This of course isn’t just one media outlet’s personal history. We’re in a period of transition. The reality of China’s reform is that there are ups and downs and countless missteps. And the hardest part of reform is breaking old patterns, because no one is willing to give up their vested interests.

[…] In the past, many reforms have been unsuccessful because reformers romanticized them. They thought that with courage and planning, complex reforms could be carried out relatively quickly.

There are many people who call for reform and discuss policies, but there are very few who dare take responsibility, suffer and bear the trials involved in the reform process.

There’s nothing romantic about reform. It’s like dripping water wearing down stone. It takes long-term persistence and the tenacity to never give up, even when it seems like a hopeless cause.

A media outlet that’s willing to take responsibility will certainly share the same fate and breathe the same air as the era it lives in. We always believe that this is the era that can decide the future. All the dreams that China has for the future depend on what you and I do today.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: economic observer, news media, newspapers, reform
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During the course of that broader probe, the Justice Department approached News Corp.’s outside counsel in early 2012 and said it had received information from a person it described as a whistleblower who claimed one or more Journal employees had provided gifts to Chinese government officials in exchange for information, according to people familiar with the case.

[…] According to U.S. and corporate officials, News Corp. has told the Justice Department that some company officials suspect the informant was an agent of the Chinese government, seeking to disrupt and possibly retaliate against the Journal for its reporting on China’s leadership. The company officials came to that view after finding no evidence of the alleged bribery and because of the timing and nature of the accusations, company officials say. It isn’t clear what, if any, evidence the company officials have for that claim, which reporters for this article couldn’t independently verify.

[…] The Chinese bribery allegations against the Journal arose around the time that U.S. and Dow Jones officials believed Chinese hackers were targeting Dow Jones’s computer systems, according to people familiar with the matter. That is one reason company officials say they suspected the informant’s actions were part of a broader attack on the paper.

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Post tags: bribery, Chongqing, corruption, foreign media, hackers, news media, newspapers, United Kingdom, United States
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On Weibo, a kind of Chinese Twitter, I recently made a joking comparison between media censorship and the pervasive threat of contaminated food, a constant source of worry:

“There’s no end to these food scares,” a friend sighed. “Is there any hope of a solution?”

“Oh, all we need is for food inspections to be as forceful as film censorship,” I told him breezily. “With all that faultfinding and nit-picking, food-safety issues will be resolved in no time.”

More than 12,000 readers reposted this. One wrote: I know what we should do. Let’s have those in charge of film, newspaper and book censorship take over food safety, and have those responsible for food safety censor films, papers and books. That way we’ll have food safety — and freedom of expression as well!

The unpredictable whims of film censors at the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television have been blamed for wrecking China’s Oscar chances, and even state media have carried calls for a more consistent and codified approach. SARFT has been extending its reach to cover online video and require pre-vetting of TV documentaries, however, and Hollywood productions increasingly subject themselves to its censorship in exchange for access to Chinese funding and theaters. Meanwhile, the country has witnessed a seemingly endless stream of food safety problems, most recently cadmium-tainted rice.

Yu’s op-ed was translated by Allan H. Barr, who commented on his translations of Yu Hua and Han Han in an interview at Pomona College’s website (via CDT) in December. See more on Yu Hua via CDT.

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Post tags: books, censorship, film censorship, food safety, literature, media censorship, news media, newspapers, SARFT, tainted food, TV, weibo, yu hua
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On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal revealed that it, too, has suffered attacks focused on its coverage of China. From Siobhan Gorman, Devlin Barrett and Danny Yadron:

In the most recent incident, the Journal was notified by the FBI of a potential breach in the middle of last year, when the FBI came across data that apparently had come from the computer network in the Journal’s Beijing bureau, people familiar with the incident said.

[…] Among the targets were a handful of journalists in the Beijing bureau, including Jeremy Page, who wrote articles about the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood in a scandal that helped bring down Chinese politician Bo Xilai, people familiar with the matter said. Beijing Bureau Chief Andrew Browne also was a target, they said.

