In a rare case of open resistance by Chinese media against intimidation by the authorities, Guangzhou’s New Express newspaper today published an editorial on its front page appealing directly to its readers following the cross-regional detention of one of its reporters by police from Changsha, the capital of neighboring Hunan province.
Under the bold headline, “Release Him,” the editorial occupies the full front page of today’s New Express. The finer bolded text directly above the headline reads: “Dear Readers, our reporter Chen Yongzhou (陈永洲) reported on financial problems at Zoomlion and was taken into custody by the Changsha police outside their jurisdiction, accused of damaging business prestige. Over this matter, we must speak out.”
Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology Development is a construction machinery company based in Changsha and listed on both the Hong Kong and Shenzhen stock exchanges (SZSE: 000157, SEHK: 1157). In a series of 15 news stories published in the New Express between September 2012 and June 2013, Chen Yongzhou alleged that Zoomlion had exaggerated its profits and manipulated the market.

Chen was reportedly taken into custody in Guangzhou more than a week ago by four policeman from Changsha — clearly operating far beyond their jurisdiction — who charged that Chen had “damaged the business reputation” of Zoomlion with his reports. The New Express initially kept quiet about the detention, hoping the matter could be resolved reasonably behind closed doors. Today’s front page editorial, with its acerbic and mocking tone, was apparently a measure taken by the newspaper as a last resort.
Police in Changsha formally announced the arrest of Chen Yongzhou on their official Sina Weibo account yesterday, October 22. The message read simply: “New Express reporter Chen [Yongzhou] was legally detained on October 19 on criminal charges of damaging commercial reputation. The case is now under further investigation.”
The comments directly below the Weibo announcement railed against the Changsha police. “The reporting activities of the New Express are a matter of corporate conduct, so why are you arresting an individual?” one user wrote. “Legal channels must be respected! This kind of thing makes people feel like local police networks truly are despotic!”
“How much money did Zoomlion pay you?” asked another user.

For the moment, coverage of Chen Yongzhou’s arrest is appearing elsewhere on the internet, including on Xinhua News Agency’s website. The case is likely to be relatively non-sensitive so long as it is framed as a case of overbearing conduct by local authorities.
A quick translation of the New Express editorial follows:

Dear Readers, our reporter Chen Yongzhou (陈永洲) reported on financial problems at Zoomlion [a listed global construction machinery company http://en.zoomlion.com/english/about/index.html] and was taken into custody by the Changsha police outside their jurisdiction, accused of damaging business prestige. Over this matter, we must speak out . . .
Please Release Him
*Written by our newspaper’s commentator*
Imagine, you are a journalist, and you write some reports that are critical of a certain company. Then, one day, Uncle Policeman come and arrests you.
Don’t get over-excited. They have their reasons, after all. [They accuse you of] “damaging [the company’s] business reputation.” So can’t they investigate you for a few days, or for a few weeks?
Now, our New Express reporter Chen Yongzhou has the misfortune of becoming that poor soul.
We really want to come clean.
Because we have always believed that if we just go out and responsibly do our reporting, there won’t be any problem; and if by chance there are problems, we can print corrections in the newspaper, and apologise [for our errors]. And if things are really serious, we prepare for the courtroom — and if we lose, we pay compensation as it’s demanded. If [given such eventualities] we must close our doors, well then, that’s only what we deserve.
But the facts show that we have been too naive.
When, after three days and three nights [in custody], Chen Yongzhou finally got to see a lawyer, he said he could hold out for another 30 days — longer than that, he dare not say.
He tried to weep but there were no tears.
It must be said that we exercised extreme restraint in dealing with this attack [on our paper] — for five mornings last week, after he was taken away, we didn’t make a sound. Last Saturday, we said nothing. On Sunday, we said nothing. On Monday, we said nothing. Yesterday still, we said nothing.
Why? Because we thought all along that the safety of our lively colleague was the most important thing, and if we could get him back through forbearance and working under the table, this was worth it. We hope readers, and especially our colleagues [in journalism], will forgive us for these decisions, which were so unrighteous, which showed such lack of revolutionary dedication and courage. We were truly cowardly, selfish and shameful.
However, we have no regrets.
Because while the police are strapped with guns and are capable of force, and while Zoomlion pays a lot of taxes to the city of Changsha and has powerful backing, they are still our class brothers, and a disagreement is still a disagreement among the people (人民).
If we were given another opportunity, we would still say: Uncle Policeman, Big Brother Zoomlion, we beg of you, please set Chen Yongzhou free!
If we were given another chance to speak, we would also say:
We have diligently studied all 15 of the reports Chen Yongzhou wrote about Zoomlion, but could only find that we mistakenly wrote what should have been “advertising and entertainment fees of 513 million” as “advertising fees of 513 million.” If Brother Policeman can find any evidence of shabby reporting on our part, please make notice of it and we will gladly doff our hat. Because we still believe that — some day, at least — you will have the same full respect for the law that we have.
We would like to thank those four police officers who came from Changsha for keeping one eye closed, so that yesterday night Chen Yongzhou’s young wife, shaking with cold, could peacefully leave her own home.
We would also like to thank you for not employing your secret weapon to arrest another person you have set your eyes on, the head of our economic news desk. Just for the record, he really isn’t at home. For days, he hasn’t dared to return home. I’m not kidding.
Oh, and to Gao Hui (高辉), the esteemed assistant to the CEO of Zoomlion, we brought a case against you for infringement months ago [for verbally attacking Chen Yongzhou on Sina Weibo and releasing his personal information]. We hope you’ll give us a bit of face and acknowledge the case. We won’t make any sudden moves against you. We pay just a bit of tax every year, and our business is far short of the hundreds of millions [that Zoomlion does].
The Hunan native Zeng Guofan, [an official during the Qing dynasty], once wrote a couplet: “Two old bones can keep a vigorous mind and spirit alive (养活一团春意思，撑起二根穷骨头).” [NOTE: This phrase means, essentially, that you must have a bit of backbone].
Our newspaper may be small, but we have those two bones at least.

