On April 24, 2013, members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council expressed opposition to a plan for the Hong Kong government to donate 100 million Hong Kong dollars to the Sichuan provincial government to help with quake relief, citing concerns about mainland corruption. A powerful earthquake struck Sichuan on April 20, killing 192 people and injuring at least 11,000. Hong Kong donated more than 9 billion Hong Kong dollars following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, only to learn later that much of the money was misappropriated. “What China lacks is not money but rather clean government,” Hong Kong Legislative Council member Claudia Mo told the Associated Press. “Our trust in those provincial governments has gone bankrupt.” China’s Red Cross has also fought to regain trust in the wake of several scandals in recent years. In the above cartoon, posted by artist Kuang Biao (邝飚) to Sina Weibo, a large figure with a red cross on his shoulder carrying a red donation box runs away from a camera-headed paparazzi labeled “Hong Kong.” The figure with the donation box says, “Hey, don’t you think it’s ridiculous for you to chase me around like this?” To which the Hong Kong figure behind replies: “You definitely need to tell me exactly how you’re going to spend that money.”

For China’s Communist Party leaders, political catchphrases, or tifa (提法), are an important means of communicating general political ideas, moods and orientations. They are the way new leaders, like current president Xi Jinping (习近平), try to articulate and imprint their leadership values.
But in this era of information chaos, when the Party can no longer hold all of the puppet strings of public opinion at once, the meaning of the political catchphrase can slip in interesting and even fatal ways.
When Hu Jintao introduced his political vision of the “harmonious society” (和谐社会) at the National People’s Congress in 2005, his stated objective was to build a “well-off society,” one “that puts people first.” The idea of “harmony” rapidly became synonymous, however, with rigorous censorship and violent “stability preservation.” [SEE ALSO “Hu’s Decade of ‘Failed Power’“].

[ABOVE: This cartoon by artist Kuang Biao speaks perhaps most emotively and directly to the slippage experienced by Hu Jintao’s 2005 political buzzword “harmonious society.” Two “river crabs,” or hexie, a common web slang playing on Hu’s notion of “harmony” and synonymous with censorship and repression, joust for dominance, one representing money the other power: Background from CMP here.]
Over the next few years, as President Xi Jinping’s own political catchphrases are defined, elaborated and disseminated, what kind of slippages of meaning will we witness?
At a forum held in Beijing on April 16, the All-China Journalists Association and representatives from 25 official state media did their best to infuse Xi Jinping’s notion of the “China Dream” (中国梦) with the imperative of press control. The ACJA and the Party press are reminding us all that Xi’s vision of prosperity and “national rejuvenation” can only come through the continued restriction of information freedoms. (The English release, for foreign audiences, emphasises “truth” and “credibility”).
At the April 16 meeting, state media and the ACJA issued a formal pledge, or changyishu (倡议书), called “Applying Positive Energy with a Fierce Sense of Social Responsibility to Realize the China Dream” (以强烈社会责任感为实现中国梦传递正能量). The document makes it clear that “social responsibility” equals the media’s responsibility to the Chinese Communist Party.
The document emphasizes, for example, the need for state media to sing the “main theme,” or zhuxuanlu (主旋律), a term referring to the Party line. It speaks of “strengthening the mainstream public opinion field” (主流舆论场), in a political culture where “mainstream” refers explicitly to alignment with Party interests (“mainstream media” = Party media).
Can we look forward, in the months ahead, to interesting new slips of meaning whereby the “China Dream” becomes synonymous with censorship?
Alas, I’m too late it seems. The process has already begun.
In the following post, one user asks if another post has just been “harmonized,” to which someone responds: “This doesn’t suit the times. Shouldn’t it be ‘done away with by a dream’ (被梦做掉了) or ‘to be dreamed’ (被做梦了)?”
No, a third user says, providing the definitive solution: “It was dreamed away!” (被梦掉).
That’s it. The time may come when we are all “dreamed away.” 我们都被梦掉了.

A partial translation of the pledge by state media follows, including a list of the media who signed up on April 16. Items 1 and 2 are followed by two further items emphasizing the need for “truth and impartiality” (which is trumped by item 2 about the “Party nature of the news”) and for “social efficacy” (社会效果).

