How and how much are the protests in Hong Kong being reported or talked about inside China?
First of all, searching mainland newspaper pages today for the keyword “Occupy Central” we find around 20 Chinese newspapers that have run an official Xinhua News Agency release filed yesterday evening, September 28. That article is a direct report of a statement highly critical of “the illegal gathering ‘Occupy Central'” issued yesterday by the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council.
Aside from use of this official Xinhua News Agency release — deep in the inside pages in all cases — we have only the example of the Chinese-language edition of the Global Times, which has a prominent front page piece with a jump to page 16. That article begins:

In what direction will Hong Kong be led? The violent clashes that played out yesterday on the streets in the vicinity of Hong Kong’s center of government are a cause of concern for all who care about Hong Kong’s future.
香港究竟要被引向何方？昨天，香港政府总部附近街区上演的暴力冲突让所有关心香港前途的人忧心忡忡。

At present, it seems that outside this highly restricted coverage in the news pages we have only the same highly restricted coverage on news portal sites. If we found coverage on major news sites in China, we would expect it to be 1) the Xinhua release on the above-mentioned Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office statement, 2) information from the address given by Chief Executive C.Y. Leung at 1AM today or 3) shares of Global Times material.
As of mid-day, most major news sites had no prominently placed coverage at all. That includes the Xinhua News Agency website, People’s Daily Online, Sina.com (China), Sohu.com and QQ.com. However, when you select “news” on the home pages of the above-mentioned commercial sites, both Sina and QQ offer the Xinhua version of the already-very-outdated remarks made by Chief Executive C.Y. Leung yesterday, September 28.
The “coverage” on the QQ News site differs from other commercial sites in prominence of treatment. It uses a slightly larger headline, and also links to an August piece in the official People’s Daily addressing Occupy Central.

Searching news sites inside China for any coverage at all of what is happening in Hong Kong, the most current information mainland readers are likely to find is the full text of C.Y. Leung’s 1AM address on the ongoing protests. That information is being relayed by China’s second official news agency, China News Service.
So what about social media?
We encourage readers to use our WeiboScope tool for updates on deleted posts about Hong Kong and other issues in China. But it is clear that there is a flurry of activity about Hong Kong on Sina Weibo. As we would expect, posts about protests in Hong Kong are disappearing almost as quickly as they appear.
A search of “Hong Kong” on Weibo returns mostly entertainment, finance and tourism related results, with odd scattered results including mention of the protests, even some using the Chinese term for “Occupy Central” (占中). Generally, however, when you click into the posts about events in Hong Kong right now, you find the posts are already gone, yielding Sina’s “Sorry” message.
The surest way to get posts through related to the Hong Kong protests at all seems to be stick to the Global Times front page (like this post), its bold headline reading: “Hong Kong Government Fiercely Rejects Illegal ‘Occupy Central.'”

Interestingly, as I was testing search terms on Sina Weibo a few hours ago, a little pop-up window came up in the bottom right-hand corner of Weibo directing me to the China News Service report including the full text of Leung’s remarks at 1AM today.

Here is a brief taste of posts deleted today from Sina Weibo. Note that even posts, like the last one, that are critical of the protesters are being removed.
(1)

From User “kingsouleater00th”
With more than 3,900 fans
“Today’s front page in the Apple Daily”
苹果日报今日头版

(2)

From filmmaker Xu Xin (徐辛XuXin)
With just under 13,000 fans
“microphone”
[話筒]

(3)

From User “Reporting Hong Kong” (報道香港)
With more than 11,000 fans
“So violent like this, and you tell me you want democracy. I don’t want this kind of democracy!”
你們如此暴力，和我說是爭取民主，這樣的民主我不要!