Below is an image of one of Chen Yongzhou’s “exclusive” reports about Zoomlion.

The original Chinese version of the piece, as posted to the New Express website, follows:

各位读者，我们的记者陈永洲报道了中联重科财务问题，然后他就被长沙警方跨省抓走了，罪名是涉嫌损害商业信誉。对此，我们要呐喊——
　　请放人
　　敝报虽小，穷骨头，还是有那么两根的
　　■本报评论员
　　假如，你是个记者，写了些批评某公司的报道。有一天，警察叔叔把你抓了。
　　请你不要激动。人家是有理由的——“涉嫌损害商业信誉罪”——关你几天、几十天，查查总可以吧？
　　现在，我们新快报的记者陈永洲，不幸成为了那个倒霉的家伙。
　　我们很想抽自己两耳光。
　　因为我们一直以为，只要负责任地去做报道，就不会有问题；万一出现问题，我们登报更正，致歉；实在严重，对簿公堂，输了官司，该怎么赔就怎么赔，该关门就关门，那也是活该。
　　但事实证明，我们太天真了。
　　陈永洲在熬过三天三夜，终于见到律师时说，他可以熬个三十天，多了，就不敢说了。
　　欲哭无泪。
　　应该说，我们对这个突如其来的打击保持了极大的克制——上周五上午，人被带走了，我们没有吭声；上周六，我们没有吭声；星期天，我们没有吭声；星期一，我们没有吭声；昨天，我们还是没有吭声。
　　因为，我们总是想，人的安全是第一位的，如果台底下的隐忍和努力能换回来一个活泼泼的同事，是值得的——请读者诸君尤其是同行们原谅，我们这样做，没有顾及公义，没有为革命而牺牲而献身的勇气，真的很懦弱，真的很自私，真的很可耻。
　　但是，我们不后悔。
　　因为警察叔叔虽然别着枪，很威武，中联重科虽然给长沙交了很多税，很强大，但毕竟都还是阶级弟兄，有矛盾也是人民内部矛盾嘛。
　　如果上天再给我们一次机会，我们还是会说：警察叔叔，中联大哥，求求你，放了陈永洲吧！
　　如果上天只给我们一个说话的机会，我们会说：
　　我们认真核查过陈永洲对中联重科的所有的15篇批评报道中，仅有的谬误在于将“广告费及招待费5.13亿”错写成了“广告费5.13亿”。如果警察叔叔发现了敝报虽力尽而不能发掘之证据，敬请公示，我们一定脱帽致敬。因为我们仍然相信——至少会有那么几天吧——你们和我们一样，对法律具有完整之尊重。
　　我们要谢谢长沙来的四个警察叔叔，是你们闭起一只眼，昨天夜里陈永洲瑟瑟发抖的幼妻才能从自己家里平安出走了。
　　我们还要谢谢你们，没有动用高端大气上档次的秘密武器，把你们认定的可疑分子、经济中心主任一举抓获。顺便说一句，他真的不在家里，早几天就不敢回家了。真的。
　　哦，还有高辉，敬爱的中联重科董事长助理，我们几个月前已经起诉你侵权了，希望你给点面子，应个诉啥的，我们不会突然把你拿下的——我们每年交的税很少的，营业额也远远没有几百亿。
　　你们的老乡，湖南人曾国藩写过一个对联，“养活一团春意思，撑起二根穷骨头”。敝报虽小，穷骨头，还是有那么两根的。