[…] “Evidence shows that infiltration efforts target the monitoring of the Journal’s coverage of China and are not an attempt to gain commercial advantage or to misappropriate customer information,” Paula Keve, a spokeswoman for Journal publisher Dow Jones, said in a written statement Thursday. Dow Jones is a unit of News Corp.

The Times noted that Bloomberg News had also been attacked following its investigation of Xi Jinping’s family last year, and that security firm Mandiant had compiled a list of other targeted journalists. The Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon added on Twitter that a 2011 intrusion into his own computer had also been aimed at “specific China-related files”. Numerous other targets have been identified elsewhere; in fact, wrote Adam Segal of the Council on Foreign Relations, the “sweeping cyber espionage campaign […] appears endemic”. From Foreign Policy:

As with many cases of cyber espionage, the break-in is assumed to have started with a spear-phishing email, a socially engineered message containing malware attachments or links to hostile websites. In the case of the attack on the security firm RSA in 2011, for example, an email with the subject line “2011 Recruitment Plan” was sent with an attached Excel file. Opening the file downloaded software that allowed attackers to gain control of the user’s computers. They then gradually expanded their access and moved into different computers and networks.

[…] Evidence that the hackers are China-based in all of these cases is suggestive, but not conclusive. Some of the code used in the attacks was developed by Chinese hacker groups and the command and control nodes have been traced back to Chinese IP addresses. Hackers are said to clock in in the morning Beijing time, clock out in the afternoon, and often take vacation on Chinese New Year and other national holidays. But attacks can be routed through many computers, malware is bought and sold on the black market, groups share techniques, and one of the cherished clichés of hackers is that they work weird hours.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence has been the type of information targeted. The emails and documents of the office of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan activists, defense industries, foreign embassies, journalists, and think tanks are not easily monetized and so would apparently have little attraction to criminal hackers. The information contained in them would be of much greater interest to the Chinese government.

Graham Cluley at Sophos’ Naked Security blog summed up the attribution debate:

Security experts brought in by the newspaper have pointed the finger of blame at China. And, in all likelihood, they’re right.

However, it must be remembered that it is extremely difficult to prove who is behind an internet attack like this. That’s because it’s so easy to use compromised computers around the world to route attacks through – disguising the true origin.

Of course, even if China is identified as the starting point of an attack – it doesn’t necessarily prove that it the operation is backed by the Chinese government or intelligence services. It could just as easily be a patriotic group of skilled, independent Chinese hackers upset with how the Western media is portraying their country’s rulers.

But let’s not be too naive… In all probability, the New York Times’s conclusion is correct, and this attack was sanctioned by the powers that be in Beijing.

NPR’s Neal Conan raised a third possibility: that the campaign might have been initiated privately by a member of Wen’s family, to investigate the investigation.

According to The Times report, the organization’s Symantec anti-virus software detected only one of 45 pieces of intruding malware. Symantec would not comment for the article itself, but in a later statement suggested that the newspaper had simply not bought enough of its products:

“Advanced attacks like the ones the New York Times described in the following article, (http://nyti.ms/TZtr5z), underscore how important it is for companies, countries and consumers to make sure they are using the full capability of security solutions. The advanced capabilities in our endpoint offerings, including our unique reputation-based technology and behavior-based blocking, specifically target sophisticated attacks. Turning on only the signature-based anti-virus components of endpoint solutions alone are not enough in a world that is changing daily from attacks and threats. We encourage customers to be very aggressive in deploying solutions that offer a combined approach to security. Anti-virus software alone is not enough.”

While some dissected the NYT attack itself, others pondered its broader significance. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos viewed it in light of Xi Jinping’s professed crusade against official corruption:

The timing of all this is significant for anyone interested in the prospect of reform: this attack has unfolded at the very moment that the new Chinese leadership, under Xi Jinping, has pledged to root out corruption before it destroys the Party. Xi has been making so many gestures of reform that he has persuaded some longtime China-watchers to take him seriously.

[…] The renewed commitment to combating corruption isn’t looking as sincere. On the contrary, this case feels like déjà vu for the Times: in 2004, the Chinese government detained the Times researcher Zhao Yan, accusing him of leaking state secrets. As evidence, the investigators cited a photocopy of one of Zhao’s handwritten notes; the Times pointedly noted, “questions remain about how security agents obtained a copy of the note. One possibility is that agents entered The Times’s Beijing bureau without permission.”