In our ongoing series of posts on media corruption in China, we look at an official perspective on media corruption and its impact on the practice of watchdog journalism — what in China is called “supervision by public opinion,” or yulun jiandu (舆论监督).
Supervision by public opinion has featured strongly in discussions of the role of media and press freedom in China since the late 1980s. In some cases the term can be used, particularly by proponents of an independent and professional press, as a stand-in term for “press freedom,” which is itself used only very cautiously by Chinese media (usually only in pejorative references to “Western press freedom”). Seeing the term as a Chinese cognate of Western “watchdog journalism,” they envision news media operating as a fourth estate, casting light on social, political and economic problems in China.
But “supervision by public opinion” has also been used frequently by officials in China to talk about the role of news media – under state control – in uncovering issues of official corruption and abuse of power on a range of issues, particularly at lower levels of the bureaucracy. In this official view, this “supervision by public opinion” must be subject to the overarching political demands of party leaders. Since 1989 the term has stood in tension with the cardinal control concept of “guidance of public opinion.”
In response to the recent news extortion scandal at 21cbh.com, China Press and Publications Journal — a publication run by a central-level media group founded in April 2011 by the State Council — ran an editorial by He Yonghai (何勇海) that spoke out sharply against the corrupting influence of commercial interests in the media.
“Media professionals must be independent of commercial interests, avoiding the corrosive affect of commercial interests,” He wrote. “[O]nly then can they earn the trust of the public. Acts like those at 21cbh.com, of using the threat of negative reports to press companies into buying advertising, or taking money to ‘profit from silence,’ without a doubt turn supervision by public opinion into a tool for profit.”
He Yonghai also voices indignation about media “doing excessively positive reporting or covering up negative problems about enterprises they [are] ‘cooperating’ with.”
Typical of official arguments on the question of media corruption, He Yonghai’s editorial blatantly ignores the elephant in the room, the corrosive affect of political power. He talks in an offhand fashion about how media should earn the trust of the public, when in fact the notion that the media should work in the public interest at all can be a highly sensitive one in China.
The media, make no mistake, work for the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, a point Xi Jinping has made more emphatically than his predecessor, telling propaganda leaders they should “show their swords” and “struggle” for domination of the ideological sphere.
Press controls under the CCP have always emphasized that “politicians run the newspapers,” a term that goes back to Mao Zedong. Under this idea of the role of the press, it is the Party’s prerogative to dictate what is meant by such things as truth, fact or rationality. And year after year, propaganda leaders bang their fists about the need to “emphasize positive news” and “speak with one voice.”
Long before money could ever corrupt the relationship between the media and the public, power severed that relationship.
How can this editorial by He Yonghai speak with outrage about media “doing excessively positive reporting or covering up negative problems” when this is precisely what China’s press and propaganda apparatus, one of its most robust institutions, is tasked with accomplishing?
This is the kind of hypocrisy we should be alert for in official reflections on the 21cbh.com case and other incidents of media corruption.
Think of the way, in the heady days of state-sponsored “supervision by public opinion,” two lines would form outside the offices of China Central Television’s “News Probe,” an investigative news program. In the first line were those with urgent complaints petitioning the program to tell their story — peasants whose land was seized, patients who suffered malpractice. In the second line were local and regional government officials (or their representatives) hoping to convince the network not to run damaging segments.
In the latter case, these petitions to do exactly the kind of covering up He Yonghai professes to find so offensive, money and power greased the wheels. And these were not “black-hearted journalists” or fake reporters. This was China’s official national television network.
When this is the sort of press environment created by China’s political institutions, how can we be the least bit surprised when pay-for-play and pay-for-silence become institutionalized forms of media business?
We should be surprised if they don’t.
One of the most interesting veins in He Yonghai’s piece is his principled defense of the “shareholders’ right to know” about possible mismanagement at publicly-listed companies.
Says He:

The acts of 21cbh.com in carrying out “supervision by public opinion,” exacting “protection fees” from listed companies and then doing what they could to sweep negative news clean, or doing excessively positive reporting or covering up negative problems about enterprises they were “cooperating” with . . . all of this seriously damages the interests of the shareholders and their right to know (股民的知情权).

So citizens as such do not have a right to know news and information that might be in the public interest. But shareholders, they do have a right to know — about those companies, at any rate, where their capital is invested.
He Yonghai’s argument exemplifies the corrupt mindset he sets out to criticize and mobilize against. And that is another feather in the cap of Zhu Xuedong, who argued here at CMP last week that China, and its media, are in an “era of corruption.”
He Yonghai’s argument boils down to this. In China, who has a right to information? Well, the Chinese Communist Party, of course. And also those who are able to pay for it.
Perhaps next time, before we begin the debate about how money has corrupted China’s media, we should open our wallets, pull out a 100 yuan note and remember whose face is on it.

