It’s impossible to pinpoint a precise moment when official Party media in China lost the agenda. But the progressive erosion of Party media influence has been a fact ever since the 1990s, when the rise of a new generation of commercially operating metro newspapers and news magazines was paired with the rise of the internet.
Over the years at CMP, we’ve written a great deal about the many ways the Party has attempted to transform and solidify its control of information, a project it refers to as “guidance of public opinion,” or yulun daoxiang.
In 2003, the year of China’s SARS epidemic, we saw what was in some sense the culmination of a new force of agenda setting, resulting from the combination of commercialised media and the internet. By that time, commercial newspapers like Southern Metropolis Daily were pursuing harder-hitting stories in a bid both for market success and professional point scoring. Their stories could then find broader national audiences through commercial internet portal sites. Local news could go national in a matter of hours and impact subsequent coverage in unforeseen ways.
Never had the job of China’s propaganda leaders been more difficult.
Ever since that time, Chinese leaders have been trying to put the genie back in the bottle. Hu Jintao’s approach, in a nutshell, was to invest in core Party media (including the likes of People’s Daily Online) and encourage them to report quickly on sudden-breaking stories that were potentially sensitive. This tactic was combined with traditional forms of control, such as bans preventing commercial media from doing independent reporting. In this way Party media could control the agenda early on — or, as journalists said, “grab the megaphone” — allowing leaders to shape and dominate the story.
Another complimentary tactic under Hu Jintao was to strike out against investigative reporting by more independent-leaning commercial newspapers and magazines. This could be seen in a 2004 central ban on “cross-regional reporting,” the practice of reporting tougher news stories in neighbouring provinces to avoid reprimand by the local officials directly responsible for overseeing your publication. It could also be seen in the more aggressive internal control approaches taken at papers like Southern Weekly, which from 2008 onward had internal “news readers” exercising an unprecedented level of prior control on content — what eventually culminated in last year’s Southern Weekly incident.
But even before Hu-era control could have a decisive impact, along came new media platforms to upset the status quo. By 2010, microblogging services like Sina Weibo were having a dramatic impact on news cycles. It was no longer sufficient for Party media to dominate stories in the first couple of days when public opinion could coalesce around unforeseen stories in a matter of minutes.
The problem of Weibo was largely left to Xi Jinping, and over the past year we’ve seen very robust action — including the campaign against “Big V” users — to bring this now five year-old medium to heel. The thirteen months since the Southern Weekly incident have also seen continued encroachments on the work of journalists at the commercial papers and magazines where for years we have looked for the most professional in-depth and investigative reporting.
In the midst of this lull of uncertainty, central Party media like China Central Television have tried to reclaim the agenda with soft-glove “investigative” reporting, including spots on allegedly poor customer service by Apple in China, high prices for Starbuck’s coffee in China, or news writ large about a government crackdown on the sex trade in Dongguan.
Reports like these have not, however, won CCTV admirers. Many Chinese on social media panned the reports on Apple and Starbuck’s as petty and one-sided. After the reports on the sex trade in Dongguan, many Chinese chose to side with the victimised prostitutes rather than with the authorities.
Shortly after he came to power, Xi Jinping pledged to deal actively with the problem of corruption, “striking tigers as well as flies.” So far, however, Xi has been unwilling to deal systematically — rather than symbolically — with corruption. The government has persecuted those who, like the activist lawyer Xu Zhiyong, have called on officials to be transparent about their assets.
“Swatting at flies and letting the tigers run free” has long been a phrase in China’s media — generally levelled at state outfits like CCTV — to refer to half-baked investigative reports that go after small-time crooks rather than high-level officials. The crackdown in Dongguan, and related reports by Party media, seem to establish a new pattern of expectations, both in terms of the Party’s anti-corruption campaign and the Party’s journalism. That is, government campaigns that swat at flies, and media reporting that fawningly follows suit.
In the following article from the official Xinhua News Agency, the author argues that China Central Television has regained its place lately at the “forefront of watchdog journalism.” If that is true, it is only, unfortunately, because commercial media have been actively discouraged from pursuing harder-hitting coverage.
Real investigative reporting is under threat in China. Meanwhile, CCTV is establishing itself as the country’s preeminent swatter of flies. It’s hard to congratulate the network for exposing “serious quality issues with more than ten types of facial tissues” when there are serious stories in the public interest waiting out there.

After China Central Television exposed the story of the Dongguan sex trade, it then exposed such stories as that involving the “China Hospital Management Society (中华医院管理学会), and serious quality issues with more than ten types of facial tissues. The Dongguan report brought anti-prostitution campaigns in places across China, and the impact of these other reports is still unfolding. CCTV has once again returned to the forefront of watchdog journalism.
There was a period of time in which CCTV served a “flagship” role among Chinese media for the practice of watchdog journalism [or “supervision of public opinion”], with program’s like Focus, Friday Quality Report and News Probe capable of touching on serious issues and stirring attention. Later, with the rise of the internet, a new locus for public opinion was generated, challenging the authority of CCTV and other mainstream media [i.e., Party media], and China’s public opinion pattern experienced profound change.
Perhaps it was the fact that online public opinion was often “too extreme” that gave greater urgency to the task of mainstream media “seizing the public opinion initiative,” and directly challenged and diluted the role of supervision by public opinion. Up to the time of the appearance of Weibo, various news tips, true and false, emerged, so that all traditional media were behind the curve.
On March 15 last year, when CCTV exposed problems with Apple, And later exposed high Starbucks prices in China, it faced an unprecedented clamour online. This suggests that some people online already do not trust the public interest motive of traditional mainstream [Party] media in carrying out supervision by public opinion — and certain forces even wish to deprive CCTC and other [Party media] of their right to conduct supervision by public opinion.
If they do not conduct supervision by public opinion, traditional [Party] media will be progressively marginalised.
If social media sites become the unquestioned chief force in conducting supervision by public opinion, then they might actually become the broadcast center of public opinion in China and its moral high-water point. The fact that CCTV exposed the Dongguan sex industry, and yet still suffered a lot of online criticism, this should be heard as an alarm bell. Mainstream [Party] media Must once again capture the initiative in carrying out supervision by public opinion, winning the full trust of the public. This is most crucial in striking the right balance of online and offline public opinion in the new global internet era.
What we need to recognise is that, with the constant mounting of supervision by public opinion by commercial media and international online supervision, the public’s expectations of supervision by public opinion have already surpassed what they were in the early days of News Probe. . .
Supervision by public opinion can have a soft touch, or it can deal with serious problems we see all around us. The public hopes that mainstream [Party] media are brave enough to pursue “major” and “sensitive” issues, exposing things that the Me Media (自媒体) cannot. This might be strenuous, and it might mean taking risks, but this is certainly what the public expects of traditional mainstream [Party] media.
The influence and authority of the current mainstream [Party] media among the public is a matter that concerns China’s ability to persist along its present political path . . . The government must have a firm consensus about this, recognising that the protection of the authority of the mainstream [Party] media is a key part of enhancing its governing capacity.