This time, the newspaper claims, the intruders have been exorcised, and no sensitive data was taken. The Times has always maintained that the Wen exposé was based on public records, not human sources. Nevertheless, some feared, the recent episode might raise doubts about its ability to protect such sources in future. At Slate, Farhad Manjoo suggested that a deterrent effect might even have been one of the attackers’ goals:

The most important outcome here might be the chilling effect: Now that a Chinese attack on the New York Times is international news, any dissident or potential whistle-blower in China will be wary of talking to journalists at the paper—or, for that matter, all journalists.

In other words, the hack worked. […]

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, computer security, cyberattacks, cybersecurity, Dalai Lama, hackers, hacking, journalism, Neil Heywood, new york times, news media, newspapers, Wen Jiabao, Xi Jinping
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Investigators still do not know how hackers initially broke into The Times’s systems. They suspect the hackers used a so-called spear-phishing attack, in which they send e-mails to employees that contain malicious links or attachments. All it takes is one click on the e-mail by an employee for hackers to install “remote access tools” — or RATs. Those tools can siphon off oceans of data — passwords, keystrokes, screen images, documents and, in some cases, recordings from computers’ microphones and Web cameras — and send the information back to the attackers’ Web servers.

[…] The attackers were particularly active in the period after the Oct. 25 publication of The Times article about Mr. Wen’s relatives, especially on the evening of the Nov. 6 presidential election. That raised concerns among Times senior editors who had been informed of the attacks that the hackers might try to shut down the newspaper’s electronic or print publishing system. But the attackers’ movements suggested that the primary target remained Mr. Barboza’s e-mail correspondence.

“They could have wreaked havoc on our systems,” said Marc Frons, the Times’s chief information officer. “But that was not what they were after.”

What they appeared to be looking for were the names of people who might have provided information to Mr. Barboza.

I would like to apologize to the NYT computer support folks I snapped at after they reset my password without warning nytimes.com/2013/01/31/tec…

— John Schwartz — NYT (@jswatz) January 31, 2013

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A source close to Guangdong’s provincial government said Wang Genghui, a deputy editor-in-chief of Nanfang Media Group, which owns the newspaper, had taken over from Huang Can, Southern Weekly’s editor-in-chief since 2009. Huang had been sidelined and was likely to be transferred to another post in the group.

“Wang has a rather popular image as he is more willing to listen to editors and journalists,” the source said. “But this is likely to be a transitional role to restore normal operation at the newspaper as soon as possible.”

This week’s newspaper included a veiled protest saying that editorial procedures should be respected and made corrections – a typographical error, the erroneous numbering of the edition and a factual flaw that said flood control work by “Yu the Great” happened 2,000 years ago, instead of 4,000 years ago.

A comment below the corrections, signed by editorial staff, read: “Newspaper mistakes are always in black and white. In every link of editing and publishing a newspaper, its standard processes should always be respected and followed. We have never been more keenly aware of this.”

A report at Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, meanwhile, described Xi Jinping’s alleged displeasure at propaganda chief Liu Yunshan’s handling of the affair. Though the account is based on information from unnamed sources, Bill Bishop commented in his Sinocism newsletter that “[I] hear from other reporters that this report could be credible, that this paper has had other scoops recently..if true then very interesting.” One sign of the report’s accuracy might come in or after March when, it predicts, Guangdong propaganda chief Tuo Zhen will be removed from his post.

At a meeting in Zhongnanhai in Beijing on the night of Jan. 9, Xi, visibly displeased, asked if the media control division was not adding to confusion, sources familiar with the discussions said.

[…] Liu had decided to impose penalties, including dismissals, against editors and reporters who disobeyed the order. But Xi gave instructions not to punish journalists who protested the propaganda department, according to a party source formerly involved in media control.

Xi has apparently attempted to contain the fallout even by accepting demands from Southern Weekly reporters.

He decided to remove the chief of the propaganda department of the Guangdong provincial party committee, who led prior screening of the Southern Weekly.

The official is not expected to leave the post until at least March, when the National People’s Congress is scheduled to convene, because an immediate removal would reveal confusion within the party.

