An editorial in the the paper today criticizes “commercial newspapers and magazines” in China — that would be the likes of Southern Metropolis Daily, Caixin Media, Shanghai’s Oriental Morning Post, etcetera — of being infected with a Western notions of journalism that they do not sufficiently understand.

The editorial argues further that the Western concepts of the media’s role do not suit China’s unique “circumstances”.

“Chinese media must sing the main theme,” the editorial said, a reference to the media’s role as propaganda vehicles for the CCP. “This is determined by China’s political system, and accords with the realities of China as a nation of 1.3 billion people. The fact is that for China to develop it must maintain social stability, and it must create a public opinion environment conducive to stability.”

CMP also pointed out that after the editorial was published, ironically, searches for “Beijing Daily” were blocked from Sina Weibo.

CMP now reports that the above editorial has inspired a lively debate in China about the purpose of the media. They translate a letter to Southern Metropolis Daily in which the author disagrees with the concept of media put forward by the Beijing Daily:

On the question of whether or not media reports on food safety have created a sense of fear and anxiety, we have recently had two media expressing different views on this issue. Beijing Daily says that quite a few report lately — on food safety, doctor-patient conflicts, construction quality, official corruption and other issues — have been built up by the media, giving the impression that all food in China is “poisonous”, the all buildings are “tofu architecture,” that all public officials are corrupt, and suggesting that social tensions are growing ever more severe and prospects for development are grim. “In fact,” the newspaper said, “this is just a mistaken impression created by various media.”

The Xinhua Daily Telegraph responded with an editorial called, “Expert Opinion Helps Calm ‘Food Panic’” (专业舆论有助于消除“吃的恐慌”). The editorial argued that “facing problems head on is the basis of resolving problems, and media reporting on food safety issues is a form of monitoring by public opinion and monitoring by society that should be encouraged” (New Express, May 19).

Naturally, the fact that such issues as food safety, doctor-patient conflict, construction quality and official corruption have become public opinion hotspots has to do with media reports. But if there were no media reports, would these problems be any less obvious or serious? No one lives in a vacuum, and the various problems we come upon were not created because of media reports. Sometimes, naively, I’m even of a mind to feed information to the media! Which is to say, I think there are far too few media reports on negative issues.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing Daily, media conditions, press freedom
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The title comes from a previous Foreign Ministry press conference, when then-spokesperson Jiang Yu answered foreign journalists’ questions about why they were roughed up while reporting on so-called Jasmine Revolution protests by telling them, “The law is not a shield!” (Read more via CDT’s Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon).

Read more about Hexie Farm’s CDT series, including a Q&A with the anonymous cartoonist, and see all cartoons so far in the series. 

[CDT owns the copyright for all cartoons in the Hexie Farm CDT series. Please do not reproduce without receiving prior permission from CDT.]

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Al-Jazeera, foreign correspondents, Foreign Ministry, hexie farm, press freedom
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To be a journalist in today’s China you sometimes need to have a few subtle tricks up your sleeve to get your stories to print.

Sun Hua, an award-winning investigative journalist for the Jinan Times, knows just what he can and cannot get away with and how best to persuade his bosses to allow him to continue his work. He is charming, philosophical – and also very determined.

This film follows Sun Hua at work as he investigates a story about possible corruption by a property developer, seeking out residents’ views, negotiating demonstrations and dealing with the police.

All the time, he quietly considers his position as a journalist in a complex country that itself is dealing with change. He dreams of ‘fairness, objectivity, truth’ – but he also knows there are real limits to what he can do. Yet he continues to push, to persuade and to publish.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: investigative journalism, journalists, media conditions, press freedom
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“Chen Guangcheng is currently being treated in hospital. As a Chinese citizen, if he wants to study abroad he can go through the normal channels to the relevant departments and complete the formalities in accordance with the law like other Chinese citizens,” the Foreign Ministry said ….

Chen sounded anxious as he spoke by telephone from his hospital bed Friday, saying he was very worried about his safety.

“I can only tell you one thing. My situation right now is very dangerous,” Chen said. “For two days, American officials who have wanted to come and see me have not been allowed in.”

Chen said he spoke to American officials by phone on Friday, twice, “but the calls keep getting cut off after two sentences.” A senior U.S. official said U.S. Embassy personnel also met Chen’s wife in person.