In recent days, news of the passing of Li Junxu (李君旭) has been little more than a whisper, muffled amid the story of the crackdown on Dongguan’s sex trade. But 38 years ago, Li Junxu was the centre of a great big news story when it was reported that the 23 year-old factory worker had been arrested for fabricating a text called “The Last Will and Testament of the Premier” (总理遗言).
The world of Chinese politics is a black box, and black-box politics naturally gives rise to “rumour.” I remember very clearly the end of the Cultural Revolution, how people would whisper things privately and pass on speculative information. The core of most of this speculation was Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s last wife. In 1976, Deng Xiaoping was criticized in the movement to “strike back against the right-deviationist wind.” In the midst of this, Zhou Enlai passed away and this drove an undercurrent of rumour and speculation.
In Hangzhou, Li Junxu drew up a fictional “Last Will and Testament” for Zhou Enlai. In March and April 1976, Li’s document spread rapidly across China.

[The above image is of Li Junxu. The image is from Yuan Minzhu’s book, Reassessing the ‘Premier’s Will Case’ of 1976 That I Experienced]
The tone of Li Junxu’s letter was weighted with the sentiment of burden and humiliation. “Do not keep my ashes, but rather throw them away. Goodbye, my comrades!” When we look at the document years later, we can recognise clearly how it validates Zhang Chunqiao (张春桥) and Wang Hongwen (王洪文), but more important is what comes later: “Comrade Deng Xiaoping has done great work on a number of fronts over the past year . . . The pressures to come for Deng Xiaoping will be much greater, but so long as the path is correct, whatever difficulties can be overcome.”
These were fateful words at a time when Mao Zedong was in the midst of “criticising Deng and “striking back against the right-deviationist wind.” On April 1, 1976, The authorities proclaimed that “the so-called Last Will and Testament of the Premier is entirely counter-revolutionary rumour,” and called for an investigation. Just a few days later the “April 5” Tiananmen incident broke out, and Party media argued that political rumour had paved the way for the Incident and that rose who “fabricated counter-revolutionary rumours” must be suppressed. (People’s Daily, April 18, 1976, “What Does the Incident on Tiananmen Square Demonstrate?”.)
Party media said:

In spring this year, as the struggle against the right-deviationists was in full swing, achieving victory after victory, a flood of counter-revolutionary political rumours flooded up from the sewers. A small contingent of class enemies whipped themselves into a frenzy and manufactured the so-called “Directive from Mao Zedong, ” the so-called “Central Document,” the so-called “Last Will and Testament of the Premier,” the so-called “Speech from a Central Party Official,” and so on. They conspired to use the high prestige of Mao Zedong and the Central Party to peddle their black reactionary wares. This is a dangerous and poisonous counter-revolutionary strategy. The content of these political rumours is reactionary, their language is poisonous, their plot is bizarre and their methods disgusting!” (People’s Daily, May 5, 1976.)

The search for the originator of the “Last Will and Testament of the Premier” had begun. Thousands of people across the country were interrogated, and finally Li Junxu and six others were arrested. Li was subjected to brutal treatment while in prison. He was forced to spend long periods of time under powerful lamps, and later suffered from chronic insomnia requiring medication.
In the early 1980s, I once met Li Junxu, a man my own age, from the same hometown — and in fact a professional colleague, like me a writer of reportage who had won a national prize. Never did I imagine that this writer, so full of vitality, would be struck with illness soon after our meeting. In 1989 he suffered a brain haemorrhage that resulted in severe memory loss.
“Rumours” created. “Rumours” believed. “Rumours” passed on. “Rumours” denied. Then, inevitably, rumourmongers punished. This is a story that has played out time and again in China. In many cases, these so-called “rumours” are ultimately shown to be truths that are politically inconvenient. Other “rumours,” like Li Junxu’s will and testament, are actually creative works that express popular anger in an indirect way. This is the nature of Chinese politics. In 2013, Chinese a leaders once again launched am internet crackdown touted as (what else?) a campaign against “big rumours.”
Some of the din and clamour we hear today prompts us to think back to 1976. The spirit of Mao still lingers. This is precisely why those who care about Chinese politics must understand the Cultural Revolution — and why they must learn about “The Last Will and Testament of the Premier” and it’s author, Li Junxu.

Another year has passed. We can now take a comprehensive look back on China’s political discourse in 2013 — and what it can tell us about China’s current political atmosphere.

“Light Blue” Terms Associated with Constitutionalism and Democracy Reach New Lows

I use a graded color system of four quadrants to describe China’s political discourse. “Deep red,” on the left end of the spectrum, denotes political terms from the Maoist era. At the opposite end, we have “dark blue” terms. These are words and phrases, many of them associated with sensitive concepts like separation of powers or privatisation of the military, that the Chinese Communist Party does not permit.
“Light red” terms are those employed by the Party leadership. They represent the dominant orthodoxy in terms of CCP discourse. Finally, “light blue terms” are those the Party does not sanction but does not explicitly ban. They may be used by commercial media in China, but are rarely, if ever, seen in official Party media.

