A leadership change announced today at the top of one of China’s most important media groups, the Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily Media Group, could herald new troubles ahead for its longstanding culture of relative editorial independence.
According to a news report from Caixin Media today — which happens to be World Press Freedom Day — the position of party secretary at the Nanfang Daily Media Group will now be held by Yang Jian (杨健), who serves also as a deputy minister in Guangdong’s provincial propaganda department.
This is the first time a top position at the group will be held by an “outsider,” sources say, and the first time the top positions — party secretary (党委书记) and director (社长) — will be held separately.
“There were several attempts in the past to install Party officials at the top level of the Nanfang Daily Group, but these attempts were always successfully opposed by the group,” one former top editor told CMP.

[ABOVE: Yang Jian, former deputy propaganda minister of Guangdong and previously head of Xinhua News Agency’s Guangdong bureau, will take over as party secretary of the Nanfang Daily Media Group.]
In the past, the top positions at the Nanfang Daily Media Group have been held by a single individual emerging from within the group and respectful of its unique, often pioneering character as a news organization. Former directors like Fan Yijin (范以锦), who participated in the launch of professionally-inclined newspapers like Southern Weekend and The Beijing News, have commanded respect within the organization and in the Chinese journalism profession at large.
Yang Xingfeng (杨兴锋), who is stepping aside as party secretary at the group to make room for Yang Jian, will reportedly continue to serve as the group’s director.
Yang Xingfeng began work as a news reporter at Nanfang Daily in 1982 and rose through the organization, becoming the group’s editor-in-chief in 2001 and party secretary and director in November 2006.
The irony of this move at the top of one of China’s top press groups coming on World Press Freedom Day did not escape users on Sina Weibo. “On World Press Freedom Day, there is change at the Nanfang Daily Group,” wrote one user, linking to the report from Caixin Media on ifeng.com.
Another user wrote: “There’s a personnel change at the Nanfang Daily Group. Will it be readable after this?”
But perhaps the best indication of what the change at the top at the Nanfang Daily Media Group could mean came in a post made to a verified Sina Weibo account by an “investigator” for the Hubei provincial propaganda department:

The Nanfang Daily Group’s public opinion guidance will now be more correct, and more authoritative!
南方报业的舆论导向将更准确、权威！

The following post by journalist Xiong Peiyun (熊培云) on China’s demand for an apology from the U.S. over the Cheng Guangcheng affair was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 6:02am Hong Kong time today, May 3, 2012. Xiong Peiyun currently has more than 181,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].

How can you not be ashamed that a dignified citizen must flee inside his own country? You must live up to the sun that shines every day across this land. Sixty years [of CCP rule], and what this country needs is to settle its soul. What it needs is a set of core values the people of the nation can be proud of. What this country needs is its own way [and principles], not an apology from another country. I’ve heard the saying, “A just cause deserves abundant support, and an unjust cause must find little support” (得道多助，失道寡助). But I’ve never heard the saying, “An apology deserves abundant support, and no apology must find little support” (得道歉多助，失道歉寡助).

Xiong Peiyun’s original Chinese post follows. Readers may note that in his final line Xiong is playing on the popular saying by replacing “way/principles/morals”, or dao, with “apology”, or daoqian (道歉):

你怎能不羞愧于一个堂堂正正的公民在自己的国家逃亡？你要对得住太阳每天还在照着这片土地。六十余年了，这个国家需要安顿自己的灵魂，需要有让本国国民引以为傲的价值观，这个国家最需要的是自己的道，而不是他国的道歉。我听过“得道多助，失道寡助”的，没听过“得道歉多助，失道歉寡助”的。

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 CMP Director Qian Gang (钱钢) on Hong Kong views of the Cheng Guangcheng affair was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 9:16am Hong Kong time today, May 3, 2012. Qian Gang currently has more than 1.1 million followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].

[How Hong Kong brethren see the “Missing Light” (无光) news] I have a friend, an old worker at the University of Hong Kong, who loves his country and cares about current affairs. Every day when we swim together he discusses the news with me. Early this morning when we talked about that biggest of news stories [Qian Gang is referring to the Chen Guangcheng affair], he sighed. Aye! There is even less possibility that the two sides [China and Taiwan] will ever unify.

Qian Gang’s original Chinese post:

香港同胞看“无光”新闻】我有一位朋友，是香港大学的老工人，爱国，关心时事，每天一起晨泳时，他都会和我议论新闻。今早谈起那个最大的新闻，他叹气道，唉，两岸统一更加没可能了。

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.

