CMP has confirmed that daily newspapers across China — including Party papers (党报) and commercial spin-offs (子报) — were instructed by propaganda authorities to publish today’s front-page People’s Daily editorial reiterating that China is “a nation of rule of law and that the dignity and authority of the law cannot be trampled ….”

This forced placement of an editorial from the CCP’s flagship newspaper is a highly irregular move, and sends a clear message that the leadership is tightening propaganda controls across media — from social media sites and news websites to traditional media.

On his Sinostand blog last week, Eric Fish pointed out that the push behind the editorial may not have stopped with the daily print media. He noted “striking” similarities between the article’s content and a series of supposedly spontaneous interviews included in that evening’s flagship Xinwen Lianbo broadcast. Interviewees repeated key phrases from the editorial: “a socialist country under the rule of law”, “demonstrate the party’s firm determination to keep its purity”, and “strict discipline” as a “distinctive feature” of the Party.

It seems to me one of three things happened here:

1. CCTV reporters did some serious shoe-leather reporting in several different cities across China in the space of a few hours, managing to find interviewees that happened to have nearly verbatim opinions to the People’s Daily editorials.

2. The whole country truly was engulfed by the heated editorials and their spirited points rolled off the tongues of all those CCTV approached.

3. CCTV told interviewees what to say.

I know I know. Chinese state media lacking journalistic integrity … truly breaking news. Last year a leaked uncut video showed a farmer being told what to say on camera by a reporter, and CCTV has had plenty of its own fake interviews exposed. But having the audacity to do it with five back-to-back interviewees speaking from a single source openly available to the public is a bit surprising; especially for a network now trying to build credibility for its ambitious overseas expansion plans.

Update: Bandurski comments on Twitter: 

— China Media Project (@cmphku) April 25, 2012

And adds in the comments to this post, “Yes, of course the string of ‘biaotai’ 表态 [making one's position known] on CCTV’s Xinwen Lianbo on the night of April 11 was not spontaneous. The interviewees were reading the text verbatim, with cut-ins of people reading the People’s Daily. This was a very unusual case of public ‘biaotai,’ not seen since 1989.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, CCTV, corruption, news media, people's daily, rule of law
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A standard, even boring, piece of Chinese military propaganda screened in mid-July included what must have been an unintended but nevertheless damaging revelation: shots from a computer screen showing a Chinese military university is engaged in cyberwarfare against entities in the United States.

The screenshots appear as B-roll footage in the documentary for six seconds—between 11:04 and 11:10 minutes—showing custom-built Chinese software apparently launching a cyber-attack against the main website of the Falun Gong spiritual practice, by using a compromised IP address belonging to a United States university. As of Aug. 22 at 1:30pm EDT, in addition to Youtube, the whole documentary is available on the CCTV website.

The documentary itself was otherwise meant as praise to the wisdom and judgment of Chinese military strategists, and a typical condemnation of the United States as an implacable aggressor in the cyber-realm. But the fleeting shots of an apparent China-based cyber-attack somehow made their way into the final cut.

Update: See also a Wall Street Journal report:

The brief footage—the relevant segment runs no more than 10 seconds—didn’t attract much domestic or international attention when it was first screened last month as part of a 20-minute report on cybersecurity broadcast on CCTV-7, which covers military affairs.

But it was highlighted Wednesday in a report published by Dr. Erickson, an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute, and Mr. Collins, a commodities and security specialist focusing on Russia and China.

The footage, which could still be seen on CCTV’s website as of late Wednesday, features Senior Col. Du Wenlong, a researcher at the Chinese army’s Academy of Military Sciences, giving a detailed analysis of cybersecurity issues around the world.

At one point, as a narrator discusses various forms of cyberattack, a cursor is shown moving on a computer screen with a software application that is identified in Chinese characters as a “distributed denial-of-service” attack. Also known as DDOS, such attacks are relatively unsophisticated tools of cyberwarfare that involve bombarding websites with data to disable them.

The next screen says at the top, in Chinese, “Attack system..PLA Electronic Engineering Institute.” PLA stands for People’s Liberation Army.

© alicebirney for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cyber warfare, Falun Gong, information leak
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The Guangzhou station became a “place of grief” as left-behind kids cry as they return to the countryside by train. Guangzhou is the transportation hub for millions of migrant workers in Southern China.

Changsha’s first student to enter the guzheng department at the Central Conservatory of Music in 30 years is a 9-year-old girl from Xiangxi. Her scores were the top in the nation to test into this school, and she will go straight to university!

