked about under the auspices of the new slogan “political civilization.” In the Hu Jintao era, the favored term relating to political reform was “intra-party democracy.” So, is Xi Jinping favoring this new phrase about the “modernizing” of governance as a constructive form of discourse, without the layers of historical meaning, and without the associations with Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, that “political reform” carries within the Party? “Decision-making power, executive power and supervision power should mutually restrain and coordinate one another” (决策权、执行权、监督权既相互制约又相互协调). This phrase, used in the political report from the 17th National Congress in 2007, gets to the essence of political reform, the most core concept being the restraint of power. The idea could be found in both the 17th and 18th national congresses. But when it came to the Third Plenum in 2013, the idea was confined within “government organs” and “administrative mechanisms,” meaning that the sense of mutual and external checks was lost. Then, finally, in the “Decision” from the recent Fourth Plenum, the language is gone altogether. When we search the People’s Daily for the entire year, we find the phrase about “mutual restraints” appearing only six times.
After the 18th National Congress, Xi Jinping’s phrase about “shutting power in the cage of the system” (把权力关进制度的笼子) became extremely popular. 2014 has been the year of “striking tigers,” or going after more senior corrupt officials. Every day calls within the Party for turning the system against the scourge of corruption seem to grow louder and louder. But in the “Decision” from the Fourth Plenum, with its ostensible emphasis on governing the nation in accord with the law, we see nothing whatsoever of this biting slogan about tigers and cages. “Power is given by the people” (权为民所赋). This is a phrase Xi Jinping spoke before he became General Secretary of the CCP in 2012. In 2014, despite the fact that Xi Jinping seems to have a great deal of space to propagate his ideas, we see virtually nothing of this idea. Search record after record of Xi’s remarks and you’ll find neither hide nor hair of it. The phrase appears in just four articles in the People’s Daily for the entire year.
The cooling off of the “Party language” (党语) above is linked to the anti-constitutional wave. The four phrases bolded above all deal with the question of whence the legitimacy of power arises and how power is to be restrained, what are in fact the pillars of “governing in accord with the constitution.” These have naturally been spurned under the present environment by those who hold the reins of the press.
The Fourth Plenum called for rule of law (法治), but immediately after the plenum restraint took hold in the dominant Party discourse; while one eye was trained on “the law,” the other looked to the “the Party,” or in fact to the strongman.
Fang Ning (房宁), head of the Politics Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, stated publicly that, “We cannot hold rule of law up as sacred while demonising rule by man” (People’s Daily Online, December 6, 2014).
The “Decision” of the Fourth Plenum is quite a hodgepodge. As I said, “political reform” does not appear, but a number of deep red terms, like the “Four Basic Principles” and “dictatorship,” are also absent. What we have are conservative assertions of the Party’s rights combined with suggestions of institutional shift (制度变革).
I have focused on 8 terms in particular, looking at their occurrence in the media before and after the Fourth Plenum: A. “Building a system for recording, reporting and handling instances of intrusion on judicial activities by leading cadres” (建立领导干部干预司法活动、插手具体案件处理的记录、通报和责任追究制度). B. “Adhering to an organic unity of the leadership of the Party, the people as the masters, and governing in accord with the law” (坚持党的领导、人民当家作主、依法治国有机统一). C. “Strengthening the judicial protection of human rights” (加强人权司法保障). D. “Exploring the mutual separation of the judicial administrative management authority and jurisdictions of courts and prosecutors” (探索实行法院、检察院司法行政事务管理权和审判权、检察权相分离). E. “[We must] take the regulation and restraint of public power as our point of emphasis” (必须以规范和约束公权力为重点). F. [The Party must] “act within the scope of constitutional law” (党要“在宪法法律范围内活动”). G. “Legalization of civil rights protection” (公民权利保障法治化). H. “Implementing and lifelong responsibility system for case handling, and a responsibility system for wrongful cases” (实行 终身负责制和错案责任倒查问责制).
