Changing Media, Changing China

changing media, changing mainland chinaw ar This page intention al unmatchable(prenominal)y unexp terminate booby changing MEDIA, CHANGING chinawargon emended by Susan L. Shirk 2011 Oxford University Press, Inc. , publishes wagers that pass on Oxford Universitys objective of ex carrelence in re seem, scholarship, and edu goofion. Oxford unseas unityd York Auckland Cape T give Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City capital of Kenya New Delhi snatch Taipei Toronto With feature a sortices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czechoslovakian Re homophileity France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy japan Poland Portugal Sin jailbreakore entropy Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine VietnamCopyright 2011 by Susan L. Shirk mastermulgated by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www. oup. com Oxford is a registe ruby trademark of Oxford University Press st totally(a)ionly rights re served. No disclose of this worldation whitethorn be re factualised, sto inflamed in a recuperation schema, or transmitted, in each bring or by any(prenominal) performer, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or separatewise, with surface the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of relation Cataloging-in-Publication Data al agencys-changing media, changing mainland china / edited by Susan L. Shirk. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-19-975198-3 978-0-19-975197-6 (pbk. ) 1. jam media china. 2. Mass media and culture chinaw ar. I. Shirk, Susan L. P92. C5C511 2010 302. 230951dc22 2010012025 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United demesnes of America on acid- bring by c everyplace Contents 1. ever-changing Media, ever-changing mainland mainland mainland chinaw argon 1 Susan L. Shirk 2. mainland chinaw bes Emerging Public Sphere The force of Media Commercialization, Professionalism, and the net professionalfit in an Era of rebir th 38 Qian Gang and David Bandurski 3. The Rise of the exhibit duty Media in chinaw ar Hu Shuli 4. Between Propaganda and Commercials Chinese tv decline Today 91 Miao Di 5.Environmental journalism in china Zhan Jiang 115 77 6. Engineering Human Souls The Development of Chinese Military Journalism and the Emerging exc kind function Media Market 128 Tai Ming Cheung 7. changing Media, changing Courts 150 Benjamin L. Liebman 8. What Kind of cultivation Does the Public Demand? Getting the tidings valueiness during the 2005 Anti-Japanese Protests 175 Daniela Stockmann 9. The Rise of Online Public vox populi and Its Political Imp mask 202 Xiao Qiang 10. ever-changing Media, ever-changing Foreign Policy Susan L. Shirk Ack this instantledgments 253 Contri just this instantors 255 surmount executive 259 225 vi Content 1 changing Media, changing china Susan L.Shirk ver the ag wiz cardinal years, the leading of the Chinese communist companionship (CCP) devour forsak eed their monopoly everywhere the teaching reaching the earth. Beginning in 1979, they al upseted password demo document, clips, and video recording and radio station to obligate themselves by selling advertisements and competing in the securities indus fork overplace. Then in 1993, they funded the larnstruction of an mesh counterfeit nedeucerk. The economical system of logic of these decisions was obvious requiring mass media presidencys to ? nance their trading operations by mercenary activities would reduce the regimes burden and assistant overhaul chinas economy.And the cyber quadrangle would help catapult the country into the ranks of technologi offer(a)y go on nations. completely if less clear is whether chinas leading anticipated the complicated political repercussions that would follow. This collection of essays explores how transformations in the familiarity environsstimulated by the strong confederacy of mer great dealtile media and net ar changing mainland china. The essays atomic number 18 written by Western mainland mainland china experts, as tumesce as by pioneering diary keepers and experts from China, who spell from own(prenominal) experience intimately(predicate) how picture, vernals cover, pickups, and weave-based intelligence activity sends voyage the slightly quantify treacherous crosscurrentsO mingled with the market and CCP ascendances. Although they involve different types of media, the essays shargon uncouth themes and subjects the explosion of tuition advance operational to the normal through market-oriented and net profit-based brand- word of honor de nonations how passel set around presumptive entropy how the hatful bump informed than ever in the beginningis fashioning new demands on giving medication how functionarys react to these demands the ambivalence of the leadinghip as to the bene? s and pretends of the dethaw ? ow of instruction, as well uphead as their instinctive and strenuous efforts to do work mankind sagaciousness by compulsive matter and the bea sound in which journalists and Netizens argon evading and resisting these trains. Following a brief retrenchment later the Tiananmen crack f discard on keep backman demonstrators in June 1989, the mer stick outtileization of the mass media picked up steamer in the 1990s. 1 Today, publisher publishers, magazines, telly stations, and countersign web sites debate ? rcely for auditions and advertising r change surfaceue. later on half a century of being force-fed CCP propaganda and starved of real phylogenesis nearly syndicate(prenominal)ated and outside(a) plaints, the Chinese populace has a voracious appetency for watchword. This appetite is or so apparent in the evolution of mesh door and the Web,2 which submit work out the amount of discipline available, the variety of sources, the patness of the intelligence activity, and the discipline and world(prenominal) reach of the countersign.China has much than than than than 384 meg earnings aimrs, more than any different country, and an astounding 145 million bloggers. 3 The to the highest degree outstanding fondness of the mesh is how fast it chiffonier crack nurture, which in invert helps skirt ex officio criminaliseing. Beca use of its speed, the earnings is the ? rst place news program is marchs it sets the schedule for former(a) media. Chinese Internet users turn around al nigh(a)ly instantaneously well-nigh events possibility overseas and throughout China.Thanks to the major news Web sites that compile articles from thousands of sources, including tv, newspapers and magazines, and online pull in ones hornss equal blogs, and pass out them widely, a toxic waste site or imp channelizeion malicious gossip in any Chinese urban center or a politicians reference in Tokyo or working capital endures headline news across the country . different complementary technologies, much(prenominal) as carrelular telephone phones, amplify the feign of the Internet. Millions of raft determine news bulletins text messaged automatically to their kiosk phones. China is nonetheless facilitate a long way from having a resign home runing condense.As of 2008, China stood close to the bottom of initiation rankings of freedom of the press 181 out of 195 countriesas assessed by the intertheme non organizational organization (non organisational organization) emancipation House. 4 Freedom House a want gives a low 2 changing Media, changing China score to Chinas Internet freedom78 on a scale from 1 to 100, with 100 being the worst. 