Author: David Bandurski

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).

From Myanmar, on duty and freedom

I was in Yangon on March 9 to hear an address by Burmese opposition politician Aung San Suu Kyi to an international media conference called “Challenges of a Free Press,” hosted by the East-West Center. In tackling the issue of freedom of speech, she spoke at length about the media’s “responsibility.”

[Without a free press] . . . we will not be able to defend the rights and freedoms of the people. But at the same time, this press has to be aware not just of its great power and influence, but of the great responsibility that it bears for the building of a new nation that is centered on the will of the people.

Some of the participants shook their heads in disappointment at these remarks, suggesting an emphasis on responsibility was inopportune, and sounded too much like official-ese.

aung
Aung San Suu Kyi addresses an international media conference in Yangon. Photo by Allison Wrabel, Missouri School of Journalism, courtesy of the East-West Center.
I personally found this question of freedom versus responsibility an engaging one against the vibrant backdrop of a changing Myanmar. Over several days I was treated to a tour of media in the country, like gazing at flowers on horseback. I saw the busy wholesale market for newspapers at daybreak. I saw the news stands at the roadside. I saw the people reading their newspapers in the train station outside the city. I saw clusters of people watching television newscasts at they dined out in the open. And I saw young people using their iPads and iPhones inside the temples of Yangon.

In the days following the speech, as I toured the independent Irrawaddy newspaper, the independent Myit ma Kha newswire, and the various journalism schools that have now opened their doors in Myanmar, I asked my friends what they thought of Aung San Suu Kyi’s emphasis on responsibility.
Lives in Myanmar are being transformed, and for the Chinese journalists taking part in the conference, there was a palpable sense of envy. Controls on the media in Myanmar have been abrogated. Independent media have now been legalized and legitimized. Media that once could survive only overseas have been transplanted back to their home soil. And yet, the Burmese journalists I met did not feel at all that freedom had been achieved. Facing the restrictions of a permit system for newspapers, the strong position held by state-run media, and covert controls on the media by the government, there was an strong feeling among local journalists that the road to freedom was still a long one stretching out before them.
The editor-in-chief of the English-language edition of the Irrawaddy would not say explicitly whether or not he felt Aung San Suu Kyi’s speech was full of official-ese. He did say, however, that “the most urgent task before us is to achieve freedom of speech.”
The “responsibility” of the media is also an important test facing Burmese journalists. After more than fifty years of military rule, Myanmar faces change on an unprecedented scale. Media in Myanmar must grapple with a host of issues and challenges. There is, of course, the major national election that will happen soon. And there are many other issues — political pluralism, ethnic conflict, environmental destruction and, thanks to the internet, a richness of information such as the country has never seen.
Faced with this complex of problems and issues, journalists in Myanmar are insufficiently prepared. During the past half century of military rule, there was no journalism education at all in the country. When I visited the new journalism schools that have cropped up, and the independent newswire, those in charge spoke with clear concern about just how youthful the new generation of journalists is, how they lack sufficient training. They urgently need instruction in professional ethics, investigative methods and comprehensive and fair reporting. This was how the educators and editors understood the question of “responsibility.”
There is no time to waste. The media in Myanmar have to work fast to raise their level of professionalism, allowing them to work more independently and avoid being manipulated by interested parties.
Freedom and responsibility are both essential to the media. But the situation in China with respect to freedom of speech lags so far behind that of Myanmar, and the circumstances journalists in either country face are so different.
In China, media are subjected to stringent controls. The ideals of freedom of speech and freedom of expression enshrined in Article 35 of the Constitution have in actual fact become a mockery. On the one hand, the Chinese Communist Party bitterly attacks the notion of freedom of speech, and on the other it shouts at the top of its voice about “the responsibility of the media.” In China, “responsibility” is much more than official-ese filling one’s ears — it is a weapon with which the government beats the media down.
There was a great deal of opposition last year when Chinese police abused their power to detain a journalist from Guangzhou’s New Express newspaper, after which official Party media illegally aired the journalist’s confession. But shame was quickly added to outrage as it was revealed that the journalist in question had actually accepted bribes. The fact is, Chinese media face a crisis of ethics, and there is a deep rift between those journalists who emphasize responsibility and refuse to tolerate what they see as a fall from grace, and those who see responsibility as a trap. Some Chinese journalists feel that talk of “responsibility” in a China without the most basic speech freedoms essentially means aiding repression.
During my visit to Myanmar, I puzzled again over these two issues — freedom and responsibility. In my view, freedom and responsibility are difficult to separate. The media’s responsibility (媒体责任) is a pledge to society and to the public by those in the media. It is not a “responsibility” on the part of shackled media to serve as tools of power. The media’s responsibility is the responsibility of those who have freedom, and also the responsibility of those who seek it. In the process of pursuing freedom, we cannot abandon our sense of responsibility. And there is an implicit danger in the idea that we must first seek freedom and only afterwards uphold responsibility (先自由,後责任).
In China’s troublesome environment, journalists who forsake responsibility do themselves harm by offering the government a legitimate pretext for striking out against the media. This is why the investigative reporter Lu Yuegang (卢跃刚), one of our fellows at the China Media Project, once said when asked how journalists can protect themselves against retaliation: “The truth. Only verifiable truth can offer me protection.”
In this sense, I understand Aung San Suu Kyi’s emphasis on responsibility. “Politicians look to the next election,” she said, “but political leaders must look to the next generation.” The sense I got from Aung San Suu Kyi was that of an opposition leader for whom the driving force was not opposition itself, but who was looking ahead to the election and to her life in leadership.
Her sentiment was light years away from the reality facing us in China, but I felt I had to make note of it, and had to share it with all of those friends working diligently for freedom.
This essay was previously published in Chinese by Taiwan’s Storm Media.