In the People’s Daily the order of the above in the foot race of most-used to least-used was: BFACHDGE. In the WiseNews database, reflecting mainland newspapers more broadly, the order was: ABCHFDGE.
Looking for commonalities, we find that in both cases, B (“Adhering to an organic unity of the leadership of the Party, the people as the masters, and governing in accord with the law”) is in prime position, being first in the People’s Daily and second in WiseNews.
And in both cases, G, “Legalization of civil rights protection,” and E, “[We must] take the regulation and restraint of public power as our point of emphasis,” are at the bottom of the list.
The implication here is clear enough. The emphasis on Party control is supreme, while restraints on power are conditional.
I also looked at 5 other keywords in the Fourth Plenum “Decision”: 1. “Constitutional supervision” (宪法监督) 2. “Governing the nation with virtue” (以德治国) 3. “Intra-party regulations” (党内法规) 4. “Judicial protection of human rights” (人权司法保障) 5. “The leadership of the Party + governing the nation in accord with the law” (党的领导+依法治国), looking for articles using both terms together.
In the WiseNews database, the term with the highest degree of use was “intra-party regulations.” The combination of terms in 5 came in second. In third place was “ruling the nation with virtue,” followed by “judicial protection of human rights” and finally “constitutional supervision.”
The first term in the above lineup was used at 7 times the frequency of the last term.
Frequency of terms appearing in the “Decision” from the Fourth Plenum. From the left: “The leadership of the Party + governing the nation in accord with the law”; “Intra-party regulations”; “Governing the nation with virtue”; “Judicial protection of human rights”; “Constitutional supervision”.
The situation we see in regards to Fourth Plenum keywords and their deployment shows us guidance of public opinion (舆论导向) in action — official manipulation, in other words, of public perception and the public agenda. The discourse of cautious reform takes the lead, while those terms dealing with institutional change fall far behind.
As for the heating up of “Party language” (党语), this might bear little fresh meaning for the liberal intellectuals who have been pressed into silence, but it is a worrying sign for more reform-minded forces within the Party. The Crudeness of the “Deep Red”
Let’s move on now to the far end of the Chinese political discourse spectrum, to the “deep red” words that hark back to the years before the reform era.
In 2014, a number of these words, having disappeared in the Deng Xiaoping and post-Deng Xiaoping eras, made unexpected returns.
First we have “class struggle” (阶级斗争) and “dictatorship of the proletariat” (无产阶级专政). We find these redeployed by Wang Weiguang (王伟光), the head of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in a September 2014 edition of the journal Red Flag.
Wang’s piece was called, “There’s Nothing Wrong With Adhering to the People’s Democratic Dictatorship” (坚持人民民主专政并不输理). The article stressed that “the dictatorship of the proletariat is a tool by which the proletarian class as the ruling class carries out its class rule,” and class struggle, said Wang, remained the “main line” today, “that cannot be extinguished.”
Another deep red term is “against the Party and against socialism” (反党反社会主义). An article in Red Flag this month said that on the internet [the Party] “must strike out fiercely against the ‘black line’ [working] against the Party and against socialism.”
“The hilt” (刀把子). This is another term from the Mao Zedong era, referring specifically to the organs of dictatorship (专政机关). An article in the January 9, 2014, edition of the People’s Daily, “We Must Maintain the Party’s Leadership of Political and Legal Work” (毫不动摇坚持党对政法工作的领导), said: “Political and legal organs, as organs of state power for the people’s democratic dictatorship, are the hilt grasped by the Party and the people, and it must be under the leadership of the Party.”
The day after this piece in the People’s Daily, Chinese media ran the text of a speech by China’s Ministry of Public Security under the headline, “Political and Legal Organs are ‘the Hilt’ Grasped By the Party and the People” (政法机关是党和人民掌握的“刀把子’).
“The hilt” is an example of what we can call crude discourse (粗蛮话语), discourse that reflects the brutal politics of raw power.
