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).

In China, an odd mix of bawdy and serious

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

Read the news about the news in China today and you might note the sober and severe tone. The official Xinhua News Agency reports that nine government departments have jointly launched a concerted campaign to “crack down on news extortion and fake news.” [Click here for a past CMP example of “fake news”].
The notice, we are told, refers to these practices as “journalism diseases (新闻界病害) that seriously damage the image of the press corps and erode the authority and credibility of the news media.”

BTV on fake news
Beijing TV reports on the government’s new campaign to strike down “fake news” and “news extortion.”
I have written extensively about the relationship between media control and the basest conduct in China’s media. Almost eight years ago, I wrote in Index on Censorship:

The whole ecology of speech and information in China today faces a crisis of credibility. The media is invested with power by virtue of its traditional role as agent of the Party’s will. As it is hustled away from public interest coverage and toward profitability, the temptation to abuse that power and pander to the basest interests of the public grows stronger. China now has its own brand of yellow journalism. There is ‘news extortion’, in which journalists write critical news reports about companies and then pressure them into taking out ad contracts. There is ‘paid-for-news’ — state-controlled media coverage sold to the highest bidder. There is ‘fake news’ — fabricated content tailormade to ‘attract eyeballs’. In one case several years ago, a newspaper convinced a young woman to donate her liver so they would have an exclusive news story. And of course, there is good-old-fashioned propaganda.

News extortion and fake news have been endemic to China’s media environment since at least the mid-1990s. Campaigns against them are nothing new — which, of course, should raise questions about the efficacy of fist-pounding campaigns to enforce government notions of professional practice in the media.
Way back in May 2006, I wrote about an official bulletin released through state media outlining six cases of news extortion and warning media to watch their conduct.
Unable to loosen their grip, Party leaders fail to understand that control itself, combined with the commercial imperative, has lead to the steady erosion of credibility in China’s media. If you tell underpaid journalists that their role is not to report real news but to serve the Party, that public interest stories are off limits, but that somehow they must find a way to win over readers (or otherwise create revenue), you have a recipe for media corruption. And in fact the temptation to extort money is even greater for Party and government media, which have the power to pack a real punch. (The “gold nugget” case reported by Liu Chang at China Youth Daily is a strong case in point.)
As I read the news of the notice this morning and thought — yet again — about how I might illustrate the hypocrisy that looms behind these government pronouncements on credibility and responsibility, I suddenly realized the answer was right in front of me:

BTV news coverage

Can’t quite make it out?
Well, here’s a close-up that might help. The image to the right of the Beijing Daily article, the slightly racy one with the woman lying supine, bears the headline — and I apologize to anyone who finds this offensive: “How many times can a woman take it in one night?”
close up 2

I was reading the report, along with a video of the Beijing TV newscast, on a Chinese news portal called China.com.cn. Do a WHOIS search on the website and you find that it is associated with China.org.cn. No? Doesn’t ring a bell? Well here you go:

The authorized government portal site to China, China.org.cn is published under the auspices of the State Council Information Office and the China International Publishing Group (CIPG) in Beijing.

The Chinese introduction for China.com.cn says essentially the same thing:

China.com.cn is an important national news portal that is under the leadership of the Information Office of the State Council and the China Internet Network Information Center, and is managed by the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration. . .

I’ll avoid the temptation to editorialize any further on this most recent campaign, which at best is pointless and at worst could justify a crackdown on real news reporting.
But I do wonder what the folks over at the Office of the National Working Group on Anti-Pornography, one of the nine departments behind this “special movement,” think of the salacious content being peddled on this “important national news portal . . . under the leadership of the Information Office of the State Council.”
Then again, I’m sure their eyes are focused piously on the campaign ahead.
A full translation of the Xinhua report follows.