No laughing matter

Many of the countless number of posts deleted from Sina Weibo on March 13 and March 14, 2014, dealt with the very staged press conference Chinese premier Li Keqiang hosted for foreign new reporters at the National People’s Congress.
The following is a string of deleted re-posts and comments made to a Weibo post reporting the news that Li Keqiang said at the March 13 press conference that China is a nation of rule of law. Separate re-post comments are marked by “//”:

The emperor putting on a show! It gets worse with each generation. . . // Three times yesterday Premier Li lavishly praised foreign journalists for their decent Chinese, just trying to lend some lightness to a very cold proceeding. I can’t imagine a colder scene. When those who don’t understand humour make jokes and you can only grin and bear it, that feeling is so intolerable. Now Premier Li is making another joke. Should we laugh or not laugh. It’s excruciating.

Premier Li

These comments, made at 8:04AM today, were deleted around 40 minutes later.


Deleted: frightened Tibetans

This post by Little Wooden House of Yanta (雁塔小木屋), which appears to show (a possibly doctored photo of) a member of a Han Chinese delegation on a visit to the home of a Tibetan farmer to bestow a poster of four generations of Chinese Communist Party leaders, from Mao Zedong to Hu Jintao, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before March 14 at 10:07AM. The post, made just after midnight, managed to stay alive for just over ten hours. “Little Wooden House of Yanta” has more than 3,700 followers on Sina Weibo.
The post reads:

Just look at how frightened this Tibetan farmer looks . . .

tibetan farmer

Unwanted posts of the NPC

Sina Weibo censors are working hard to remove sensitive posts about the National People’s Congress, which opens today in the Great Hall of the People. The following is a selection of some of the many, many posts deleted so far today.
User Tang Shaojian (康少见) — who has more than 15,000 followers — wrote in a post at 11:08 AM (deleted around 11:46 AM):

Someone also set fire to something today on Tiananmen Square. The police respond really quickly.
今天还有在天安门前点东西的。警察反应真快。

User “Shen Buyao’s Dad” (沈步搖的爹) — who has more than 12,000 followers — responded to Tang Shaojian’s post:

It’s definitely someone with an appeal. Someone just ignited something combustible in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, just now, and a group of police and riot police rushed over, and in the flash of an eye they were gone.
肯定是有诉求咯。有人在天安门前点了个燃烧物,刚点着,一群警察武警特警扑上来,秒秒钟搞定带走不见了。

Just after 12:00 PM user “Beidaijin is Never Decent” (贝带劲永远不正经) posted a timeline of a supposed incident on Tiananmen Square aggregated from posts on another website:

10:49:57 — It seems there’s a fire, something going down at Tiananmen, a woman around 40 years old has set herself on fire.
10:59:36 — Around 11 AM another woman was giving out fliers and was immediately taken into custody and loaded into a police van. Everyone was taking pictures of it just now, but police only got their hands on me.
11:10:10 — One of the tourists said that as soon as that woman opened up her clothes she was set on fire, and then some people ran up with fire extinguishers. Now there’s a fence in front of the entrance to the Forbidden City and tourists aren’t allowed to get close.
11:14:58 — There’s a water truck cleaning up the scene now.
11:18:59 — Another woman was taken around 11:05 near Jinshui Bridge. A tourist only saw that she was carrying a black bag but didn’t do anything at all.

tiananmen npc

Weibo user “Wen Sanwa: (文三娃), who has more than 30,000 users, shared a post by user Sina Weibo #3684719771880168 that includes a picture of armed police that reads: “Stability Preservation: From the People and Used On the People.” The user’s words below read, in dark reference to the recent attack at the Kunming Railway Station:

On the square, if you raise a placard, then within a minute a whole bunch of people will throw you down; but if you brandish a knife you can go on killing for 25 minutes [before the police act] . . .
在广场,你若举的是牌,一分钟内就会有人把你扑倒;你若举的是刀,你可以绕场跑二十五分钟;你若举斧子和镰刀,你可以为所欲为liu shi 多载!

The above post, made at 11:11 AM, survived for almost three hours on Weibo, finally deleted just after 2 PM.

stability

The following post, made by rights defender Tian Shuhua (如皋维权-田书华), who has more than 1,800 followers, includes a picture of petitioners gathering outside the State Bureau of Letters and Calls, the national-level office that handles petitions for redress of a whole range of issues. The post reads:

The 2nd Conference of the 12th National People’s Congress opens in Beijing on March 5, 2014. Meanwhile, petitioners are out in full force at the State Bureau of Letters and Calls (国家信访局).
第十二届全国人民代表大会第二次会议于2014年3月5日在北京召开。与此同时,国家信访局内访民挨肩接踵

The post was up for more than four hours, posted at 10:09 AM and deleted at 2:30 PM.

petitioners

The following post made at 3:24 PM by Liu Fengyi (刘凤翼), a user with more than 30,000 followers, responds to a Weibo post from The Beijing News about Premier Li Keqiang by reaffirming calls for officials to report their personal assets:

Without public reporting of assets by officials and the loosening of restrictions on supervision by the press, reform is just a joke.
没有官员财产公开和开放报禁新闻监督,改革就是一个笑话

The post was deleted just before 4:09 PM, after a lifetime of just over 40 minutes.