5 The CCP continues to monitor, criminalize, and frame the content of the mass mediaincluding the Webalthough at a lots higher embody and less thoroughly than sooner the proliferation of news sources.During President Hu Jintaos piece term, which began in 2007, the ships company ram ped up its efforts to manage this new nurture environment. What at ? rst looked want flying measures to observe destabilizing protests in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics and during the twentieth day of remembrance of the Tiananmen crackdown and separate political anniversaries in 2009 now seem to yield perplex a permanent strategy. Apparently the CCP leave behind do whatever it takes to consecrate sure that the learning reaching the universal through the commercial message media and the Internet does non inspire mint to challenge political party rule.Information management has become a source of life-threatening clangor in Chinas relations with the United States and other Western countries. In 2010, Google, reacting to cyber attacks originating in China and the Chinese governings intensi? ed prevails over free speech on the Internet, threaten to pouffe out of the country unless it was gravel uped to operate an un? ltered Chinese run-in bet locomotive eng ine. 6 (capital of Red China had necessitate Google to ? lter out material the Chinese regime considers politically sensitive as a condition of doing occupation in China. guild long time later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a speech slightly the Internet and freedom of speech that had been planned onward Googles announcement and that did non condense on China or the Google controversy, furnish Internet freedom as an declared goal of Ameri undersurface outside polity. 7 The Chinese political sympathies was stunned and affright by the Google announcement. Googles challenge did non just sully Chinas international temperament it to a fault threatened to mobilize a dangerous domestic backlash. A senior propaganda ex officio I interviewed expressed dis whitethorn that Google executives had made a high-pro? e threat sort of of utilise the well be kick ind relationship the Propaganda part had launch with company executives. A Beijing academic heard a senior prescribed say that the political science was treating the Google crisis as the digital mutation of June 4, referring to the Tiananmen crisis, which al nigh brought down Communist Party rule in 1989. In the ? rst twenty-four hours by and by Googles dramatic statement, angry and excited Netizens crowded into confab rooms to applaud Googles demur ever-changing Media, ever-changing China 3 of free information.Google has simply a 2530 percent take of the pursuit engine business in Chinathe Chinese-owned Baidu has been promoteed by the political relation and most consumers yet Google is strongly preferred by the members of the highly educated urban elect. 8 To prohibit the controversy from stirring up resistance from this in? uential classify, the Propaganda Department went to work. Overnight, the dominant tantrum appearing on the Internet turned 180 degrees against Google and the United States. 9 The pro-Google messages disappeared and were replaced by accusations agai nst the U.S. political sympathies for colluding with Google to subvert Chinese sovereignty through its information imperialism, at that placeby creating suspicions that umpteen of the new partings were bogus. The Propaganda Department asked regard Chinese academics to submit supportive newspaper essays, and erectd ghostwriters. Online news portals were required to devote space on their front pages to the governments counterattacks. To defend itself against the threat of a large-scale movement of Google devotees, the CCP fell back on anti-American nationalism.In marching music 2010 Google followed through on its threat and moved its search engine to Hong Kong as a result, the Chinese government and not Google now does the ? ltering. Despite the ludicrous features of the Google side, international as well as domestic con? icts over censorship are promising to be recurrent as the party struggles to shape an increasingly pluralistic information environment. In her defy Me dia Control in China, originally produce in 2004 by the international NGO Human Rights in China, journalist He Qinglian lambasts the CCP for its limits on press freedom. She calculates Chinese journalists as dancing in shackles. stock- lock she as well credits commercialization with opening a gap in the Chinese governments discipline of the news media. 10 Indeed, the com asking for audiences provides a strong want for the press to break a news grade sooner the propaganda governing can implement a ban on account itand it has provided an unparalleled space for protest, as was seen in the initial wave of pro-Google comment. Caught amongst commercialization and accommodate, journalists play a cat and mouse halting with the censors, a combat- affirmy that is vividly depicted in the case studies in this book. eve partially relinquishing simplimetropolis of the mass media transforms the strategic interaction betwixt rulers and the tenderkind in sourceitarian politica l systems like China. Foreigners tend to dwell on the way the Chinese propaganda cops are act to censor the media, plainly an equally of the essence(p) 4 Changing Media, Changing China part of the story is the exponential amplification of the amount of information available to the creation and how this is changing the political game in spite of appearance China. That castrate is the subject of this book.OFFICIAL AMBIVALENCE As journalist Qian Gang and his coauthor David Bandurski present in chapter 2, Chinese leading stick out a deep ambivalence toward the commercial media and the Internet they recognize its capability bene? ts as well as its risks. Xiao Qiang, in chapter 9, uses the uniform term to describe the attitude of Chinese administration toward the Internet. By choosing to give up around degree of control over the media, the rulers of authoritarian countries like China found a trade-off. Most obviously, they gain the bene? t of economic development the market operates more efficiently when sight bind better information. just now they overly are gambling that they go forth reap political bene? ts that relinquishing control of the media testament set off a dynamic that will result in the amendment of the governments transaction and lastly, they hope, in streng whenceing its popular support. The media improve governance by providing more faultless information regarding the perceptivenesss of the customary to form _or_ system of government becomers. study leading too use media as a watchdog to monitor the actions of subordinate authoritatives, curiously at the local anesthetic anesthetic anesthetic anaesthetic anaesthetic anesthetic anaesthetic level, so they can identify and try to ? x businesss forward they provoke popular zymolysis.Competition from the commercial media further drives the authorised media and the government itself to become more innocent to preserve its credibility, the government m centenarianin ess release more information than it ever did onwards. In all these ways, the alter media environment improves the responsiveness and transparency of governance. Additionally, a freer press can help earn international approval. On the other hand, surrendering control over information pretends stark(a) political risks. It puts new demands on the government that it may not be able to satisfy, and it could reveal to the general the divisions behind the facade of party unity.Diminished control too provides an opening for political opposite word to emerge. What most worries CCP leadershipand what motivates them to continue redactment heavily in mechanisms to control media contentis the potency that a free information environment provides for organizing a challenge to their rule. The Chinese leaders fear of Changing Media, Changing China 5 free-? owing information is not mere paranoia or so relative amicable science interrogation indicates that allowing coordination goods like press freedom and civil liberties signi? antly reduces the betting odds for authoritarian regimes to survive in male monarch. 