The China Media Project would like to invite anyone interested to attend a special talk tomorrow (Tuesday, October 22) by Bai Yansong (白岩松), a veteran news commentator for China Central Television.
We apologize for the short notice, but hope everyone is able to attend what should be a interesting talk and lively discussion.

The Two Sides of China (中國的AB面)
By Bai Yansong, news commentator, anchor and journalist for China Central Television (CCTV)
The talk will be conducted in Putonghua
When: 22 October 2013 (Tuesday), 6:00pm-7:30pm
Where: Wang Gungwu Lecture Hall, Graduate House, HKU
Free admission
About the speaker:
As commentator for China Central Television’s “News 1+1” program and the host of its “News Week” program, Bai Yansong is a a noted broadcaster, known for his piercing insight into current affairs. A graduate of the Communication University of China, Bai has been with CCTV since 1993, when he got his start on the network’s “Oriental Horizon,” CCTV’s pionneering current affairs programme. He was born in Inner Mongolia in 1968.

China’s top leadership has recently commemorated the 50th anniversary of something few people have probably heard of — the “Fengqiao experience.” Ring any bells?

Almost certainly not, because this is what I would call a “cold term” (冷词), a Chinese Communist Party buzzword that has long fallen out of use and favor owing to its association with the Mao era. That has all changed in recent days.

The fanning to life of this Mao-era term is a lamentable surprise, the latest reminder of those chilly winds that have lately been blowing so strongly from the left, particularly as we near the 120th anniversary on December 26 of Mao Zedong’s birth.

What is the “Fengqiao experience”?

This “Fengqiao” does not refer to the Maple Bridge of Tang dynasty verse. Fengqiao, literally “Maple Bridge,” is a township in the city of Zhuji (诸暨市) in China’s Zhejiang province. Fifty years ago, Zhuji was a county, and Fengqiao was a district of that county.

There are two chief points of background to understand. The first is that in 1962, during the Tenth Plenary Session of the 8th CCP Central Committee, Mao Zedong once again raised the prospect of “class struggle” (阶级斗争). It was at that meeting, in fact, that Xi Zhongxun (习仲勋), the father of current president Xi Jinping, was purged after being falsely charged with leading an anti-Party clique.
The second point is that it was in 1963 that Mao Zedong launched his Socialist Education Movement (社会主义教育运动), also known as the Four Cleanups Movement (四清运动). This was essentially a ploy to root out elements within the Party that Mao regarded as “reactionary.”

Here is how the top Party leader of Fengqiao District reflected back on the Four Cleanups in the official People’s Daily fourteen years later, on December 21, 1977:

In 1963, the seven communes in my district, under the leadership of the work team of the provincial Party committee of Zhejiang and the prefectural and county leaderships, carried out the first group of socialist education campaigns. During this movement, complying with Mao’s great injunction to “never forget the class struggle,” the masses were mobilized, enemies and friends distinguished, and four types of destructive activities perpetrated by reactionary elements (四类分子) were thoroughly exposed. At that time, some grassroots cadres and activists, full of revolutionary fervor, demanded that all reactionary elements involved in destructive activities be rounded up. Faced with this situation, we organized cadres and the masses to study a series of Mao’s guidelines and policies on struggling against the enemy. Through detailed ideological and political work, and a massive campaign of study and debate, awareness was substantially raised among cadres and the masses, who recognized that by relying on their own strength they could deal with an rehabilitate the enemy. This overcame the simple reliance . . . upon violent methods, relying instead on the masses classifying and listing the enemy, carrying out struggle through education, review and explanation, and relying also on the masses carrying out monitoring and rehabilitation locally. As a result, not one person was rounded up, and still the vast majority of enemies were dealt with.