In particular, Xi reportedly suggested, Liu’s order for other outlets to republish a Global Times editorial expressing the Party line had turned a local problem into a wider one. (The order was conveyed by a Central Propaganda Department directive obtained and published by CDT.) Certainly, it spread the stand-off as far as Southern Weekly’s half-sister, the Beijing News, which initially refused to republish the article at all, and eventually buried an abbreviated version under a non-committal headline deep within the paper. At Reuters, Sui-Lee Wee described what had threatened to become the Beijing News’ last stand:

“This is the first time in China’s history, with the exception of June 4th, that there’s been such a large-scale collective protest by Chinese journalists against the central government’s propaganda department’s restrictions and suppression,” said Cheng Yizhong, who co-founded the Beijing News with Dai [Zhigeng], referring to the Tiananmen Square protests.

But Cheng said he expected no improvement in freedoms, predicting authorities would try to pre-empt any direct challenges by strengthening controls over social media. Cheng was arrested in 2004 on embezzlement charges that his supporters said were politically motivated. He was later released.

The editor at the Beijing News said management had warned staff not to talk about the incident, especially to foreign reporters, who “could make the higher-ups lose face”.

“It’s possible that after this, they might settle scores.”

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Post tags: Asahi Shimbun, Beijing News, Cheng Yizhong, Guangdong, June 4th, Liu Yunshan, media censorship, news media, newspapers, press freedom, Southern Media Group, Southern Weekly, southern weekly protest 2013, Tuo Zhen, Xi Jinping
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The lawyers claimed that those of Wen’s relatives who have engaged in business activities have done nothing illegal, and hold no shares in any companies; that his mother has never received any income or property besides her regular salary and pension; and that Wen himself has never interceded on their behalf or allowed policies to be affected by his family’s financial interests. Several points addressed statements not made in the Times article. “In fact,” wrote Donald Clarke at China Law Prof Blog, “the statement disputes remarkably little […. T]he lawyers’ statement really challenges only one specific assertion – that Wen’s mother is a multi-millionaire – and one general assertion – that several of his relatives own shares in various corporations.” From Keith Bradsher’s report on the statement at The New York Times:

The statement was not a sweeping denial of the article. The statement acknowledged that some family members were active in business and that they “are responsible for all their own business activities.”

While the statement disputed that Mr. Wen’s mother had held assets, it did not address the calculation in the article that the family had controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion.

Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for The Times, expressed confidence in the article. “We are standing by our story, which we are incredibly proud of and which is an example of the quality investigative journalism The Times is known for,” she wrote in an e-mail.

The lawyers’ statement represents an unusual move for the family of a senior Chinese leader. When Bloomberg News published an article in late June describing real estate and other assets held by the family of Vice President Xi Jinping, his family did not respond publicly.

(See CDT’s coverage of the Bloomberg article and subsequent censorship.)

Speaking with Simon Rabinovitch of The Financial Times, the Brookings Institution’s Cheng Li said that this “unprecedented” response is encouraging: “Wen Jiabao is behaving differently from other Chinese leaders. His reaction can potentially be a positive example.” At the South China Morning Post, Shi Jiangtao discussed the different reactions to the two investigations, and the Times article’s possible impact on transparency reforms:

Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based political analyst, said the image-conscious premier, who had always boasted a “clean” image, had no choice but to fight back.

“The Times’ report has forced Wen’s hand … Of course the best way to dismiss allegations is for Wen to become the first mainland leader to disclose his personal assets,” Zhang said.

Both [Zhang and Zhu Lijia, of the Chinese Academy of Governance] noted that when the family of Vice-President Xi Jinping was subject to similar attacks in June by Bloomberg he kept quiet.

“Xi apparently chose to bide his time as the leader-in-waiting while Wen, who will step down next year, chose to fight as he has nothing much to lose,” Zhang said.

Experts consulted by the Post’s Keith Zhai felt that the statement’s threat of legal action against the Times would probably come to nothing:

He Weifang, a law expert at Peking University, said the statement was more of a gesture than a substantial legal document. “It was a demonstration of the attitude of a single party [the Wen family], intended to show the Chinese public that [The New York Times] report wasn’t factually correct,” He said.

