From China Media Project:
Carrying its recent tradition of outspoken editorial writing into 2007, Southern Metropolis Daily today offered backhanded praise for the State Council’s “constructive” relationship with foreign media and said the same relationship should apply to domestic media.
The editorial, again a case of jieti fahui (or using the opportunity afforded by an official pronouncement to make one’s own point), followed a statement by Cai Wu, a minister of the State Council Information Office, on December 28 in which he said foreign reporters were welcome in China and that the government viewed them as “constructive and cooperative partners”.
The editorial also sought strategically to dovetail the notion of a freer domestic press with Chinese President Hu Jintao’s social policy of the “harmonious society“, saying that if “this [concept of] ‘constructive and cooperative partnership’ were extended the government’s relationship with domestic media, this would … allow the media to take a more active and professional role in the building of a harmonious society”.[Full Text]