Many of the terms we have observed carefully in our discourse analysis on the topic of political reform within the Party in recent years belong to the light red category — terms like “democratic politics,” “political civilisation” and “intra-Party democracy.”

Light blue terms like “universal values,” “constitutionalism” and “civil society” coexisted peacefully (though not exactly comfortably) with light red terms throughout the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao eras. But in 2013, the first full year of the Xi Jinping era, light blue terms have been under assault — some moving into the dark blue end of the spectrum.

The idea of “constitutionalism” was the origin of the Southern Weekly incident in January 2013. Southern Weekly‘s New Years editorial — an important essay that generally sets the paper’s professional tone and mission for the year — had originally been called, “The Chinese Dream: the Dream of Constitutionalism.” During preparation of the New Years edition, the editorial was altered beyond recognition by censors in Guangdong. All 18 instances of “constitutionalism” in the essay were removed, and censors even added text to the edition (without input from editors) that contained serious and embarrassing factual errors. The incident created a major uproar, and prompted widespread calls for greater freedom of speech in China.

Using the advanced search function on Baidu.com, the most widely used search engine in China, we can see that 2013 was a different year from 2012 as far as light blue terms were concerned. In 2012, there were 150 distinct articles using the term “universal values” in the headline, of which 78 percent presented the term in a positive light. The same year, there were 400 articles using the term “constitutionalism” in the headline, of which all uses we’re positive.

In 2013, there were 500 articles using “universal values” in the headline, of which 84 percent presented the concept in a negative light. There were 1200 articles using the term “constitutionalism,” 86 percent negative.

Southern Weekly, Southern Metropolis Daily and The Beijing News have typically been publications where light blue terms like the above have thrived. But light blue terms fell off sharply at these newspapers in 2013. Here, for example is a graph of “civil society” in Southern Metropolis Daily over the past 10 years.

Not long after the curtain closed on the 18th National Congress in 2012, Xi Jinping emphasised the need to “govern according to the constitution.” This was the first time that this phrase, which is similar to the notion of constitutionalism, appeared in a headline in the Party’s official People’s Daily. In December 2012, use of the phrase “govern according to the constitution” soared in China’s media. But after this the term nosedived. In 2013, there were seven months during which the term was completely gone from People’s Daily. A search in Baidu News turns up just a handful of uses in headlines, and eight months in which the term is completely absent from headlines.

On the opening day of the Third Plenum of the 18th CCP Central Committee, a lengthy editorial on the front page of the People’s Daily, “‘The New Historic Starting Point’ on the Chinese Road,” did finally include this phrase about the constitution once again, and it emerged in another editorial two days later. But the term did not appear in the formal “Decision” coming out of the Plenum.

On January 6, 2013, the phrase “the two must not rejects,” or liang ge bu fou ding (两个不能否定), began appearing in Chinese newspapers. This term summed up a new political position emerging from the Party leadership, that “the historical period after economic reforms [in 1978] must not be used to reject the historical period before economic reforms; and the historical period before economic reforms must not be used to reject the historical period after economic reforms.” This new phrase generated an uproar, and it heralded the appearance of the “Seven Don’t Speaks,” a Party document — not formally released but widely discussed — restricting use of political ideas generally in the light blue quadrant, like constitutionalism and civil society.

From May to July of 2013 came the first round of attacks against light blue political concepts, but these attacks were met with concerted opposition from academics, lawyers and rights advocates online. Finally, in late August, Party media “showed their swords,” calling for a “public opinion struggle” (also referred to as a “struggle in the ideological sphere”). Both “public opinion struggle” and “struggle in the ideological sphere” are reminiscent of another term from the Maoist era, “class struggle in the ideological sphere.”

From this point deep red discourse moved to center stage. In September, criticism of light blue terms reached new heights, though this assault was put on hold on the eve off the Third Plenum.
On October 17, the People’s Daily re-ran in full an essay from the Party journal Qiushi attributed to “Autumn Stone” (秋石) — a writer, or group of writers, of unknown identity. It was called, “Firming Up the Common Ideological Basis for United Struggle by the Party and the People.” The article was essentially an open version of the “Seven Don’t Speaks,” and said that universal values and constitutional democracy are uniquely Western ideas and forms of governance. It severely criticized neoliberalism, historical nihilism and critiques of China’s reform project. Quite notably, however, the essay left a corner of the net open, touching on the notion of civil society that had previously been lumped in the “Seven Don’t Speaks” and been openly attacked. In discussing “socialist constitutionalism,” another idea roundly criticized for several months, the essay was also somewhat moderate in tone.

On November 8, the day before the opening of the Third Plenum, the People’s Daily ran a piece called, “Accurately Viewing the Two Historical Periods Before and After Economic Reform.” At first glance the piece seemed to expound on the idea of “the two must not rejects,” but in fact it did a patching job on the 1981 “resolution on Important Historical Questions” (历史决议), reaffirming the resolution’s rejection of the Cultural Revolution and its statements on other errors in the period prior to the Cultural Revolution.

Light Red Party Discourse Runs Hot and Cold

Some have described the recent Third Plenum of the 18th CCP Central Committee as a reform milestone, much as was the Third Plenum of the 11th CCP Central Committee that initiated Deng Xiaoping’s reform program. But 2013 was not 1978. For more than a year prior to the 1978 plenum, Deng Xiaoping and Hu Yaobang were engaged in a fierce battle of strength with conservative elements in the Party — a process that was all about debating standards of truth, and ultimately clearing away the road to reform. In 2013, quite the opposite happened. The Third Plenum of the 18th CCP Central Committee, touted as a “comprehensive deepening of reforms,” in fact unfolded in the midst of a year-long atmosphere of ideological campaigning that was quite contrary to reform.