If the Wen family does take the Times to court, it could be a formidable undertaking.

“Then the case would get bigger … and even out of control,” He said. “Based on this rationale, I reckon it’s not likely [the Wen family] would sue The Times.”

[…] Pu Zhiqiang, a Beijing-based civil rights lawyer specialising in press freedom and defamation cases, said the statement was more like a declaration of innocence. “It’s understandable why the family asked the lawyers to make the statement, but to me it didn’t say anything. It’s more like a public oath or some act of public relations.”

At IHT Rendezvous, Mark McDonald described Chinese authorities’ efforts to stifle discussion of Barboza’s report, citing CDT’s Sensitive Words post on blocked weibo search terms. Delivery in China of the the hard-copy Tribune carrying the article, meanwhile, was variable. From NPR’s Louisa Lim and the Los Angeles Times’ Julie Makinen:

Surprised my IHT arrived intact today.Expected to see whole WJB-related pages torn out.

— Louisa Lim (@limlouisa) October 27, 2012

Hilarious. This is how a hotel explained why the IHT (with NYT story on Wen $$) would not be delivered in Beijing Sat. twitter.com/JulieMakLAT/st…

— Julie Makinen (@JulieMakLAT) October 28, 2012

For more on fallout from the investigation, see ‘New York Times Wen Exposé Makes Waves‘ at CDT.

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Post tags: Bloomberg, donald clarke, He Weifang, Internet censorship, new york times, newspapers, pu zhiqiang, Wen Jiabao, Xi Jinping, Zhang Lifan
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Headlines from four papers, clockwise from upper right:

Liaoshen Evening Post: In Gamble, Japan Will Lose;
China Declares Baseline of Diaoyu and Subsidiary Islands;
Wen Jiabao: We “Will Never Yield an Inch”;
Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Chinese Government Will Not Sit Idly by Watching Territorial Sovereignty Infringed Upon”

Modern Express: The Diaoyu Have Always Been China’s!

Henan Business Daily: Give Us Back Our Land!

New Express: Japan Illegally Buys Diaoyu;
China Says No;
China Declares Baseline of Diaoyu and Subsidiary Islands

Official statements from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are above the fold in the People’s Daily. The blue headline in the lower left reads, “Ignoring Historical Fact Effects the Present.”

Reference News: China Will Not Yield to Japan’s “Island Purchase”

Qilu Evening News:
On “Buying Islands,” China Tells Japan: Do It Your Way, There Will Be Consequences;
China Declares Baseline of Diaoyu and Subsidiary Islands;
Wen Jiabao: We “Will Never Yield an Inch”

Oriental Morning Post:
Japan to Sign Contract “Nationalizing” Diaoyu As Early As Today;
China and Japan Face Grimmest Conflict of the New Century;
China Will Absolutely Not Yield on Issue,
Moves Forward with Legal Counterattack,
Declares Baseline of Diaoyu and Subsidiary Islands;
Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Chinese Government Will Not Sit Idly by Watching Territorial Sovereignty Infringed Upon”
Yang Jiechi Summons Japanese Ambassador;
Japan Will Be Responsible for All Repercussions;
China Will Launch Monitor of Diaoyu and Subsidiary Islands

Xianyang Today:
In Illegal Island Purchase, You’re to Blame for Consequences

This Shenyang paper’s front page features the Foreign Ministry statement surrounded by 56 blood red fingerprints. The larger text towards the bottom reads, “The days when the Chinese people let themselves be bullied are gone forever.”

Via AmazeNews.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: AmazeNews, diaoyu islands, Hu Jintao, Japan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, newspapers, people's daily, propaganda, Reference News, Shenyang, territorial disputes, Wen Jiabao, Yang Jiechi
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The weight Gu Kailai put on between her arrest and trial has many guessing at the conditions of her detention, or whether she even had a body double take the heat for her. There’s little hope for true justice, either. A commuted death sentence can easily become a life sentence; Gu may even leave prison in some years’ time.

Bogu Kailai’s Commuted Death Sentence

Bogu Kailai: “I feel that the sentence is fair, and that it reflects the court’s sincere respect for the law, sincere respect for reality, and sincere respect for life.”