These so-called “reactionary elements,” or silei fenzi (四类分子), referred to landlords, wealthy peasants, counterrevolutionaries and evildoers (坏分子). A subsequent investigation, done after the end of the Cultural Revolution and printed in the February 5, 1979, edition of the People’s Daily, showed that the population of Fengqiao was 130,000, of which some 3,000 had been identified as “reactionary elements.” That means that 1 in 50 people in Fengqiao were regarded as “enemies.” The persecution of people like this across the country was part of the awful political landscape of that era.

In 1963, the work team of the provincial Party committee of Zhejiang summarized the methods employed in Fengqiao in a document called, “Experiences in Struggling Against the Enemy During the Socialist Education Movement in Fengqiao District, Zhuji County” (诸暨县枫桥区社会主义教育运动中开展对敌斗争的经验). During the National People’s Congress in 1963, the minister of public security, Xie Fuzhi (谢富治), gave a speech called, “Relying on the Strength of the Masses, Strengthening the People’s Democratic Dictatorship, Transforming the Majority of ‘Reactionary Elements’ into New People” (依靠群众力量，加强人民民主专政，把绝大多数“四类分子”改造成新人). Xie’s speech made specific mention of the example provided by Fengqiao.

Then, on November 20, 1963, Mao Zedong added his written instructions to the Xie Fuzhi speech, in which he said: “The example of Zhuji raised here is a good one — various regions should follow this example, expanding the work through pilot programs.”

On November 22, when Mao Zedong spoke with the deputy minister of public security, Wang Dongxing (汪东兴), he said: “Of all the work carried out by the ministry of public security, the most important was the question of how to work among the masses, how to educate and organize them so that they can take part in the general work of public security. Judging from the experience of Zhuji, once the masses have risen, they can do things as well as you and as strong as you. You must not forget to mobilize the masses.” (NOTE: The implication here is that public security officials should not focus on simply arresting “reactionary elements,” but must organize the masses to “reeducate” and reform them.)

Before the Cultural Revolution, the ministry of public security released materials about Fengqiao, but the People’s Daily never reported on these. On December 21, 1977, the People’s Daily published the piece from the top Party leader of Fengqiao District quoted above. That piece was called, “Raising High the Red Flag of Fengqiao Erected by Mao Zedong, Relying on the Masses to Strengthen Dictatorship” (高举毛主席树立的枫桥红旗　依靠群众加强专政). It was the first introduction to what would be called the “Fengqiao experience,” or fengqiao jingyan (枫桥经验):

In the struggle against the enemy, arrest is necessary and proper for a small number of class enemies; as for those you can choose to arrest or not, none should be arrested; you must mobilize the masses to carry out a struggle of reason, to deal with the enemies, carrying out on-site monitoring and rehabilitation, without the need to submit issues to higher authorities. This experience was affirmed and praised by the greater leader and teacher Mao Zedong.

On September 5, 1978, the People’s Daily published an official editorial called, “Rectifying and Strengthening Public Security Work” (整顿和加强社会治安工作). It talked about how “Fengqiao District in Zhejiang’s Zhuji County relied on the masses to carry out on-site rectification of reactionary elements, reforming the vast majority of them into self-supporting laborers for the law.” “Their successful experience,” the article said, “was praised by Mao Zedong, and was known as a red flag on the front lines of public security.”

What is the “Fengqiao experience”? That’s it. And now, half a century later, it is being remembered in China with highest honors.

Vanishing and Reemerging

The People’s Daily is our weathervane for judging political affairs in China. Its discourse is strictly regulated by the system of public opinion guidance (舆论导向). The Party leadership, in other words, chooses its words carefully, and the language we see in the People’s Daily is to a large extent reflective of prevailing consensus.