In 2014, we have seen the proliferation of crude discourse.
Another example is the phrase, [We cannot] “allow the eating of the Communist Party’s food by those who smash the Communist Party’s cauldron” (不允许吃共产党的饭，砸共产党的锅). In a November issue of Red Flag journal, Zhang Quanjing (张全景), former head of the Organization Department of the Central Committee, said: “There are Party members who wear the costume of Chinese Communist Party members, who work against the Chinese Communist Party, who eat the food of the Chinese Communist Party, who break the cauldron of the Chinese Communist Party.”
The idea of a Party under attack has gained prominence in the official media. Said one recent article: “Slandering the Party, slandering the leadership of the Party, does greater damage than the graft to the tune of one million yuan.”
The obsession has even led to the rise of the term “cauldron destroyers” (砸锅党) to refer to those who threaten the Party’s position. The People’s Liberation Army Daily said on December 24, 2014: “As for those who eat the Party’s food and break the Party’s cauldron, we must not only deny them food but must also take away their bowls; for those cauldron breakers who act with reckless disregard for others, we must never be too soft hearted to break their bowls.”
An article in the People’s Liberation Army Daily urges action against the “cauldron breakers” who damage the Party’s leadership.
These pieces published in Red Flag and other Party publications have been widely distributed on the internet.
Also in 2014, terms like “hostile forces” and other terms alluding to foreign and otherwise unwelcome involvement in the Party’s affairs — such as “outside forces” (境外势力) and “external forces” (外部势力) — have become lively terms, along with the notion of “color revolutions” (颜色革命).
“Hostile forces” and related keywords appeared in 120 articles in the People’s Daily in 2014, higher than the 98 recorded in 2013.
Thanks to the unwelcome addition of “color,” the word “revolution,” once the number one red word in the CCP lexicon, has undergone a dramatic change in valence. In China’s media we now see a discourse revolution against revolution. Do a headline search on People’s Daily Online for the term “color revolution” and you find this was its blowout year. The term “color revolution” on People’s Daily Online, 2009-2014.
Such a dramatic ascendence of the discourse of fear leads one to infer a general sense within the Party that the shadows are flickering everywhere, that trouble is on the way. This sort of language is almost disorienting, as though here we are again in an era of all-round dictatorship in which enemies are perceived on all sides.
On the heels of the 18th National Congress, I conducted a discourse analysis with my students at the University of Hong Kong, and we concluded that: “Conservative forces remain very powerful, and substantive progress on political reform will be difficult to advance.”
The past two years have in fact shown that not only has advancement been difficult, but we have actually seen substantial backsliding, at least in terms of public opinion controls. The progressive and political reform discourses that have emerged over the past 30 years of reform have never before suffered the level of attack we see happening right now.
To the extent that we saw efforts at institutional reform from the third and fourth plenums, these have been forcefully neutralised by the ideological extreme left.
It seems at the moment that China’s rulers are taking steps backward from Deng Xiaoping. Despite the reinvigoration of deep red keywords, however, few people dare to really entertain the possibility that a full return to the politics of Mao Zedong might be possible. One reading of the deep red rally — hardly a heartening one — is that these are being flashed like knives to strike terror into people’s hearts and make them step into line.
So will China’s rulers take a path that is neither Deng nor Mao? What kind of road might that be?
Those are the core questions to bear in mind as we continue to observe the political discourse in China.
In an opinion piece last week, China Daily, the official Chinese government newspaper published in English by the Information Office of the State Council, criticized the New York Times for being “highly selective” in its news coverage. The Times, said the opinion piece, “selected quotes” in order to “fan the flames of trouble.” It “opted to wear blinkers.”
For example, how dare the Times suggest that regional competitors were loathe to accept Chinese military assistance in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
Woah. Hold on. Did India not reject China’s request to search its territorial waters for the missing airliner? Reports citing concerns over the possibility of Chinese snooping came first from India’s own press, citing government officials.
