The following post by Sina Weibo user “Hong Kong Cheng Dong” (香港成东1) was deleted sometime before 8:13 a.m. today, December 20, 2012. The post shares a post made to the China.com website that purports to show images from a protest, apparently (if true) in September this year, by members of the South China Sea Fleet (南海舰队). According to the post, officers of the South China Sea Fleet have protested the sale to a private developer of land set aside for affordable housing for the fleet. The post is unverified, and a number of responses on Sina Weibo, also deleted, called for confirmation. “Hong Kong Cheng Dong” currently has just under 35,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre]

Big things are happening at the South China Sea Fleet, with hundreds of officers making trouble — It’s said that South China Sea Fleet transferred a section of land given to the fleet for the building of affordable housing for officers to a private boss building an auto parts warehouse, and this has prompted resistance from officers who do not have housing. http://t.cn/zjCmxeY

The original Chinese-language post follows:

南海舰队出大事了，数百军官闹事 – 据说南海舰队把给军官建经适房的一块地转让给了老板建汽配城，从而引发了没有住房的转业军官的抗议。 http://t.cn/zjCmxeY

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.

China’s Communist Party leaders are matchless masters of formalized bluster and braggadocio. This is true for the basic reason that learning to live and work (and think) within the Party’s linguistic framework is an absolute necessity for any Chinese official. The Party’s political culture is conditioned by the language officials use — by its tifa (提法), or what we might call its “watchwords” or “New China Newspeak.”
In recent weeks, media have hyped Xi Jinping’s professed drive to reshape the Party’s rigid “working style”, or zuofeng (作风), and its exasperating “language style”, or wenfeng (文风), which puts slavish parroting of Party slogans above down-to-earth speech. And there is now fresh talk in China’s state media about making news coverage of official Party and government activities less rigid and more accessible.

[ABOVE: Is Xi Jinping the cool, casual new task-master of the Chinese Communist Party. Or will he recast the Party’s image in the same old mould?]
But what does this campaign — which of course has its own slogans — actually mean? Are Xi’s apparent efforts real, or is this another flavor-of-the-month Party mobilization, doomed to fizzle into the old, familiar formalism?
Is Xi really a “casual communist” out to shake and remake a rigid bureaucracy increasingly distant from the lives of ordinary people?
Real change is impossible to rule out. But it may be most helpful to refresh our memories about the Party’s history on this issue of language and style — which makes Xi Jinping’s Party makeover at least seem far less fresh.
This is not the first time Party leaders have talked, in the lofty tones to which they are so conditioned, about “reforming language style” (改文风). The talk goes back at least to the Yan’an Talks in 1942, where there were high-minded ideas about “opposing subjectivism to rectify the style of writing” (反对主观主义以整顿文风).
More than 30 years ago, in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, a new sense of alertness to the “fake, exaggerated and empty” nature of media during this decade of terror was the primary driver behind media reform. There was a new emphasis on shorter news stories grounded in facts. This sort of journalism, including critical news reporting and more serious discussion of social issues, was pioneered by papers like China Youth Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Youth League, and by Shanghai’s World Economic Herald.
In the midst of Xi Jinping’s “new” approach to the walk and talk of Chinese politics, this old phrase, jia da kong (假大空), has popped up again.
An article in the Party’s official People’s Daily on Monday remarked changes in “working style” at the Central Economic Work Conference held over the weekend. There were no flowers on the dais, and fewer officials were seated there. Discussions, officials told the paper, were focused on practical questions. Bao Kexin (包克辛), chief executive of the China Grain Reserves Corporation, remarked:

Everyone already abhors things that are false, exaggerated and empty (假大空), so changing our style of work and our style of speaking is a popular sentiment.