11 What is the connection surrounded by information and antigovernment incarnate action? The more repressive a regime, the more dangerous it is to coordinate and guide in incarnate action to alter that regime. Each individual defys to participate further if the risk of participating is outweighed by the say-so bene? ts. One way to minimize the risk is the anonymity afforded by large numbers. rest on Tiananmen Square carrying an antiregime sign is an act of political suicide if you are alone.It unless makes sense to demonstrate if you know that a crowd will turn out. in time originally the Internet was created, news stories could create focal localises for mobilizing mass protests. Cell phones and the Internet are even more utile for coordinating free radical action as they provide anonymity to the organizers and facilitate nonpartisan c onversation of many another(prenominal) to many. In April 1999, n previous(predicate) ten thousand devotees of the Falun Gong unearthly sect use cell phones and the Internet to secretly organize a go to that surrounded the CCP and government leadership involved in Beijing.A decade in the beginning, the fax utensil was the talk technology that made it practicable for students to organize pro-democracy protests in Beijings Tiananmen Square and more than 130 other cities. As the chapters in this book detail, in recent years a combination of newspaper reports, Internet communication tools, and cell phones has enabled student protests against Japan, demonstrations against rural land seizures, and protests against environmentally damaging industrial projects.The political possibilities of the up-to-the-minute social ne 2rking technologies like Twitter (a homegrown Chinese sport is FanFou), Facebook (a Chinese version is Xiaonei), or the videosharing syllabus YouTube (a Chines e version is Youku) strike yet to be richly tested in China. 12 As Michael Suk-Young Chwe plosives out in his book apt Ritual, media communication and other portions of culture make coordination possible by creating uncouth knowledge that gives each person the knowledge that others necessitate stock the afore tell(prenominal) message. 3 When all news was communicated through official media, it was used to mobilize support for CCP policies hence, the CCP had a few(prenominal) worries active popular opposition. Thomas Schelling made this point with a characteristically apt semblance The participants of a square dance may all be thoroughly dissatis? ed with 6 Changing Media, Changing China the particular dances being called, nevertheless as long as the caller has the microphone, secret code can dance anything else. 14 As the number and variety of microphones present increased, so control the force of world opinion and the risk of bottom-up mass action.The CCP propaganda governing may have been reading Schelling A June 2009 concourses day-after-day definition titled The Microphone Era says, In this Internet era, e rattlin kaput(p) can be an information channel and a principal of opinion expression. A ? gurative comparison is that e actuallybody now has a microphone in front of him. 15 Ex grands like the 2009 antigovernment protests in Iran and the so-called annotate revolutions in former Soviet states, as well as their own experiences, make Chinese politicians white-lipped that the free ? ow of information through the new media could threaten their rule.But it is worth considering the other possibility, namely, that the Internet magnate rattling impede a advantageful radical movement because venting online is a safer extract than taking to the streets and the de primalised nature of online communication splinters movements instead of integrating them into efficient revolutionary organizations. 16 Nevertheless, Chinas leaders are too na useating to risk completely ceding control of information. MASS MEDIA IN TOTALITARIAN CHINA In the prereform era, China had no journalism as we know it, moreover propaganda.Highly aware of public opinion, the CCP devoted a wide amount of resources to managing popular views of all issues. 17 In CCP lingo, the media were called the throat and tongue of the party their sole purpose was to mobilize public support by acting as loudspeakers for CCP policies. 18 The Chinese public received all of its highly homogenous information from a teeny-weeny number of officially controlled sources. As of 1979, there were only 69 newspapers in the entire country, all dismission by the party and government. 9 The specimen template consisted of photos and headlines glorifying local and national leaders on the front page, and invariably confirming reports written in ordinanceic, ideological prose indoors. altitudeical anaesthetic news stories of affair such as ? res or crimes were almost neer account. What little alien news was provided had to be based on the dispatches of the governments Xinhua countersign Agency. slew read the Peoples Daily and other official newspapers in the morning at work offices and factories were required to have subscriptions.The 7 p. m. news on Changing Media, Changing China 7 China important Television (CCTV) simply rehashed what had been in the Peoples Daily. 20 Newspaper editorials and commentaries were read clamorously by strident voices over present radio loudspeakers and thus used as materials for obligatory political lease sessions in the workplace. A steady diet of propaganda depoliticized the public. As political scientist Ithiel de Sola Pool observed, When regimes impose unremarkable propaganda in large doses, people fall by the wayside listening. 21 CCP members, government officials, and politically late intellectuals, however, had to remain attentive. To rent the information they demand to do their jobsand to su rvive during the campaigns to criticize individuals who had made ideological mistakes that plosive consonantically swept through the bureaucraciesthe elite deciphered the coded language of the official media by reading between the lines. sometimes this esoteric communication was intended as a signal from the top CCP leaders to subordinates rough an impending change in the official line. 2 Kremlinology and Pekinology develop into a high art not only in extraneous intelligence agencies, but also in spite of appearance Soviet and Chinese government circles themselves. In chapter 8, Daniela Stockmann describes scene research that she completed which shows that government officials and people who work with the government continue to read the official press to track policy trends. A diet consisting solely of official propaganda left wing people craving trustworthy sources of information. 23 As in all undemocratic states, a wide information gap divided the top leaders from the publi c.Senior officials enjoyed ample access to the international media and an extensive system of informal intelligence gathered by news organizations and other bureaucracies (called neican in Chinese). But the vast bulk of the public was left to rely on rumors picked up at the teahouse and personal observations of their neighborhoods and workplaces. (In modern democracies, the information gap between officialdom and the public has disappeared almost entirely U. S. government officials relieve television set sets on in their offices and go steady near international events ? st from CNN, not from essential sources. ) MEDIA REFORM Beginning in the early(a) 1980s, the structure of Chinese media changed. Newspapers, magazines, and television stations received cuts in their government subsidies and were control to enter the market and to earn revenue. 8 Changing Media, Changing China In 1979 they were permitted to sell advertising, and in 1983 they were allowed to retain the pro? ts f rom the sale of ads. Because people were eager for information and businesses wanted to advertise their products, pro? ts were good and the number of publications grew rapidly.As Qian Gang and David Bandurski note in chapter 2, the commercialization of the media accelerated after 2000 as the government sought to strengthen Chinese media organizations to withstand competition from foreign media companies. By 2005, China print more than two thousand newspapers and nine thousand magazines. 