To prove its point about how stories can be framed differently, China Daily insists leaders behind protests in Hong Kong are just criminals.
Is it reasonable — is it not preposterous? — to expect professional news reporters to suppress what for China are inconvenient aspects of complicated stories simply because China doesn’t like complication?
In its lede, the China Daily piece snidely referred to the famous Times motto, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” suggesting the words were a ruse, that in fact the New York Times is “highly selective.”
This should be news to no one. The New York Times motto was never seriously intended as a claim to infinite all-inclusiveness.
American University professor Joseph Campbell tackled the Times motto for the BBC back in 2012, as many have before. Campbell noted that for well over a century the phrase “has been admired as a timeless statement of purpose, interpreted as a ‘war cry’ for honest journalism, and scoffed at as pretentious, overweening and impossibly vague.”
Campbell also shared the cautionary tale of US congressman Wright Patman of Texas, who in 1960 asked the Federal Trade Commission to look seriously into the matter of whether or not the New York Times motto could be construed as false or misleading advertising. The Commission poo-pooed the request: “We do not believe there are any apparent objective standards by which to measure whether ‘news’ is or is not ‘fit to print’.”
There’s no need to harp on this point, any more than there is any sense in bickering over whether Jenny’s Diner on Fifth Street really does have the “world’s best cup of coffee.”
Ultimately, questions about bias in the news are about how news is put together: within what sort of news cultures; under what time and resource constraints; under the influence of what sorts of frames or biases, conscious or unconscious.
No journalist who has ever had to grapple under deadline with fussy or vacuous editors, with limitations of time and space (How vexing that we can’t be everywhere at once!), with all the variables that come with the pursuit of professional journalism . . . No journalist would believe that out there lies some Holy Grail of absolute objectivity, a standard to which every report can be held up. Good journalists try their best under imperfect circumstances to get the story right (as vague as that sounds).
And these days, let’s not forget, foreign correspondents are under more scrutiny than ever from a slew of experts and conscientious amateurs with their own blogs, columns and social media accounts. We pick apart their stories, question their methods. We offer alternatives, or additional background.
The problem for official China, and by extension for the China Daily, is that for them the Holy Grail does exist. China’s strategic interests, refracted through the prism of its national leaders, are the gold standard for journalism.
They may whine about “biased” framing of stories in the New York Times, but the overarching official policy on information control in China (and what they hope for outside China) is “guidance of public opinion” — the dominance, in other words, of the story frames of the Chinese Communist Party.
Just a few days after the China Daily fired its shot across the bow of the New York Times, state media in China huddled together in the southern city of Zhuhai for the 16th annual China International News Forum. The topic on the agenda, the same topic that has been on the agenda since the forum began in 1999, was to “raise the level of international news reporting by Chinese media and strengthen dialogue and cooperation among news media.”
Delegates meet in Zhuhai for the annual China International News Forum, sponsored this year by China Mobile.
The forum was hosted by the Central Propaganda Department’s Guangming Daily and the Party leadership of the southern city of Zhuhai. Interestingly, at a time when official media are decrying the corrupting influence of money in the media, the event was sponsored by China Telecom.
The event was attended by representatives from the Central Propaganda Department, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the International Department of the Central Committee of the CCP, the All-China Journalist’s Association, and the Provincial Propaganda Department of Guangdong Province, as well as representatives from around 50 Central and regional media across the country.
Among the media dignitaries was Zhu Ling (朱灵), the publisher and editor-in-chief of China Daily.
The unabashed agenda of the conference, set out in the keynote by the editor-in-chief of the Guangming Daily, was to advance international news in such a way that it serves the Chinese Communist Party’s now dominant notion of the Chinese Dream, or “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people.”
And there you have it. The Holy Grail. The ultimate story frame. The proper “objective” aspiration of all the journalists of the world where China coverage is concerned.