There was not one mention of the “Fengqiao experience” in the People’s Daily throughout the 1980s. This was the era of Deng Xiaoping, and while Deng had said that the Party would “continue to uphold Mao Zedong Thought,” it was he who led the entire CCP in criticizing the errors of Mao Zedong. In 1981, the CCP passed its Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the Republic, which rejected the Socialist Education Movement.

On May 2, 1991, the People’s Daily published a report that praised Fengqiao for having “relied on the masses to preserve social stability.” But it made no mention of the 1963 example provided by Fengqiao.
Over this period — from 1980 through to the end of the 1990s — we passed the 20th, 25th, 30th and 25th anniversaries of Mao Zedong’s written instructions on the “Fengqiao experience” in 1983, 1988, 1993 and 1998 respectively, and in none of these cases was the date commemorated.

The first reappearance of the “Fengqiao experience” in the People’s Daily was on December 2, 1998.
On December 1, 1999, the People’s Daily published an article called, “Establishing Stability and Development: A Record of the ‘Fengqiao Experience’ in Zhejiang’s Zhuji” (立足稳定和发展——浙江诸暨“枫桥经验”纪实). The piece included the words of the current Party secretary of the city of Zhuji, in which he called “reliance on the masses, dissolving tensions and preserving stability” as the “Fengqiao experience” of the new era.

In the People’s Daily there are plenty of superficial references to the “Fengqiao experience.” But in the 14 years from 1999 to 2012, there are just 49 articles with the term “Fengqiao experience” in the People’s Daily (10 in the headline). Of these, four pieces appeared in 1999, two in 2000. There were no pieces using the term in 2001 or 2002. The rest of the articles using the term, 43 in all, appeared during the Hu Jintao era.

After Hu Jintao came to power, China entered what has been called the “age of stability preservation” (维稳时代). In 2003, the 40th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s written instructions on the “Fengqiao experience” was commemorated. At a ceremony in Zhejiang province, Central Committee member Luo Gan (罗干) said of the “Fengqiao experience”: “Dealing onsite with the resolution of tensions can enable to the greatest possible extent the resolution of conflicts at the grassroots [local] level, [so that problems are] resolved locally, resolved when they are still at an early stage” (People’s Daily, November 27, 2003, page 1).

In November 2008, during commemorations of the 45th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s written instructions on the “Fengqiao experience,” the hues of stability preservation were even deeper. Security chief Zhou Yongkang (周永康) said during the commemoration event, held again in Zhejiang, that “Party and government leaders at various levels must earnestly fulfill their prime responsibility to preserve stability.” He urged leaders to “grab [problems at] the source, grab the roots [of tensions] and grab the foundation” (People’s Daily, November 25, 2008, page 1).

The reemergence of the “Fengqiao experience” and its rise in temperature had to do directly with the intensification of the regime of stability preservation in China. The “onsite rectification and monitoring” of 50 years earlier had transformed into a new stability preservation slogan, “resolving problems locally.” This “resolution” really meant local officials needed to prevent their local petitioners from reaching Beijing. The “problems,” in other words, had to be rounded up and locked into black jails.

Governing the Nation by Mao (以毛治国)?

Until recently, no top Chinese leader since Mao Zedong had ever been quoted publicly in the People’s Daily or other state media making remarks on the “Fengqiao experience.” Not Deng Xiaoping. Not Jiang Zemin. Not Hu Jintao. But now Xi Jinping has broken the mold with his “important instructions on the development of the ‘Fengqiao experience’.”

Now we have Party media emphasizing that “the vitality of the Fengqiao experience lies in its following of the mass line.”

The “Fengqiao experience” for which Mao Zedong issued written instructions in 1963 was only ever about — and could only have been about — the class struggle. It was not, and could not possibly have been, about (as we have seen in state media this week) “employing legal thinking and legal methods to resolve problems and tensions concerning the vital interests of the masses.” Mao Zedong’s mass line was about organizing the masses to control evildoers, in other words a kind of “mass dictatorship” (群众专政).