In 2013, the most widely used light red phrase was “the Chinese dream.” In 2012, the Chinese dream appeared 106 times in the People’s Daily. In 2013, it appeared 1,912 times, emerging as a classic super-term (超强话语). We can compare the term to other historical super-terms in the People’s Daily, such as Mao Zedong’s “general line” in 1959 (1,605 appearances), “Mao Zedong’s Thought” in 1966 (3,877), Hua Guofeng’s “grasping the key link to bring great order” (抓纲治国) in 1977 (1,145), and Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents” in 2003 (2,928). Another term related to the Chinese dream, “trusting in the path” (道路自信), appeared 95 times in 2012 and 203 times in 2013.

Ever since the 16th National Congress in 2002, the Party has prescribed a whole set of regularized terms that deal with reform. These include: Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Three Represents, the Scientific View of Development, the Harmonious Society, the people as the base, political system reforms, political civilisation, democratic politics and intra-party democracy.

Among these, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Three Represents and the Harmonious Society are the banner terms of Xi Jinping’s predecessors, Deng, Jiang and Hu. They are, in other words, the slogans meant to encapsulate their ideas and policies. Some have argued that this set of terms can be understood essentially as “enlightened discourse” within the CCP — a strain of open-mindedness, if you will. The core of Deng Xiaoping Theory, for example, is Deng’s openness and reform policy. The essence of Jiang’s Three Represents (according to this reading) is the transformation of the CCP from a revolutionary party to a governing party, the most tangible result being the decision to admit capitalists into the Party. On the surface, the terms associated with Hu Jintao are also relatively moderate. My analysis has revealed that the weakness or intensity of these terms corresponds directly to the strength or weakness of light blue discourse in China’s media. In those years that these terms are on the rise, light blue terms enjoy more space to develop.

I conducted a search of this set of banner terms from 2004 to 2013 to determine their frequency of use over time. My sources were the People’s Daily database and Hong Kong’s WiseNews database, the latter representing hundreds of mainland Chinese newspapers. The following plots frequency in the People’s Daily:

Numbers in the People’s Daily reveal that all 9 of these terms, excepting “political system reforms,” reached historic lows in 2013. When we conduct a headline search in the WiseNews database, the results are the same. We see too that “political system reforms,” a light red term that straddles the light blue on my spectrum (used eagerly, that is, by more liberal commercial media), reaches its lowest point in seven years in 2013. The light blue term “constitutional democracy” seems to ebb away entirely. Most important to notice is the fact that the entire set of light red “enlightened” terms in the CCP discourse are on a downward slide in 2013. Among these, I note in particular the rapid descent of “intra-party democracy.”

What Does the Plummeting of “Intra-Party Democracy” Tell Us?

Among those who still hold out hope for political reform within the CCP, the most modest hope is that intra-party democracy can expand under the umbrella of single-party rule — which would include, for example, changes to selection procedures for the National Congress of the CCP and local Party governing bodies. During the Hu Jintao era, the term “intra-party democracy” experienced periods of advancement in the media. Hu Jintao affirmed the idea of putting organisational decisions to vote — by allowing multiple candidates (to the Party’s liking, of course) to compete for a certain number of positions — and during his tenure some experiments in internal elective procedures were encouraged.

The focus during the Hu era where intra-party democracy was concerned was on what is called “differential election,” or cha’e xuanju (差额选举), whereby multiple Party candidates stand for election by their Party peers for a number of positions (a differential of 105 percent, for example, would mean 105 individuals filling 100 posts). Under Hu Jintao there was also limited experimentation in certain areas with direct election of Party officials. After he took office, Hu encouraged a number of places in China to organize experiments in the direct election of grassroots Party officials. One of these places was in Jiangsu province, where the provincial Party secretary, Li Yuanchao, first experimented with “ or gongtui zhixuan (公推直选), between 2002 and 2007.

Gongtui zhixuan is one method of reforming the mechanisms by which leaders are chosen for official posts, a limited decentralization (or letting go) of the Party’s power to exercise control over its own cadres. The word gongtui, which means roughly “mutual nomination,” refers to the method by which candidates emerge. Formerly (and of course this is mostly still the case), candidates were simply appointed by their Party superiors. Now, in addition to candidates recommended by superiors, Party members can jointly or individually recommend candidates, and city residents or villagers can send representatives to take part in the nomination process. Zhixuan, which means “direct selection,” refers to a process by which a general meeting of Party members or a congress of Party delegates directly elects a candidate for a post from among the nominees.

When we search the People’s Daily over the past five years, we can see that “open nomination and direct election” reached a peak of coverage in 2010. “Differential election” reached its peak in 2012.
In 2013, use of the term “intra-party democracy” fell 74 percent in the <em<People’s Daily over the previous year. Use of the term fell 81 percent in the larger universe of Chinese newspapers represented by the WiseNews database. “Open nomination and direct election” dropped 88 percent in the People’s Daily in 2013, and 64 percent in the WiseNews database. “Differential election,” meanwhile, fell 67 percent in the People’s Daily and 48 percent in the WiseNews database.

At the same time, another term, “deliberative democracy,” or xieshang minzhu (协商民主), reached a five-year high 2013. When we conduct a headline search for the term on People’s Daily Online, the official online portal of the CCP mouthpiece, we find that use of the term increased 69 percent in 2013 over the previous year.

Party media assert that the idea of deliberative democracy has historic roots in the Chinese Communist Party, that it is not a foreign import. In fact, deliberative democracy is a concept that comes from mature constitutional democracies in the West. The term appeared for the first time in the People’s Daily in 2006, but specifically dealt with the workings of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress. The article quoted Li Junru (李君如), former deputy head of the Central Party School, as saying that, “Our democratic politics, in terms of the people’s congress system, essentially carries out elective democracy; and where the consultative congresses are concerned chiefly carries out deliberative democracy” (People’s Daily, April 7, 2006, p. 13).

