Public anger has grown in China lately over rampant corruption and the phenomenon of the “naked official,” the corruption government official who has managed to send his family members and (probably ill-gotten) assets overseas. The English-language Global Times reported recently that Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has worked to establish an anti-corruption network among its member nations to help deal with the “trans-boundary effects of corruption”. In the following cartoon, posted anonymously to Sina Weibo and shared widely by celebrity users like writer Li Chengpeng (李承鹏) before being deleted by web censors, corrupt officials in black suits rip apart the ship of state to construct their own private escape rafts, causing the nation to sink. Li Chengpeng wrote of the cartoon in his deleted post: “I’d like to know who drew this, and what it is titled. I found this on Weibo, and some people had called it “Leaving China”. I’ve given it the title, “The Ocean Journey Requires Cutting Away” (大海航行靠切割). Is there a better title? This cartoon says more than a three-volume novel series.”

As we approach the critical one-week anniversary of the floods in Beijing last Saturday that claimed at least 77 lives, according to the latest official numbers — and as Chinese continue to heap criticism on the government via social media — China’s propaganda leaders are moving aggressively to contain negative coverage.
On July 22, China’s Central Propaganda Department sent down an order instructing news media to “reduce the number of reports on Beijing’s flood disaster, uphold positive reporting, and not engage in news reporting or editorials that reflect back.” Reflecting back refers in particular to coverage that asks harder questions — such as whether the response by the government was quick enough, or whether enough was done to build up essential infrastructure.
In the intervening days, authorities have actively enforced these propaganda directives. Eight pages of special flood-related coverage planned for yesterday’s edition of Southern Weekly were killed by officials. Images of proofs of some of the deleted pages were shared on social media, but quickly removed by web censors.

Searches for “Southern Weekly” on Sina Weibo today returned the boilerplate warning: “According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, search results for ‘Southern Weekly’ cannot be shown.” Even more interesting, searches combining the keywords “Southern Weekly” and “proof” returned today’s official Weibo coverage from People’s Daily commemorating those who died in the flooding:

As our deleted posts archive at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre shows, microblog posts critical of the government’s handling of the floods have been actively and constantly removed from Sina Weibo. Here are just a handful:

Example Deleted Weibo Flood Post 1
Example Deleted Weibo Flood Post 2
Example Deleted Weibo Flood Post 3
Example Deleted Weibo Flood Post 4

Beijing propaganda authorities even reportedly sent out a specific order for the wholesale deletion of “Totem,” a blog commentary on the Beijing floods by well-known writer Li Chengpeng (李承鹏) that was shared widely across Chinese social media.
But what exactly does it mean for Chinese media to “emphasize positive news“? And how does this play out in practice? Here is a brief snapshot of today’s warm and friendly coverage.
At Beijing Announcements (北京发布), the official microblog of the information office of the Beijing government, internet users are treated to a slideshow of positivity. Children happily playing in front of temporary shelters, soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army clearing mud away with their bare hands.

One of the stories on page A12 of today’s edition of The Beijing News, “‘Suffering Hero’ Smiles as He Receives His Disaster Relief” (领到救灾物资 “委屈英雄”笑了), tells the story of Zhao Lupo (赵露泼).
A migrant worker from Anhui province, Zhao Lupo is called “the wronged hero,” a reference to suggestions in news coverage earlier this week that Zhao, who acted commendably to help others in the midst of the floods, had been denied relief supplies from the village where he lived because he is not a local villager — which is to say he does not have a local hukou [See this related piece from China Labour Bulletin].

Local village officials have denied discriminating against non-locals — who would generally vastly outnumber locals in such places — and the article in The Beijing News seems to suggest things are all patched up as Zhao, smilingly, receives the relief that is his do. This is an interesting case of a slightly more ambiguous “positive” news story, a smile with just a hint of trouble. But the message is that all is well now, that it was all a misunderstanding.
A story running vertically to the right of the page opposite this one is a brazen feel-good story, that of the “golden haired” dog “Wei Wei” (未未), who helped retrieve items from the flood waters.