In its broadside on the Grey Lady, the China Daily predictably concludes by laying the story frame out in patronising, primary school fashion:
With a long history, China is the world’s largest developing country with a population of 1.3 billion. When reporting on China, reporters need to take into consideration China’s history and national conditions, which are very different from those of the West.
We could call this “guidance of public opinion.” We could call it “spreading positive energy.” But we might call it just as well: “All the News That’s Fit for China.”
. . .
An excerpt of coverage of the China International News Forum in the Global Times follows:
Guangming Daily editor-in-chief He Dongping (何东平) said in his greetings [to those gathered]: “We hold the China International News Forum today in order to make a profound study of the series of instructions by Comrade Xi Jinping on fostering great nation diplomacy with Chinese characteristics, building a new system of international relations with a core of cooperation and mutual benefit, winning support and understanding among the nations for the Chinese Dream (中国梦). [We meet in order that] our way of thinking might broaden, that our ideas are more liberated, and that the international news reports in which we take part create a more favourable public opinion environment for the achievement of the ‘two century goals’ (两个一百年) and the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people.”
Liu Jianchao (刘建超), assistant to the minister of foreign affairs, and Guo Weimin (郭卫民), head of the external news division of the Central Propaganda Department, gave an addresses about the international situation (国际形势) and the framing of international news reports (国际新闻报道导向) and other issues. At the same time, they raised expectations concerning international news reports and commentaries to come.
As the Chinese Communist Party’s official flagship newspaper, the People’s Daily is not made to entertain, or even necessarily to edify beyond the dictates and doings of the Party itself. But let it never be said that the pages of this strait-laced paper do not disguise gems of any kind.
As a case in point, we’d like to share the following essay from the People’s Forum section on page four of today’s People’s Daily. The piece addresses a phenomenon we are all familiar with — wherever we are — in the age of the ubiquitous smartphone: the “head droppers,” or ditouzu (低头族), who can’t seem to extract themselves from the mobile internet.
It’s OK to live some of the time on the mobile internet, says the CCP’s flagship newspaper. But don’t forget the importance of paying attention. Photo by Jeffrey Timmermans.
The People’s Daily piece manages to bring together the American dystopian writer Kurt Vonnegut, the ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zi (庄子), the GO master Wu Qingyuan (吴清源) and the contemporary Chinese performance artist Xie Deqing (谢德庆) to consider the deep impact the mobile internet has had on all of our lives.
So lift your chin, read, and enjoy.
“You Can ‘Drop Your Head,’ But Don’t Lose Attention” (People’s Forum)
Bai Long (白龙) The People’s Daily
December 15, 2014
Page 4
One thing you see all the time in China is that people have become “head droppers” (低头族). Whether you’re on the underground, on the street, in a university study room or a hospital waiting room, everywhere there are people dropping their heads to look at their mobile phones. Smartphones have become like magic boxes, and like greedy hunters people are constantly on the prowl, waiting to see what rabbits will emerge from the box, so that eventually they are led deep into the gloom of the forest, where they gaze around blankly.
This forest whose boundaries lie beyond all vision is called the mobile internet (移动互联网). It is a completely new territory, and history and experience can offer us little direction where it is concerned. Experts say that from the time humankind could walk upright to about 2003, it produced around 5 exabytes of knowledge (1 exabyte equalling one billion gigabytes); but in 2015, [they expect] the digital information flowing aroudn the world to be reach 966 exabytes. When a vast sea of information appears right there on the few inches of our mobile screen, when it surrounds us ubiquitously, how can it not be a shock to our way of life?
The most severe criticism of the “head droppers” has come from heavy-hearted humanists. They believe that smartphones are destroying subjectivity, making people no longer capable of putting their full energy into things. The American author Kurt Vonnegut suggested last century in a piece of fantasy writing that in the future people with higher intelligence would be required to wear ear radios in order to address inequalities of intelligence, that every 20 seconds they would be subjected to harsh bursts of sound, making it impossible for them to think about anything. [NOTE: The writer is referring to Vonnegut’s 1961 dystopian short story “Harrison Bergeron.”] Well, today mobile phones are disturbance devices for us all. Every time a chime sounds, it’s like we must take a little break [from whatever we’re doing], whether its a nice cup of tea we’ve just made, or a moment deep in thoughtful reading. We must stop and take a look at some new bit of information.