In the CCP dictionary, “elective democracy” and “deliberative democracy” are opposites. In the past, Party media have asserted that a combination of elective and deliberative democracy is what makes for Chinese-style democracy. Deliberative democracy is also a term much loved by those of the China Model camp, who assert that China has developed its own unique set of values (distinct from those of the West) enshrined in its own unique and highly successful system. In 2013, the term “deliberative democracy” made a much stronger appearance in China. The Third Plenum defined economic reform as the focus of the reform project, and had little to remark on the issue of political reform. In his explanation of the Decision emerging from the plenum, Xi Jinping said:

The [Party] Congress has taken the widespread and multi-level systematisation and development of deliberative democracy as the chief content of political system reform, emphasizing, under the leadership of the Party, the carrying out of an expansive process of deliberation throughout society on major issues of economic and social development and real issues dealing with the immediate interests of the masses, carrying deliberation through from the policy-making phase to the policy implementation phase.

The only point in Xi’s speech dealing at all with political system reforms is directly connected with deliberative democracy. This elaboration by Xi would seem to suggest that we can only expect the scope of political reform [pursued by the Party] to narrow in the future. we can expect substantive moves on political reform, those touching on the thornier issue of Party power — such as an organisational system in the Party based principally on elective procedures, or separating the powers of decision-making, implementation and supervision — will be very slow indeed. The focus in promoting democratic politics under this formulation lies outside the Party, with “consultation” taking precedence over election. if this is indeed the case, I’m afraid what we have is the shelving of Deng Xiaoping’s idea that the core of political reform must be addressing the problem of “over-concentration of power.” As we see the rapid cooling off of the term “intra-party democracy” this can only anticipate further concentration of power.

Observations for 2014

1. Deep red. We must continue to observe the term “public opinion struggle.” While the term has mitigated somewhat in event weeks, it is still being used. Its last appearance in the official People’s Daily was on December 30. we must pay special attention to the phrase “raising high the banner of Mao Zedong’s Thought” (高举毛泽东思想旗帜). Over the past few years the standardised slogan has been, “raising high the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics” (高举中国特色社会主义伟大旗帜), but just as Jiang Zemin did in his speech to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth, and Hu Jintao for the 110th, Xi Jinping used the phrase in his recent 120th anniversary speech. The question is whether or not use of the phrase will continue, and so we must keep a close eye on the use of deep red keywords this year.

I’ve pointed out before that “Mao Zedong’s Thought” is a measuring stick we can use to look at Chinese politics. If we look at the People’s Daily and at the broader universe of papers represented by WiseNews, we find that use of this term did not increase in 2013. However, if we search news headlines on Baidu.com, we find that “Mao Zedong Thought” has reached a six-year high (altogether 2,120 uses, of which 312 came between December 26 and December 31).

2. Light blue and dark blue. Something we have to look at very carefully is whether in fact “universal values” and “constitutionalism,” typically light blue terms in the past, have indeed shifted into the dark blue, becoming sensitive terms that cannot be used in a positive sense. It seems at the moment that “civil society” and “civil rights” remain in the light blue quadrant. Toward the end of the year, both People’s Daily Online and the official website of the court system, chinacourt.org, carried articles using “civil society” in a positive sense. We’ll have to see whether this situation holds.

3. Light red. Right now “the Chinese dream” is dominant everywhere. but this slogan is meant to be primarily motivational, like Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward incitement to “surpass England and the United States.” It is not, in fact, a banner term (or legacy term), like “Mao Zedong Thought,” “Deng Xiaoping Theory” or the “Three Represents.” There is a process to banner term introduction in the Chinese Communist Party, and these are not things leaders simply toss out as soon as they take the stage. It’s inconceivable that in the future people will be shouting, “Raise high the banner of the Chinese dream!” Nor can we imagine a legacy formulation like, “Comprehensively implementing the Chinese dream.” So the matter of Xi Jinping’s banner term is something we’ll have to keep an eye out for.
2013 was a year in which we saw the deck of China’s political discourse being shuffled. This year, we’ll have to be careful observers and see what cards are played.

After several weeks of uncertainty over the visa status of reporters for the New York Times and Bloomberg working in China, it appears some — but not yet all — are receiving the press cards necessary for them to renew their visas and continue working in the country. [Homepage image by “oldandsolo” posted to Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]
This development, however, by no means puts to rest lingering questions about China’s worsening treatment of foreign journalists. As I said to the Straits Times, the recent visa row is probably the clearest indication that Chinese leaders now view foreign media reporting on China as damaging not just to the country’s international image but to the essential project of domestic public opinion control.
The New York Times expose on the wealth of the family of former Premier Wen Jiabao, published in October 2012, was discussed widely on social media inside China, even as it was aggressively targeted by domestic censors. Given the potential domestic impact of more probing reporting in China like that done recently by journalists at the New York Times and Bloomberg, the Party leadership may see a more aggressive stance toward foreign media as a necessary part of domestic public opinion guidance.
As the one-year anniversary of the Southern Weekly incident approaches, there is plenty to observe in China’s media landscape. The ideological environment continues to tighten, with a renewed push to remind journalists of their obligations to the Party.
To keep heads cool and spread a bit of holiday cheer, we turn to latest ideological masterpiece tumbling out of the world of CCP punditry.
In a blog post last week, Wang Xiaoshi, a mysterious writer — possibly not a single individual — who has made waves before with his/her/their hardline writings, attacked the notion of American press freedom. The post was shared on the website of the Party journal Seeking Truth, which emphasized that it represented only the writer’s personal views. (How convenient.)
The following is a partial translation of the lengthy post, which argues that American journalism serves only rich and powerful families out to police their own political dominance — though the writer somehow manages to brand the American media as virulently anti-corporate as well:

American Freedom of Speech and Control
December 16, 2013
Sina Blog
By Wang Xiaoshi (王小石)
Owing to the longstanding influence of American common sense as it is drum-beaten by the liberal media [in China], many Chinese now have the impression that the United States is a society in which the news is absolutely free, and the government has no control over what media report. [NOTE: The term “liberal media” here is 普世系媒体, which refers to commercially-driven media, such as Southern Metropolis Daily and Southern Weekly, that tend to uphold “universal values” such as freedom of the press.]
The government, [they believe], is powerless to do anything about this, given the protection of press freedom in the American Constitution. I’d like to set out some materials below in an attempt to give a truer picture of the press environment in the United States.
1. The Basic Nature of American “Press Freedom”
There is a rather insightful political manifest written by an American in which they tell this story:
An American arrived on a small island in order to study their system of democracy. The king of this small island informed him that they handled things in a very democratic fashion. When they held meetings to discuss affairs all of the island’s people were present, each one holding a golden trumpet. When the time came for voting, a matter was decided by whichever side, for or against, made the greatest sound.
When the American heard this, he thought it was very democratic indeed. He asked if he could witness the proceedings for himself.
On the day matters were debated, he discovered that each time it came to determine the measures to be taken, it was always the same few people who sounded off their trumpets. Everyone else was silent and motionless. The American thought it was strange, and so he asked the king: “Why don’t the others make a sound?”
The king answered: “Because they can’t afford to buy golden trumpets.”
That wasn’t democratic at all, the American said. It was simple rule by the wealthy. To this the king responded: “Well then, how does your democracy work?” So the American started to introduce the idea of press supervision, how the power of the government could be checked by the media.
“Well,” asked the king, “who does your media belong to?”
“To the wealthy,” the American answered.
The king laughed. “This is exactly like our golden trumpets.”
If you live in the United States for very long, then you’ll entirely understand this incisive declaration. American media are concentrated in the hand of the super-rich, and no matter how they appear they all publish content that is to the advantage of capitalist financial cliques (资本财团). So-called “freedom of the press” is in fact freedom of capital. Perhaps sometimes different capitalist financial cliques will be in conflict, and perhaps at times they’ll roast the government over the grill. But the basic nature of media as beholden to capital will not change.
The most dazzling aspect of American press freedom and supervision is the way media often sing a different tune than the government. In the eyes of those who have a strong sense of righteousness, going against the government is the fullest expression of freedom, and it means carrying out supervision. Compared to other countries in the world, news media in the United States certainly do seem to care little about the government’s face. Nor do they fear the power of the government. They specialize, it seems, in going at odds with the government. Major newspapers are at odds with the federal government, and small newspapers are at odds with local governments. No politician in the United States is immune from criticism. The federal government has already been taken to task for 200 years in the United States, to the extent that this has become force of habit. If there’s no criticizing, people start to think something’s wrong. . . But if you think about it, is anyone really going to behave themselves just because they’ve been criticized in a newspaper?
According to From Washington to Obama: 200 Years of Family Politics in America, by Jing Huzi, the United States did not have the concept of freedom of the press during its colonial period, but there were not too many limitations on the news, because there weren’t so many papers anyhow. There were newspaper publishers from the time of the Franklin brothers, but papers at that time weren’t about providing information to the public, and they weren’t about monitoring the government — rather, they were a way of articulating the political views of the publishers themselves, most of whom opposed the government (which is to say, the English king).
[NOTE: This mysterious book was published by the Xinhua News Agency Publishing House in 2009, and written by the mysteriously prolific Jing Huzi (京虎子), or “Beijing Tiger Child.” This is possibly the nom de plume of a Party-backed group of writers.]
During the movement for the independence of the colonies, Samuel Adams published a newspaper. His goal in publishing a newspaper was not to supervise the administrator dispatched by Britain, nor was it to offer his opinions to the Massachusetts legislature. His goal was to spread the idea of independence, making people believe that independence was the only path open to the colonies. It was about getting his own views out in order to incite revolution and bring about independence. The costs of the newspaper were provided by John Hancock, so from the beginning public opinion [i.e., the content of the newspaper] was controlled in the hands of a wealthy [patron] and there was no notion whatsoever of independence of the news. Public opinion was controlled by Adams and a number of people who advocated independence, and this was an important reason why American independence could succeed.
After independence, Washington and Hamilton hoped to create a strong federal government, and so naturally they hoped there would be no messy speech [i.e., dissent]. Jefferson, on the other hand, and others who opposed federalism naturally hopes there would be dissent. Therefore, Jefferson elevated freedom of the press to a new high: “Our freedom rests upon freedom of the press, and if we limit the latter the former will be lost. . . ” [NOTE: Jefferson’s words in 1787 were: “The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.”
Freedom of the Press is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
This is the freedom of the press later so praised by Americans. This freedom was not mentioned in the Declaration of independence, nor was it mentioned in the Constitution. It was not until 1791 that it was set down with an amendment to the Constitution. Why was this content written into the Constitution in 1791?
It was because there were political parties.
Not long after this amendment appeared, the number of newspapers started to multiply. The proliferation of newspapers was not because freedom of expression was set down in the law, but because there were political parties. Between 1791 and 1792, the two earliest political parties in the United States were founded, the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party.
The first party to be formed was the Federalist Party. From Boston to Philadelphia, perhaps all of the newspapers at the time were talking about the advantages of forming a strong federal government. Soon after, the Democratic-Republican Party was formed and there was another wave of newspaper publishing — all of these newspapers talking about states’ rights and opposing a large federal government.
Before long newspaper publishing took off in cities across the United States. Generally, several hundred copies of each newspaper were published, mostly to attack the other side. When John Adams became president, the newspapers controlled by Jefferson and his clique issued daily attacks on the government . . .
If they relied on sales, not a single one of these newspapers would probably survive. But these papers continued to publish, because those who were printing them had plenty of money. The newspapers published by the Federalist Party were supported by Hamilton, and the newspapers controlled by the Democratic-Republican Party were supported by Jefferson. So from the beginning newspapers were controlled by powerful and influential families.
Regardless of who controlled the newspapers, during this period the freedom of public opinion in America was protected by the Constitution. But in 1798, when war broke out between the United States and France, the Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Act, which said that anyone conspiring to oppose federal law, provoking revolt or slandering the president or the Congress would be subject to fines up to 5,000 dollars and maximum prison sentences of five years.
This act went against the First Amendment of the Constitution and amounted to depriving Americans of their right to free speech. It meant that Americans could express no critical views of national policy or of the president.
The act was not just window dressing. In the two years from the act’s introduction to the end of Adams’ presidency, it was dutifully enforced by the government, and in all 24 newspaper distributors and editors were charged, 10 of them found guilty. These people were exclusively from the Democratic-Republican Party, the party opposed to that of President Adams, the Federalist Party that held the majority of seats in Congress.
We can basically say that in this period there was no freedom of the press — and even less was there anything resembling press supervision.
Among those convicted [under the Sedition Act] . . . was James Thomson Callender, a newspaperman in Philadelphia who specialized in publishing materials of a political nature. In 1797, he published a book that printed in full the love letters of Hamilton, all at once destroying Hamilton’s political prospects. [NOTE: Callender’s book, The Prospect Before Us, was sharply critical of the Adams administration and directly attacked the president.]
. . .
When Jefferson took the presidency in 1800, he pardoned those convicted under the Sedition Act and Callender was released from prison. Feeling that going to prison had been a great sacrifice for the Democratic-Republican Party, Callender requested the president appoint him as postmaster general of Richmond, Virginia.
Jefferson gave Callender no response, so all at once he changed, heading for a pro-Federalist Party newspaper to serve as editor, issuing constant attacks on President Jefferson. First, he accused Jefferson of bribing news reporters, which of course Jefferson denied. Callender responded immediately by publishing a letter that Jefferson had written him. It was at this point too that he revealed Jefferson’s longstanding romantic relationship with one of his slaves. This story was fatal to Jefferson’s moral reputation.
Of course Jefferson was furious at the noise Callender was making, so he had others go and dig up nastiness on Callender — for example, that he mistreated his wife. Jefferson’s supporters even physically attacked Callender. In 1803, Callender fell into the James River and drowned. It was said he had been drunk and didn’t know how to swim, but it was difficult for Jefferson and those around him to escape suspicion.
Callender was the originator of American freedom of the press, and the freedom of the press that he created was not a freedom about objectivity and impartiality, of the disinterested observer. It was about personal prejudice, and to a large extent about “going where the milk was.” When Jefferson was his gold master, he served the interests of Jefferson and attacked Hamilton. When he didn’t get the official post he wanted he started working for the Federalist camp, attacking Jefferson. This sort of freedom of the press is about serving the interests of influential families, mingled with prejudice and personal interest — because there is fundamentally nothing impartial about it.
It’s precisely because its been a tool of influential families, from that time all the way through to today, that the American press is so clearly different from that of European countries — especially fond of reporting bad news (so-called “muckraking”). News media have become base camps for social liberals and reformists, and they are attracted by that sort of news that challenges corporations, the government, the police, the military and other interest and power centers in society. The topics of their coverage are the greedy merchants, the politicians acting in collusion, the arrogant bureaucrats, sadistic generals and cruel police. The describe the poor, minorities, the elderly and the working class as those sacrificed by extreme greed and political ignorance, by the coldness of high officials. They are particularly inclined to draw their information from liberal and reform-inclined special interest groups, and they maintain skepticism toward information from the government, corporations and the scientific community. It is precisely because their channels for obtaining information are already insufficiently objective or non-objective that their reports have a short supply of objectivity and are extremely one-sided.
American news media seldom expend great energy to report about the debauched private lives of this or that business person, even though this would be equally brilliant. . . What they love most is nasty news about political figures, because this is the way they can reach their goal — and that is, political struggle (政治斗争).
The wealthy and influential from various regions rely on the media they control to leverage negative news as tools against their opponents. And the vast majority of those political figures attacked by the news media are political figures who emerged without money or connections, especially those who are from poorer backgrounds and have relied on their own efforts to become visible figures in politics. The effect of these news reports is to draw people’s attention away from the powerful and influential and the fact that they control politics. This is the goal that the media seek behind the scenes.
. . .
In order to protect national sovereignty, the government of no country on earth would allow language in the media that encourages national division, exacerbates domestic tensions or incites revolt against the government. It’s difficult to imagine any country allowing within its system a “freedom of the press” that goes against its national interest.
The fact of national interest makes it such that media control is a line that sovereign nations today must draw.
Freedom of the press is a common ideal pursued by humanity. The pursuit of freedom of the press is a gradual, historical process of constant improvement that has no end. And appropriate news controls are a constant companion in the development of freedom of the press — they are a method of both checking freedom of the press and protecting freedom of the press.
But out of their own private interests, liberal media in China on the one hand turn a blind eye to and refuse to talk about American controls on the news, and on the other hand criticize China’s legal controls that seek to uphold the country’s national interest, their goal being to create confusion.