The positive stories continue in the Beijing Times, like The Beijing News a former national-level newspaper that transferred to the control of the Beijing city leadership last year. The front page of the Beijing Times, it should be noted, is more provocative than that of its Party counterpart, the official Beijing Daily.
The latter, as you can see below, does place news of the revised death toll of 77 in the center of the page, but it is squeezed in among news about increased “stability preservation” ahead of the 18th Party Congress and the resolute action of leaders to increase disaster relief. Crucially, the main headline at center emphasizes that this was a “natural disaster”, or ziran zaihai (自然灾害).

Additionally, an emotional piece of propaganda under the news report at center on the revised death toll calls for remembrance with this opening line: “The list of those who died in the large-scale natural disaster on July 21 has been released. Let us express our profound condolences to our brethren who were lost, and our highest esteem to the heroes who gave their lives!”
The front-page treatment at the Beijing Times is strikingly different. The whole page is dominated by the names of those who died in the recent floods, set off by rectangular boxes. At center, the bold black headline “77 Dead.”

The bold front-page layout is about as far as the Beijing Times deviates from the official playing of the flood story, however. A story on A16 bears the almost comical headline: “That Mountain * That Person * That Dog.” It is like a pointing finger that says: “Don’t look over there at those negative things — look here at all of these positive and uplifting stories.”

On July 21, rainfall in the district of Fangshan approached level not seen in 500 years, resulting in three types of natural disasters, high water levels, flash flooding and mudslides. Economic damage is estimated at 6.1 billion yuan, and 800,000 people were affected.
In this heartless natural disaster, some people lost their homes, others lost their loved ones. Perhaps they have felt despair and terror, but seeing those surging acts of love, their pain will lessen substantially.

The typically daring Southern Metropolis Daily, down in the southern city of Guangzhou, carries nothing whatsoever about the floods on its front page today. The top story is a call by Guangdong’s top leader, Wang Yang (汪洋), for cities in the province to beef up their e-commerce platforms. Coming second is the news that Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Chongqing leader and prominent “princeling” Bo Xilai, has been formally charged in the murder of British national Neil Heywood.

On Page 2 of the paper, a soft-gloved editorial attempts to push against controls on the flood story, saying that “openness should be the rule, and secrecy the exception.” A second opinion piece bears the headline: “The Number of Dead is Not ‘A Sensitive Issue’“.
News of the adjusted death toll is pushed back to page 6 at Southern Metropolis Daily, buried in the middle of nine pages of advertising. This flood of advertising pages front-loading the newspaper could suggest that other planned reports were pulled and replaced with advertising.
Finally, on page 14, the newspaper runs the full Xinhua News Agency release on the adjusted death toll.
Tomorrow, we can probably anticipate more overwhelming positivity. Black news pages of commemoration, but little or no real exploration.

On July 21, 2012, Beijing was hit with what state media called the most severe rains in more than 60 years. At least 37 people died in floods that crippled the city, according to official numbers up to July 26, 2012 — but Chinese on social media argued that the real death toll was much higher. Harsh criticism turned on the insufficient attention to basic infrastructure in the city under rapid development. In this cartoon by Will Luo (罗杰), published in the July 25 edition of China’s official English-language China Daily, two construction contractors are shown at work with their “Beijing city planning” blueprints. In the initial long view at left, a large skyscraper is visible above ground, and the assistant holding a black umbrella says: “It’s gone up really fast!” In the second close-up view, at right, it becomes clear the two men are up to their waists in rainwater, and the assistant clarifies his statement: “I mean, the flood waters are coming up really fast.”

The following post by Wang Wei (王巍), an expert on mergers and acquisitions, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 12:13pm today, July 26, 2012. Wang Wei currently has just under 1.6 million followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].

Right now Chang’an Avenue makes me recall SARS [in 2003]. The principal crossroads all have police cars with flashing lights. The roads are clear, and restaurants where there are usually lines to get in have no customers at all. Everyone has gone home, and the city is silent. The roads are tangled with the question of how a young lives can drown on the road in the center of the city, and how scores or even more residents can have their lives washed away in the city that was host to the [2008] Olympic Games.