In fact, the issue of changing the Party’s “language style” has returned to the official People’s Daily with stubborn persistence over the past three decades.
Back in 2001, the Sixth Plenary Session of the 15th CPC Central Committee issued a “Decision” — written, naturally, in the Party’s uniquely obscure political discourse — in which the issue of “strengthening and improving” the Party’s “working style” was addressed.
On November 23, 2001, the People’s Daily relayed the lessons propaganda leaders had drawn from the buzzword-laden “Decision”:

The Core Group of the Central Propaganda Department learned much from the “Decision,” and it deeply recognizes the importance and urgency of strengthening and improving the Party’s building of its working style. Everyone believes that working style is inextricably linked to language style, that working style determines language style and language style embodies working style. On the basis of serious research into the actual situation regarding propaganda work, they raised a number of specific measures for grasping working style, changing language style and avoiding and opposing formalism (形式主义) — these included opinions on the improvement of news reports on [Party] meetings and leaders events, an area in which breakthroughs have not been made over many years.

This article from more than 11 years ago acknowledges that the Party had tried, and failed (repeatedly), to change the way it works and talks.
That failure is not surprising when you understand CCP discourse as core to the way the Party works. Sloganeering is key to the mobilization approach that drives China’s vast bureaucracy. Leaders define priorities, which are then drummed through the bureaucracy, from the top all the way to the bottom, through slogans that encapsulate those priorities.
When Hu Jintao made pronouncements about “building soft power” in the 2007 political report, even local township leaders jumped on the soft power bandwagon. Now that Xi Jinping has pronounced his intention to make the Party look and feel more in touch, is it any surprise that everyone is jumping on his anti-bandwagon bandwagon?
In Chinese politics, everyone needs to be on the same page. And that’s difficult to accomplish when everyone is reading from a different phrase book. That’s important to remember for those who feel so sure Xi Jinping is throwing that book out the window.
But who knows? Perhaps if enough Party cadres heed Xi Jinping’s call . . .
As a reader’s letter to the People’s Daily said on July 25, 2001, when talk of a change of “style” was also the prevailing weather of the day: “Language style is a kind of ‘breeze,’ and changing our language style demands more than just blowing the breeze. It requires the real and long-term efforts of everyone.”

An article on the front page of the official People’s Daily today serves as a cautionary note to Chinese: the internet is as much a tool of rumor and misinformation as a platform for information sharing, and everyone must be as responsible and law-abiding online as they are offline.
The article, which appears in the “Today’s Topic” column, is at the bottom of the People’s Daily front page. The article is written by “Mo Jinjin,” almost certainly a byline standing in for an official government department.

[ABOVE: In China, those going online should remember there are lines that cannot be crossed, cautions today’s People’s Daily. Photo by “eviltomthai” posted to Flickr.com under Creative Commons license.]
The People’s Daily article has no new significance as a reflection of the Party’s policy on media and information, but it does serve as a reminder that the internet and social media are now a core focus of media controls in China. The article follows a statement earlier this month by the new propaganda chief, Liu Qibao, that China must research ways to strengthen internet controls.
Perhaps the most interesting line in the article (underlined below) is its admission — a rather moderate position on China’s media control spectrum — that it is “impractical” to expect people always to say the “correct” thing.
A translation of the article follows:

“The Internet is Not Outside the Law” (网络不是法外之地)
People’s Daily
December 18, 2012
Page One, “Today’s Topic” column
By Mo Jinjin (莫津津)
“It’s the greatest, but it’s also the most clamorous . . . ” Many people would sympathize with these words as a description of the internet. As a brand new platform, the internet facilitates social interaction, providing information, the sharing of points of views and other things, but at the same time it causes many complications, such as business fraud, malicious attacks and the spreading of rumors.
Rapid development and ease of use, combined with the virtuality and anonymity of the online space, have driven many people to participate online “without giving it any thought.” We must recognize that the online world is not a space beyond the law. Our words online can, whether intentionally or unintentionally, violate the law. Because the damage caused to individuals or to society [by actions online] is not limited to the virtual world. Those who are subjected to fraud, those who are the victims of infringements or attacks, suffer no less than those who harmed in traditional ways.
An open China requires a civilized and healthy online world governed by rule of law. Everyone, whether supervising government bodies or the masses of internet users, must treasure this platform. Demanding that people all use the correct means to say the correct things is not practical, but they must have a consciousness of the law and take responsibility for their words — this is a must. Because regardless of whether online or offline, this is the foundation on which public order and good habits are built.