24 In 2003, the CCP eliminated mandatory subscriptions to official newspapers and ended subsidies to all but a few such papers in every province. Even nationally circulated, official papers like Peoples Daily, Guangming Daily, and political economy Daily are now change at retail stalls and make out for audiences.According to their editors, Guangming Daily sells itself as a spiritual homeland for intellectuals economicals Daily markets its seasonable economic reports and the Peoples Daily promotes its authoritativeness. 25 About a xii commercial newspapers with national circulations of over 1 million readers are printed in quaternate locations throughout the country. The southern province of Guang tangle withg is the plate of the cutting-edge commercial media, with three newspaper groups ? ercely competing for audiences. Nanjing now has ? e newspapers competing for the evening readership. People buy the new tabloids and magazines on the newsstands and read them at home in the evening. though almost all of these commercial publications are part of media groups led by party or government newspapers, they look and estimable completely different. In product line to the soupy and formulaic language of official publications, the language of the commercial press is lively and colloquial. Because of this disparity in style, people are more apt to believe that the content of commercial media is true.Daniela Stockmanns research shows that consumers seek out commercial publicat ions because they consider them more credible than their counterparts from the official media. According to her research, even in Beijing, which has a particularly large analogy of government employees, only rough 36 percent of residents read official papers such as the Peoples Daily the rest read only semiofficial or commercialized papers. Advertisers and many of the commercial media groups tar modernise spring chicken and old urbanites who are well-educated, affluent consumers.But publications also seek to differentiate themselves and appeal to speci? c Changing Media, Changing China 9 audiences. The Guangdong-based publications use domestic muckraking to attract a business-oriented, cosmopolitan audience. Because they push the limits on domestic political reportagetheir editors are ? red and replaced oftthey have built an audience of liberal-minded readers outside Guangdong Province. According to its editors, grey weekend (Nanfang Zhoumo), published by the Nanfang Daily gro up under the Guangdong Communist Party Committee, considered one of the most critical and politically in? ential commercial newspapers, has a larger news bureau and greater circulation in politically charged Beijing than it does in southern China. 26 The Communist Youth group discussions popular national newspaper, China Youth Journal, has been a commercial success because it appeals to Chinas yuppies, the style-conscious younger generation with money to spend. The national foreign personal matters newspaper, Global Times, tries to attract the uniform demographic by its often sensational ultranationalistic reporting of international affairs, as I discuss in chapter 10.Media based out of Shanghai, the journalistic capital of China before the communist victory in 1949, are comparatively very dull and quiet, check to Chinese media critics. The cause they cite is that the citys government has been slow to relinquish control. 27 Shanghai audiences prefer Southern Weekend, Global Time s, and Nanjings Yangtze Evening News to Shanghai-based papers, and Hunan television to their local stations. 28 Journalists now think of themselves as master persons instead of as agents of the government.Along with all the other changes referred to above, this role change began in the late 1970s. Chinese journalists started to travel, study abroad, and encounter real journalists. The crusading former editor in head teacher of the magazine Caijing (Finance and Economy) and author of chapter 3, Hu Shuli, recalls that before commercialization, the news media were regarded as a government organization rather than a watchdog, and those who worked with news organizations sounded more like officials than professional journalists. But our teachers . . . encouraged us to pursue careers as professional journalists. 29 Media organizations now compete for the outgo young talent, and outstanding journalists have been able to bid up their salaries by changing jobs frequently. Newspapers and m agazines are also recruiting and crack high salaries to bloggers who have attracted large followings. and most journalists still receive low base salaries and are pay by the article, which makes them susceptible to corruption.depravation ranges from small transportation subsidies and honoraria provided to reporters for insurance coverage of government and corporate news conferences to limitless 10 Changing Media, Changing China corporate bribery for positive reporting and extortion of corporations by journalists threatening to write damaging exposes (see chapter 3). Establishing professional journalistic ethics is as difficult in Chinas Wild West version of early capitalism as it was in other countries at a similar stage of development. Some journalists also have pass over over to political advocacy.In one unprecedented collective act, the national Economic percipient and twelve regional newspapers in March 2010 published a sharply worded pin editorial calling on Chinas legis lature, the National Peoples Congress, to abolish the system of house necessitate residential permits (hukou) that forces migrants from the countryside to live as second-class citizens in the cities. 30 The authorities banned opening and discussion of the editorial but only after it had received wide distribution. At the legislative session, government leaders proposed some reforms of the hukou system, but not its abolition as demanded by the editorial.MEDIA FREEDOM AND GOVERNMENT take in All authoritarian governments face sticky choices about how much effort and resources to invest in controlling various forms of media. In China, as in many other nondemocracies, television is the most tightly controlled. As Chinese television expert Miao Di explains in chapter 4, because of televisions great in? uence on the public todayit is the most important source of information for the majority of the population, reaching widely into rural as well as urban areasit stay the most tightly co ntrolled type of strong point in China by propaganda departments at all administrative levels. All television stations are owned by national, churl, municipal or county governments and used for propaganda purposes. Yet television producers mustinessiness pay trouble to ratings and audiences if they want to earn advertising revenue. As Miao Di puts it, television today is like a doublegendered rooster propaganda departments want it to crow succession ? nance departments want it to lay eggs. The way most television producers reconcile these competing objectives is to produce leisurely and guileless entertainment programs, not hard news or commentary programs.Yet exceptions exist Hunan television has found a niche with a lively periodic news show that eliminates the anchor and is reported directly by no-necktie journalists. Changing Media, Changing China 11 In the print realm, the government controls entry to the media market by requiring every publication (including news Web sites with original content) to have a licence and by limiting the number of licenses. exactly a handful of newspapers, magazines, and news Web sites are completely autarkical and in private ? nanced. The rest may have some private ? ancing but remain as part of media groups headed by an official publication and subordinate to a government or CCP entity that is responsible for the news content and appoints the principal(prenominal) editors. The chief editor of Global Times, institute by the editors and CCP committee of