The following is the original Chinese post:

此刻长安街，想起非典时期。主要路口都有警车闪烁蓝光，一路疏通，平时排队的饭店也没有客人了。人都回家了，城市也空寂了很多。一路上纠结着何以一个年轻有为的生命居然淹死在市中心路上，几十个甚至更多的居民竟然在奥运会主办城市中被大雨带走生命。牛气哄哄的首都也就能被水给治了。

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.

Rains pummeling the Chinese capital of Beijing on Saturday, July 21, and which state media said were the worst in 60 years, caused serious flooding through the city and surrounding areas. According to official numbers, the death toll from the flooding stood at 37 as of July 25, 2012. But as the city braced itself for more rain, web users attacked the city government on social media for not doing enough to build up basic infrastructure and prepare the city for events like this. In this cartoon, posted to Sina Weibo by Mao Ni’er (猫妮儿), titled “Asking for a Day Off” (求放假), two Chinese struggle through a violent thunderstorm. The text on the dark thundercloud reads: “On July 25, Beijing will see more huge storms”. The caption under the figures reads: “Won’t bosses with a conscience please let [workers] off for a day. In Beijing, when it rains PEOPLE DIE!”

The rise of social media in China has brought a burst of communication in the country. In the midst of the recent Beijing floods, for example, tens of thousands of posts on platforms like Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo shared local eyewitness accounts, snapshots and video in real time.
But social media have of course also become a new platform for the playing out of longstanding ideological divisions in China.
In a post late last night, freelance writer Wang Pei (王佩) made a post to Sina Weibo about the erection of a statue of Mao Zedong (among other world figures) in the southern French city of Montpellier.

Just after 2am this morning, veteran China Youth Daily photojournalist He Yanguang (贺延光), a past CMP fellow, re-posted Wang Pei’s original post, and added:

Why don’t they just add Hitler, Mussolini, [Japanese military leader] Tojo Hideki, Stalin, Pol Pot, Nicolae Ceauşescu and Kim Il Sung together with him?
也连带着把希特勒、墨索里尼、东条英机、斯大林、波尔布特、齐奥塞斯库、金日成的雕像一起弄去吧？

He Yanguang’s association of Mao Zedong with this list of historical tyrants, murderers and war criminals — Tojo Hideki, it should be noted is buried at the Yasukuni Shrine, a constant source of Sino-Japanese friction — quickly drew fury from leftist defenders of Mao Zedong’s legacy as a liberator of the Chinese people.
The Weibo user “Internationale” (英特那雄纳尔), whose name is a reference to the official anthem of the Socialist International, fumed in response to He’s post:

It is clearly written in the Party Constitution that we must take “Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory and the ‘Three Represents'” as our personal guides to action. China Youth Daily was created by the founding fathers Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. @HeYangguang, a journalist at China Youth Daily, has clearly insulted our founding leader, Mao Zedong. He has classed Mao together with fascists and war criminals, and his motives are execrable. I strongly call for the removal of this unprincipled journalist He Yanguang! Everyone pass on this call!
中青报是毛泽东周恩来等开国元勋创立的，@贺延光 身为中青报的记者公然侮辱开国领袖毛泽东，把毛与法西斯战犯相提并论，其心可诛，强烈建议开除无良记者@贺延光 ！呼吁大家转起！

Many Weibo users did pass on the call from “Internationale”, including a user called “Lao Jiu” who added to his re-post the tag for “Peaceful Beijing” (平安北京), the official Weibo of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau.
Here we find, in the dawning age of social media in China, what we might call Maoist atavism. Social media are used as a contemporary, real-time tool to politically attack and shame one’s perceived ideological enemies — not at all unlike the so-called “struggle sessions” of the Mao era.
These are, we might say, “micro-struggle sessions”, or wei pidou (微批斗).
Here are some of the comments trailing behind the original post by “Internationale”:

1. Sina still hasn’t harmonized his [He Yanguang’s] post.
2. This bastard can be a journalist at China Youth Daily?
3. Just as you said, his parents were from landlord families.
4. He should have been fired long ago. This isn’t the first or second time he has opposed the Chinese Communist Party.
5. Who exactly is China Youth Daily speaking for? He Yanguang, this clown!
6. The [political] standpoint of the China Youth Daily has always been a problem.
7. China Youth Daily is an organ of the Chinese Communist Youth League of the CCP. [We] strongly call for the removal of He Yanguang, this performing buffoon.