A little mouse’s thirst for booze led it into a beer can. It made it in, but no matter what it can’t get out.

Go on a Diet, Then Come on Out 

Read more about Gu Kailai and her husband, Bo Xilai, from CDT.

Via Over the Wall. Translation by Josh Rudolph.

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Lu Yan, publisher of the Oriental Morning Post, was transferred to head another division of the Shanghai-based Wenxin United Press Group that owns the paper, and deputy editor-in-chief Sun Jian was suspended, according to two sources at the newspaper who declined to be named.

On Monday, Guangdong’s New Express announced that its chief editor, Lu Fumin, had been removed from his post to head the political section of a sister newspaper, while its national and international coverage was slashed and its op-ed page eliminated.

A separate veteran Shanghai-based journalist said that municipal party secretary Yu Zhengsheng was unhappy with the newspaper’s stories. “Yu has criticised some of the newspaper’s reports in recent months, so the paper had to do something about it,” he said.

[…] Shanghai party boss Yu has been widely regarded as a front runner to enter the party’s top echelons at its national congress in the autumn.

Tania Branigan’s report at The Guardian brought together a range of perspectives on the shakeups:

“I think these can probably be read as the surfacing of tensions playing out on a daily basis across the country’s media. These are probably more egregious examples of the tightening of everyday control ahead of the 18th party congress [where the new leadership will be unveiled],” said David Bandurski of Hong Kong University’s China Media Project.

He stressed that the moves should not be seen as part of a co-ordinated crackdown and could be related to local as much as national issues.

[…] Li Datong, an independent commentator and former journalist, said he thought it was probably not a press freedom issue, adding: “It might be just be an internal issue among Chinese officials.”

At China Media Project, Bandurski stressed the uncertainty surrounding the moves. Two of the articles widely cited as triggers the personnel changes, he pointed out, are still freely available online.

In the most general sense, the two actions — though not in any way related or coordinated — can be read as stemming from an all-round tightening of press controls in China ahead of the crucial 18th Party Congress later this year. That simple reading, however, tells us very little about the specific mechanisms that are at work in these cases.

So what is really going on? The bottom line, we don’t know. As the Hong Kong paper The Sun summed the cases up in an editorial this morning:

Inside the mainland propaganda system, there is a way to die that can be called “death by uncertain causes”. This is when the propaganda department settles a score once autumn has passed [as they saying goes]. If the bosses of a paper are not regularly and dutifully talking [the Party's] politics, they will be pulled down mysteriously. The New Express and Oriental Morning Post are both examples of this.

Right now, the reasons being given for these “deaths by uncertain causes” are themselves mysterious to media insiders.

Whatever the explanation, warned Madeline Earp at the Committee to Protect Journalists, the moves threaten to further chill China’s already wintry media climate:

Personnel changes can be an effective way to neuter a publication that pushes the boundaries in its coverage, according to CPJ research. So although we don’t know exactly why these two papers are under fire, and local journalists are unlikely to talk about it on the record, it’s safe to assume that the censors have decided it is better to be safe than sorry in advance of the sensitive political hand-off coming later in the year.

Our concern is that with sensitive periods occurring so frequently in China, and with crackdown the new normal for so many activists and journalists, there’s no knowing if or when the censors will loosen their grip. Meanwhile, fellow journalists in Guangzhou and Shanghai will likely be more circumspect for a while, lest the same fate befall them.

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Post tags: Committee to Protect Journalists, David Bandurski, Guangdong, journalists, leadership transition, Li Datong, media conditions, newspapers, Shanghai, Yu Zhengsheng
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On Monday, Foreign Policy website published a 2,500 word article by Larson named “Global Times: China’s Fox News,” which is the longest article about the Global Times in the foreign media yet. The article has an accompanying collection of “The Top 10 Screeds in China’s Global Times.” It may show that China is attracting more and more attention from the US media.

But we feel the quality of the article didn’t live up to what we expect from the Western media. The article even does not describe the location of the Global Times clearly. Larson claimed in her article that Global Times is subject to government review before publication, which is totally contrary to the fact ….