The following post by Simon Zhou (我是西蒙周), a journalist for Hong Kong Commercial Daily, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 10:33pm yesterday, December 16, 2012. The post is one of a number, all deleted, sharing photos from Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States in February 2012. Simon Zhou currently has just under 70,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre]

[Not such old photographs] Wait a minute . . .

The original Chinese-language post follows:

【不太老的老照片】等一下……

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.

Chinese media reported in mid December 2012 that a migrant worker living under a bridge in the city of Zhengzhou died of exposure to the cold, the second such death of a rural migrant worker (农民工) in China within days. The news prompted debate over the predicament facing migrants from the countryside working (or looking for work) in China’s cities. In the above cartoon, posted by artist Kuang Biao (邝飚) to Sina Weibo, a worker, his body cracked and broken, huddles on the ground to support a naked human figure trying in vain to take flight on feeble wings — a comment on the stark contrast between the official triumphalism of China’s current development and the hardship often suffered by the migrant workers fueling much of China’s development. Kuang Biao reported on Sina Weibo that the cartoon nearly made the cut for his newspaper, Southern Metropolis Daily, but was later left out for unexplained reasons.

The unexplained absence last week of newly-appointed propaganda chief Liu Qibao (刘奇葆) generated a great deal of speculation in Chinese-language media outside China — particularly after reports that Liu’s former second-in-command in Sichuan, Li Chuncheng, is facing corruption charges.
In shades of Xi Jinping’s sudden re-emergence after a strange and troubling absence in September, Liu Qibao reappeared last Friday, according to a report by the official Xinhua News Agency, but with no attempt to explain the gap. Liu made official visits to the Information Office of the State Council and the Ministry of Culture, where he spoke in muddy Party rhetoric (despite Xi Jinping’s calls for fresh language) of “implementing the spirit of the 18th National Congress.”

It may never be clear why Liu Qibao was missing from the public eye for more than a week. Looking at the Xinhua release marking Liu’s return, however, it is clear that the new propaganda chief is so far living up to his image as a hard-liner on media control.
Liu Qibao’s hints on the direction of media policy in China should be weighed carefully against Xi Jinping’s much-touted New Deal on Party rhetoric. Less jargon does not necessarily spell more openness.
In particular, we should note Liu Qibao’s recent call for more “research” on the strengthening of internet controls, ensuring that the “main theme” — in other words, the Party’s line and priorities — are sung loudly in the online space.

“Liu Qibao Demands Research on Strengthening Internet Management”
Xinhua News Agency
December 7, 2012
Liu Qibao . . . Minister of the Central Propaganda Department, made visits to the Ministry of Culture and the Central Foreign Affairs Office [Information Office], emphasizing that the propaganda, ideological and cultural front must take the study and implementation of the spirit of the 18th National Congress of the CCP as the main line of their work, solidly promoting the building of a socialist cultural power, and further promoting a new tide of publicizing and implementing the spirit of the 18th National Congress.
Liu Qibao pointed out that the propaganda, ideological and cultural front lines must act according to the strategic objectives of the Central Committee, this being their chief political task and their cardinal task. [They must be] meticulous in their organization, ensuring real results, explaining profound theories in simple language (深入浅出), working to enter people’s hearts and minds.
Liu Qibao pointed out that [the Party] must deeply research the characteristics and principles of foreign publicity (对外宣传) and international cultural dialogue (对外文化交流), seeking to deepen the channels and methods for work [in propaganda, ideology and culture]. [The Party must] deeply research the strengthening of the building, operation and management of the internet, singing the main theme online.
Luo Shugang (雒树刚), deputy minister of the Central Propaganda Department, and others accompanied [Liu Qibao] on the tour.