These ideas are poles apart from modern ideas of rule of law. How can they possibly be implemented in a present-day China that is at least ostensibly a “people-oriented” (以人为本), “harmonious society” (和谐社会)?

There is an old saying in China, that if you don’t see the larger trends clearly before you act, your actions will be misguided, regardless of whether those actions are firm or flexible.

China’s general trend today is clear. The Cultural Revolution ended 37 years ago. Reform and opening has gone on for 35 years now. We’ve had a market economy for 21 years now. We signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 15 years ago.

As a major nation on the international stage, with a market economy, there is no other way for China except to govern according to the Constitution. Without constitutionalism, without full and sound rule of law, without a healthy civil society, there can be no peace and stability. Right now, to drag out this experience from the era of class struggle, which is all about struggling with internal enemies — this is not just climbing trees to look for fish, it is playing with fire.

The most obvious signal we can read from this commemoration of the “Fengqiao experience” is that this is a new validation of Mao Zedong’s ideas about governing the nation. Mao Zedong’s legacy is in fact one of the Chinese Communist Party’s most damaging negative assets. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, while Mao has been revered as a symbol — as the “God card” (神主牌) — his general course in governing the nation (class struggle, comprehensive dictatorship, the continuous revolution, the command economy, the people’s commune system of government, etcetera) has been rejected outright for 30 years. Both Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao dreaded “the stain” of Mao (沾毛).

Who would dare, in this day and age, to “manage state affairs with Maoist ideas” (以毛治国)?

On October 14, People’s Daily Online published an article called, “Why the ‘Fengqiao Experience’ Can Become the China Experience.” The author of the piece was Lan Yuqing (蓝蔚青), the deputy director of the China Society for Scientific Socialism (中国科学社会主义学会). Lan wrote:

From the beginning, the “Fengqiao experience” dispensed with the idea of “class struggle as the key link,” and introduced the idea of governance according to law. Comrade Mao Zedong’s validation of the “Fengqiao experience,” and the central Party leadership’s endorsement of the “Fengqiao experience,” comes not only because it upholds the Party’s mass line, but also in order to resolve the problem of excessive violence and incarceration that come with the expansion of the class struggle.

What sort of logic is this?

Mao Zedong always gave priority to the “two hands of revolution” (革命的两手). In 1964, he severely criticized Liu Shaoqi (刘少奇) for being a “closet rightist” (形左实右) in the midst of the Socialist Education Movement. He said that “the focus of this movement is cleaning up those within the Party who are established capitalist roaders.” Was this really about “dispensing with the idea of class struggle” or encouraging “governance according to law”?

During the “first 30 years” of Party rule, there were all sorts of written instructions from Mao Zedong that tinkered with policy. Concerning the Great Leap Forward and the Great Famine, we could also choose to be selective about our history, overlooking the purge of Peng Dehuai. And we could focus instead on Mao Zedong’s six internal Party missives of 1959, in which he sought to address the errors of his own policies. Maybe there are documents we could use selectively to suggest Mao Zedong was in fact a counterrevolutionary?
Lan Yuqing’s article is strange indeed. After 1962, did Mao Zedong’s class struggle not result in indiscriminate death and incarceration? But Lan describes Mao as a champion of governance according to law, as having rejected the idea of “class struggle as the key link.” This is tantamount to suggesting that Mao wasn’t Mao, that Mao opposed Mao. What can we call this kind of logic but demented?
The serious danger of this advocacy of the “Fengqiao experience” lies in how it confutes the first 30 years of CCP rule and the last 30 years of CCP rule, in how it ignores the facts of history, disregards logic, and shoves aside the very real pain the public feels over the Mao era — particularly those who suffered directly during that period.
As we near the 120th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth, the rashness of this drum-beating in the state media sends a chill through the hearts of countless millions.

It’s that time of year again. No, I don’t mean the Nobel Prizes. I’m not talking about the International Emmys. It’s time for the World Media Summit.
You know, that buzzing international meeting to carry on serious strategic dialogue about the future of media at the pleasure and expense of China, the country with the world’s most robust system of media controls. Or, as it is better unknown to all, the media event all major global media players attend but none bother to actually cover. Why not? Because under the surface it’s all just a little too disgusting.

