The following post criticizing censorship was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 5:32pm Hong Kong time today, June 4, 2012. The post was made by Zha Liangjun (查良钧), who currently has just over 13,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
Zha Liangjun’s post, in which “all of you” refers to Chinese leaders, reads as follows:

Do all of you really believe that by plucking off every flower petal you can keep Spring from coming?

Zha’s original Chinese post follows:

你们以为掐掉所有绽放的花朵，春天就不会来么？

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 about the social consequences of violent enforcement of urban regulations, particularly against migrant populations in China, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 10:32am Hong Kong time today, June 4, 2012. The post was made by scholar Cui Weiping (崔卫平), who currently has just under 77,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
Cui Weiping’s post reads as follows:

Nothing that happens disappears lightly, but rather it conditions our life in this world. A massive secret becomes a vast void. Long silences emerge as new histories and responsibilities. Aren’t certain things, when avoided, the avoidance of certain important things? How far exactly have our morals slid? How deep is our spiritual fall?

Cui’s post is accompanied with a lengthy text-as-image file topped with a photo showing a young boy who seems to be seething with anger as he is apparently forced up against a wall by urban enforcement officers, or chengguan (城管), who are tasked with dealing with unlicensed peddlers in China’s cities, “illegal” construction and other matters. According to the description, the boy is the son of a migrant woman who has just been dragged away by the officers. The crying girl just visible behind the boy is his sister, according to the text file. The men in uniform standing behind the children wear different hats denoting different government offices.

Cui Weiping’s original Chinese post follows:

所有发生过的，都不会轻易消失，会成为我们在这个世界上生活的前提。某个巨大的秘密会成为一个巨大的虚空。长期的沉默构成了另外一些历史和责任。回避了某件事情，是不是也回避了另外一些重要的事情？到底我们道德尺度滑出了多远。我们在精神上的沦陷有多深？

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 oblique joke about online censorship on the occasion of the 23rd anniversary of the June 4th, 1989, crackdown on demonstrators in Beijing, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 3:02am Hong Kong time today, June 4, 2012. The post was made by journalist Chen Baocheng (陈宝成), who currently has more than 60,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
Chen Baocheng’s joke goes as follows:

WOMAN: I miss you, why don’t you come to my place tonight?
MAN: Oh, is your husband away on a business trip?
WOMAN: He’s working overtime tonight deleting posts [on social media] and so he can’t come home. He’ll be busy through to tomorrow.

Chen Baocheng’s original Chinese post follows:

女：想你，晚上来我家吧。男：怎么，你男朋友出差了？女：他今夜加班删贴回不来，得忙到后天呢.

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 piece is a response to a May 29, 2012, editorial in the Chinese-language Global Times called “Fighting Corruption is a Crucial Battle for Chinese Society”. The article created a sensation last week on China’s internet, where some portals used an altered headline: “China Must Permit Moderate Corruption, the Public Should Understand”. The term “moderate corruption,” or shidu fubai (适度腐败), quickly became an online buzzword, drawing scorn from many Chinese.
On the Global Times take on the issue of corruption, response to Web user 1: It is all true to say [as the Global Times editorial does] that, to varying degrees, all countries in the world have corruption, that in China it is relatively serious, and that at present there is no way to utterly root it out. Some web users believe that the Global Times . . . has spoken the truth, that it is like the courageous child pointing out that the emperor’s news clothes [are a fraud]. But this isn’t where the problem lies. The problem lies in the conclusion the paper comes to after it has pointed out that the emperor is wearing no clothes — that the naked emperor is pleasing to look upon. They have broken through the floor of universal human values.
On the Global Times take on the issue of corruption, response to Web user 2: Some official media go even faster and farther than the authorities in challenging universal values, as though they are testing the intelligence and patience of the people. Monopoly media that go unchecked are not an outgrowth of freedom of speech, but rather brainwashing propaganda, a hotbed of fascism. If we do not refute them, they will someday reach the following conclusion — that in fact rape exists in all countries, that it cannot be utterly eliminated, and therefore a moderate level of rape is reasonable, something that women who are raped should understand and accept.
On the Global Times take on the issue of corruption, response to Web user 3: We must remember that there are certain lines that humanity must not cross. All countries in the world have corruption, but our official media, the Global Times, is the only to have put into words the idea that the people should understand and accept corruption! There are cheats in every nation, but no cheat harmed more people than [the official] People’s Daily newspaper during the Great Leap Forward, when it printed fake news about historic harvests. There are some lines that our official media must respect, otherwise our country and our people have no hope!
On the Global Times take on the issue of corruption, response to Web user 4: If our country is to jumpstart political reform and take to the road anew, then this must begin with freedom of speech. Only if the people are permitted to speak can consensus values emerge from among the people. Over the years, value concepts that are generally accepted by humanity have quietly and steadily found a place [in China], and even Party and government leaders have increasingly accepted them, but still time and again we see words that challenge the basic threshold of humanity emerging from our official media, always anonymously. Really, who are they?
On the Global Times take on the issue of corruption, response to Web user 5: There are also tabloid newspapers in the West that publish unreliable information and sensational accounts, but these newspapers cannot become the mainstream, and even less can they obtain the support of government, having a monopoly on discourse power. The key of course is that their readers are few. But in China the Global Times has a massive circulation, and some young people take to it like a drug. So ultimately we cannot entirely blame the Global Times. The readers determine the nature of the medium. Happy Children’s Day.
[This is a translation of a post Yang Hengjun made to his blog on June 1, 2012.]