The following post by Sina Weibo “News is Already Dead” (新闻已死) was deleted sometime before 8:30 a.m. today, December 10, 2012. The post shares a news page from Taiwan’s Want Daily months ago about a survey from Freedom House in which Taiwan was ranked second in Asia for its degree of press freedom. The article mentions in the subhead that mainland China was 187th in the ranking, coming in near the bottom. The post wryly remarks that at least China is still ahead of countries like North Korea and Myanmar. “News is Already Dead” currently has just under 62,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre]

Number 187, that’s still not bad. At least we’re still ahead of those “golden nations” that neighbor us. This is neither a gift nor an utter shame.

The original Chinese-language post follows:

187名，还好，最起码高于邻邦“金国”。既不知耻，亦不后勇。

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

The following article, shared through Sina Weibo as a text image this week, shares a recent talk given by Wu Si (吴思), a former China Media Project fellow and the editor-in-chief of the liberal journal Yanhuang Chunqiu. In his talk, Wu Si described freedom of expression in China as a building with five levels — starting at the Constitutional ground level and moving up to the odd and unpredictable space of the internet and social media.
Wu’s talk offers a great overview of how media and information control work in China, how much can actually be said (and how much can’t), and why. The writer of the piece summarizes Wu’s remarks, but at points the voice seems to be Wu’s own. For the convenience of our readers, I have separated the portions laying out Wu’s ideas from the introductions and transitions that are clearly the author’s.

Wu Si: The Five Levels of Freedom of Expression in China
Kai Wen (凯文)
December 4, 2012
Wu Si is one of the best-known scholars in mainland China today, and his books Unspoken Rules and Blood Compact have not only netted top sales but have introduced two concepts that have now become effective tools for observing traditional and modern China. At the same time, as the editor-in-chief of Yanhuang Chunqiu magazine, he has a deep understanding of media controls. At a recent event to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the 1982 Constitution, Wu Si used the metaphor of property area to offer a layman’s explanation of the situation with regard to freedom of expression in China today.
Is it true that mainland media have not enjoyed freedom of expression in recent times? There are very different views on this issue in the leadership and the public. In the propaganda dished out by official mouthpieces, modern media [in China] have real and full-fledged freedom of expression; but for those radically opposed [to this idea], the control exercised by official propaganda organs is like an iron curtain, to a large degree killing off the vitality of public opinion. As the editor-in-chief of Yanhuang Chunqiu, Wu Si must frequently deal with controls on expression. In his view, freedom of expression in China can be separated into five levels.