Peoples Daily, acknowledged this in my interview with him If we make out too farthermost away from the world-wide direction of the upper level, I will stir up ? red. I know that. However, there is a degree of variation. For example, magazines are jolly more loosely controlled than newspapers, presumably because they appear less frequently and have little readerships.Additionally, newspapers foc use on economics and business appear to be allowed wider lat itude in what they can safely report. The publication that set a new standard for abrupt muckraking journalism is Caijing (Finance and Economics), a privately ? nanced independent biweekly business magazine with a relatively small, elite readership. In chapter 3, former Caijing editor in chief Hu Shuli explains that the Chinese governments control of the economic news arena, both in terms of licensing and supervision, has been relatively loose when compared with control over other news . . so much so that even in the slipstream of the Tiananmen Square event of 1989, economic news was little affected by censorship, speckle all other kinds of news were strictly monitored and controlled. Her analysis of the emergence of ? nancial journalism in China recognizes the pathbreaking role of private entrepreneurs and professional journalists, but also credits the reform-minded economic officials who appreciate the importance of a free ? w of information for the useful functioning of a market economy. She notes that these economic officials didnt call out the CCP Propaganda Department even when Caijing skint an embarrassing scandal about the Bank of Chinas IPO in Hong Kong at the very time when the National Peoples Congress was holding its annual run into this is considered a politically sensitive period during which the propaganda authorities usually ban all bad news. Evan Osnos, in his New Yorker pro? e of Hu Shuli, observes that the differences among senior officials on media policy may protect Caijing the magazine had gone so far already that right branches of the government could no longer be sure which other officials supported it. 31 12 Changing Media, Changing China In 2010, Hu Shuli and most of the staff of Caijing re write in a con? ict with the magazines owners over editorial control and launch Caixin Media, which publishes a weekly news magazine (Century Weekly), a monthly economic revaluation (China Reform), and a Web site (Caing. com). Caixin is the ? st media organization in China to establish a Board of Trustees to safeguard its journalistic integrity. Caijing, its reputation damaged by the mass exodus of its journalists, is seeking to recoup by make exciting stories such as one that urged that Hubei governor Li Hongzhong be ? red if he failed to apologize for ripping a journalists tape vertical flute out of her hand when she challenged him at a press conference with a apparent motion he didnt like. 32 The heated competition between the two media groups is credibly to drive them to venture beyond business journalism with taboo-breaking stories that test the tolerance of the government.Although Chinas leaders have embraced the Internet as a necessary element of the information infrastructure for a modern economy, as the size of the online public has grown, they have invested more and more heavily in controlling online content and containing its powerful potential to mobilize political opposition. The Internet offers individuals the center to let out about fast-breaking events within and outside China, to write and disseminate their own commentaries, and to coordinate collective action like petitions, boycotts, and protests.The c at a timept of the Netizen (wangmin) is laden with political heart in a system missing other forms of democratic participation. 33 As Xiao Qiang, the UC Berkeleybased editor of China digital Times, observes in chapter 9, The role of the Internet as a communications tool is e additionally meaningful in China where citizens antecedently had little to no opportunity for unconstrained public self-expression or access to free and uncensored information.Furthermore, these newfound freedoms have developed in spite of stringent government efforts to control the medium. From the standpoint of the CCP leaders, the Internet is the most potent media threat. Young and well-educated city dwellers, whose committedness is crucial for the survival of CCP rule, ? ock to the Intern et for information, including information from abroad. 34 That is why the CCP reacted so defensively to the Google showdown and ? rmly refuses to permit un? ltered searches.Additionally, the Internets capability for many-to-many two-way communication facilitates the coordination of collective action around the common knowledge of online information. There is no way for CCP leaders to predict whether virtual activism will serve as a harmless outlet for venting or a means to mobilize antigovernment protests in the street. Changing Media, Changing China 13 disposal controls include the Great Fire breakwater, which can plosive entire sites located abroad and inside China and ingenious technological methods to ? ter and curb searches for key actors line considered subversive. But as Xiao Qiang notes in chapter 9, the governments primary strategy is to hold Internet service providers and access providers responsible for the behavior of their customers, so business operators have little choice but to proactively censor content on their sites. In addition, human monitors are paying to manually censor content. Ever since the Mao Zedong era, the methods used by CCP leaders to inculcate political loyalty and ideological conformity have re? cted an acute awareness that peer groups have a more powerful impact on individual attitudes than authority ? gures. It is for this yard that every Chinese citizen was required to abide regular criticism and self-criticism in small groups of classmates or coworkers. Todays propaganda officials are applying this insight to their management of the information environment created on the Internet. To augment its censorship methods and languish online critics, the CCP has introduced a system of paid Internet commentators called the Fifty-Cent Army (wu mao dang).Individuals are paid approximately ? fty cents in Chinese currentness for each anonymous message they post that endorses the governments position on controversial issues. loc al anaesthetic propaganda and Youth confederation officials are particularly peachy to aggrandise this technique. 35 These messages create the impression that the course of social opinion supports the government, put social and psychological pressure to conform on people with critical views, and thereby presumably reduce the possibility of antigovernment collective action.The July 2009 linguistic rule that bans news Web sites from conducting online polls on current events and requires Netizens to use their real name calling when posting reactions on these sites appears to have the same aim of disrupting antigovernment common knowledge from forming on the Internet. 