NOTE: The following post by veteran journalist and former Southern Weekly commentator Xiao Shu (Chen Min) was posted to his Facebook account today. Xiao Shu is an important figure in the New Citizens Movement launched by lawyer and social justice advocate Xu Zhiyong. He has called repeatedly this year for the release of Xu Zhiyong, Wang Gongquan, and other leaders of the movement.
Yesterday, my writings from more than eighteen months ago were dragged out again by Phoenix Online — and once again they started making the rounds. For more than a year I’ve been blocked out entirely on China’s internet, and I suppose there must be readers who have missed me.
I remember those few days over a year ago when they started to force me out, shutting my accounts down and blocking anything I wrote or had written. I watched from the sidelines as internet users shared their comments. It was like watching my own funeral. I was so deeply moved — it’s something that’s hard even to describe.
These past few years I’ve been driven into exile, hunted down and attacked from all sides. And now I feel quite certain it’s all been worth it.
In early August this year I was abducted by state security police. Under orders to bring me in for questioning, state security from Guangzhou detained me in Beijing. They said in no uncertain terms: There’s no sense in arguing — we fully intend to marginalize you all.
At the time I responded: So, you think marginalization is really going to work? And today I think I can repeat that question to those who would silence me. They blocked me entirely on China’s internet. They blocked so many of my friends as well. But have they succeeded in winning back public opinion? Have they won the will and support of the people?
Today, more and more of my friends suffer the same fate, having their internet lives entirely annihilated. Even the most moderate voices, like that of Zhang Qianfan, are not spared.
But we should not despair. Today is not yesterday. Being blocked is not something terrible. It is, in fact, a kind of honour. It is a testament to your strength and to your contributions. Last year they snuffed me out, and no doubt in the future they will seek to restrain my voice in every aspect possible. But life goes on, and in fact I enjoy perhaps even more space than I did before. Those who have real strength have nothing to fear from their obstruction.
The truth is, those who restrain us are the ones whose hearts are burdened by fear.
We cannot give up simply because we are curtailed. Nor should we allow ourselves to be provoked by their actions. We must be cool-headed and resolute, neither haughty nor humble, pushing ahead on our own terms, traveling the path we must travel even as attacks rain from all sides. We must trust in time. We must trust in the human heart. We must trust in our own discipline.