On May 1 and 2, 2012, in the midst of an ongoing standoff between China and the Philippines over the Huangyan Islands in the South China Sea, Chinese online chat rooms and social media (examples here and here) buzzed with satirical posts about the People’s Liberation Army and a series of public quilt folding exercises publicized by official media in recent years. Chinese internet users quipped that China was invincible as its military excelled in the art of quilt folding, not to be bested by any military in the world. This post on one chat room gathers together scores of photos — indeed hilarious — of Chinese soldiers and officers seemingly preoccupied with quilt folding, while soldiers from the United States seem correspondingly undisciplined with regard to bedding and obsessed with weaponry. In this cartoon, shared by artist Kuang Biao (邝飚) and others through Sina Weibo — we’re not sure yet exactly who is responsible — a diminutive spear wielding warrior called “Xiao Fei” (小菲), a reference to the Philippines, looks on in disbelief as an oversized People’s Liberation Army soldier explains: “Xiao Fei! A truly awesome military is not about subduing others with force of weaponry. Come here! Fold a quilt and let me have a look!”
[Backup PDF of Luo.bo forum with images of Chinese and U.S. military: bedding and supremacy_luo.bo 5.2.2012]

Today’s edition of the Chinese-language Global Times newspaper ran what appears to be the first Chinese-language piece on blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng (陈光诚) in China’s domestic media since Chen escaped house arrest in Shandong province late last month. But the editorial, which was dismissive of the Chen Guangcheng case as a Western public opinion fixation, had been removed by midday from many websites, including the Global Times website.
The English-language version of the editorial, with slight variations from the Chinese, is still (not surprisingly) available under the headling “US embassy in a quandary over Chen.”
Of the top five search results for the editorial on the Chinese search engine Baidu at noon today, two (Yanzhao Metropolis Daily and 21CN) were still active). The other three results, including for the Global Times website, returned warnings saying the page was no longer available.

[ABOVE: A screenshot showing the top 5 search results returned on May 2 for a Global Times editorial about blind activist Chen Guangcheng.]
Censorship of terms related to Chen Guangcheng remains strong this week on social media. Search tests on Weibo performed by CMP showed that the following terms all returned warnings saying the results could not be shown “according to relevant laws, regulations and policies”:

1. Chen Guangcheng [Chinese] (陈光诚)
2. “Chen Guangcheng” [English]
3. “Guangcheng” [English]
4. “blind man” [English]
5. “blind person” [English]
6. “blind” [English]
7. “blind person” [Chinese] (盲人)
8. 陈GC [Chinese surname with English abbreviation of name]
9. “CGC” [English abbreviation of full name
10. Guangcheng [Chinese name minus surname] (光诚)
11. Linyi [Chinese] (临沂)
12. “Linyi” [Pinyin romanization for prefecture in Shandong where Chen Guangcheng was held]

[ABOVE: A screenshot showing the English-language version of the May 2 Global Times editorial about blind activist Chen Guangcheng.]
The full Chinese-language version of the Global Times editorial follows:

环球时报：挟洋能自重的时代早已过去
2012-05-02 08:57:38 燕赵都市网 www.yzdsb.com.cn
近日围绕山东临沂盲人陈光诚的事情，美国等西方国家媒体出现惊人的报道量。这些报道纷纷说陈光诚已经“闯入”北京的美国驻华使馆，并且向中国政府提出一些个人要求。美国国务院发言人在记者会上连续以“无可奉告”回答包括陈光诚究竟在不在美国使馆等提问，美国领导人则避免提及陈光诚的名字。
陈光诚一段时间以来一直被形容为中国地方政府的“烫手山芋”，现在终于美国政府也变得十分难受了。陈光诚不是当年的方励之，也不是不久前的王立军，他的抱怨大多是一个村民针对基层官员的，所涉层面很低，很多都让清官“难断”。他从临沂跑进美国使馆，很多具体的难题一下子变成了美国的。
如果美国政府把陈光诚的要求当成很正经的东西拿到对华谈判桌上，大概他们自己都会不好意思。况且美国政府很清楚，具体“指挥”中国人如何如何做，这犯了干涉中国内政的大忌，北京断不会理睬它。
每个国家都积累了一些民怨，谁也都知道中国一些人上访的复杂性，如果上访失败者转去向美国驻华使馆“上访”，这决非仅仅是中方的尴尬，美方的尴尬只会更多。
谁说美国政府真的有兴趣帮助所有自认为受到不公平对待的中国人？美国使馆大概不想变成接待“告洋状”的“信访办”，他们更希望向中国人宣扬“普世价值”，偶尔找一两个有价值的典型“帮帮”。他们从未表现出愿意卷入中国社会要多少有多少的具体纠纷之中。
无论最初是怎么回事，陈光诚被西方舆论和中国一些人捧成“盲人维权英雄”，这像是给陈光诚本人造成了“他对美国的确很重要”的错觉。他对自己个人在中国影响力的认识也脱离了实际，一些舆论对他的利用和忽悠似乎毁掉了他的判断力。
中美关系不应该受陈光诚事件的影响，即将举行的中美战略与经济对话也不太可能为了他单独辟出时间，否则将是奇怪的。中美关系没那么小。
挟洋自重仍是一些失意中国人对解决问题的思路之一。其实这种想法已经很烂。今天的中国如此强大，外国政府能够主导或者调控中国人做事方向的时代早已一去不复返。最近几十年，一头扑进西方怀里而不顾及中国社会感受的人，没有一个获得他们期望的“成功”。
人权进步说到底需要一个社会的综合发展和进步支撑，需要全社会投入大量人力物力细心雕琢。西方社会向中国输送了人权观念，中国对它总体上是接受的，在中国没有该不该发展人权的思想对立，一些所谓的“人权对立”通常是对具体难处和矛盾朝人权方向的生拉硬扯。
中国进一步发展人权的动力来自中国内部，西方已无能力继续在人权领域推动中国。西方自己的人权问题在越积越多，既无财力物力支持中国，也缺少在中国崛起并对其构成竞争的时候真诚帮中国出主意的胸怀。西方现在给中国出的主意经常驴唇不对马嘴。“人权”现在更像是美国政府给中国添乱的口实，解决中国的问题非其所愿。
在中国这样复杂的大国里，陈光诚的故事被简单标签化的程度反映了西方舆论的巨大能量以及它们的胡作非为。过去陈光诚在临沂基层，“错”全怪到中国政府头上。现在他据说进了美国使馆，情况出现戏剧性的变化。
我们很想看看，美国政府究竟怎么做，才能让陈光诚和西方舆论都“非常满意”。

The following post by billionaire investor Wang Gongquan (王功权) on credibility and China’s information control policies was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 12:08pm Hong Kong time yesterday, May 1, 2012. Wang Gongquan currently has more than 1.4 million followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].

So long as the Central Propaganda Department kills speech, the credibility of the Chinese Communist Party cannot possibly be built up. It’s just that simple.

Wang’s post is a response to a separate Weibo post by well-known lawyer Chen Youxi (陈有西) — also now deleted by censors — that discusses heightened controls on Chinese social media in recent weeks:

This killing of Weibo [posts and accounts] without rhyme or reason shows the extreme idiocy of China’s rulers. This law-of-the-forest approach to governance constitutes malpractice. If social management is without principle and does not abide the law, then the country lacks confidence and the people are in a state of disorder — and if the people are in disorder the country must grow chaotic. When this sort of violence by public power is exercised in an information society, and [power] itself feels proud of its actions, this must result in a deep social crisis. The people who send out orders for this kind of action are bringing calamity to our country and our people.
不告知不说理封杀微博，体现了中国的统治者非常愚蠢。丛林法则是管天下的大忌，社会管理无规则不依法，国无信则民无序，民无序则国必乱。信息社会行此公权暴力，还自以为得意，必引深层社会危机。下令这样干的人是在祸国殃民。

The original Chinese post by Wang Gongquan follows:

只要中宣部还在封杀言论，共产党的公信力就不可能建立起来。道理就是这么简单。

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.

Reuters reports that blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng (陈光诚) is now under the protection of the U.S. embassy in Beijing, according to human rights advocates inside and outside China. Chen, who has long been an international symbol of China’s human rights abuses — and who became the focus of domestic attention through Chinese social media last year — escaped from house arrest in Shandong province last week.
If Chen Guangcheng is indeed under U.S. protection, the delicate matter of Chen’s escape (already potentially damaging in light of the constant refusal of Chinese officials to deal with clear and systematic abuses) has now become a major diplomatic matter.
The sensitivity of the Chen Guangcheng story can be glimpsed today both in the total blanket of silence that has enveloped Chinese traditional media, and in the robustness of social media controls.
CMP was able to find no coverage of Chen Guangcheng whatsoever in traditional media, and so far (as of 6pm today) there has been no official word from official outlets like Xinhua News Agency.
Following a flurry of discussion of Chen Guangcheng on Chinese social media Friday, we see far more robust controls today. Nearly all possible searches have been blocked, and even the Chinese word for “blind person”, or mang’ren (盲人) — Chen Guangcheng lost his sight during his early childhood — turns up the familiar warning that: “According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, these search results cannot be shown.”