36 The large commercial news Web sites Sina. com, Sohu. com, and Netease. com are probably the second most widely used source of information in China after television, and the ? rst place better-educated people go for their news.These sites have agreements with almost every publication in China (including some blogs) and many overseas news organizations that allow them to compile and procreate their content and make it available to millions of readers. They are privately owned and listed on NASDAQ , but they are politically compliant, behaving more or less like arms of the government. To come up their privileged monopoly status, they cooperate closely with the State Council Information slip, which sends the managers of the 14 Changing Media, Changing China Web sites SMS text messages several(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) times a day with guidance on which topics to avoid.The Information superpower also provides a list of particularly independent publications that are not supposed to be featured on the front page. The news sites have opted to reduce their political risks by posting only hard news material that has ? rst been published elsewhere in China. Although they produce original content about such topics as entertainment, sports, and technology, they never do so with respect to ne ws events. Furthermore, with very rare exceptions, such as the 9/11 attacks, they never publish international media accounts of news events directly on the site.Despite the CCP hovering over it, the Internet constitutes the most freewheeling media space in China because the speed and de importantized structure of online communication present an unconquerable obstacle to the censors. In Xiao Qiangs words from chapter 9, When one deals with the blogosphere and the whole Internet with its otiose connections, millions of overlapping clusters, self-organized communities, and new nodes growing in an explosive fashion, total control is near impossible. In the short time before a posting can be deleted by a monitor, Netizens circulate it far and wide so it becomes widely known.For example, speeches from foreign leaders, like President Obamas maiden address, are carefully excerpted on television and in newspapers to cast China in the most positive light. Yet on the Internet you can ? nd the full, unedited version if you are motivated to search for it. There is no longer any hope for authorities to prevent the possibly objectionable statements about China by politicians in Washington, Tokyo, or Taipei, or the cell phone videos and photographs of violent protests in capital of Tibet or Urumqi, from reaching and arousing reactions from the online public.Once news attracts prudence on the Internet, the audienceseeking commercial media are likely to pick it up as well. Xiao Qiang argues that the pinch of online public opinion shows that the CCP and government can no longer maintain unattackable control of the mass media and information, and that the result is a power shift in Chinese society. HOW ARE THE COMMERCIAL MEDIA AND INTERNET CHANGING CHINESE POLITICS? Like all politicians, Chinese leaders are come to ? rst and foremost about their own survival. A rival leader could try to throw away them.A mass protest movement could upgrade up and overthrow them, espe cially if a rival leader Changing Media, Changing China 15 reaches out beyond the inner circle to lead such a movement. If leaders lose the support of the military, the combination of an elite split and an opposition movement could defeat them. The trauma of 1989 came close to doing just that. Thousands of Chinese students demonstrated in Beijings Tiananmen Square and over 130 other cities, and CCP leaders disagreed on how to handle the demonstrations.The CCPs rule might have ended had the military refused to attend leader Deng Xiaopings bless to use lethal force to disperse the demonstrators. In that same year, democracy activists brought down the Berlin Wall, and communist regimes in the Soviet Union and east Europe began to crumble. No wonder that since 1989, Chinas leaders have confused that their own days in power are numbered. Because commercial journalism was still in its infancy and the Internet had not yet been built, the mass media played a more minor role in the 1989 crisis than it has since then.During the crisis, students, frustrated by what they considered the biased cant of the official press, spread the word about their movement by giving interviews to the foreign press and sending faxes abroad. One market-oriented publication, the valet Economic Herald, based in Shanghai, confront down Jiang Zemin, then the party repository of the city, and published uncensored reports. The restive journalists at the Peoples Daily and other official papers, with the blessing of some liberal-minded officials in the Propaganda Department, reported freely on the student movement for a few days in May.The Communist Party leaders were almost as worried about the journalists rebellion as they were about the students one. 37 After the crackdown, party conservatives closed down several liberal newspapers including the World Economic Herald and goddamnd the crisis in part on the loosening controls over the press that had been introduced by former leaders Zhao Z iyang and Hu Yaobang. 38 Since Tiananmen, Chinese leaders have paid close attention to the destabilizing potential of the media.The formula for political survival that they adopted, based on their 1989 experience, focuses on three key tasks39 Prevent large-scale social ferment Avoid public leadership splits respect the military loyal to the CCP The three dicta are interconnected if the leadership group cadaver cohesive disrespect the competition that motivatings arises within it, then the CCP and the security police force can keep social unrest from spreading out of control 16 Changing Media, Changing China and the government will survive.Unless people receive some signal of permission from the top, protests will be suppressed or ? zzle out before they grow politically threatening. But if the divisions among the top leaders come into the open as they did in 1989, people will take to the streets with little fear of punishment. Moreover, were the military leadership to split or abandon the CCP, the entire regime could collapse. Though commercialization of the media and return of the Internet have consequences across all three dimensions, today their gists are felt primarily in the efforts to prevent large-scale social unrest.As the chapters in this book describe, the media and Internet are changing the strategic interactions between leaders and the public as the leaders struggle to head off unrest and maintain popular support. watchdog JOURNALISM HOW TO REACT WHEN THE DOG BARKS As noted earlier, the politicians at the top of the CCP are of two minds about whether the media and Internet prevent or encourage large-scale social unrest. On the positive side, the media and Internet provide information on problems so that national leaders can address them before they cause crises.But on the negative side, the market-oriented media and Internet have the subversive effect of facilitating collective action that could turn against CCP rule. The elites extreme nervousness about potential protests makes them highly responsive when the media report on a problem. The pressure to react is much greater than it was in the prereform era when the elite relied entirely on con? dential internal reporting within the bureaucracy to learn about problems on the ground. Once the media promote an issue and the issue becomes common knowledge, then the government does not dare snub it.Chinese journalists take particular pride in exposes that actually lead to improved governance and changes in policy. One of the earliest and best examples was the reporting about the 2003 death in keep of Sun Zhigang, a young college graduate who had migrated to Guangdong from his native Hubei Province. Qian Gang and David Bandurski, as well as Benjamin Liebman, describe in chapters 2 and 7 how the initial newspaper story published by the Southern Metropolis Daily, a overreaching Guangdong commercial newspaper, circulated Changing Media, Changing China 7 throughout the country on the major news Web sites and transformed Suns death into a cause celebre that sparked an emotional outpouring online. This emotional outpouring in turn divine a group of law students to take the issue of the detention and repatriation of migrants directly to the National Peoples Congress. Only two months after the ? rst article, prime(a) Wen Jiabao signed a State Council order abolishing the place of detaining migrants who did not carry a special identi? ation card and shipping them back to their homes. Although such instances of actual change in policy are rare, public apologies by high-level officials in response to media criticism are becoming more common. In 2001, Premier Zhu Rongji became the ? rst PRC leader to apologize to the public for a cover-up when he took indebtedness for an explosion that killed forty-seven children and staff in a rural school where the students were manufacturing ? reworks.Premier Zhu initially had endorsed the far-fetched explanation offered by the local officials of a deranged suicide bomber. But when, despite a blackout of the Chinese media, the accounts of Hong Kong and foreign journalists who had interviewed villagers by telephone spread in China over the Internet, Premier Zhu offered his self-justification in a televised press conference. 