The first level is the pretty scene painted by the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, in which Article 35 stipulates that “citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.” This phrase is often referred to as the “six great freedoms” (六大自由), and no limitations whatsoever are placed upon them [in the language of the Constitution]. On the face of it, this looks very attractive. Applying the metaphor of property area we might say this is 100 square meters [or roughly 1,100 square feet].
Does this 100 square meters exist in truth? No. And the reason lies with the second level: laws and regulations. Wu Si explains in detail the complicated operation of this level.
Despite repeated efforts through twists and turns, a “Press Law” (新闻法) could not take shape [in China], and so this second level is empty, to be filled in with administrative regulations. They stipulate on the one hand who can take part in publishing, who has the right to publish. On the other hand, adminstrative regulations also decide what you can and cannot talk about. [CMP NOTE: In the 1980s there was a real attempt by reformers in China to introduce a law protecting freedom of speech, but these efforts met resistance from hardliners and were scuttled entirely after June 4, 1989.]
One of the most important regulations concerns who can enter the [media] market, which in fact is governed by a system of “supervising and publishing institutions” (主管主办单位制度). What is the system of supervising and publishing institutions? To create a media, you must apply through a supervising institution in order to receive approval. Only provincial and ministerial-level bodies can serve as supervising institutions. You must have a provincial or ministerial-level body submit an application to the General Administration of Press and Publications, and only then will you be accepted and considered for approval. If you are only a private citizen, and are not a branch institution of a provincial or ministerial-level body, then you have no right to submit an application. Through the use of this method, the press freedom of every individual citizen [in China] is in fact null and void — it becomes a right belonging instead to the [official] unit.
Another aspect is what you can say. For the publishing sector, the regulation directly managing the expression space is the “registration of major topics system” (重大选题备案制度). If you want to say something that could have a major impact, you must first report to a higher body and put it on file (上报备案). This applies to major questions of Communist Party history, national history, military history, and anything concerning affairs involving officials now or at any previous time above the “four deputies and two highs” (四副两高) －－ meaning the vice-chairman [of the CCP], vice-premier [of the State Council], vice-chairman of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the judges of the Supreme People’s Court, and the heads of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate. Notice that it specifies “now or at any previous time. That means from Party co-founder Chen Duxiu (陈独秀) all the way down to today. Issues concerning ethnic minorities. Religious issues. Issues concerning the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the international Communist movement. And major topics that might impact social stability. As far as publishing newspapers and magazines goes, if you’re not just talking about pretty things but actually discuss the affairs of the nation, then you could say every single article could be construed as a major topic. In this sense, at least in theory, all of them should be reported and registered.
What does this mean, “report and register” (报备)? China actually has no [prior] news censorship system, at least in name. So if censorship is not permitted, what do you do? You “report and register.” “Report and register” means that we let them know that we are doing a report, and we leave it at that, no need to seek approval. But under China’s system of “report and register” a [prior] censorship system is in fact in operation. But it is not carried out very strictly, and so this is something of a grey area. The reason things are so unclear is that not-so-bad Article 35 of the Constitution we talked about earlier. Article 35 says that Chinese citizens enjoy freedom of speech and of the press. If we didn’t have this language, we could just call [our current system] a censorship system (审批制度). But since there is this article, we can’t call it a censorship system, but call it a report and register system instead. In this way, the language in the Constitution about having 100 square meters of freedom of speech isn’t just empty talk. There is some meaning in it. If this promise hadn’t been made [in the Constitution], everything underneath would have become a lot more direct; there wouldn’t be any need to cover anything up at all. In the process of application [of press controls], the stipulations of the Constitution serve to restrict administrative regulations — a system of censorship becomes a system of report and register.
On the second level, if you talk about pretty and harmless matters you have about 78 square meters. But if you talk about national matters, in fact your expression space shrinks down from 100 square meters at the Constitutional level to about 10 meters.

On the third level of freedom of expression, “administrative orders and bans” (行政命令), Wu Si explains:

When you’re running a newspaper, magazine or website in China you regularly receive certain phone calls to “just say HI” (打招呼). These are administrative orders and bans. They specify what you can say, and what you cannot say. Generally speaking, the things within the scope of those important topics we talked about earlier that need to be reported and registered are difficult to handle in practice, and in fact there is no way to keep a handle on them. So if you bring them up, you bring them up. If you touch them, you touch them. If what you say is in line with the Party line there is generally no problem. If what you say is not in line, only then will someone call to say HI, sending down an order or ban. If everyone is perfectly honest, they know in their hearts where the boundaries are. If you’re a good and well-behaved editor-in-chief, editor or reporter the two side co-exist in harmony. In this situation, the degree of freedom of expression we enjoy is not the 10 square meters dictated by regulations that we saw on Level Two, not that dismal — we might have 20 square meters.

The last two levels owe their thanks to the efforts of bolder journalists and citizens:

On the fourth level there are some newspapers and magazines that are relatively “fierce” (猛), for example Southern Weekend and Southern Metropolis Daily. When they lose an editor [over a sensitive report] they are replaced with another, and through and through they remain “fierce” and are difficult to deal with. And there are magazines, like Caijing, which aren’t under directly managed by any office in the administrative system. They have entered with fuzzy identities, as corporate entities, and managing them isn’t all that easy. Some of these magazines have really strong backstage supporters, and also strong people in front of the stage [editors and reporters]. When both the front and the back of the stage are strong then it is sometimes possible to expand the expression space to around 30 square meters, or even to 50 square meters. This is the sort of expression space we enjoy when we face an editor-in-chief who doesn’t follow the rules so much.
Now for Level Five. To enter [the media] you must have supervising and publishing institutions. But if you open up a Weibo account who are your supervising and publishing institutions? If we hold a discussion forum, who are our supervising and publishing institutions? When you talk “crap” over the dinner table, who manages you? There we have another expression space. To set up a Weibo account you don’t need approval. Of course you might be “pursued cross-province” [for something you said], that kind of thing. If, like the lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, you focus on an issue like re-education through labor, these things can happen. But generally speaking, there is no entry system, and that makes this a very big space. Tens of millions of people have Weibo accounts and it’s impossible to manage them all successfully. So this gives us the freedom we find on Level Five. And this freedom is a bit roomier than what we found on Level Four. Compared to the rather “fierce” editors I just talked about who get maybe between 30 and 50 square meters, the space [on Level Five] maybe gets up to 60-70 quare meters.