On PBS Newshour, Susan Shirk of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California summed up the changes of the past few days, which she said US officials had “really left … up to him.”

They offered [the] alternative of staying in the embassy for a period of time. And, in fact, on Monday evening, that’s where things were. He — if you talked — he talked with Professor Jerome Cohen, professor at NYU Law School, who was giving him independent advice as a highly respected China expert and human rights lawyer. And as of Monday night, it looked like he was going to stay in the embassy and the embassy was making preparations to house him for some period of time.

On Tuesday, his thinking changed. And he asked that his family be brought to Beijing by the Chinese government as a sign of goodwill and credible commitment. And the Chinese government did that. And once he spoke with his wife several times, once she had gotten to the hospital, he decided to leave.

But, of course, once he reentered Chinese society, I think his feelings of vulnerability very much came to the surface, and he became uncertain about the risks he now faces.

The South China Morning Post gathered perspectives from a number of Chen’s supporters:

Lawyer Jiang Tianyong , who was taken away yesterday afternoon after attempting to enter the hospital to meet Chen, told the Post earlier that morning that he thought Chen made up his mind after reaching the hospital. “Previously he had been threatened only by people in Linyi [Shandong] – he was not in contact with people from the central government or Beijing – but at the hospital, he was directly threatened by someone from the Foreign Ministry. This perhaps made Chen truly feel that he was not protected.”

However, Chen’s lawyer, Li [Jinsong], said he was worried. “The original result was a relatively good one for Chen and his family. But now it seems like emotional influences are taking over, drowning out voices of the gentle conscience, both within and outside the system,” Li said. “It’ll be a relief if Chen can leave. But what if he can’t?

“The only people who actually benefited from this are those who mistreated Chen in the first place.”

While police outside the hospital were “very, very interested in recording everyone’s press IDs” according to Tom Lasseter, some supporters who had gathered there faced detention and, in two cases, beatings. Jiang Tianyong was among them, and was detained overnight on Thursday. From AFP:

“They beat him on his ears,” Jiang’s wife Jin Bianling, told AFP. “He is now deaf in one ear and can barely hear out of the other ear.”

Police released Jiang early Friday, but have been stationed at the couple’s home ever since, effectively placing him under house arrest, she said, adding they also destroyed Jiang’s mobile phone.

Artist and rights defender Liu Yi told AFP that police also grabbed him outside the hospital on Thursday, beat him over the head with a bottle and took him into custody for interrogation.

TIME’S Global Spin blog put together a guide to some of Chen’s most prominent supporters and associates who are now at risk. One of them, He Peirong, was confirmed to have returned home on Friday after being detained in Nanjing a week earlier. From Twitter:

我回家了，一切都好，谢谢大家。

I’ve returned home, everything is fine, thank you all.

Finally and inevitably, Next Media Animation offered its own interpretation of the Chen affair ….

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, detention, diplomacy, Foreign Ministry, Jerome cohen, Jiang Tianyong, journalists, Li Jinsong, linyi, police brutality, press freedom, study abroad, Susan Shirk, United States
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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 served most recently as deputy minister of 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.

Read more about the Southern Daily Media Group and press freedom via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: press freedom, Southern Media Group
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In the West, cynicism about African democracy has led governments to narrow their development priorities to poverty reduction and stability; individual liberties like press freedom have dropped off the agenda, making it easier for authoritarian rulers to go after journalists more aggressively. In the 1990s, leaders like Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia were praised by the West as political and social reformers. Today, the West extols these men for achieving growth and maintaining stability, which they do largely with a nearly absolute grip over all national institutions and the press.

Then there’s the influence of China, which surpassed the West as Africa’s largest trading partner in 2009. Ever since, China has been deepening technical and media ties with African governments to counter the kind of critical press coverage that both parties demonize as neocolonialist.

In January, Beijing issued a white paper calling for accelerated expansion of China’s news media abroad and the deployment of a press corps of 100,000 around the world, particularly in priority regions like Africa. In the last few months alone, China established its first TV news hub in Kenya and a print publication in South Africa. The state-run Xinhua news agency already operates more than 20 bureaus in Africa. More than 200 African government press officers received Chinese training between 2004 and 2011 in order to produce what the Communist Party propaganda chief, Li Changchun, called “truthful” coverage of development fueled by China’s activities.

China and African governments tend to agree that the press should focus on collective achievements and mobilize public support for the state, rather than report on divisive issues or so-called negative news.