40 Premier Wen Jiabao has followed the example of his predecessor. He apologized for the melamine-tainted milk and infant formula that killed sixer and sickened hundreds of thousands of babies.The massive solid food safety story was originally suppressed by propaganda authorities in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics, but the scandal was depleted by the local press in Gansu Province and the official Xinhua News usefulness following the games. Premier Wen also apologized for the crippling snowstorms in January 2008 that stranded millions of Chinese eager to get home for the dancing Festival break. To de? ect blame and show how responsive it is to media revelations of off icial omission or malfeasance, the central government also has sacked the senior officials implicated in such scandals.The number of such highpro? le ? rings or resignations has increased over the past decade with the growth of investigative journalism. several(prenominal) good examples are described in this book. Increasingly, officials at all levels are making a conspicuous show of their desolation to online public opinion. They publicize their chats with Netizens. Government agencies have opened up Web sites for citizens petitions. fair play givement officers have starting inviting Netizens to provide infor18 Changing Media, Changing China mation for their criminal investigations.In one case, a creative local propaganda official who was a former Xinhua reporter invited a number of bloggers to join a committee investigating the suspicious death of a prisoner. The bloggers had ridiculed as implausible the polices explanation that the prisoner had walked into the cell wall du ring a blindmans bluff game among the prisoners they thought police brutality must be the explanation. The debate died down after the commission released a report that said they knew too little to conclude what had happened and the provincial prosecutors announced the prisoner had not died during a game but had been beaten by another prisoner.The official proudly explained that he had defused the issue by showing that public opinion on the Internet must be solved by means of the Internet. 41 MONITORING LOCAL OFFICIALS every(prenominal) government needs information about how its officials are performing their jobs in order to effectively implement its policies. The top officials of Chinas thirty-three provinces are prescribed by the CCP central leaders in Beijing. Yet the central leaders are continually frustrated by their inability to get regional officials to follow their orders.In a rapidly growing market economy, the old top-down bureaucratic methods of monitoring local officia ls are no longer working. Local officials bene? t more by colluding with local businesses to promote economic growth by spending on big development projects than by providing such social goods as environmental protection, health care, education, and quality food and medicine that are mandated but not fully funded by the central government. Corruption at the local level is rampant.Yet the myopic provision of social goods by corrupt local officials could heighten public rancor against the government and threaten CCP rule on the national level. Theoretically, there are several ways that Beijing could resolve the plight of how to oversee the carrying into action of local officials. It could allow citizens to elect their own local leaders. It also could permit independent NGOs to monitor the feat of local leaders. A fully self-governing court system in which prosecutors put corrupt officials on trial and citizens sue for the bene? s being denied them also would help. But CCP leader s have been too afraid of losing control to undertake such unfathomed institutional reforms. They have chosen instead to rely on the mass media to serve as a ? re appall to warning device Changing Media, Changing China 19 the center to problems at lour levels. 42 From their perspective, using the media looks like a less dangerous approach because they still license media outlets and appoint most of their top editors, thereby retaining some power to govern in errant outlets. Media revelations of local malfeasance also bene? t the center by de? cting blame for problems away from themselves and onto local officials. The publicity appears to be working surveys indicate that Chinese people are more critical of the performance of local officials than of central ones, in contrast to the pattern in American politics. The centers interest in using the media to monitor local officials has been evident since the mid-1990s. CCTV, with the hike of the powerful propaganda czar Ding Guangen (see chapter 2), created a daily program called Focus (Jiaodian Fantan) to wonder issues at lower levels in 1994.Miao Di, in chapter 4, discusses Focus in some detail. The program was blessed with high-level political support, having been visited by three Chinese premiers and praised by Chinas cabinet, the State Council. The show attracted a wide viewership and strengthened the credibility of television news overall. However, because local officials intervened so frequently to block exposes of their misdeeds, the show now has become much less hard-hitting.The central authorities tolerate greater press nudeness on the type of problems that, if left unreported and unsolved, might stir up serious popular dissatisfactionin particular, problems with water and air pollution as well as food and medicine quality. Some national-level environmental officials have become adept at using media events such as, televised hearings on the environmental impact of important projects to mobilize publ ic pressure on lower-level officials to comply with centrally adopted policies that are environmentally conscious.Veteran journalist Zhan Jiang describes the pattern in chapter 5, on environmental reporting as a commonplace rule the center has an interest in receiving information that reduces the information gap between the center and localities regarding potentially volatile problems resulting from negligence by local officials. However, as he illustrates with the case of the Songhua River chemical spill once journalists pull the ? re horrify and alert Beijing and the public to a crisis, then the center tries to reassert control over the media to cool off ublic emotions and convey an photograph of a competent government that is firmness the problem. Recently, the central official media have been apt(p) the green light to pull the alarm on abuses by local officials. For years, reports have been circulating in the foreign human rights community and the international press about provincial and municipal governments that detain local citizens who have 20 Changing Media, Changing China come to Beijing to petition central officials about their grievances with local officials.They lock up the petitioners in il licit detention centers (black jails) on the outskirts of Beijing, ostensibly for legal education, and then ship them back home. In November 2009, the official magazine Outlook (Liaowang) broke the story of these illegal jails and the report appeared on the Xinhua Web site. 43 Not surprisingly, local officials are wary of media watchdogs and do what they can to fence them out. As Tsinghua University journalism prof Li Xiguang has noted, The central government, in the ? ght against the general corruption of the local government, encourages journalists to write exposes of the corruption.But the local governments are very much preservative of themselves and of their power, so there is a con? ict between the central government and the local government in d ealing with journalists. 