New brides lift their veils at the Rose Wedding ceremony in August 29.

On August 29th, director of “Let the Bullets Fly” Jiang Wen (third from the left), Ge You (2nd from left), and others on the red carpet at the premiere.

A thousand people gather together for a lively blind date event during the 26th of August’s “Qixi Festival” [note: somewhat analogous to the Western Valentine's Day] in the city of Xian, located in Anhui Province. The event planners organized over 1000 singles to participate in blind dates. Within the event were introductions, a talent show, as well as other items, all of which gave these young men and women opportunities to get to know one another.

On August 23, the ladies from Miss Tourism Queen International take a group photo in front of a Shaolin Temple gate in Dengfeng, Henan. The Miss Tourism Queen contestants came from 120 countries and regions to visit Shaolin Temple.

In the afternoon in Wuhan, this reporter spotted an eye-catching small advertisement affixed to the front of a white police car. The advertisement is for making fake IDs and seals, and includes a contact number.

The province’s first women’s school in Chengdu’s Immaterial Culture and Heritage Park has begun classes. Zhou Yongchen, who is in charge of the school, [stated that] the intention in launching the school was to return classical, gentlewomanly cultivation to the modern woman and to promote Chinese traditional culture.

In the morning of the 24th of August, Anhui’s Chaohu city Party secretary, Zhou Guangquan, received his verdict in Anqing’s mid-level for accepting a bribe, and possessing large sum of money from unkown sources. The Anqing mid-level court ruled that Zhou Guangquan would receive life imprisonment, be stripped of political rights for the rest of his life, and have his property confiscated.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: lifestyle, photos
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From the Financial Times, James Kynge provides a critique of Western media representation of Tiananmen and provides an interesting perspective:

When I think about the massacre in central Beijing that followed weeks of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989, which I covered as part of a team of Reuters reporters, I cannot help feeling troubled.

Of course it was a brutal and harrowing time, but that isn’t the reason for my disquiet. I’m concerned because I don’t think we – the western media – got the narrative of those days quite right. People say journalism is merely a first, rough draft of history. But the problem here is that this draft appears to have been canonised, passing largely unedited into popular conscience.

I do question, however, the western media’s basic assertion that the demonstrations had been “pro-democracy”. Even now, a raft of editorials commemorating the event’s 20th anniversary repeat the mantra that the students were “demanding democracy”.

© jleung for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Tiananmen, western media coverage, western views of china
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These and thousands of other children stolen from the teeming industrial hubs of China’s Pearl River Delta have never been recovered by their parents or by the police. But anecdotal evidence suggests the children do not travel far. Although some are sold to buyers in Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, most of the boys are purchased domestically by families desperate for a male heir, parents of abducted children and some law enforcement officials who have investigated the matter say.

The demand is especially strong in rural areas of south China, where a tradition of favoring boys over girls and the country’s strict family planning policies have turned the sale of stolen children into a thriving business.

Su Qingcai, a tea farmer from the mountainous coast of Fujian Province, explained why he spent $3,500 last year on a 5-year-old boy. “A girl is just not as good as a son,” said Mr. Su, 38, who has a 14-year-old daughter but whose biological son died at 3 months. “It doesn’t matter how much money you have. If you don’t have a son, you are not as good as other people who have one.”

The documentary “China’s Stolen Children” treats the subject of child trafficking.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Read also: Kidnapped in China without hope by Bill Schiller, published on thestar.com last October.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: child trafficking, gender imbalance, one-child policy, video
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When did you first start following Chinese online conversation, and have you noticed any big changes in Chinese online culture since then?
Fauna:
I started to read BBS forums every day maybe 2 or 3 years ago. Before that, I used to to read them but not so often as every day. I think the big changes for Chinese online culture are that Chinese netizens are now more funny, more yellow, and maybe more free.

However, I think it is also very clear that the Chinese government cares more about the Internet now than before also and many “bad” things are deleted very fast too. Sometimes I notice that the source of a post we are working on is deleted before we are finished translating. That makes me worried that if I post it, I will attract too much attention from the government.

I only hope they do not care too much because we are just translating and most Chinese do not read English. We also try to talk only about social things and not very political things like democracy or human rights.

Ping Gao:
When I was 18 or 19, in college I was not as busy as when I was in high school, so I could spent more time on internet. Yeah, big changes! I think the influence of the Internet has been growing. Internet was more about sharing information 6 or 7 years ago, but now it can has social influence as well.