The Right to Supervision by Public Opinion Cannot Be Warped: It Must Be Independent of Commercial Interests
(舆论监督权绝不可异化 要独立于商业利益之外)
China Press and Publications Journal
September 18, 2014
He Yonghai (何勇海)
The news extortion scandal at 21cbh.com has been brewing for days now. The special task force dealing with the case has found that the website targeted listed companies and well-known enterprises under such themes as “listing,” “restructuring” or “business transitions” in order to press willing companies into expensive arrangements whereby they would be given exaggerated praise or have their problems covered up in order to carry out “positive reporting” (正面报道). For those companies unwilling to cooperate, the site would release negative reports seeking to corner them into buying advertising or signing cooperative agreements.
The website and individuals working there reaped huge rewards through such practices, earning several hundred million yuan since 2010. (China Youth Daily, September 11, 2014).
In the past, it was generally fake reporters or “black-hearted reporters” from various media that perpetrated news extortion. Whenever these people would hear about an enterprise or government office that they could “hijack,” they would spring into action, rushing off to carry out “supervision by public opinion.” They would use such threats as the writing of neican to corner these enterprises and earn money. At 21cbh.com people were involved at every level, from the chief editor to the management, editorial and advertising staff — amounting to a news extortion “bomb” that was ready to go off and send shock waves.
The acts of 21cbh.com in carrying out “supervision by public opinion,” exacting “protection fees” from listed companies and then doing what they could to sweep negative news clean, or doing excessively positive reporting or covering up negative problems about enterprises they were “cooperating” with . . . all of this seriously damages the interests of the shareholders and their right to know (股民的知情权). For example, if certain listed companies do not carry out their obligations and reveal information, or if they violate regulations, this might seriously impact the capital of the shareholders.
To accept “protection fees” under the guise of “advertising fees” also harms the interest of certain enterprises that operate in line with standards. Aside from those enterprises that might have real problems, there are those enterprises that are clean but remain concerned that financial media might, in exercising “reasonable doubt,” attack them maliciously with negative reports, damaging their reputations and shaking the confidence of shareholders even when the reports are shown to be false — and so these companies do everything they can to maintain their media contacts, even purchasing peace.
Aside from seriously interfering with the normal operation of the market economy, taking “protection fees” under the guise of “advertising fees” does massive damage to the media industry. Media professionals must be independent of commercial interests, avoiding the corrosive affect of commercial interests — only then can they earn the trust of the public. Acts like those at 21cbh.com, of using the threat of negative reports to press companies into buying advertising, or taking money to “profit from silence,” without a doubt turn supervision by public opinion into a tool for profit.
If we do not severely strike out against this sort of conduct, if we are lenient toward these villains, then the damage to the media’s reputation in society will be serious, poisoning the atmosphere for supervision by public opinion.
Right now, numerous suspects from 21cbh.com are in prison. The soul-searching in the media and in the capital markets cannot stop here. “If those who use the media have evil intentions, the damage done as a result is unthinkable. If things go on like this, not only will be fail to become the promoters of social progress, we will in fact become the destroyers of value.” These were the words spoken in the confession given by Liu Dong (刘冬), the president of 21cbh.com, and all journalists should be warned.
If we are to create a healthy and transparent environment for supervision by public opinion, and avoid supervision by public opinion becoming a tool that is sold at a profit, we must act without fail and without delay.

In late 2012, China’s outgoing president, Hu Jintao, warned that corruption was a clear and president threat to the Chinese Communist Party. “If we fail to handle this issue well,” he said, “it could prove fatal to the party, and even cause the collapse of the party and the fall of the state.”
Since coming to power, President Xi Jinping has tried to shore up the CCP’s legitimacy by launching an aggressive anti-corruption drive combined with a mass line campaign attempting to drum up support for the Party and tamp down dissent [More here].
In his bid to strengthen the ruling Party’s position and dominance, Xi Jinping has actively reigned in China’s media and sent a harsh message to dissidents and rights defenders through the persecution of the likes of Xu Zhiyong and Pu Zhiqiang.
In the above cartoon, posted by artist Kuang Biao (邝飚) to Sina Weibo, an ear-tagged pig representing, presumably, the Chinese Communist Party, sits in a pot in which he has built himself a gruesome throne made out of bones. He holds high a red flag emblazoned not with the crossed sickle and hammer, symbols of the Party’s alliance with the workers and the peasants, but with the gun and the cleaver — the brutal weapons the pig must use to maintain his rule.

The following post by ChrisTac, a Sina Weibo user with just 360 followers, was deleted sometime before 5:50PM yesterday, September 22, 2014. [See more deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre]
The post shares an image of the start of university student boycotts in Hong Kong yesterday to protest China’s refusal to grant full universal suffrage to the territory as promised in a 1984 treaty with the United Kingdom. The student boycotts were inaugurated with a mass gathering of students on the University Mall at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The image collection on ChrisTac’s Weibo post is topped with a picture showing students holding a banner that reads, “Make a foundation of democracy, to ensure tomorrow is free from trouble.”
A translation of the post follows:

More than 13,000 at the Chinese University of Hong Kong

The original Chinese post follows:

香港中文大學 突破一萬三千人

The recent investigation into alleged news extortion at 21cbh.com, a financial news website under the auspices of China’s 21st Century Business Herald newspaper, is just the latest smudge on the grubby surface of China’s media industry. We can add it to a long list of desecrations, including the shameless media mudfest over the televised confession of socialite Guo Meimei (郭美美) and sensational coverage of prison escapee Gao Yulun (高玉伦).
The 21cbh.com case stands as further proof positive that China’s media has entered an era of corruption. In the coming years, I’m afraid, we will continue to see cases and stories like these.
“Age of Corruption” was the cover of the April 2013 edition of China Weekly, the magazine where until recently I was editor-in-chief. Our coverage in that issue sketched an outline of the present age in which we have found ourselves. In our political, economic and cultural life, we are in an age of corruption. And there is no better phrase to capture the ethos of our present-day media industry.