Without freedom there is no security

On February 27, China announced the creation of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs, of which CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping was appointed chairman. This [latest move to centralise authority] follows the creation last year of the Central National Security Commission,. I feel confident in saying that this news doesn’t make Chinese internet users feel that the internet is now much safer — rather, it gives them a keener sense of dread.
Freedom and security have often been regarded as mutually exclusive. In the aftermath of 9/11, some politicians in the United States said it would be necessary for people to relinquish a degree of freedom and stomach increased surveillance in order to live with a sense of security. The Snowden affair intensified the debate in the West over the balance between rights and security.
Chinese state media are fond of reporting on the security debate in the West, which the Chinese Communist Party can draw on to further justify strict controls on its own population. But this is a complete deception that turns the argument on its head.The situation in democratic countries is entirely different. Freedom is the guarantee of security, and without freedom there can be no security.
Chinese internet users live every day with a sense of insecurity in a country that ranked in the bottom six in a report on world press freedom released by Reporters Without Borders. This insecurity does not arise from the infiltration of American ideas and culture, from the ascendancy of the Japanese political right, or from the threat of Uighur separatism, Tibetan separatism or Hong Kong separatism. The sense of insecurity arises from controls exercised on the internet by Chinese authorities.
There are thousands upon thousands of sensitive keywords on China’s web. If you’re not alert to these no-go areas you risk deletion of your Weibo posts or even the shutdown of your account. If, finally fed up with breathing foul air that threatens your well-being, you take to social media to vent your frustration and call for urgent government action, you might get a knock on your door from police who want to “invite you to tea.”
If, out of compassion, you join a group of others to mourn the death of 10 people in a horrible disaster — but official figures admit only 9 death — you risk being charged by police with spreading “rumours.” And if your post is read 5,000 times, or shared 500 times, you might face criminal responsibility.
If the police can’t get one of the above handles on you, but you continue to support things like democracy and freedom, your might have your company finances and personal life subjected to surveillance to substantiate all sorts of crimes.
According to a 2013 report on press freedom in China issued by the International Federation of Journalists, last year China’s justice department levelled all sorts of crimes to crack down on freedom of speech. They include: disturbing order in a public place, criminal damage to a commercial reputation, criminal libel, the crime of illegally obtaining commercial benefits, the crime of illegal business operations, the crime of assembling a crowd to engage in sexual promiscuity, the crime of spreading rumours, the crime of manufacturing false information, the crime of false registration and disturbing social order.
In its announcement of the formation of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs, the official Xinhua News Agency said that “clearing up and building the online space would be a long-term task,” and it characterised the 2013 “targeted crackdown on cyber rumours” as a positive example.
Everyone who understands China’s internet knows that after this crackdown there was a notable decline in activity on China’s internet. Web users grew fearful and avoided more sensitive public agendas. The crackdown on the sex industry in Dongguan brought a huge backlash on social media, but silence reigned after these voices were attacked in the official People’s Daily.
One of America’s founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin once said: “Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” In China, this saying should be: if a political party surrenders freedom for security it will not have, nor will it deserve, either one.”
At the first meeting following the creation of this new special group on internet security, Xi Jinping said: “Without internet security there can be no national security; without digitalization there can be no modernisation.” What he really means to say with his first sentence is: without internet controls there can be no totalitarianism.
And the second sentence voids down to this: without freedom of information there can be no modernisation.

Finding hope in "Chinese Words"

“Are you optimistic or pessimistic about China’s media?” I’ve answered this question for more than ten years now. I’ve answered with optimism. I’ve answered with pessimism. And it’s gotten to the point where I’m sometimes confused myself about what to say or what to feel.
Perhaps it’s better then to get back to concrete analysis and avoid simplistic pronouncements. Earlier this year, Ying Chan, the head of our center, wrote a piece for FT Chinese called, “Chinese Media: Avoiding Pessimism and Returning to Professionalism,” in which she listed out a number of important stories Chinese media had managed to report despite facing a horrific environment.
I agree with Professor Chan’s approach, that we should be mindful of encouraging efforts even as we recognise discouraging setbacks. And I’ve been delighted recently to discover another positive case in point, a documentary series called Chinese Words.
I’ve written before about my own flesh-and-blood experiences with political language, for example with the notion of a “red heart,” from my youthful days as a reporter in the People’s Liberation Army all the way through to the economic reform era. Now a group of my friends and colleagues are speaking on camera about 100 “Chinese words” — terms like zheng shen (政审), or “examination of one’s political record,” and jiating chushen (家庭出身), meaning someone’s “political pedigree” (were you a worker or one of the “five red types,” or a capitalist or one of the “five black types”?). An examination of these terms, so important to China’s recent political and cultural past, provides the substance of Chinese Words.
Many intellectuals in China have welcomed this examination with open arms. “These Chinese words,” said the scholar Zhang Ming, “are words that hold our blood and our tears.” The writer Hu Fayun said: “Chinese words are words particular to China, they are words that reveal how China’s unique character came to be.” Clearly, this documentary series is an opportunity to reflect back on our history and admonish many aspects of our present political and social circumstances.
In our current media environment, characterised by intensified control, this sort of media undertaking is a real rarity. And in it we can see a group of journalists at work who aren’t pessimistic — who in fact are seizing every opportunity.
Chinese Words was created in a very unique way as well, with content provided by the public and financing coming from the public. The 100 “Chinese words” were gathered through social media, and 3,000 citizens donated 100 yuan each to the project through the crowd-financing site “Zhong Shou Wang” (众筹网) , giving it a total budget of 300,000 yuan. The project even drew attention from other media, and China Youth Daily‘s “Freezing Point” supplement did a feature story on it.