Therefore, in Wu Si’s view, the way space for expression in China is structured is quite complex. Freedom of expression is not “total,” but nor is it “nonexistent.” It can be found on all five levels. Freedom of expression is squeezed down from 100 square meters down to 10 square meters, and then it expands back up to 60 or 70 square meters, not as a result of formal policies or official grace but through the resistance of media professionals and ordinary citizens.

Chinese media reported on December 5, 2012, that the Central Discipline Inspection Commission — the Chinese Communist Party’s anti-corruption body — had launched an investigation against Li Chuncheng, the deputy secretary of Sichuan province. Some read the announcement as the first anti-corruption salvo since Xi Jinping spoke out strongly against corruption within the Party last month, and a sign the Party was making good on its promise to tackle corruption. In this cartoon, posted by artist Sun Haifeng (孙海峰) to Sina Weibo (and deleted within several hours), the Party is depicted as a feudal, backward government minister who deals with his own villainy by castrating himself with a knife and bandaging the wound. He then gives the public a V-sign for “victory,” announcing that the anti-corruption campaign is a success. The cartoon speaks to the concerns of pro-reformers, who argue that without real reform to the Party leadership system there is no hope of effectively fighting corruption.

China’s new top leader, Xi Jinping (习近平), seems settled to have settled into the routine of running the world’s most populous country. Just three months ago, however, China’s soon-to-be head honcho was missing for an astonishing two weeks. As China made no attempt to publicly explain Xi Jinping’s absence, speculation ran wild through September, exposing a serious risk and downside to the country’s secretive political system. Had Xi had a stroke? A heart attack? Had his car been attacked by Bo Xilai loyalists?
Xi’s gap this fall has slipped like a memory loss into the unregarded past. There have since been uncorroborated reports that he in fact was hit with a chair during a brawl among Party elites. But the fact is we still don’t know.
Now, apparently, China is experiencing yet another mysterious high-level disappearance. And this time the missing person is the Party’s newly-appointed chief of propaganda, Liu Qibao (刘奇葆).

[ABOVE: Liu Qibao, China’s newly appointed propaganda chief, was suddenly pulled off a planned state visit last week, and there has been no news of him since.]
Formerly the top Party leader in China’s western Sichuan province, Liu was formally appointed head of the Central Propaganda Department last month. He replaced Liu Yunshan (刘云山), who is now on the Politburo Standing Committee.
On November 27, Liu Qibao made his first public appearance as propaganda department chief, addressing a meeting of the Chinese Ballad Singers Association. According to the official People’s Daily, Liu urged his audience to “make the lives of ordinary people the subject of their works.”
The same day, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported that Liu Qibao would make official visits to North Korea, Laos and Vietnam from November 29 to December 2.
But Hong Kong media reported on Friday that Liu had not made the trip as planned, and there was no official explanation from China about the sudden change.
Four days later there is still no news of Liu Qibao, the man who now oversees China’s news machine.
Searches for “Liu Qibao” on Sina Weibo return no results after November 29, though no message indicates a keyword block on his name. The last result is a post including among other unrelated notes that Liu Qibao will not be going overseas “due to work.”
One Sina Weibo user commented: “Liu Qibao has been replaced on the overseas trip by [National People’s Congress Vice Chairman] Li Jianguo. That’s really strange!”
“Where has Liu gone?” another queried.
“Li Jianguo is going in his place. I’ll bet he’s sick,” another ventured a guess.
This could, of course, be nothing. But that just leaves behind another great big question: if it’s nothing why does China say nothing?