We cannot deny that the mobile internet has brought us immense convenience. The right attitude to have is mastery of technology, accommodating the times rather than avoiding them. In fact, at any point in history, new forms of technology have been criticized for various reasons as they emerge. When printing technology made newspapers widespread, when television sets started appearing in living rooms, these voices of cultural conservatism could be heard.
Nor can we deny that so far no technology has, like the mobile internet, had such a major impact on the attention of human beings. Embracing new technology, but at the same time preserving our attention — these are the twin challenges we face.
Attention is a necessary condition of a full and healthy personality. It is also the foundation of any human cultural or intellectual pursuit. There is a story recorded in the Book of Zhuang Zi (庄子·达生) in which Confucius makes a visit to the Kingdom of Chu, and in the forest there he sees a camel bearing an old man who is using a pole to gather cicadas. He uses the device with ease, as though it is his own limb. Surprised at his skill, Confucius asks the old man if he can teach him. The old man explains that he ascertains the cicadas with his full heart and mind (一心), never looking right or left — and for nothing does he ever break his concentration on the diaphanous creatures. Through time and practice, his success came naturally. Hearing this, Confucius said to his disciple: If the will does not divert from its object, then spirit may be focused” (用志不分，乃凝于神). These words were later applied to the great Weiqi (or GO) master Wu Qingyuan (吴清源). . . For anyone and everyone who has work they must attend to, these words are worth hearing.
Smartphones are just a symbol that epitomizes our information society. The crucial question is how, in a fragmented age, we think, and how we conserve our valuable capacity to pay attention. Just 30 years ago, the contemporary artist Xie Deqing (谢德庆) completed a series of performance art pieces that shocked the world, and one of these was that every hour he would stamp a time card, and in each day he would do this 24 times, keeping it up for a full year. He wanted to use this means to remind others how modern life could be split into fragments like this.
Our lives move forward through splinters of information, and among these splinters we must find the sense of life, piecing them together into a picture of complete value — so that time doesn’t necessarily become a mottled mosaic, so that the human spirit does not crumble under waves of data. Making that happen begins with our control of how we use our own mobiles.
In a news piece promoted to its homepage today, China’s official Xinhua News Agency praised the country’s top internet official, Lu Wei (鲁炜) — the director of the former State Internet Information Office, now called the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) — for his deft sale of Chinese internet policy while on a visit to the United States.
Recapping Lu Wei’s attendance of the 7th Internet Industry Forum in Washington D.C., and his part in a seminar at George Washington University, Xinhua said: “During the day, Lu Wei extended three invitations to the deputy secretary of state and to university students, and the charm of his ‘internet diplomacy’ was on full display.”
Used in this way, bespeaking China’s confidence in making its presence felt in global internet policymaking, this pair of words, “internet diplomacy,” or hulianwang waijiao (互联网外交), mark an important shift. Why? Because it is the very first time state media in China have used the phrase in a positive sense at all, moving beyond the rhetoric of foreign interference.
China, it seems, has entered its own era of “internet diplomacy.” It is ready to embrace the idea. But it wasn’t always so.
On March 14, 2011, the official China News Service reported on a second speech on “internet freedom” (互聯网自由) by then U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton (following on her 2010 speech). In this follow-up speech, the news service noted, Clinton “included this concept [of internet freedom] in the foreign policy framework of the United States.” With slightly pejorative overtones, the report added: “The current situation shows that America’s internet diplomacy has already moved on from verbal utterance to a stage of concrete implementation.”
