Despite this year’s disappointing, propagandistic line-up of winners for the 34th China Journalism Award, some Chinese investigative journalists continue to ply their trade with dogged reporting, commitment to keeping the public informed and holding the powerful accountable, and artful dodging of the many roadblocks thrown at them by Party, government, and censors. (For more coverage of investigative journalism in China, see CDT’s extensive Chinese and English archives on the topic.)
Two recent Chinese-language articles highlight these reporters and their day-to-day efforts. The first article is by Li Wei’ao (李微敖, Lǐ Wēi’áo), an award-winning investigative journalist formerly with Caijing and Southern Weekend, and currently chief correspondent for the Economic Observer. Li’s article, published to WeChat, is an annual year-end “inventory” of his journalistic output, including eight articles that were later deleted by censors. The list of censored pieces is revealing, as they touch on local political corruption, profiteering, and unexplained deaths:
This year (from November 8, 2023 to November 7, 2024), I published a total of 54 news articles, of which 51 were written independently (some involved collaboration with interns) and three written in collaboration with other colleagues. In addition, there were several draft articles that didn’t get published.
Of the 54 published articles, eight later “disappeared” after surviving online for five or six days at the most, and a scant 40 minutes at the least. Those eight articles were:
January 12
“A 75-year-old retired cadre in Hebei was arrested and prosecuted after reporting the local county party secretary”February 18
“During the period of strict COVID controls, a health commission cadre in Xinjiang stole and resold 15,000 sets of PPE”March 17
“Tian Wei, member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and former director of Jishuitan Hospital, under investigation” (by Li Wei’ao and Zhang Ling)May 20
“People’s Fine Arts Publishing House President Zhou Wei under investigation for reselling Beijing residence permits”July 19
“Bai Yuguang, Health Commission Director for Beijing’s Tongzhou District, under investigation”September 19
“Hunan Finance Chief Liu Wenjie died unexpectedly on September 19″October 9
“Fujian Provincial Healthcare Security Bureau Director Lin Shengkui fell to his death” (by Qu Yixian and Li Wei’ao)October 28
“How to prevent ‘high-seas fishing’ shakedowns of companies? NPC representative Zhu Zhengfu suggests two ways to sever the ‘profit chain’” [Chinese]
In another article about the state of journalism, published by WeChat account 图拉的精神食粮 (Túlā de jīngshén shíliáng, “Tula’s food for thought”), a reporter looks back at the ups and downs of her career during the last three years. She mentions numerous frustrations and setbacks, including times when she paid out-of-pocket to travel to locations where disasters or other events had occurred, simply because she felt it was important to at least try to report from the scene:
In 2022, I worked at a features-focused media outlet and witnessed its decline under censorship pressure. The change started with the Shanghai pandemic lockdown, during which time several long-form news reports by my colleagues and I were not published. The interview subjects would ask us when the articles were going to be published, and all we could do was tell them the truth and feel guilty about it. Later, there was no space for reporting on societal topics.
Three pandemic years swept everyone up in the changing times. Many features teams have been disbanded, and outlets doing investigative reporting have been forced into retreat. At a certain point, routine articles became “sensitive news,” and having one’s articles deleted by censors came to be seen as a professional badge of honor. Covering sensitive news has become the special prerogative of a very small number of “courageous” media outlets. Every time a somewhat daring news article is published, it attracts a lot of industry attention.
[…] In the latter half of this year, the number of public events that the media could report on was steadily shrinking. Disaster reporting was impossible, and it was getting harder to even touch on women’s issues. As for the killing of a Japanese schoolboy in Shenzhen, the indiscriminate murders [at a Walmart] in Shanghai’s Songjiang district, or the students injured in a stabbing attack at Beijing Zhongguancun No. 3 Primary School—reporting on any of those incidents was completely out of the question.
[…] Under pressure from censorship and conservative public opinion, the original standards that guided our industry are being abandoned. How to be a journalist has become an increasingly confusing issue for me. Apart from sticking to my guns when selecting topics to report on, I really don’t know what else to do.
[…] Since the pandemic, I have struggled with political depression and trauma. In seeking a balance between idealism and pragmatism, I more often than not find myself having to choose between survival and destruction. Recently, I have tried to comfort myself with this thought: Trump has just been re-elected. If I can face that, I can face anything.
At the same time, I also remind myself that having survived the pandemic, I have to keep on surviving—so that I can outlive a few old men, until their generation finally dies out. Even if the world doesn’t change, I want to stick around to see what happens. [Chinese]