[ABOVE: A search for the words “blind person” brings a warning from Sina Weibo that the search results cannot be shown.]
A number of other search terms we attempted are shown below, with images of the warnings returned from Sina Weibo.

[ABOVE: A search for the Chinese surname of Cheng Guangcheng, but replacing the last two characters of his name with the letters “GC” brings a warning from Sina Weibo that results cannot be shown.]

[ABOVE: A search for the English initials of the three Chinese characters making up Chen Guangcheng’s name, “CGC”, brings a warning from Sina Weibo that results cannot be shown.]

[ABOVE: A search for Linyi (临沂), the now-infamous prefecture in Linyi where Chen was held under house arrest for 19 months, brings a warning from Sina Weibo that results cannot be shown.]

[ABOVE: A search for the word “embassy” (大使馆) brings a warning from Sina Weibo that results cannot be shown.]

[ABOVE: A search for a shortened form of “U.S. embassy” (美使馆) brings a warning from Sina Weibo that results cannot be shown.]

[ABOVE: A search for the word “consulate” (领事馆) brings a warning from Sina Weibo that results cannot be shown.]
So how do you talk at all about the Chen Guangcheng story on social media? It seems to be a game of cat and mouse with diminishing prospects for the mice — at least over this particular story.
But we did happen across this post by Chinese professor Zhu Dake (朱大可), who wrote cryptically:

[The Story of the Mole] Once upon a time there was a mole who was surrounded by a pack of wolves, but with the help of some mice he managed to escape. The wolves were furious. The mole’s older and younger brothers, his mother and his baby still lived in the burrow. They became the hostages of the wolves. The escaped mole hid in the forest and called out to the lion, but the lion could not hear his fragile voice. The mice in the walls and the mice in the field all passed along the welcome news, but they couldn’t decide whether the [mole’s] escape was a victory, or whether it was just the beginning of more hardship.
【鼹鼠的故事】从前有只鼹鼠被狼群围着，却在老鼠帮助下逃走了。狼们很生气。窝里还有鼹鼠哥哥，鼹鼠弟弟，鼹鼠妈妈和鼹鼠宝宝。它们成了狼的人质。逃走的鼹鼠躲在森林里向狮子喊话，但狮子听不见这微弱的声音。家鼠和田鼠们互相传播着喜讯，但它们也弄不清，逃亡究竟是胜利，还是另一轮苦难的开始。

Back on April 11 and 13, two separate CMP posts looked at how the official line from the CCP’s Central Committee on the Bo Xilai (薄熙来) case had been forcibly jammed into Chinese media of all stripes — from Nasdaq-listed commercial websites to major market-driven metro newspapers and subsidized Party “mouthpieces.” Everyone had to run the Party’s version of the top news prominently.
As I told The New York Times late last week, “We haven’t seen this kind of direct meddling with the media across the board in a long, long time.” And we certainly have not seen the sort of biaotai (表态) — or affirmation of loyalty toward the central leadership — that we have seen in recent weeks on China Central Television and in local Party paper editorials since the aftermath of the crackdown on democracy demonstrators in Beijing in June 1989.

[ABOVE: A local Party cadre says on the official nightly newscast on April 11 that “all local Party cadres must maintain unity with the Central Committee of the CCP through and through.”]
We may speculate over whether the shift in the political winds in recent weeks will or will not bring substantive change on key issues like political reform. But certainly the politics we have seen at play in the Bo case hearken back to the past, not to the future. This is old-style power politics — and it’s the factions or alliances that happen to hold sway that get to control the news coverage.
For China’s Party-run media, apparently, the recent success of the imposed monopoly of the Party line on the Bo Xilai story is a source of pride.
The Oriental Morning Post, a leading commercial newspaper in Shanghai, reports today on a talk given at Fudan University this week by Zhang Yannong (张研农), the director (or top Party official) at the CCP’s official People’s Daily.
In his talk, “The People’s Daily‘s Historical Undertaking and Pursuit of Innovation” (《人民日报的历史担当与创新追求》), Zhang spoke openly about how editorials in the People’s Daily had “set the tone” (确定了基调) for the Bo Xilai affair and had “served to create unity of thought for the Party and nation, and to reassure the public and stabilize the overall situation.”
In its treatment of the Bo Xilai affair, Zhang added, the People’s Daily had “shown a powerful capacity for channeling public opinion, and had had great value.” Moreover, it should be “written into political history and journalism history.”