The brief history of the phrase “internet diplomacy” mirrors the fraught history of US-China relations over the question of information freedom. Composite of photo of Barack Obama by Beth Rankin, photo of Xi Jinping by Michel Temer, and photo of Hilary Clinton by Keith Kissel, all available at Flickr.com under Creative Commons License.
An article posted to Sichuan province’s official news portal on June 19, 2011, spoke of the “web war” (网战) — in Chinese, a play the word “website” — waged by the United States. According to the article’s “web war” timeline, in 1995 “the Pentagon began organizing a group of ‘hackers’ to engage in an information war against America’s enemies.”
Referring to reports of “shadow” internet and mobile systems the U.S. might deploy to assist dissidents living under repressive regimes in circumventing censorship — including the so-called “internet in a suitcase” — the article said such systems were “just the tip of the iceberg of the internet diplomacy pursued by the Obama government.”
China, it seemed, was forever on the receiving end of “internet diplomacy” — a tool, a ploy, or even a conspiracy, of the West.
On January 5, 2012, Liu Zhongmin (刘中民), director of the Middle East Studies Institute at Shanghai Foreign Languages University, wrote a piece called, “The Successes and Failures of China’s Foreign Policy in the Middle East,” published in Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post. Topmost among China’s successes, Liu listed its adherence to the doctrine of non-interference.
Among the many lessons dramatic changes in the Middle East held for China, however, Liu noted the role of the internet and the nettlesome issue of “social management.”
. . . “Internet politics” and “internet diplomacy” have become a serious challenge facing China. At present, the internet has already become the principal tool by which the United States seeks to export democracy and carry out political infiltration (政治渗透). Responding to “internet diplomacy” will become a normalised political and social issue facing China.
“Internet diplomacy” was a political bogeyman, of a piece with the CCP’s recurring nightmare that the “Arab Spring” might make its way east.
In March this year, even as the power of China’s new internet czar grew, “internet diplomacy” was still an exclusively American matter. Here is a portion of a report by China Youth Daily about First Lady Michelle Obama’s China visit:
The U.S. government is also promoting with full force its strategy of “internet diplomacy”, with the belief that America’s global foreign policy relies not just on the diplomatic corps, but on the “online diplomacy of the people,” in which American citizens are encouraged to interact with foreigners on the internet . . .
But today, December 4, 2014, we can finally say that “internet diplomacy” is China’s strategy, pursued with a gusto China’s own state media see as only befitting its status as a great nation.
Mirroring the praise of Lu Wei from Xinhua today was an article in the overseas edition of the official People’s Daily, the gist of which was that foreign media had voiced admiration for Lu Wei’s nuanced understanding of the internet.
The final section of the overseas People’s Daily article offered the views of never specified Chinese scholars, who gushed (apparently in unison): “It would be apt to dub this ‘the year of internet diplomacy.’ These actions show the pluck and confidence of a great nation!”
The following post from “Han Dai Fu 2013 (汉大赋2013), which criticizes what the user sees as China’s lack of resolve in attacking the United States over recent riots in Ferguson, was deleted from Weibo sometime before 12:52AM today, December 3, 2014. The post was live for just over an hour before being removed by censors. [Explore more deleted posts by using the Weiboscope, created by the Journalism & Media Studies Centre.]
Here is a translation of the post:
The American imperialists have been talking nonsense about Occupy Central in Hong Kong, which gives China the perfect opportunity to attack the American imperialists over the resistance of black people at Ferguson to oppression. But so far [the government] doesn’t have the courage or attitude, but just talks about this new type of great-power relationship. Has this new type of great-power relationship kept the American imperialists from meddling in China’s internal matters? Why don’t we give them a taste of their own medicine? Why don’t we make it hurt rather than going on in this passive sort of way?
I’ve read a number of books on Chinese politics published overseas, and they all wantonly attack and criticize Chinese leaders past and present but make an exception for a certain current leader. This is something I worry about too. I’m guessing this post won’t be around too long. Start the clock.