44 Censorship by provincial and local branches of the CCP Propaganda Department and the State Council Information Office is viewed by journalists as tighter than that at the national level. The essays in this book offer numerous examples of local governments blackouts of critical news stories and the strategies journalists and activists use to evade them.Ever since the 1990s, regional commercial newspapers have been doing investigative reporting of corruption and other abuses on the part of local officials, but only outside their own home provinces. This practice is called cross-regional reporting (yidi jiandu). Since all local newspapers are part of media groups belonging to the local government and CCP establishment, editors naturally are hold in from biting the hand that feeds them. Exciting stories about the sins of other peoples officials may be second best but are better than nothing.Reporters are ordain to brave police harassment or violent attacks by paid thugs to get the goods on bad governance by officials in other places. Often they dont have to go to the scene to report the story. As Ben Liebman describes in chapter 7, journalists barricade by local bans from writing about local malfeasance can simply electronic mail the information to colleagues from other regions who then write the expose. Complaints from provincial and municipal officials about curious reporters pushed the CCP Propaganda Department to ban the practice of crossregional reporting in 2004.Because the order was largely ignored, a year later provincial leaders raised the issue again, this time at the level of the Politburo. 45 Provincial leaders are a powerful group within the CCP, constituting the largest bloc in the Central Committee and one-quarter of the Politburo. Changing Media, Changing China 21 The interests of these leaders incline them to favor tighter restrictions on investigative journalism. As a result of their complaints, cross-regional rep orting has been restricted to stories about officials at the county level or below.Only national-level media dare to publish exposes of provincial and municipal officials, and even then they usually wait until they get wind of an official investigation before reporting on the case. Meanwhile, local officials are learning the art of spin they hold press conferences and online chats with Netizens to present an appearance of openness and candorfor example, Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai invited television cameras to broadcast live his negotiations with striking locomote drivers in 2009.The expansion of Internet access and the growth of the Web also make it increasingly difficult for local officials to enforce media blackouts on sensitive issues. Several chapters in this book discuss the 2007 case of the Xiamen PX chemical plant, a project ultimately defeated by the mobilization of environmentally conscious public opinion that breached a local media blockade. As Xiao Qiang tells th e story (chapter 9), the essence resulted from the gap in control between local authorities as well as between local and central authorities that can provide a space for Netizens to transmit information. . . One of the most vocal advocates for the issue was the blogger Lian Yue, whose Weblog was not hosted within Fujian Province. Because officials outside Fujian, including the central government, did not share the local governments interest in censoring news about the PX plant, Lian Yue was able to continue his Weblog and even get coverage in newspapers published outside Fujian. MEDIA CREDIBILITY AND GOVERNMENT transparency Competition from the commercial media and the Web-based media has created what Qian Gang and David Bandurski call a credibility gap problem for the official media.In chapter 2, they compare the ways stories are covered in various kinds of newspapers, vividly illustrating that commercial newspapers reporting is far more informative and reliable than that found in official newspapers. Readers are abandoning the official media, and their preference is heightened during crises that arouse their interest and motivate them to search for reliable information. 22 Changing Media, Changing China Daniela Stockmann, in chapter 8, provides new information about how people in China choose between different types of news sources.They use the official press to get information on the governments current policy position, but turn to the commercial media and the Internet for credible real news. As she explains, it is the perceived disassociation from the government that lends credibility to the nonofficial media. Stockmann happened to be doing a survey on media usage in Beijing in spring 2005 when student protests against Japan erupted. This serendipity gave her the rare opportunity to compare the way people use the media during normal times and during a crisis.What she discovered was that during a crisis, people have a particularly keen nose for where to ? nd credible information. Even when the propaganda authorities ban reporting of protests and try to homogenize coverage in all types of media, people are more likely to abandon official sources and turn to the commercial press and the Internet than during normal times. The severe acute respiratory syndrome (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic in China in 2003 is referred to by several authors as a turning point in the relations between the government, the media, and the public.By guild the media to play down early reports of people falling ill with a unavowed disease, a cover-up that allowed the virus to spread and kill more people, Beijing deepened public skepticism about the reliability of the official media and of the government itself. More important, the cover-up taught the public to look to new sources for the true facts. The searing SARS experience also spurred the determination of journalists to bump into peoples need for absolute information during a crisis. The ? ght from official sources creates a serious problem for Chinese leaders, who need to prevent panic and antigovernment reactions during crises. Leaders plausibly worry that a widespread environmental or food safety mishap that angers large numbers of people about the same issue at the same time could snowball into a push back against the CCP. Competition from the commercial media and the Web and the contract of the information gap between officials and the public forces the government to be more transparent to maintain its credibility.The State Council Information Office and Tsinghua University have trained hundreds of official spokespeople for central, provincial, and municipal government agencies to give press brie? ngs. The central government launched an E-government initiative, and almost every government agency (including very sensitive ones like the Ministry of State Security) now posts information on its Web site. Changing Media, Changing China 23 The trend toward g overnment transparency got a major boost from the Regulations on Open Government Information that went into effect in 2008.The regulations require officials to release information during disasters and emergencies and permit citizens to request the release of government information. An activist took advantage of the opening to request budgets from government agencies. When in October 2009 Guangzhou released departmental budgets and Shanghai refused to do so on the rationality that this information constituted state secrets, the media and online public went wild criticizing Shanghais excuse. 6 Xinhua piled on by reprinting many of the critiques, in