It is not a bad thing for the media, especially the media in different countries, to respect each other.

Global Times usually criticizes the opinion of the US media. But we never report stories about the editorial department of the US media to prove the correctness of our criticisms.

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None of this attracted much notice in the West until 2009, when, in the midst of surging overseas interest in China following the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Hu founded Global Times’s English edition. Some of the news articles are translated directly from the Chinese edition, but most are distinct, with a focus on interpreting China’s domestic affairs. “Because many readers are foreigners, we have news about what happens in China,” Hu says. The English edition is somewhat tamer than the Chinese edition, but still more nationalistic than China Daily, the country’s other state-run national English language paper, founded in 1981 ….

How does fear-mongering about foreign policy mix with muckraking about outrageous official behavior? “I think Hu is opportunistic and trying to be sensational … in the vein of the New York Post,” says Richard Burger, a former PR professional based in China and former editor at Global Times’s English edition. According to Burger, shortly after the English edition launched, Hu announced in an editorial meeting that he was determined to publish an article at least referencing the June 4, 1989 massacre — a date on which, according to China’s official media, nothing happened. Global Times did manage to twice break that taboo, albeit in passing references in articles devoted to the development of Chinese intellectual thought. “He’s out to win attention for his newspaper,” says Burger, “he relishes controversy.”

See also Foreign Policy’s collection of The Top 10 Screeds in China’s Global Times.

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@jajia: From today on, remove the administrative and editorial oversight of the Beijing News from the Southern News Group, and transfer it to Guangming Daily Group. 今日起，取消南方报业集团对新京报的业务指导权，转交光明日报报业集团。

From Sinaweibo:

@aihuijiangtao: it was said that Beijing Times (under People’s Daily) and Beijing News (under Guangming Daily) both will be under the control of Beijing Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Department, belonging to Beijing News Group. @安徽蒋涛：据说，人民日报旗下之京华时报，和光明日报旗下之新京报，都将划归北京市委宣传部管辖，隶属京报集团。

While none of the above information has been confirmed by any official source, “Beijing News” “新京报” and “Beijing Times” “京华” have both become forbidden search words on Sina Weibo since yesterday.

Update: China Media Project points to a weibo post by Caijing editor Luo Changping in which he confirms that the two newspapers will be moved under the direct administration of the Beijing Propaganda Department.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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When Li Xiang got home with a pile of books he had bought from a bookstore at a Shanghai business school, he started to happily flip through one of them until he noticed something odd; pages 16 and 17 were stuck together ….

Using a razor and the skill of a surgeon, Li managed to pry apart the glued-together pages to find that the offending passage described China’s legal system. On page 18, he also found lines of text that were redacted with sloppy strokes in black ink. Carefully scrutinizing the passage, Li could see the section was an explanation of China’s one-party rule ….

Li remembers how he had to play a little game with CNPIEC’s Shanghai office when he tried to subscribe to a foreign newspaper. Chinese mainland citizens can not directly subscribe to daily foreign language newspapers.

According to the import-export monopoly’s Shanghai branch’s website, subscription services for foreign newspapers and periodicals are restricted to people and companies from overseas, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao. A photocopy of a business license or passport is required proof.

“It was very interesting to see the way they dealt with it,” said Li. “I just asked my German friend for help. I used his ID to order the International Herald Tribune but had it delivered to my address,” he said.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: books, censorship, newspapers
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Xie Baokang, assistant to the Times’ editor, told Agence France-Presse that the investigative department had been “dismantled.” Reporters from the team, including the veteran journalist Wang Keqin, have been moved to different departments, Xie told AFP.

The reasons for the move are not clear, but the lack of transparency surrounding the restructuring is characteristic of the behind-the-scenes political pressure that governs China’s media. Journalists are often fined, dismissed, or demoted in retaliation for outspoken reporting and warned not to publicize the penalty, according to CPJ research.

“This apparent crackdown of the China Economic Times’ investigative section is a loss for China,” said Bob Dietz, CPJ Asia program coordinator. “The shutdown carries the hallmarks of a political measure to curb a leading news outlet’s reporting that found disfavor within the government.”