Applying Positive Energy with a Fierce Sense of Social Responsibility to Realize the China Dream: A Pledge
Bearing the social responsibility of drumming and shouting for the realization of the China Dream is the great trust placed on the news media by the Party and the people, it is the noble pursuit of news workers, and it offers key support for the Chinese people in building the China Dream. The great masses of news workers must conscientiously carry out this mission, in order to provide the spiritual motivation and ideological assurance needed to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people. To this end, we propose the following:
1. [That we will] sing loudly the China Dream as the strongest voice of the era. [That we will] sing loudly the main theme (主旋律) of the era, and pass on positive social energy, strengthening the mainstream public opinion field (主流舆论场). . .
2. [We will be] faithful to the role and mission of the news worker. We will conscientiously accept the leadership of the Party, adhere to [notion that] the interests of the motherland and the people are higher than all else, thoroughly upholding the Party nature of news work (新闻工作的党性原则), abiding by the Constitution and the law, and fully adhering to correct guidance of public opinion . . .
Units Jointly Issuing the Pledge (26 in all):
The All-China Journalists Association (中华全国新闻工作者协会), the People’s Daily (人民日报), Xinhua News Agency, Seeking Truth (求是), People’s Liberation Army Daily (解放军报), Guangming Daily (光明日报), Economic Daily (经济日报), China National Radio (中央人民广播电台), China Central Television (中央电视台), China Radio International (中国国际广播电台), China Daily (中国日报), Science & Technology Daily (科技日报), Zhongguo Jijian Jiancha Bao (中国纪检监察报), Worker’s Daily (工人日报), China Youth Daily (中国青年报), China Womens Daily (中国妇女报), Farmer’s Daily (农民日报), Legal Daily (法制日报), China News Service (中国新闻社), People’s Daily Online (人民网), Xinhua Online (新华网), CNTV (中国网络电视台), Beijing TV (北京电视台), Beijing Evening News (北京晚报), Beijing Youth Daily (北京青年报), the Beijing Times (京华时报).

The following post by a user with the alias Tianyuan Difang 3511E (天圆地方3511E), was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 8:39am today, April 24, 2013. The post is a repost of an original post showing victims of the Ya’an Earthquake in Sichuan holding up signs saying, “We are cold and hungry.” Tianyuan Difang 3511E currently has just over 2,600 followers, according to Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre]

The text accompanying the original post reads:

[Photo from the disaster area]: At 8:30am on April 23, in Lingguan Township in Sichuan’s Baoxing County, disaster victims hold up banners that read, “I am cold and hungry,” calling on others to pay attention to and support them. Because transportation has been cut off, many relief supplies have not reached Lingguan Township in the disaster area in a timely manner. Right now, as there are shortages of water, grain and shelters, the people have become agitated.
[灾区现场照片]: 4月23日上午8点30分, 四川省宝兴县灵关镇, 受灾民众举着“我冷饿”的横幅, 呼吸各方支持和关注因交通阻断，许多救援物资及时运送到震区灵关镇。目前，震区缺水缺粮和帐篷，民众情绪激动.

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.

One female journalist was killed and a second seriously injured on April 18 after they were struck by a tractor shovel on the worksite of a high-profile infrastructure project in Urumqi, the capital of China’s Xinjiang autonomous region. The tragedy seems to have been an accident, but there are lingering questions about how local media and authorities in Urumqi have handled the story.
The two journalists were reportedly interns for the Urumqi Evening Post, a leading commercial newspaper in the regional capital. They were struck by the tractor shovel shortly after 11am on April 18 while on the worksite of the Tianzi Road Project (田字路工程), an important infrastructure project in Urumqi designed to alleviate serious traffic congestion in the city.