For those of you not familiar with the World Media Summit — because only Chinese media have covered it (enthusiastically too) — here is how the state-run China Central Television describes its impetus and origins:

During the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, President of Xinhua News Agency Mr. Li Congjun respectively held working talks with the leaders of the global major media such as News Corporation, The Associated Press, REUTERS, Kyodo News, BBC, etc., exchanging the views on the challenges of the digital multi-media era, enhancement of exchange, cooperation and win-win, etc. All the parties reached consensus that it is necessary to hold the World Media Summit, which builds an efficient platform for the global media to communicate with each other and pool collective wisdom, sparking their thoughts and wisdoms, discussing survival and development, and talking about cooperation and future.
From 8 to 10 October 2009, the World Media Summit was successfully held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. This summit was jointly initiated by nine global leading media organizations in the world – Xinhua News Agency, News Corporation, The Associated Press, REUTERS, ITAR-TASS, Kyodo News, BBC, Turner Broadcasting System and Google Inc., and organized by Xinhua News Agency, which absorbed the leaders of more than 170 media organizations from across the world.

So, this was a more or less spontaneous meeting of the big guns in global media, “jointly initiated” by “nine leading media organisations.” Because a bit of shoptalk among global media leaders could be a very productive thing. “Survival” is at stake, after all. And couldn’t we all benefit from the pooling of “collective wisdom”?
Well, not exactly. The Global Meeting Summit was, make no mistake, the idea of China’s leaders at the most senior level, the direct product of a specific media policy launched by then-President Hu Jintao in 2008 and designed to combat what China saw as its strategic failure of “discourse power” internationally. China wanted a bigger voice. And it wanted to influence all of the other voices talking (negatively, always SO negatively) about it.
What better way to close the gap than to get ALL the global media bosses around the conference table — and of course also around the dinner table?
At the helm of the summit since the beginning has been Xinhua News Agency chief Li Congjun (李从军), a member of China’s central party committee who was deputy chief of China’s Central Propaganda Department for over six years before he took on the top Xinhua job. In February 2009, eight months ahead of the first summit, Li wrote in China Journalist:

According to the central committee’s strategic demand for “strengthening outside propaganda/publicity” (大外宣), we must work hard to get our own voice out at the first moment from the actual scene for important news and sudden-breaking incidents . . . constantly enhancing the affinity, attractiveness and infectiveness of Chinese news reports to the outside world, actively seizing the initiative and our right to have a say in international public opinion channeling, working to create an objective and amicable international public opinion environment. . .
[We must] actively seek out new horizons, new mechanisms, new channels and new methods in the area of outside dialogue and cooperation, particularly, as by the demands of central party leaders, successfully organizing the first meeting of the World Media Summit, building a platform for dialogue among first-rate international media (国际一流媒体), further raising the capacity of Xinhua News Agency to make its voice heard in the international news and information sector.

So . . . To sum up, the World Media Summit, this ostensible back-slapping affair offering an opportunity for media leaders to talk media strategy, is fundamentally about China projecting its influence over global media agendas. Any global media bosses at the summit who do not realize this — though I suspect plenty of them do — are woefully deceived. I want all of you participants at the World Media Summit right now to pick up your complimentary Xinhua News Agency fountain pens and write this on the back of your hand: “I am not here because China really wants to talk about the future of global media. I am here because China wants to channel the future of global media.”
I realize I’m laying the sarcasm on thick. But I’ve written with some seriousness about the World Media Summit since its first “presidium” in 2009, and one of the things I find most incredible is that there are virtually no news reports of the event anywhere outside China. This is an international summit about media, hosted by a country that has an abysmal record this year alone on media and information (including the crippling of Sina Weibo, its most vital media platform), and no one wants to talk about it.
Is this not news? Well, let me help out by providing a list of three interesting possible stories emerging from this year’s summit:
1. According to reports from Chinese state media, next year’s World Media Summit will be hosted by the New York Times. Why? What does this mean? How is it linked, if at all, to the business interests of the New York Times in China? What does the New York Times have to say for itself?
2. On the World Media Summit agenda this year is the feasibility of creating new global prizes for journalism. How would the media groups involved in these future prizes through their summit participation balance their professional goals and values against attempts by China’s leadership to use the prizes to push its own values? If the prizes had been awarded this year, would David Barboza have been considered for his Pulitzer Prize-winning report on the family of former Premier Wen Jiabao?
3. As media bosses wine and dine with Xinhua News Agency chief Li Congjun, they might like to know that Li wrote last month in the official People’s Daily that “[the Party must be] confident and courageous in its positive propaganda, [carrying out] the public opinion struggle with a clear banner.” His article was one of the most hardline pieces on the CCP’s press control priorities to appear in China in recent years. He spoke in extreme terms of the attempts by Western media and “hostile forces” to Westernize China. “This again sends a warning to us,” he said, “that strengthening [China’s] international discourse power is of urgent importance.”
Participants should know that this — the strengthening of China’s discourse power — is the real reason they have been invited to the World Media Summit.
Li’s words are more than just rhetoric. They are another sign among many in recent weeks of a very real crackdown on speech and civil rights in China. You can read up here on the arrest of Liu Hu, a journalist with Guangzhou’s New Express. Or maybe brush up on the recent arrest of a middle school student accused of spreading rumors on social media.
But don’t let the news spoil your dinner.



