China Media Project translates and comments on Chinese media reports, since expunged from the Internet, about “writing task groups,” which publish commentaries in Party newspapers under pseudonyms, such as recent pieces ostensibly written by “Zheng Qingyuan”:
CMP reported earlier this week about a bold feature page at Sohu.com, one of China’s top internet news portals, that took a not-so-subtle jab at a heavyweight series of official Party editorials appearing recently in People’s Daily under the mysterious assumed name “Zheng Qingyuan” (郑青原). Topping the Sohu page, which was quickly “harmonized” but can be downloaded in PDF form here (Sohu Missing Page 11.2), was an unmistakable visual reference to the disquieted era of the Cultural Revolution, when ideological rancor tore the country apart.
The Sohu feature page dealt with so-called “writing task groups”, or xiezuo xiaozu (写作小组) — referring to teams of editorial writers generating pieces to articulate the voices and viewpoints of specific political interests within the Communist Party — as a unique feature of China’s political environment and history.
Here is the “Editor’s Note” accompanying the feature page:
Lately, a series of articles under the assumed name “Zheng Qingyuan” have sailed into the world, and have been re-posted by major internet portals. Masses of [Chinese] readers have speculated as to who this person is? So suddenly commanding banner positions at major sites, this must be [someone] of no ordinary background. Actually, “Zheng Qingyuan” is not any specific person, but rather is [the name given to] a writing task group. But its “background” is out of the ordinary indeed. In the history of New China [since 1949], these writing task groups have existed all along.
A couple of subsections on the feature page linked to the same Beijing Morning Post article, called “Who is People’s Daily’s ‘Zheng Qingyuan’?” The Sohu page originally containing the article was expunged along with the feature page itself, but is still available elsewhere.