[ABOVE: Urumqi Evening Post intern Bailu was struck and killed by a tractor shovel when reporting on a major construction project on April 18.]
The project’s design is in the shape of the Chinese character “tian” (田), meaning “field,” hence the name “Tianzi Road” (or “field character road”). Phase one of the project has already been completed, and phase two is now underway.
The Tianzi Road Project is an important source of political capital for local Party leaders in Xinjiang and there has been pressure in recent months to complete phase two. On April 16, just two days before the on-site accident, local media reported that work on the project had been accelerated.
One source in Xinjiang, who requested anonymity given the local sensitivity of this story, said many problems had been exposed at the Tianzi Road Project and that the local government had violated normal construction procedures for the sake of “political point scoring” (政府为了政绩违背建设规律一味最求速度). The source also alleged that the Urumqi Evening Post had sent two inexperienced interns to the Tianzi Road Project worksite because it believed they would be more amenable to the propaganda goals of the local leadership.
According to the Xinjiang source, the accident on April 18 happened on a section of the project directly across from Urumqi’s famous bazaar, the “Dabazha.” The source also told CMP that the reporting intern killed in the accident, Bailu (拜璐), belongs to China’s muslim Hui minority.
The priority nature of the infrastructure project and the ethnicity of the intern who was killed both make this a potentially sensitive story for the local leadership.
On the day of the accident the Urumqi Evening Post initially issued a post from its official Weibo account that included the name of the project worksite and the term “tractor shovel.” That post was quickly deleted and replaced with a second post in which both were removed. The omission was spotted by eagle-eyed users on Sina Weibo, who re-posted images of both posts:

[I’d like to ask: Why did the Urumqi Evening Post delete the location, and the word “tractor shovel”?] On the morning of April 18, 2 female journalists from the Urumqi Evening Post were reporting on the Tianzi Road Project when they were accidentally struck by a tractor shovel. One died and the other was injured. What is unforeseen is that the first Weibo sent out by the Urumqi Evening Post was quickly deleted, and the words “tractor shovel” and “Tianzi Road” were removed from a follow-up post. A tractor shovel was the cause of the accident, and the place where it happened was Tianzilu — so why were these most crucial aspects of the news story removed? Look at the following image.

[ABOVE: A composite image showing two posts on the April 18 accident at the Tianzi Road Project, the first mentioning the location and the second removing it.]
Users speculated that the newspaper had removed the reference to the Tianzi Road Project because local leaders did not want to be held liable or have the project tainted by tragedy. The reference to “tractor shovel” might have been removed to avoid associations with forced demolition. In a number of cases across China, villagers have been crushed by machines while trying to defend their homes from forced demolition by the authorities. Social media users did make this association in the comments sections of some posts on the Tianzi Road Project accident.
The August 19 edition of the Urumqi Evening Post also deflected the story of the intern’s death away from the Tianzi Road Project. The paper’s front page carried the story with a photograph of a candlelight vigil held for the victim the night before [A slideshow of the vigil is also available on the paper’s website. But the story’s headline read: “Bailu: Youth Cut Short On The Way To An Interview.” The story suggests that Bailu was killed not at the worksite but on the way to report on the story.

[ABOVE: The August 19 edition of the Urumqi Evening Post runs a front-page story on the death of the paper’s intern, Bailu.]
Social media have played an important role in the unfolding of this story.
One of the first reports on the incident came from Zhou Peng (周鹏), a journalist for the Xinjiang Legal News, who wrote at 1:11pm on April 18: “There’s been an accident on the Dabazha (大巴扎) section of the Tianzilu Project (田字路工程). Two journalists, one dead and one injured.”
A few minutes later he added: “On April 18 at 11:05am, two journalists from the Urumqi Evening Post were struck by a tractor shovel when covering the Dabazha section of the Tianzilu regeneration project. One journalist died on the scene and the other was injured.”
At 2:18pm Zhou Peng further updated the story, encouraging users not to invent conspiracies about the reporter’s death (for example, the suggestion that this was related to forced demolition): “While working the driver of the tractor shovel had line of sight problems and didn’t notice the two reporters, and this resulted in the accident. I ask that everyone not come to careless conclusions.”
Social media have also provided a platform for other journalists to make their feelings known about the case. Mou Min (牟敏), a reporter at Urumqi Evening Post, wrote on Sina Weibo:

If one day something happens to me in the course of reporting a story, the rest of you won’t know where exactly it happened, and how it happened, because you wouldn’t be allowed to know. But there would be people calling on all of you to follow my example, to contribute to the cause of journalism. This is our sorrow. I love doing journalism, but I am filled with sorrow.