Read more about China’s trade relationship with Africa and about Beijing’s efforts to export censorship via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Africa trade, diplomacy, exporting censorship, press freedom
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What happened next was not surprising, but on this day, felt particularly ironic: plainclothes police officers prevented us from interviewing Pu on camera, even as we explained to them that this new legislation would curtail their state security powers.

The language used by the officers, who refused to identify themselves, might also be interesting to those unfamiliar with this kind of state apparatus: Orwellian, wrapped in code, and offering our crew “recommendations” that if disobeyed, could have meant some physical confrontation from the two men in sunglasses who were called up for reinforcement during the following exchange.

She then recounts the exchange between herself, the officers [PO] and Pu Zhiqiang:

AJE: This is a law about security, terrorism, and the handling of general criminal suspects. This law can be quite an improvement on things –

PO: Yes! Indeed, it is a huge reform. It’s a big improvement.

AJE: So … are you speaking in the capacity of a police officer?

PO: No, I’m … speaking in the capacity … as Mr. Pu’s … friend!

Pu Zhiqiang: You are not my friend. I adamantly, adamantly dispute that.

Pu Zhiqiang has defended many high-profile activists and dissidents, including artist Ai Weiwei. He is now providing counsel for Zhang Mingyu, a Chongqing businessman who was detained in Beijing after writing on his blog that he has inside information about the current political intrigue involving Bo Xilai, Wang Lijun, and the Chongqing mafia. For more on Zhang Mingyu, see a post from the Committee to Protect Journalists. For more on recent harassment of foreign journalists, see reports from Tibetan areas of Sichuan and from the scene of protests in Panhe, Guangdong.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: criminal procedure law, press freedom, pu zhiqiang, state security
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Against a backdrop of rapid socio-economic change and modernization, China continues to be an authoritarian one-party state that imposes sharp curbs on freedom of expression, association, and religion; openly rejects judicial independence and press freedom; and arbitrarily restricts and suppresses human rights defenders and organizations, often through extra-judicial measures.

The government also censors the internet; maintains highly repressive policies in ethnic minority areas such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia; systematically condones—with rare exceptions—abuses of power in the name of “social stability” ; and rejects domestic and international scrutiny of its human rights record as attempts to destabilize and impose “Western values” on the country. The security apparatus—hostile to liberalization and legal reform—seems to have steadily increased its power since the 2008 Beijing Olympics. China’s “social stability maintenance” expenses are now larger than its defense budget.

At the same time Chinese citizens are increasingly rights-conscious and challenging the authorities over livelihood issues, land seizures, forced evictions, abuses of power by corrupt cadres, discrimination, and economic inequalities. Official and scholarly statistics estimate that 250-500 protests occur per day; participants number from ten to tens of thousands. Internet users and reform-oriented media are aggressively pushing the boundaries of censorship, despite the risks of doing so, by advocating for the rule of law and transparency, exposing official wrong-doing, and calling for reforms.

China’s state media has responded to the report with a flurry of indignation, as HRW’s Nicholas Bequelin noted:

此地无银三百两： People’s Daily and China Daily have published a total of 10 (!) articles on Human Rights Watch (@hrw) in one week.

— Nicholas Bequelin 林伟 (@Bequelin) January 31, 2012

(“此地无银三百两”: “No 300 taels of silver here”; to draw attention to something by denying it.)

People’s Daily, for example, suggested that criticism of China’s rights record arose from Western insecurity:

It seems that some Western countries and NGOs have set out to attack China over its human rights issues. They first assume that human rights are being ignored, then seek evidence from rumors, and make speculations to blindly accuse China of violating human rights with the real purpose of distorting China’s international image ….

Why does the West still hold a prejudice against China’s human rights? The only reason is that the Cold War mentality and ideological hegemony still prevails. As long as China is a socialist country, the West will insist on distorting its image and see China as a threat to the Western system.

Since the end of the Cold War, the West has been too boastful of its political system, believing it is the only system that has universal value in the world.

China’s significant economic progress has stirred Western anxieties. Distorting China’s human rights becomes the only political choice.

Elsewhere, People’s Daily also criticised the report for failing to acknowledge China’s progress in legal reform. From Xinhua:

The World Report “gave no word on the great progress in terms of China’s judicial reforms that have been demonstrated in the Criminal Procedural Law draft amendment,” the article said.