Nine Departments Including Central Propaganda Department Issue Notice: Harshly Cracking Down on News Extortion and Fake News (中宣部等九部门印发通知: 严厉打击新闻敲诈和假新闻)
March 28, 2014
Original headline: Harshly Cracking Down on News Extortion and Fake News
Xinhua News Agency, March 27, 2014, wire — In recent days, nine official departments, including the Central Propaganda Department, Ministry of Public Security, State Administration of Taxation [http://www.chinatax.gov.cn/], State Administration of Industry and Commerce, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the State Internet and Information Office, and the Office of the National Working Group on Anti-Pornography, jointly issued a notice in which it was decided that a special movement should be launched to strike out against the practice of news extortion and fake news nationwide.
The notice pointed out that news extortion and fake news are journalism diseases (新闻界病害) that seriously damage the image of the press corps (新闻队伍) and erode the authority and credibility of the news media. The response of various corners of society [to these practices] has been intense, and the masses regard [them] with abomination.
The notice demands that propaganda department at various levels must take the lead in building [local] systems of joint meeting of relevant departments in order to strengthen coordination of this movement. Every department must perform its respective tasks, strengthening cooperation and setting up joint investigative task forces to address major case of news extortion or the fabrication and transmission of fake news, so that investigation is carried out by many departments in a cooperative fashion.
The notice emphasized that laws, regulations and management principles must be constantly improved, so that plans and system operate strictly, in order for there to be effective support for striking out against news extortion and fake news. Mechanisms to report complaints must also be improved. At various levels, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the State Internet and Information Office, the Office of the National Working Group on Anti-Pornography, and the All-China Journalists Association must set up special services for online complaints and publicize complaint hotlines — so that complaints from society can be gathered quickly. Search systems for open information should be improved, enabling members of the public to determine whether journalists or media are or are not real, and so they can check information about websites. Media assessment systems (媒体评议制度) must be improved, with the regular organization of assessments by members of society and industry representatives to determine if news media, internet sites and media personnel are maintaining good discipline and professional ethics, so that the level of self-discipline can be raised by effective oversight by society.

Shanghai paper reports on land disputes

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

Last week we posted a piece by pseudonymous veteran reporter Shi Yige (施一戈) in which he spoke in quite pessimistic terms about the decline of commercial newspapers and magazines in China as drivers of public opinion. According to Shi, these media enjoyed their “golden era” from 1995 to 2005. Since that time, however, they have been brought to heel by tighter propaganda controls — even as internet-based media have eroded their business models.
But against this rather grim picture, it is worth noting that we can still find plenty of examples of how journalism is alive and kicking at these “metro media” (都市类媒体).
On Weibo and WeChat, users are chattering today about a front-page report in yesterday’s edition of Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post, a commercial newspaper published by the Wenhui Xinmin United Press Group [Here on our Media Map].
The report, “Pingdu Brews Tragedy with Rapid Push for Urbanization” (平度强力推进城镇化酿惨剧), takes an in-depth look at conflicts over land and urban development in a community on the northern outskirts of the city of Qingdao. The report, which occupies the first three pages of the March 23 Oriental Morning Post, comes at a time when China’s leadership has focused on urbanization as a primary driver of future economic growth.
Sina Weibo user “Newspaper Observer” (@报纸观察) wrote of the report today: “The huge, three-page report in yesterday’s edition of Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post takes a broad and deep look at the tragedies caused already in Pingdu, in Qingdao, by the pushing of urbanization. We salute media who tell the truth!”

Oriental Morning Post case

Many users on social media also noted that page three of the report mentions the case of Caixin reporter Chen Baocheng (陈宝成), who was detained last year by police in Pingdu while reporting on land disputes there. (The August 12, 2013, statement from Caixin is here).
The passage on page three that mentions Chen Baocheng reads simply: “According to a villager [who identified himself as] Mr. Li, on August 9 last year, before 84 mu of land was listed for auction — on the same night, in fact, that rights defense journalist Chen Baocheng was arrested — 138 mu of crop and orchard land was destroyed with diggers.”
Just to give readers a general flavor of the Oriental Morning Post report, a (very) partial translation follows:

Pingdu Brews Tragedy with Rapid Push for Urbanization
Li Yunfang (李云芳)
Oriental Morning Post
“One dead and three injured, but what really happened that night? If the fire was set deliberately, who was responsible? . . . ”
Yesterday, the official Weibo account of the People’s Daily issued a post . . . demanding that open responses be made, and full and accurate explanations given, so that ironclad facts can convince those who still have lingering doubts, so that the public can see justice done.
On March 21 at around 1:50AM, a fire broke out in a tent erected in a field in Dujiatuan Village, in the Fengtai sub-district of Pingdu City in Shandong Province. [The incident] resulted in the death of one farmer and injuries of varying extent to three others. According to a preliminary investigation by local police, arson is suspected.
A Xinhua News Agency reporter confirmed yesterday that there have been tensions in Dujiatuan Village over land seizure issues since last year. According to villagers, there have been illegal land seizures at Dujiatuan, and about 200 mu of land has been taken by developers, for which villagers received only crop compensation of about 25,000 yuan per mu. But according to regulations, land requisition compensation should include land compensation and resettlement assistance in addition to compensation for crops and other property on the land.
Because they were unhappy with the compensation, beginning on March 9 this year, the villagers erected a tent at the entrance to a local building worksite, arranging for people to stand guard there 24 hours a day in order to prevent the continuation of work. They demanded adequate compensation in accordance with the law.
After the fire, local media quoted villagers as saying that on the night it happened four villagers responsible for looking after the land were inside the tent, which was then doused with fuel on all four sides and ignited. Ultimately, three of the people got out of the tent with varying injuries, but unfortunately 63 year-old villager Geng Fulin moved to slowly and died.
Right now, there are many different theories about the cause of the fire. According to the official Weibo of the Pingdu City Propaganda Department, “Pingdu Release” (平度发布), the injured were all villagers from Dujiatuan who objected to the distribution of land proceeds by the village committee.
On his Weibo account, the scholar Yu Jianrong shared the words of someone claiming to be the project’s “general contractor”: “The village cadres used the compensation funds to invest in commercial projects for the village committee. The villagers objected to this. They sought out the village chief and and the government, but this did no good, so they came directly to the worksite to stick a wrench in the gears, forcing us workers to stop work.” This so-called “general contractor” also voiced his own doubts that this was arson.
In Yu Jianrong’s view, the taking of villager’s land in the name of urbanization has already caused many bloody episodes [in China]. “Concerning whether or not this was arson, and who was responsible, the police need to do a thorough investigation. But we also need to be clear about why the villagers were defending the land in the first place.”