Chinese online culture is not only playing a role as media and as encyclopedia, but it’s also a window for people to know the world, and to let the world know China. This is very important for a growing and changing country.

Kris Chen:
I always receive lots of information from KDS, and it actually makes reading news (TV news, newspaper) unnecessary for me.

Big changes, hmm, basically there are a few changes, but most of them I consider as negative. It’s like people don’t know what to do with their newly granted right, e.g., exposure of private photos without the owner’s consent, taking girls pictures on the streets and posting them on the web, etc. It’s kind of an infringement of others’ legal rights.

Though many online communities provide people with access to various information, people helping each other to solve problems, is kind of encouraging. But basically it seems a higher moral standard is needed.

Joe Xu:
I’m beginning to see the use of more memes or Internet catchphrases that may have resulted from online censorship.

© Claire Kells for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: BBS, chinaSMACK, danwei.org
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Strangely, without any competitors, “government censorship does not seem to hurt the company’s bottom line.”

Since foreign broadcasters are shut out from China, it does a healthy business with international and foreign brands, striking advertisement deals with companies like Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and Adidas.

During the opening ceremonies, 840 million people tuned in to watch the games in China, which might be the largest audience viewing an event from one place ever. Nielsen numbers show that up to 96 percent of Chinese households with television sets have tuned into some part of the Olympic competition, with the women’s table tennis final on Sunday drew 330 million people — an audience larger than the entire U.S. population.

In the first 10 days of the Games, over 100 million people in China watched events over streaming video on its Web site, CCTV.com. That’s compared to the 42 million viewers that NBCOlympics.com boasted after twelve days of Olympic coverage. It’s good to be a state-sponsored monopoly.

© Japhet Weeks for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, CCTV, media control
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American expat Anna Sophie Loewenberg discusses dating across East-West lines with her friends in Beijing.

Video is available via YouTube:

© Sean Escoffery for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cross-cultural relationships, dating, videos
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The video is available via YouTube:

© Sean Escoffery for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dancing, marriage, videos
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When I set out to interview panicky people sleeping outside, little did I imagine that I myself would become one of them. In fact, I’d confidently predicted that I’d be back at the hotel within an hour. But that was not how things turned out. I’d taken a taxi to a place where many people were still sleeping outside in tents and cars, a week after the shock. When I first arrived, it seemed this constituted only a tiny minority of people, generally the elderly or the very nervous. But as I was interviewing, suddenly a massive influx of people came running to the square, quilts and tents under their arms, jostling to commandeer a space of their own…

She couldn’t get back to the city and had to spend the night outside with thousands of Chengdu residents.

As I lay outside I realized how much of a bubble we’ve been living in at our reinforced hotel. The reality for most Chengdu residents is that every time they leave home, they’re still not entirely sure that they’ll be able to return. Every night they weigh up the relative safety of their buildings and the speed of their legs. And everybody here is traumatized to a certain extent. But people are finding comfort in community. When the kind couple who’d lent me the blanket left, another elderly neighbor pressed his red plastic raincape on me. I said I’d be fine. He told me what a hard time we journalists were having and that I mustn’t get sick. I told him I didn’t need his cape. He shoved it at me. I shoved it back. Then we had a comic tussle as he attempted to tug the raincape over my head, while I tried to pull it off. Intense negotiations ensued over the ownership of the raincape. Raising the stakes, he threatened to throw it in the bin if I didn’t take it away with me…

She recounted her emotional bond with farmers in an earthquake-struck Sichuan village in an earlier post To Eat or To Mourn:

“Sit down! Eat!” was the order. Bowls of steaming rice porridge were shoved into our hands and stools jammed under our knees. We looked at each other, unsure of what to do next.

We’d just watched as the Ma family buried their eighty-seven year old matriarch, Li Mingxiu, on the hillside above the devastated remains of their quiet country village. Her reflexes dulled by her age, the old lady had been too slow to run outside when the earthquake struck, and she’d been crushed when the kitchen wall collapsed on her.

But we had to admit we were hungry. And the family’s neigbours were refusing to take no for an answer. “Eat! Please eat!” they kept on urging us, pushing the bowls of hot food into our chests. Finally we gave in and sat down. They looked relieved. When I thanked them for their hospitality under such difficult circumstances, they broke into smiles. “That’s what Chinese people are like,” they said.

© Linjun Fan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, foreign correspondents
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