Legal experts say the draft amendment will help improve the protection of criminal suspects’ human rights, by preventing judges from accepting confessions from tortured suspects and giving these suspects more defense options.

In fact, the report does acknowledge the amendment, but reiterates concern at the prospect of legalised enforced disappearances:

In August 2011, in an effort to … improve the administration of justice, the government published new rules to eliminate unlawfully obtained evidence and strengthened the procedural rights of the defense in its draft revisions to the Criminal Procedure Law. It is likely it will be adopted in March 2012.

However, the draft revisions also introduced an alarming provision that would effectively legalize enforced disappearances by allowing police to secretly detain suspects for up to six months at a location of their choice in “state security, terrorism and major corruption cases.” The measure would put suspects at great risk of torture while giving the government justification for the “disappearance” of dissidents and activists in the future. Adoption of this measure—which is hotly criticized in Chinese media by human rights lawyers, activists, and part of the legal community—would significantly deviate from China’s previous stance of gradual convergence with international norms on administering justice, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China signed in 1997 but has yet to ratify.

See more on CDT.

People’s Daily also objected to the report’s claim that “the government continues to build a ‘new socialist countryside’ [in Tibet] by relocating and rehousing up to 80 percent of the TAR population, including all pastoralists and nomads.” From Xinhua:

The People’s Daily article, jointly published by two Tibet experts, said the HRW’s conclusion was groundless and contradictory to basic facts.

The two authors, Zhang Ming, or Lorong Dramadul, with the China Tibetology Research Center, and Professor Yang Minghong with Sichuan University, hoped that their experiences and observations from over 20 years of field research in Tibet could help clarify the misunderstandings.

They cited official statistics and said that in 2011, 1.85 million Tibetans, or 61 percent of the total population, had settled in permanent residences.

“No more than 150,000 people, or less than 5 percent of the Tibetan population, had left their original residence,” the experts wrote.

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher Pan Xizhe’s op-ed at China Daily accused Human Rights Watch of sloppy methodology and political motivations:

At first glance, Human Rights Watch appears to be keen on the protection of international human rights. But it actually carries out its work with double standards and bias. Its observations lack political neutrality and its research methods are questionable. The organization’s employment of unqualified workers has also hurt the credibility of its report. Human Rights Watch should reflect inward before passing on judgment to others.

The media and international observers have long criticized Human Rights Watch for passing judgment of human rights conditions of a country or region through tinted lens. It turns a blind eye to human rights issues in some countries while criticizing others vehemently. The Sunday Times quoted a human rights insider in the United States as saying that the organization caters its reports to the US government, which greatly affects its objectivity ….

In the China portion of its report, Human Rights Watch used expressions such as “estimate”, “possibly”, and “probably”. It criticized China’s judiciary system, religious institutions, regional autonomy by ethnic groups, family planning policy as well as foreign and economic policies.

The US section of the report, which criticises the Obama White House’s failure to pursue Bush administration officials for approving the use of torture and decries America’s “abusive” counterterrorism policies, growing poverty and world-leading prison population, can be read here.

While the World Report looked back at 2011, at The Diplomat, HRW’s Phelim Kine looks ahead to 2012:

These cases represent more than the Chinese government’s well-documented contempt for freedom of expression explicitly guaranteed in Article 35 of the Constitution. They are also clear efforts to breed fear and sow silence among China’s beleaguered community of human rights defenders and civil society activists. The aim: to ensure that the 12-month senior Communist Party leadership transition this year proceeds without public challenges to the Party’s 61-year monopoly on power. China’s President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao are preparing to step aside for a new generation of leaders, widely touted to be Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, in a secretive political succession that won’t be complete until in March 2013 ….

The government’s overriding obsession with maintaining its monopoly on power make it likely that these abuses will continue under the leadership of Xi Jinping. Foreign governments could help reverse this trend and give support to Chinese who want a more accountable government by more vigorously engaging the government on such violations. Thirty years since the launch of China’s economic reform and opening, a decade after China entered the World Trade Organization, and five years since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the deterioration in respect for human rights and rule of law in China should be of serious concern for all countries seeking long-term, sustainable and mutually-beneficial bilateral relations with China.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, criminal procedure law, disabled, human rights watch, industrial pollution, leadership transition, legal reform, Li Keqiang, migrants, minorities, press freedom, religious freedom, Tibet, women, Xi Jinping
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So you’re a pragmatist?