The way Xi moves: speech under assault

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

In China today there are three principal spheres of public opinion: schools, commercialised media and the internet.
In the 1980s schools were a place of intellectual ferment. But following the events of June 4, 1989, schools were unable to recover their former role as centres of thought and expression. More recently, controls on university faculty and instructors have been draconian, applied in two ways. First, there are strict controls on the hiring of qualified teachers, so that those with more independent views find it difficult to enter universities. Second, instructors with contrarian or more active ideas are seen as “dangerous” and actively suppressed — or are otherwise marginalised, as was Xiao Xuehui (肖雪慧) of Southwest University of Nationalities.
In some cases, instructors are directly removed, as were Xia Yeliang (夏業良) of Peking University, Zhang Xuezhong (張雪忠) of Eastern China University of Politics and Law, and Chen Hongguo (諶洪果) of Northwest University of Politics and Law.
Third, controls have been tightened on younger instructors, with assessments, for example, that demand credentials on politics and ideology.
Fourth, resources for projects and topics are utilised in order to purchase allegiance, so that scholars everywhere are lining up to be complicit.
The first three of these methods form the stick and the last is the carrot.
Where students are concerned, they employ a coordinated set of stability preservation techniques, strictly controlling their speech, associations and gatherings. To this is added the pressures of testing, assessment and career placement, so that students find it almost impossible to create a sphere of free and uninhibited speech.
In sum, China’s universities are ponds of dead water, and they present no real challenge to authorities.
By commercialised media I mean principally metro newspapers and news magazines. Most representative are those of the Nanfang newspaper group, and also Caijing magazine and Caixin Media.
Commercialised media in China had their so-called golden decade from 1995 to 2005. During this period Chinese glimpsed for the first time what market-oriented media and news reports looked like. Media professionals and the news itself underwent rapid change.

golden age papers 6

During this decade public opinion was largely in the hands of these commercialised media, aided by the force of the internet. They had real power to set agendas, as we saw in the Sun Zhigang case and SARS in 2003.
Unfortunately, commercialised media always had a ceiling in the form of a whole system of news controls. What’s more, the focus of many market-oriented media was on entertainment over public affairs reporting.
As the internet grew into a dominating force, commercialised media faced pressure from two sides — from worsening press controls on the one hand, and from fast, expansive and in relative terms freer web-based platforms on the other. Before they had time to go into full flower commercial newspapers and magazines were in decline.
The third public opinion sphere, the internet, has developed in four major phases — web forums emerging after the year 2000, blogs emerging after 2005, Weibo emerging after 2009, and WeChat emerging after 2012. In the early phase of each stage of web development, Chinese authorities lacked the experience they needed to apply control, and this meant relative space for expression. This was especially true in the early days of Weibo, which all at once created the fantasy that “the surrounding gaze can change China.”
The golden era of Weibo lasted a short two years from 2009 to 2011. During this time it was possible to see just about any public affairs topic imaginable. Major milestones included the Wenzhou railway crash and the death of Qian Yunhui. As discussion heated up on Weibo, it turned increasingly to issues such as “universal values” (constitutionalism, democracy), which became an emerging social consensus.
weibo golden age