freezing point

Following the “Freezing Point” incident eight years ago, I wrote about what I call the “Three C’s” (Control, Change, Chaos), which describe the state of China’s media. While traditional controls on media continue, and have even strengthened, commercialisation of the media and the development of new digital platforms have also brought change. The resulting state of chaos in China’s media has generated opportunities for journalists.
With the emergence of Chinese Words we see the further development of this state of affairs. While traditional media face a crisis caused by the intersection of tightening controls and new media competitors, journalists in China are exploring new ways to work.
The creators of Chinese Words are all editors formerly from print media. In fact, they launched a very good magazine called China History (whose name was later changed to Views on History). However, facing constant pressures both commercially and politically, the original team pulled out one by one. They have every reason to be pessimistic, but they’ve chosen instead to pull themselves together and do something new. They’ve now created a new media production platform for history related content — the New History Cooperative (新历史合作社). Their products — including books, magazines, events and videos — are shared through the internet and through WeChat and Weibo.
The fate of Chinese media is not in the hands of control alone. The fight for space for media to exist and thrive requires brave action like that of citizens during last year’s Southern Weekly incident, but also efforts like that at the New History Cooperative that seek to find opportunity in the midst of crisis.
There are journalists in China who are endeavouring to find paths of survival in a complex environment at the intersection of power, the market and technology. New and unprecedented types of communication, financing and profit, and even new media frameworks, are emerging like fresh green shoots.
We cannot expect power to yield its control anytime soon, but the strength of society is growing daily, and the creative spirit of the media has not been crushed. I see the strength of this creative spirit in the Chinese Words project.


Criticism of Deng Xiaoping axed from Weibo

The following post by Weibo user “National Flag Micro Views” (国旗_微观点) was deleted sometime before 10:08 a.m. today, February 24, 2014. The post, which is accompanied by a picture of feeding lions, criticises Deng Xiaoping’s so-called “cat theory” of economic pragmatism — that it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice. “National Flag Micro Views,” a poster with views on China’s political left, currently has 2,800 fans on Sina Weibo.

People cannibalising people isn’t so frightening. What’s frightening is a social system that allows people to eat people. Herein lies the poison of the ‘cat theory’ [of Deng Xiaoping]. Only Mao Zedong Thought can provide a solution!

lions

The original Chinese post by “National Flag Micro Views” follows:

人吃人并不可怕,可怕的是这放纵人吃人的社会制度。猫论之毒,毒在其里,非毛泽东思想这剂猛药不能解也![生病]

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.

Ukraine/China sarcasm deleted from Weibo

The following post by Wu Li (吴澧), an author and contributor to Southern Weekly, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 8:25 a.m. today, February 24, 2014. The post is a response to another Weibo post about ongoing unrest in Ukraine. Wu Li currently has just under 32,000 fans on Sina Weibo.

There is a certain country that has struggled for 65 years [PRC flag icon] and still uses palace intrigue rather than democratic processes to resolve things. Ha ha.

The original Chinese language version of Wu Li’s post follows:

一个国家折腾了65年 [国旗] 还在用宫廷阴谋的方式解决本应由民主程序决定的事情 [哈哈]

wu li

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.

Taking back the agenda

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.

Who is Li Junxu?

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.

li junxu 2

[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.