Another Urumqi Evening Post reporter, Gao Ting (高婷), wrote:

Working the past three years as a journalist, I’ve put up with curses and hardship and these have toughened me up. But when heard that my colleague was run over by a shovel tractor, I felt the lightness of life for the first time and didn’t know how to calm myself down. After that, when I saw things being done that didn’t have the slightest shred of humanity to them, I could only think about how I hoped my own child would never become a journalist.

April 15, 2013, marked the 24th anniversary of the death of Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦), a pro-reform political figure who served as the CCP’s General Secretary from 1982 to 1987. Hu’s death in 1989 was an important catalyst for student protests in China that year. In 2013, many users on Weibo commemorated the anniversary of Hu’s death, offering words of praise and lighting virtual candles. The above cartoon, posted to Sina Weibo by artist Jiao Yantian (矫艳田), depicts Hu Yaobang raising his hand in greeting. The message reads simply: “Speak the truth and you earn the friendship of the people, do real things and you are great for a generation.”

The following post by Chen Huhua (陈沪华), a Shanghai-based Sina Weibo user with just under 5,000 fans, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 7:45pm on April 14, 2013. The post deals with a hunger strike held by a lawyer outside the gates of the Hupo School in the city of Hefei protesting the school’s refusal to allow Zhang Anni, the daughter of political activist Zhang Lin, to attend school. Zhang Lin was actively involved in the 1989 pro-democracy movement in Anhui. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre]
The deleted post reads:

A lawyer goes on hunger strike to voice his opposition, all for the sake of Anni!
律师绝食抗议，一切皆为安妮！

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

In April 2013 many Chinese took to social media to mock the excessiveness of anti-Japanese war dramas on Chinese television. Anyone who channel surfs inside China knows that anti-Japanese dramas are staple programming. The programs, which whip up hatred of the Japanese, have in recent years gotten the green light because 1) they serve the political objectives of China’s leaders by polishing up the liberation credentials of the CCP, 2) portray the CCP as China’s protector against outside aggressors, 3) distract Chinese from internal woes, 4) are an easy sell to Chinese audiences who have been reared on anti-Japanese sentiments and 5) are easy to make in a heavily restricted media environment where most contemporary issues are impossible to explore. But the flood of anti-Japanese programming has also resulted in extreme competition in a production environment that encourages low-budget fare. As a result, these programs have raced to the bottom, resorting to ever more extreme violence and sexual content to lure audiences. One recent example cited by fed-up web users was a scene in one program in which a naked young woman salutes Red Army soldiers who have just rescued her from rape as the hands of brutal Japanese soldiers. In another program a Japanese soldier is sliced in half by a heroic peasant warrior capable of ridiculous feats of violence. In the above cartoon, posted to Sina Weibo by artist Johnny Won (原子漫画), Chinese television viewers, grey and faceless, sit on a grey sofa and watch a pastiche of tasteless anti-Japanese programming. They throw their hands up with joy as a Japanese soldier is split in two.

In the most recent edition of Red Flag Journal (红旗文稿), a twice-monthly Party publication run by the journal Seeking Truth, the acting vice-minister of Shaanxi province’s propaganda department argues that Party-run media and new media now form two separate “public opinion fields” in China, and that this disconnect is an unacceptable challenge to Party rule.
Ren Xianliang (任贤良), who is also a vice-chairman of the All-China Journalists Association (中国记协) — charged with issuing press licenses and monitoring the conduct of journalists to ensure they “serve socialism and the overall interests of the Party and the nation” — has been one of the Party’s core theoreticians on propaganda and press control in recent years. Ren’s 2010 book The Guiding Art of the Public Opinion (舆论引导艺术：领导干部如何面对媒体) propounded many of Hu Jintao’s approaches to press control, essentially the idea that the leadership needed to find new ways to seize the agenda in the information age [See CMP analysis here].