Following a report in December 2013 by the Beijing News about poor migrants living in underground wells in the capital’s Chaoyang District because they could not afford housing there, local authorities sent teams to seal the well entrances with concrete. The story underscored the problems facing many migrants in China’s major cities, where real estate prices have soared in recent years, making basic living space unaffordable. In the following cartoon, posted by artist Kuang Biao (邝飚) to Sina Weibo, the pitiable denizen of an underground well shouts and raises his hands pleadingly as a combat boot seals the entrance to the well.

The following post by Old Mu on Various Topics (老慕杂谈), a media executive with more than 1.7 million followers on Sina Weibo, was deleted from Weibo sometime before 10:46am today, December 10, 2013. The post commemorates World Human Rights Day, making no direct mention at all of China. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre]
The deleted post reads:

[Today is a big day] December 10 — World Human Rights Day. Every life is precious, regardless of whether one is rich or poor. No one’s rights can be infringed, whether they are high-level officials or ordinary people. No one’s right to free speech can be infringed, no matter whether they are famous or obscure. On World Human Rights Day, let us embrace equality, embrace human rights! Today, let us salute all those brave people who have sacrificed in the pursuit of human rights. Let us salute all the brave people who fight for human rights.

The Chinese-language original follows:

【今天是个大日子】12月10日—-世界人权日。无论贫穷还是富裕，生命尊严不可侮；无论高官还是百姓，人身权利不可欺；无论名人还是草根，言论自由不可阻。世界人权日，让我们拥抱平等，拥抱人权！今天让我们向世界上所有为争取人权牺牲的勇士们致敬。向所有为人权而奋斗着的勇士们致敬。

NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.

The following post by Jilu Mei Xin Qing (記錄每欣晴), a journalist with just under 67,000 followers on Sina Weibo, was deleted from Weibo sometime before 10:06am today, December 10, 2013. The post mentions US Vice President Joe Biden’s recent visit to China, during which he pressed China on its handling of visas for US journalists in the country. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre]
The deleted post reads:

Xi Jinping ignores US Vice President Joe Biden. Britain’s Daily Telegraph and other foreign media report that the visas for 24 journalists from the New York Times and Bloomberg in China will expire at the end of this month. They say this is because the reports done last year by the two media about the wealth of the families of Wen Jiabao and Xi Jinping. Last Thursday (December 5) US Vice President Joe Biden raised this issue during a high-level meeting [in China], but Biden said the Xi Jinping was totally indifferent.

The Chinese-language original follows:

习近平不理美国副总统。英国《每日电讯报》等外媒报道，《纽约时报》和彭博社有24名驻华记者的签证将于本月底到期，中国拒绝为他们续签。有分析称，这或与两家媒体去年报道温、习两家族财富有关。上周四（12月5日）访华的美国副总统拜登在与习及其他高层会面时提出此事，但拜登称习对此似乎无动于衷。

NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.

In November 2013, top Chinese leaders released their “Decision” coming out of the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the CCP. The decision, which outlined a series of reforms planned by the leadership, caused exuberance among many observers — and markets in Asia rallied. Others were less excited about the Party’s decision, which was articulated in dense Partyspeak, and noted there were no hints of the kinds of institutional reforms necessary to make promises (on issues like land reform, for example) real. The above cartoon, posted by artist Lao Xiao (老肖) to Sina Weibo, depicts the language coming out of the recent plenum as red banners being lifted skyward on balloons of red sperm. The reference to self pleasure goes without saying.

According to the most recent news reports, a fire at a warehouse in southeast Beijing yesterday, November 19, has killed 12 people. The following post by Xiao Han (萧含), a journalist with Yanzhou Metropolis Daily, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 2:18am today, November 20, 2013. The post criticized the official police notice of the fire, which begins with a list of local leaders who are directing work on the scene, implying praise for the government’s robust response. Xiao Han currently has more than 45,000 followers on Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre]

The deleted post reads:

Such a short official notice, and it starts with the list of leaders like a dung beetle rolling dung, gliding right over the 10 [now 12] dead.

The Chinese-language original follows:

这么简短的通报，却是一溜屎壳郎似的领导名单，10名死亡者却是一笔带过，@平安北京 你这好意思这么通报火情~？

NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.