[ABOVE: Zhang Yannong, the director of the CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily, tells an audience at Shanghai’s Fudan University that the paper made “political history” with its “channeling” of the Bo Xilai affair.]
The following is a portion of Zhang Yannong’s speech at Fudan University:

Most recently the news that has gotten the most attention concerns the Bo Xilai affair. In propaganda and reporting on this story, the People’s Daily, and particularly the editorial section of the People’s Daiy, played an important role. If you opened the April 11 edition of any newspaper, whether it was a paper paper or a metropolitan newspaper, they basically all ran the People’s Daily editorial “Strongly Supporting the Correct Decisions of the Party’s Central Committee“. The two editorials that followed, “Conscientiously Safeguarding a Good Situation for Stable Reform and Development” and “Conscientiously Observing Party Discipline and National Laws”, also had an immense impact.
These three opinion pieces were done within a period of two days by a pair of young “post-80s” [writers] under the direction of the head of our editorial department. Aside from these three opinion pieces, we also successively ran eight related editorials in the “Today’s Topic” column on the front page. If we can say that the news releases [from Xinhua News Agency] were only about relaying information, then these editorials were about setting the tone. To a great extent, they served the purpose of uniting the thoughts and understanding of the Party and the nation [on the Bo Xilai affair], reassuring the public and stabilizing the overall situation. These reports and articles made the situation known in a timely manner, and also offered timely viewpoints, having a powerful public opinion channeling capacity, and vested with high political value, news value and practical relevance. They should be written into political history, and into the history of journalism. The role played by the People’s Daily during this affair has illustrate very well that the People’s Daily is still the first and foremost representative of mainstream public opinion (主流舆论) in our country.

Chinese state media reported yesterday that Hu Lianyou (胡连友), a resident of Hunan’s Dong’an County (东安县) with a long history of rights defense actions against alleged abuses by local officials, was sentenced to two years in jail by a Dong’an court on the charge of defaming the local police chief.
The allegations against Hu Lianyou by Dong’an police chief Zheng Hang (郑航) stemmed from comments Hu allegedly posted to Sina.com and other websites in September 2010. The comments were reportedly directed at Zheng Hang and another officer, Qin Liangbei, and detailed violent enforcement actions, corruption and other issues. Zheng Hang responded by filing a defamation case against Hu and another local resident, Wei Aiguo (魏爱国), in the local court.
Hu Lianyou reportedly applied for a change of venue, arguing that a fair verdict could not be rendered in the local court when the plaintiff was the local police chief. But Hu’s request was denied.

[ABOVE: Dong’an police chief Zheng Hang (郑航) alleges that he was defamed through Sina.com and other websites in 2010 by local petitioners accusing him of violent enforcement tactics.]
In today’s edition of The Beijing News, three separate Chinese legal experts raised a range of issues stemming from the Hu Lianyou case.
Zhang Shuyi (张树义), a professor at China University of Politics and Law, warned against the use of defamation as a “weapon” (武器) by public officials. Zhang suggested that public officials bringing defamation cases against individual citizens over matters of public affairs could constitute an abuse of power.
“If [an official] is dealing with a private matter as a private citizen, then a charge of ‘defamation’ may hold,” Zhang wrote. “But can’t acting in the capacity of a citizen over a public matter be seen as another form of ‘abuse of official power’?”
Zhang Qianfan (张千帆), a professor of law at Peking University, voiced concern that the guilty verdict in the Hu Lianyou case could have a “chilling effect” (冷缩效应) on other citizens trying to exercise their constitutional right to criticize the government.
According to Article 41 of China’s constitution, all citizens in China “have the right to criticize and make suggestions to any state organ or functionary.”

Citizens have the right to make to relevant state organs complaints and charges against, or exposures of, violation of the law or dereliction of duty by any state organ or functionary; but fabrication or distortion of facts with the intention of libel or frame-up is prohibited. In case of complaints, charges or exposures made by citizens, the state organ concerned must deal with them in a responsible manner after ascertaining the facts. No one may suppress such complaints, charges and exposures, or retaliate against the citizens making them. Citizens who have suffered losses through infringement of their civil rights by any state organ or functionary have the right to compensation in accordance with the law.

Yang Tao (杨涛), a Chinese prosecutor and frequent media commentator on legal issues, questioned too whether the decision by the Dong’an county court had been influenced by the local government’s past dealings with Hu Lianyou, who had a long history of petitioning over various rights issues and was therefore regarded as a “troublemaker” (头疼人物).