Actually, many people think I’m more of an idealist. I still think China needs democracy, that it needs to change. I really oppose several arguments [that are commonly made] about why China can’t have democracy, such as the argument that China is unique—that Chinese people need to wait because their “quality” [a Chinese term, suzhi, that implies everything from educational level to manners] isn’t high enough and other ridiculous things like that. Some people said that democracy wasn’t part of Chinese culture, and then Taiwan became democratic. Then they said that Taiwan was a special case. Now look at Wukan. They had their own elections. People say it’s special, but in fact Wukan is really typically Chinese. It’s a Chinese town but they organized everything. So what argument are you left with? If Wukan can have democracy so can other parts of China.

I’m not saying that China should have western-style democracy. In fact, there’s not a single western model. What do they mean? Germany didn’t copy America and America didn’t copy Britain. The issue isn’t copying. It’s do you or don’t you want democracy? Of course democracy has a lot of problems but it’s a way forward.

Since the 1980s, Chinese have been pragmatic. The question since the Cultural Revolution has been: can it work? This was Deng Xiaoping’s biggest influence on Chinese people. They ask if it’ll work or not. Now China has the world’s second-largest economy and could overtake the US. So in terms of market economics it’s been successful and I support this. What we lack is justice. There is no justice in the current system. It’s a practical issue. We need justice. Democracy is a way to bring justice. This is why democracy is necessary.

Read more by and about Chang Ping via CDT, including a translation of his blog post, “I Am Ashamed of Self-Censorship“. Read also about press freedom and media conditions in China.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chang Ping, democracy, press freedom, Southern Weekend
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Two books published in the last few months offer a complementary analysis of investigative journalism in the People’s Republic of China. David Bandurski and Martin Hala’s book looks at stories that have caused a major stir both nationally and internationally, while Tong Jingrong’s work takes a more general approach to the profession in the context of the history of Chinese journalism. [1] The 1990s seem to represent the golden age for investigative journalism in China. It established itself thanks to a convergence of political, social and economic factors. In an authoritarian state such as China, where censorship is institutionalized, investigative journalism had to meet the needs, or at least conform to some extent to the will of the Party in order for it to first be practiced in the media. Tong Jingrong stresses the idea of a real need on the part of the political authorities. The economic reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 enabled the Chinese economy to develop extremely quickly, but growth also led to major problems: mediocre quality of production, an increase in social inequalities, widespread corruption, environmental problems, etc. – all of which challenged the legitimacy of the policies implemented by the political leaders. As a way of regaining public trust in the Communist Party and the system of a socialist market economy, the government allowed critical information to appear in newspapers. Beginning with an investigation into the problems of product quality, investigative journalism gradually spread to other areas, thus prompting a form of “control by the media” (yulun jiandu).

The same issue features an interview with Bandurski about the current state of the media in China within a changing information landscape:

La Vie des Idées: Reports of recent crackdowns on Chinese journalists indicate that the government policy towards them is not relaxing. How would you describe the current state of the Chinese media? Has the greater opening of the Chinese press profoundly changed the face of the Chinese media industry? Has it led to more autonomy for journalists and more freedom of information for the Chinese?

[...] Control of the media and public opinion has remained an uncompromising priority for the CCP leadership. And yet, there have at the same time been dramatic changes. How do we explain that? Simply speaking, the major factors at play have been commercialization of the media, professionalism and the rise of the Internet and now social media. Media started commercializing – which is to say they started depending upon advertising, sales and subscriptions – in the mid-1990s, so China has only had a media market, you can say, for a little more than 15 years. In this sense, it is quite a new industry in China. This process did a lot of things, but one important thing was to transform the relationship between the media and the audience. Media still had to be careful politically, minding what is called “propaganda discipline.” But they had to mind their audiences and readers as well. This was a shift in orientation. Media now had to become more relevant to the public. It wasn’t enough to just report on what Party officials were doing, or the latest government notices. So by the late 1990s, we had a whole new generation of metro newspapers in China that relied entirely on advertising and other revenue sources. They received no state support. Most of these were what we call “spin-offs” of Party newspapers. In Chinese they are actually called “child papers,” and their official Party counterparts are “mother papers.” The mothers still receive state support, and their content is mostly dry propaganda. By contrast, the commercialized metro papers are rich in content.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: investigative journalism, media conditions, press freedom
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