The following post on alleged police violence posted by Zhang Zhou (张洲), a Chinese film director, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 5:39am Hong Kong time today, June 1, 2012. Zhang currently has more than 75,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
Zhang Zhou’s post includes the following photograph apparently showing a Chinese police officer pinning a woman to the pavement by placing his knee on her neck.

Zhang writes:

A policeman locking his knee into a woman’s neck and looking coldly at her — this photo definitely has the potential to win the Pulitzer Prize for best news photo.

Lei Yi’s original Chinese post follows:

执法者将膝盖顶在一名妇女的脖子上，轻蔑而冷漠的看着她——这张照片绝对有获《普利策新闻摄影奖》的资质

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 of the key strategies of China’s Party leadership in enforcing media controls — under the information policy mandate of “public opinion guidance“, or yulun daoxiang (舆论导向) — has been to restrict the source of news production. This is why the Party prevents online news portals from reporting news independently, forcing them to rely instead on the aggregation of news reported by traditional media, including China’s new generation of market-driven newspapers.
Web portals operated by companies like Sina, Sohu and Tencent cannot maintain their own teams of news reporters. That’s why comedian Zhao Benshan (赵本山) committed a major comic faux pas back in 2010 when when he played out a routine for the annual Spring Festival on China Central Television in which ordinary peasants in the countryside were interviewed by a pair of men introducing themselves as “online journalists” working for a fictional Sohu.com program called “Seeking the Root of the Matter” (刨根问底).

[ABOVE: Comedian Zhao Benshan (second from left) is interviewed by fictional “online journalists” during a skit for the official 2010 Spring Festival Gala.]
As though to fire home the point that reporting restrictions for online media were no laughing matter, the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) — the government agency that licenses journalists and publications — reiterated on February 22, 2010, that websites in China were not eligible for press cards, and therefore had no right to carry out interviews or gather news.
The word in Chinese is caifang (采访), which can mean “interview,” “report” or, more broadly, “gather information.” The GAPP official said websites, or anyone without proper press accreditation, had no “right to interview,” or caifangquan (采访权).
Restricting the “right to interview” to traditional media is politically safer because magazines and newspapers, whether Party run or market-driven, are all part of the official press genealogy. Even market-driven newspapers must have “sponsoring institutions,” which help to ensure political discipline. [For more background on this, please read our post: “How Chinese media relate to power“].
Commercial web portals, which are situated outside the extended Party press family, cannot be trusted with the precious “right to report.”
However, as we’ve emphasized again and again, confusion and complexity are the order of the day in China’s media environment. Just as traditional media — and particularly commercial publications — have exploited the gaps in order to push news coverage further, so have commercial websites tested the limits.
One of the best recent examples of this is Tencent’s Living (活着) series, which manages to offer quality investigative news in pictorial form.
On May 28, Living ran an investigative photo series about China’s national network of illegal kidney suppliers.
We encourage readers to visit the series themselves, but we offer a taste below of how it begins, slide by slide. Brother Sam (山姆哥), incidentally, is the alias for a well-known Chinese investigative reporter, about which we will say no more.

SLIDE 1
From May 14 to 28, 2012, Tencent news photographers went undercover to an illegal kidney sourcing facility in Hangzhou posing as individuals wanting to sell their kidneys, recording the entire process . . . The kidney sales network extends across the country, operating as an efficient assembly line. The price for a single kidney domestically is 35,000 yuan. By Brother Sam (山姆哥) and Cao Zongwen (曹宗文), Editor Wang Wei (王崴)

[ABOVE: The opening slide of QQ.com’s photo report on China’s national kidney sales network. The story’s lead is shown below the photograph..]
SLIDE 2
The kidney selling location in this undercover investigation is located at the intersection of Linding Road (临丁路) and Tiandu Road (天都路) in Hangzhou’s Jianggan District (江干区). From the outside things look perfectly normal, and no one would ever guess that here lives a group of young people who hope to sell their own kidneys. Every year in China the lives of close to one million people rely on dialysis; but in the past year, legal kidney transplant procedures numbered only 4,000. The massive demand has led to the emergence of underground kidney donation, and built up an illegal network of explosive profits.