[ABOVE: Ren Xianliang addresses journalists and editors during a government arranged tour of Shaanxi by Chinese internet media in 2011.]
Ren begins his piece in the Red Flag Journal: “In China today, two distinct fields of public opinion exist — one the traditional public opinion field comprising Party newspapers, Party journals, Party broadcasters and news agencies, the other the public opinion field of newly emerging media based on the internet.”
This state of affairs, says Ren, has “not only challenged the basic principle of the Party running the media (党管媒体), but has also resulted in confrontational division among social classes, damaged the credibility of the government and corrosively weakened the foundation of Party rule.”
Ren argues that the answer is for the Party to “have the courage to be hands on in its control” (真抓实管). He resolutely affirms the longstanding principle that “the Party runs the media” (党管媒体)”

Just like the [idea of] the Party controlling the military, of controlling guns and arms, the Party’s control of the media is an unassailable basic principle in terms of upholding the Party’s leadership, and under the current situation this [principle] can only be strengthened and must not weaken. Today, some web users use the internet to give vent to their anger, to generate and disseminate rumors, to mislead the people, and even to invade the privacy of others, and these are internet crimes. A number of so-called internet personalities (网络精英) manipulate sensitive incidents, maliciously attacking the current system, blaming and blackening the name of the Party and the government, in some cases even inciting the subversion of the Party’s leadership and its political rule. Some traditional media persons work in the home field by day and in their own private spaces at night, disguising their names with aliases to publish articles that couldn’t be published by their own media — they distribute these on the internet, and even sell them to other websites for profit.

Ren rues the fact that some users of Weibo and other platforms have drawn massive fan bases, so that “some Weibo VIPs have hundreds of thousands, millions or even tens of millions of followers . . . their influence substantially surpassing that of print media and even broadcast television.”
Ren’s note of alarmism over the Party’s loss of control and influence over media agendas is not entirely new. By the time of the SARS epidemic ten years ago, the notion that Party media were losing (or had lost) the agenda to a new generation of commercial newspapers and magazines like Southern Metropolis Daily, Caijing and The Beijing News in combination with commercial internet portal sites had already become a defining current of mainstream Party thinking on press and propaganda.
This sense of alarm in fact undergirded Hu Jintao’s 2008 press policy of “public opinion channeling”, or yulun yindao (舆论引导), the idea essentially that Party media needed to seize the agenda first and then expand the reach of their reports by using the commercial media, which were viewed as a “resource” for propaganda. Journalists in China have called this policy “grabbing the megaphone,” and these are the ideas that Ren Xianliang fleshes out in his 2010 book.
It’s not at all surprising, perhaps, to see that the sense of alarm has now shifted to social media.
Nor is it surprising that one of Ren’s solutions is a social media version of “grabbing the megaphone.” He writes: “We must promote the idea of Party members and cadres getting online, opening up Weibo accounts and speaking on behalf of the Party and the government, fostering our own group of ‘thought leaders’ on the internet and occupying the new media, this new public opinion front.”
The prospects for influential pro-Party microbloggers seem poor at the moment, however. When I plugged Ren Xianliang’s name into Sina Weibo, supposing with admitted amusement that he hadn’t even opened an account, I found that matters were far worse.
Ren Xianliang, it seems, is himself is a sensitive keyword, yielding only the message that says it all: “According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results for ‘Ren Xianliang’ cannot be shown.”

In April 2013, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un edged his isolated country to the brink of conflict by preparing the launch of missiles on its eastern coast and warning of pending nuclear war against South Korea and its ally the United States. The bellicose actions of North Korea also drew oblique disapproval from its long-time ally China, underscoring its increasing isolation. China’s Global Times newspaper wrote on April 11: “The North Korean regime has to face up to the difficulties in returning to the international community if it refuses to give up its nuclear ambitions. Even if the US and South Korea make concessions, the North still confronts problems such as sanctions and economic obstacles. Concrete moves are needed to solve the current dilemma that the North faces.” In the above cartoon, posted by artist Johnny Won to Sina Weibo (原子漫画), an impish Kim Jong-un, naked but for a childlike superhero cape, stands atop a pedestal and urinates on the United States, Japan and South Korea. Off to one side, China leans on its cane and says, “Stupid child, you’re asking for death.”

In March 2013, the shocking news that more than 15,000 dead pigs had been found floating in the river providing the main source of water for the city of Shanghai was followed with the news that health officials had confirmed several cases of a deadly new virus, H7N9. While China’s government sought to reassure the public that the H7N9 cases had no relation to the dead pigs, many people remained unconvinced. In the above political cartoon, posted to Sina Weibo by an online artist under the alias “Da Wei 29” (大卫29_45177), a chicken is depicted wearing the skin of a pig. The piece is called “Nightmare.”