The following post by Gong Xiaoyue (龚晓跃), a veteran Chinese journalist and former CMP fellow, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 6:24am today, July 24, 2012. The post is a tongue-in-cheek criticism of the official handling of floods in Beijing and of the ruling Party’s handling of a number of crises of reportedly historic proportions. In the midst of serious flooding in Beijing last Friday, official state media in China said the floods were the worst in more the 60 years. This assertion was contested by journalists and experts on social media, who turned sharp criticism on the city’s lack of preparedness. Gong Xiaoyue currently has just over 143,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].

. . . Many thanks to this once-in-5,000-years government for allowing us to experience so many worst-in-a-century things in such a short period of time.

The original Chinese post follows:

紫薇同学还是那么凌厉。那谁说的？多谢这五千年一遇的政府，让我们在短暂的一生里居然经历了这么多的百年一遇。

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 post by Wang Wei (王巍), an executive at Mergers China, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 3:54pm today, July 20, 2012. The post deals with the upcoming first anniversary of the July 23, 2011, high-speed rail crash in Wenzhou. A government report on the tragedy, promised within several months, has still not been released to this day. Wang Wei currently has just over 1.56 million followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].

The anniversary of the July 23 [high-speed rail crash] approaches. My piece “Wang Si Tiao” (王四条) [about this issue] was shared around 50,000 times before dying. I demanded that the high-speed rail system be suspended pending an investigation, that legal proceedings replace administrative proceedings, assisting outside intermediary organizations in thoroughly investigating and auditing all high-speed rail tofu engineering projects, etcetera. This is a basic demand of civil society and the information age, but the result has been that it this [issue] has been dropped into a dark and bottomless pit. Can such a huge price in human lives be forgotten and harmonized? Can this be borne by a handful of people like [former railway minister] Liu Zhijun?

The original Chinese post follows:

723事件马上也周年了。我写的＂王四条＂瞬间转发了近五万次后阵亡。要求高铁立即停驶调查、用法律起诉代替行政处理、借助外部中介机构审计和清查所有高铁动车的豆腐渣工程等。这是公民社会和信息时代的起码要求，结果都掉进无底黑洞。这么大的生命代价会被遗忘被历史和谐吗？刘志军几个人就承担了？

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 post by Chinese economist Hang Zhiguo (韩志国), was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 3:23pm today, July 20, 2012. The post, made way back on August 23, 2011, draws three fundamental lessons from the fall of “tyrannical regimes” in the Middle East and North Africa — the so-called “Arab Spring” of 2010-2011. It was presumably deleted in the midst of intensified discussion on Chinese social media following China’s United Nations Security Council veto of proposed sanctions against Syria. Hang Zhiguo currently has just under four million followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].

[Three Warnings from the Collapse of Tyrannical Rule] 1. Do not over-estimate one’s own ability. When Saddam [Hussein] was in power, he received 100 percent of the vote in every election, but with the collapse [of his regime] he could only hide out in a rat hole. 2. Never trust in the loyalty of your dogs. The underlings of Saddam, Mubarak and Gaddafi were all trusted followers, but they all scattered before the tree even fell. 3. Do not underestimate the force of the people. It is difficult to maintain public opinion in the midst of intense repression, and the demands of the people cannot be deceived, disrespected or neglected!

The original Chinese post follows:

【 独裁统治崩盘的三大警示 】 1、不要高估自己的能量。萨达姆在位时,每次选举得票率都是100%,但一朝崩溃,只有钻老鼠洞的份。2、不要相信走狗的忠诚。萨达姆、穆巴拉克、卡扎菲的手下都是亲信,但树还没倒就猢狲已散。3、不要轻视民众的力量。高压手段难抵民心民意,民众的诉求不可欺不可辱不可怠！

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.