[ABOVE: Young Chinese wait in a Hangzhou facility, where they hope to sell their kidneys for 35,000 yuan. .]

Continue reading the story from Tencent’s Living (活着) series HERE.

As we edge closer to the 18th Party Congress and its important leadership transition, one of the most crucial things to watch is how the debate over “political system reforms”, or zhengzhi tizhi gaige (政治体制改革), shapes up in China’s press. A key related issue, of course, will be the fight against corruption.
During his July 1, 2011, speech to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, readers may remember [Qian Gang’s analysis here], President Hu Jintao (胡锦涛) said that the Party needed to fight corruption seriously and effectively, or risk losing the support of the people.
But Hu’s speech itself showed an abundance of caution. He offered no concrete answers, not even new political buzzwords — suggesting no one in the leadership had the upper hand and that the battle lines were silently being drawn. He made no mention whatsoever, for example, of the issue of officials reporting their assets (even internally), which has been tossed about for years. He made no mention of the role of press supervision, or “supervision by public opinion” (舆论监督), in holding officials to account.
Throwing up one more for the political reform debate file this year, the Global Times ran an editorial yesterday called, “Fighting Corruption is a Crucial Battle for Chinese Society”. The editorial essentially argued that while corruption is a key issue and should be fought aggressively, the Chinese public should manage their expectations, understanding that thoroughly eliminating corruption is impossible.

[ABOVE: The May 29, 2012, lead editorial in the Global Times addresses corruption and political reform.]
Re-posting the editorial yesterday, major web portals, including QQ.com, rewrote the headline of the Global Times as: “China Must Permit Some Corruption, the Public Should Understand“.
The altered headline itself prompted a great deal of debate on Chinese social media. “QQ.com has spoken the true import of the Global Times editorial,” one user responded.
Addressing the issue this morning, Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin (胡锡进) wrote on his own Weibo account:

The headline for yesterday’s Global Times editorial was, “Fighting Corruption is a Crucial Battle for Chinese Society.” In reposting the editorial, QQ.com maliciously changed the headline to, “China Must Permit Some Corruption, the Public Should Understand”, misleading readers. The Global Times can be criticized, but if this sort of arm-twist editing is encouraged and imitated, this would be to the detriment of public opinion in China. I hope all web editors across the country to not err in opposing this way of doing things.

[ABOVE: The Global Times editorial appears on QQ.com with the altered headline.]
I encourage readers to make their own judgements about the Global Times editorial. A full translation follows:

“Fighting Corruption is a Crucial Battle for Chinese Society” (反腐败是中国社会发展的攻坚战)
Global Times
May 29, 2012
Yesterday it was announced that former railway ministry chief and ministry Party secretary Liu Zhijun (刘志军) has been formally expelled from the Chinese Communist Party. He is suspected of crimes and has been transferred to judicial authorities for handling according to the law. This news has once again rattled the public sensitive nerves on the issue of corruption. Nationally, news about the fall of corrupt officials has come out again and again, giving people the impression that there is wave upon wave of corrupt [officials]. The government arrests corrupt officials, but they keep on coming. So what is going on here?
China is clearly in the midst of a period of high corruption, and the conditions for entirely removing corruption are not in place. Some people say, all we need is to “democratize” and the issue of corruption can be resolved. This view, however, is naive. There are many “democratic countries” in Asia, such as Indonesia, the Philippines and India, where the problem of corruption is more severe than in China. But China is perhaps the country in Asia right now where “the pain of corruption” is felt most keenly.
This has to do with China’s political moral code of “serving the people”, which is lodged in the hearts of the whole society. But in fact, the market economy has upset the implementation [of this moral code], and officials that shrug it off or even betray it continue to emerge through various cracks in our system. China is a country where globalization runs deep, and the high standards of clean [governance] of developed nations have already been acknowledged by the Chinese public. Under the forced compression into the Chinese public opinion environment of this information stemming from different times and contexts, there is no way of release from the pain and entanglement.
There is no way in any country to “root out” corruption. Most critical is containing it to a level acceptable to the public. And to do this is, for China, especially difficult.
In Singapore and Hong Kong salaries are high, and in the United States most candidates [for public office] are wealthy. Generally, after someone comes to office they gather a reputation and resources that enable them to take various “revolving doors” after they have left office, cashing in on these resources. But in China all of these roads are closed off.
Public opinion in China would not support a general raising of official salaries. And the system does not permit the use of personal influence and connections to make major money after an official finishes serving. And allowing the rich to serve as officials would cause people to feel something is amiss. The legal wages of Chinese officials are quite low, and a number of local officials use “unspoken rules” (潜规则) to enrich themselves.
The entire society in China has to some extent today become “ruled by the unspoken” (潜规则化). Doctors, teachers and others involved in public welfare industries are also working by “unspoken rules.” Many have legal wages that are low, but earn “grey income” (灰色收入).
It is not clear where the boundaries of these “unspoken rules” are. This is one of the reasons why corruption cases are so numerous. There is a popular saying now that, “The law cannot be enforced when everyone is an offender” (法不责众). Once an official takes this idea to heart, and believes that “other people are doing the same thing,” then he becomes extremely dangerous.
We must severely crack down on those who are corrupt, never appeasing them. This will substantially raise the dangers and costs of corruption, and serve the necessary deterrent role. The government must make mitigating corruption it biggest governing objective.
The public must firmly increase supervision by public opinion [i.e., monitoring of power by voicing views, particularly through the media], raising the impetus in pushing forward with the fight against corruption. But the public must also understand, on this great road, the objective fact and reality that China has no way of entirely suppressing corruption without sending the whole country into pain and confusion.
In saying these things, we don’t at all mean to suggest that fighting corruption is not important, that it can to put off. Quite the opposite, we believe that the fight against corruption should become the chief problem to be addressed by political reform in China, and that it is a common pursuit of the whole country.
We also believe that fighting corruption is not entirely something that can be “fought”, nor is it something that can be entirely “reformed.” It’s resolution relies at the same time on “development”. It is a question of individual officials, and a question of the system — but that’s not the entire story. It is also a question of the “overall development level” (综合发展水平) of Chinese society.
Fighting corruption is a difficult task in China’s social development. But its victory relies at the same time on the elimination of other obstructions in other areas of battle. China can’t conceivably be in a situation where it is a country behind in all other areas, but where its officials are really clean. Even if that were possible, it would not be sustainable. Fighting corruption is a point of breakthrough for China. But this country ultimately can only “move forward in a comprehensive manner” (综合前进).

The following post by Lei Yi (雷颐), a well-known Chinese historian with just under 108,000 followers, was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 1:32am Hong Kong time today, May 30, 2012. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
Lei Yi’s post, which refers to the Chinese Communist Party simply as “it” (它), criticizes the suggestion that China is unsuited to “democratic politics” (民主政治) because the “character” (素质) of Chinese people is too low.

More than 60 years ago, it firmly avowed that the character of Chinese people was already suited to democratic politics. Several years later, it grabbed hold of political power. Now, it firmly avows that the character of the Chinese people is too low, that democratic politics cannot be carried out. The facts avow that its more than 60 years of rule has sent the character of the Chinese people into a downward slide, to the point that disqualified from exercising democratic politics.

Lei Yi’s original Chinese post follows:

六十好几年前，它坚决承认中国人民的素质已经可以实行民*主政治。几年后，它夺取了政权。现在，它坚持认为中国人的素质太低，还不能实行民*主,事实上承认，它执政的六十余年，使中国人民的素质下降了，至少下降到无资格实行民*主政治的水平。

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.

On May 28, 2012, new management regulations took effect for Sina Weibo, one of China’s most popular social media sites, as part of an intensifying government crackdown on social media in the country. According to the regulations, users logging more than 5 posts of “sensitive information” would be prevented from posting for 48 hours and have the relevant content deleted. Further, those users posting “sensitive content” with “malicious intent” would be prevented from posting for more than 48 hours and face the possibility of having their account terminated. As of May 29, Sina had recruited close to 6,000 “community committee members” who would be tasked with monitoring posts and determining punishments. The English-language Global Times quoted Beijing lawyer Wang Zhengyu as saying the committee lacked legitimacy: “Only the courts, not microblogging service providers, have the right to judge the authenticity of the content and decide what online behavior infringes on others’ rights or are in violation of Chinese laws.” In the above cartoon, posted by artist Kuang Biao (邝飚) to Sina Weibo, a distressed Chinese internet user prepares to feed a “post” by hand into his computer as a sharp blade hovers at the top of the screen, ready to fall.