From Jonathan Watts at The Guardian:

Contacted by phone, Wang said he was unable to comment. “Sorry, I have to hang up,” he said ….

“I had problems with black society [gangs], and problems with red society [officials],” Wang said in a Guardian interview last year. “I heard there was a special investigation team, [with the target of] sending me to prison.” He said his life had been threatened and he had been beaten up on several occasions.

Until now, however, it was assumed that his position was safe because he was protected by China’s former premier Zhu Rongji. There is little indication of what may have sparked a bout of pressure from the authorities. At midnight and from 5am to 9am, Wang posted a series of online comments calling for freedom and condemning the corruption of officials.

“Thanks for your support … Even if we can only change society a little, that is still progress,” he wrote in one. “Respect everyone’s freedom in order to achieve true freedom,” he noted in another. “Who but a corrupt man would want to become a governor?” read another.

At Economics Observer [zh], journalism professor Zhan Jiang expressed optimism for Wang’s prospects and those of Chinese investigative journalism in general. China Media Project translates:

As I wrote on my microblog, the breakup of Wang Keqin’s investigative team is not something intended by the high-level leadership. It should be understood as the intention of a handful of ignorant and incompetent people at the top of the newspaper. High-level leaders have voiced approval of the work Wang Keqin has done in recent years to uphold the public interest. They have at the very least not singled him out for trouble. Wang Keqin has worked as an investigative reporter in Beijing for more than 10 years now, and from his seminal work on taxi cartels in Beijing to today he has never been targeted with a libel suit, and the factual nature of his reporting has never been questioned.

Reporters have called to ask me about the state of investigative reporting in China and the predicament it faces. I respond that we should avoid this word “predicament.” And for this reason, I encourage against reading too much into this latest development, understanding it as necessarily a reflection of the worsening state of investigative reporting, or a sign that forces outside the paper have agitated against Wang Keqin. This should not in fact be the case. We should recognize that we’ve lately seen an upsurge in investigative reporting in many media, in financial media and commercial newspapers, and even at China Central Television, including such recent cases as tainted pork in China, and just this month revelations of counterfeit products by DaVinci furniture ….

When friends say that being a journalist is a dangerous road, I respond that, given the chance, I will still choose to be a journalist in the next life. Because Wang Keqin and others like him have made China a more transparent place, and they have transformed the values of our people. In a significant sense, they have taken us from a culture of propaganda and exultation (歌颂型文化) to a culture of criticism (批判性文化). Therefore, I suspect that the changes Wang Keqin is now experiencing might bring him an opportunity for fairer pay and greater comfort. If that’s the case, then I suppose we have Chairman Hang to thank.

Only a week ago, Wang himself wrote [zh] that, while the fortunes of investigative journalism have followed “the wave-like pattern of the ‘camel’s hump’”, the trends are generally positive. From China Media Project:

… [From] the standpoint of professionalism, the first true investigative reports in China perhaps have a history of just a decade. I believe we can date them back to the launch of Caijing magazine [by Hu Shuli (胡舒立)] in 1998. Along with the China Central Television program News Probe, which was launched around the same time and also exposed deeper stories, Caijing defined investigative reporting on the basis of “defending the public interest” (捍卫公众利益), “exposing the truth” (揭发黑幕), and “independent investigation by reporters” (记者独立调查), these three core characteristics, choosing its topics on this basis. News Probe in particular at the time defined the exposure of hidden truths (揭发黑幕) as a necessary component. This was the most basic expectation [of the program] ….

Making a broader observation, strictly-defined Chinese investigative reporting has shown the following trends over its history of just over ten years: 1. more and more reporters have been engaged in the writing of exposes (揭黑报道); 2. more and more media have been engaged in the publishing of exposes; 3. more and more good-quality reports and regular columns [on investigative reporting] have appeared in China; 4. investigative reports in China are showing a higher and higher degree of professionalism; 5. investigative reporters are receiving increasing attention and respect by general society.

See also past coverage of Wang Keqin on CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Caijing, CCTV, Committee to Protect Journalists, counterfeit goods, Hu Shuli, investigative journalism, journalists in china, newspapers, pork, tainted food, Wang Keqin, Zhu Rongji
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