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And for those who are interested, here are your global media representatives:

In September 2013, Yang Dacai, a top safety official in China’s Shanxi province, was sentenced to 14 years in jail for corruption. The sentence was the end of a saga that began online more than a year ago, when Chinese internet users heaped criticism on Yang for smiling at the scene of a deadly bus crash. Over a period of days, web users searched out a number of photos in which Yang appeared to be wearing luxury watches. How, they asked, could he afford such luxury on his modest salary as a public servant? The outcry eventually led to an official investigation. In the above cartoon, posted by artist Zhu Senlin (朱森林) to Sina Weibo, dangling “@”s — symbols of the internet — hook a corrupt official (presumably Yang Dacai) around his luxury watch, lifting him out of the filthy sea of corruption. The message at the top reads: “Changing China, One Post at a Time.”

In an article last week in Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao (联合早报), CMP Director Qian Gang outlined the emergence in recent weeks of “public opinion struggle” (舆论斗争), a new hardline term to characterize the Chinese Communist Party’s bid for dominance over public opinion. [Our English version of Qian Gang’s article is here].

One important piece Qian Gang mentioned was an early rebuttal in the China Youth Daily to an August 24 editorial in the Global Times called, “The Public Opinion Struggle: A Challenge We Cannot Avoid But Must Face Head On” (舆论斗争，不能回避只能迎接的挑战). Written by Cao Lin, the piece is an important look at the political and historical overtones of the term “struggle” — and why, as the author says, “it makes people uneasy.”

Our partial translation of Cao Lin’s rebuttal to the Global Times editorial is below.

It’s important to note that when Cao Lin wrote his piece, “‘Public Opinion Struggle’ is a Term That Makes People Uneasy“, the term did not yet seem to have a secure position in the mainstream Party discourse. That changed just a few days later, on August 30, as the People’s Daily ran an article citing the need to “effectively channel public opinion and actively launch a public opinion struggle.”

As CMP director Qian Gang made clear yesterday in his analysis of the emerging leadership phrase “public opinion struggle,” or yulun douzheng (舆论斗争), these are politically turbulent times in China. We must keep a careful eye on developments, and Chinese media offer us some of the most revealing glimpses.
Yesterday, again, we have another important sign — the first open criticism of constitutionalism in the Party’s official People’s Daily since the anti-constitutionalism wave began last spring.
Readers may remember Qian Gang’s analysis on September 2 in which he showed that the attack on constitutionalism had not yet reached core official Party media. While there were important pieces appearing online, and in less representative (of the central leadership) publications like the overseas edition of the People’s Daily, nothing had yet appeared in either the People’s Daily or the Party journal Seeking Truth.
That has now changed. In a piece called “Leaders Must Enhance the Strength of Their Political Convictions” (领导干部必须增强政治定力) run in yesterday’s edition of the People’s Daily, Yuan Chunqing (袁纯清), the top leader of Shanxi province, directly criticized liberalism, democratic socialism, universal values and “Western constitutionalism and democracy.” These ideas, he said, “are wrong ideas intended to throw China off the track of socialism and break it away from the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.”