The following post by China Daily (中国日报), an English-language newspaper published by the Information Office of China’s State Council, was deleted sometime around 11AM today, September 17, 2014. [See more deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre]
The China Daily post on Weibo summarizes a report published on Monday by Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (article in Chinese here) that said Oxford University, which has produced “a long list of political leaders in many different countries” now hoped to “produce its first Chinese president.”
The post from the Weibo account of the government’s own English-language external propaganda newspaper was presumably censored because the idea that the sons and daughters of CCP elites — sometimes called the “second-generation reds” — are studying at universities like Oxford (and might be expected to become senior leaders themselves) is a sensitive notion, underscoring the disproportionate opportunities available to Party leaders and their families.
A translation of the post follows:

[Oxford University seeks to train China’s future leaders] Andrew Hamilton, the vice-chancellor of England’s Oxford University says that many political leaders have studied at Oxford, and now Oxford hopes that a future Chinese General Secretary with emerge from Oxford. Currently, says Hamilton, around 900 students from China, Hong Kong and Macau are studying at Oxford. China, says Hamilton, is now a major priority for Oxford, and as move further into the 21st century China will only become more important for Oxford. http://t.cn/RhaVBZL

The shortened link at the end of the China Daily post takes readers to the Chinese-language story at the South China Morning Post.
The original Chinese post follows:

【牛津大学望培养中国未来领导人】英国牛津大学校长贺慕敦表示，许多国家的政治领导人都出自牛津，如今牛津希望中国未来国家主席出身于此。牛津大学现有900多名来自内地、香港及澳门的学生，贺慕敦表示，中国如今是牛津关注的重点，而随着21世纪展开，中国对牛津将会愈发重要。http://t.cn/RhaVBZL

Criminal proceedings are scheduled to begin in Guangzhou today against human rights activist and lawyer Yang Maodong (杨茂东), most often known by his nom de plume, Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄).
Yang, a long-time human rights campaigner who was previously jailed in 2007 for the unauthorized publication of a political expose (and released almost exactly three years ago), was arrested in August 2013 and later charged with “gathering a crowd to disrupt order in a public place.”

At least some of Yang’s present charges stem from his alleged organization of protests in January 2013 outside the office’s of Guangzhou’s Southern Weekly newspaper.
Yesterday, ahead of today’s trial proceedings, Yang issued a statement circulated on Twitter, Facebook and Chinese social media, in which he accused the court of violating his right to legal defense by preventing access to key case materials.
Our full translation of Yang’s statement follows:

Statement from Prison by Mr. Guo Feixiong
In the process of hearing the case against me for so-called ‘disturbance of public order’ (聚众扰乱公共场所秩序), there have been numerous instances of violations of legal procedure. In particular, there have been violations of Article 38 of the Criminal Procedure Law, namely the preventing of my defense lawyers, Chen Guangwu (陈光武) and Zhang Xuezhong (张雪忠), from copying eight discs of digitized case materials (including video taken at the scene, photographs and other evidence). This already constitutes a serious violation of the legal right of defense of myself and my defense lawyers.
If the court continues tomorrow (September 12, 2014) to proceed according to its original designs, well then, the court and the trial will be improper and illegal, and therefore entirely null and void. Tomorrow, in the midst of this illegal and entirely void trial process, I will maintain silence throughout.
Here I wish only to voice my utmost resistance and condemnation to the tyrannical stability preservation system, which flagrantly violates the law and tramples on its spirit, and which regards the basic interests of the Chinese people — namely, the realization of constitutionalism and democracy — as an abyss that means the end of the world.
If those in power wish, in disguised fashion, to do away with the legal defense system, returning us to the kind of criminal justice system we had in the days before the end of the Cultural Revolution, when [the right to] legal defense did not exist and family members could not attend trial proceedings — well then, let them begin with the cases against me and against Sun Desheng (孙德胜)!
Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄), a.k.a. Yang Maodong (杨茂东)
September 11, 2014