After Xi Jinping came to power, he began comprehensively reigning in all spheres of public opinion. First came the single-chop campaign against universal values with the so-called “Seven Don’t Speaks” (七不讲). Then came a series of combination punches.
The Southern Weekly incident in January 2013 became justification for an official culling of the media. Southern Weekly became cannon fodder, an old warrior of liberal ideas brought to its knees. Not only has the paper now lost many of its finest journalists, but its reputation as a liberal stalwart has suffered and many intellectuals have abandoned it.
Of course, traditional media present little difficulty to the authorities. They can be brought to heel with tried-and-true methods of media control — through the dictates of the propaganda department and the application of pressure at the management level. Newspapers and magazines are no longer the focus of public opinion control.
We are now also seeing a reassertion of control at universities in China. For example, the recent remarks by Yuan Guiren (袁貴仁), China’s minister of education, about the need to “comprehensively hold [strategic] public opinion positions” through stronger internet controls, emphasising also that school leaders needed “to hold themselves to the strictest standards as socialist politicians and educators.”
And right on the heels of Yuan’s piece in the official People’s Daily came the release of a Party document on the strengthening of ideological and political work among young faculty and other teaching staff.
Much of this noise at China’s universities is just that, a puff of posturing that becomes little more than a bureaucratic exercise. But the more important point is that campuses are not the strategic focus, not the root cause of official anxieties over public opinion control. So far, we can say, attempts to control ideas at China’s universities have been largely successful.
The internet remains the most crucial battleground of public opinion.
Lu Wei (鲁炜), the director of China’s State Internet Information Office and a deputy director of the State Council Information Office, has pursued a policy we can characterise as killing the ringleaders to tame the bandits. He has gone after the so-called “Big V” account holders on Sina Weibo, those users — often well-known scholars, lawyers, journalists or businesspeople — who have a huge following and can influence how stories break. These users have had their accounts removed or their posts censored. Some have been “invited to tea,” a euphemism for those involuntary sit-downs with state security thugs. In some cases, users have been detained.
This increased pressure on internet activity has been supported with judicial interpretations, such as one establishing criminal charges of disturbing public order for cases where “rumours” are passed on 500 times or more on social media.
The overall objective of the Chinese authorities, it seems, is to neutralize those pivotal points in the network that can galvanise debate. The concrete means of achieving this is the strategic targeting of “Big V” accounts combined with a more general culling of opinion within the broader base of users. A round of crackdowns in 2013 had an appreciable affect on “Big V” accounts, with the pall of fear substantially toning down discussion. Many historically active users backed off, censoring themselves. The overall chilling effect was obvious to all.
In fact, the rise of WeChat is not necessarily bad news for the leadership. WeChat is a semi-closed platform, and it cannot drive public debate so easily as Weibo. The only means to a more public identity on WeChat is registration of a public account, but control is exercised actively on these accounts — crossing the line results in immediate account deletion. The public account registered by well-known journalist Shi Feike was deleted after just a few weeks.
The most recent round of widespread WeChat account deletions makes clear that the authorities are as resolute about WeChat control as they have been about Weibo. In fact, these most recent WeChat account deletions correspond with the newly-created Internet Security Group. Once Xi Jinping became head of the group, State Internet Information Office director Lu Wei was keen to hold up a few examples. More importantly, though, this tells us that the authorities will not tolerate any threat, latent or otherwise, or any unwanted public opinion that has the potential to expand.
But while internet controls might avail the leadership in the short term, they cannot work in the longer term. Ultimately, the desire to control the thoughts of the people, to restrict speech and debate, is like trapping the moon in a well or pursuing the sun over the horizon (or nailing Jell-O to the wall?). Under the broader trends of globalisation, information growth, marketisation and democratisation, the ideas of the public will continue to mature — and when these ideas intersect with real interest conflicts, there is the potential for a mass movement of resistance.
Public opinion controls cannot resolve structural conflicts. For the moment, all of the structural problems in China are glossed over with GDP growth, with breakneck development. As soon as the economy stalls, the government will have to take responsibility for the mess that lies behind. And the methods at its disposal are already diminishing. Over the past twenty years, China’s human rights dividend has been spent, and the land financing model of the past 10 years has reached a dead end.
I think dramatic social conflict is unlikely to happen within the next five years. While the authorities have few methods at their disposal, they do have sufficient means for suppressing dissent — deep pockets, guns and soldiers. For a short time, perhaps, they can continue to draw on their resources to perpetuate the regime of stability preservation.
But as Xi begins the second half of his term in 2017, the economic contradictions will be even more pronounced, and the resources of stability preservation will be nearly exhausted. When you add to this the internal Party struggles that are likely to come to the fore, it is very possible that China will enter a period of extreme instability.


From Myanmar, on duty and freedom

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

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

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

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

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

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

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

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

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

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"

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

“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

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Headlines and Hashtags.

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.

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