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Panel 2: How are Chinese news media controlled? Working within the limits of the Chinese press To start with, I will dwell on the manner this control makes itself visible when reading the Chinese press. I will then examine the way Chinese journalists manage to convey information in spite of this control. Finally, I will focus on recent examples showing how the press seems to have influenced the political decision process, unless they were purely instrumentalised. I'll distinguish five main caracteristics of the Chinese press showing it is controlled. First of all, the Chinese press acts as a barometer of the political situation in China. This is particularilly true these days, at a time of political crisis. In the past few weeks, Chinese newspapers have provided their readers with hardly anything but the official point of view. This can be interpreted as the result of either self-censorship on the part of journalists, or a toughening of political guidelines that are issued to them. In any case, the Chinese press stops carrying anything new or investigative whenever the Chinese leadership is faced with any kind of challenge, like the Tibetan crisis. The Chinese press is also subjected to seasonal constraints. Each year, around the beginning of October, when the Communist Party holds its congress or plenum, headlines across China announce the motto of the Party in the exact same wording. Throughout the year, sensitive dates such as the June 4th anniversary of Tian'anmen events are marked by a characteristic caution, resulting in the withholding of anything newsworhy for weeks. On the other hand, every year, before the parlementary session in March, a lot of information about expected reforms is released. Some issues are totally and permanently excluded from the Chinese press. Even if we weren't aware of the strict guidelines issued by the authorities for journalists, the imposed restrictions could be easilly observed. Excluded topics are the most politically sensitive ones. In general, the following topics are not raised in the Chinese press: - opposition, dissidence, and contemporary events directly linked to dissidence, like Tian'anmen events. - any information about politically motivated arrests. For instance, in recent months, nothing has been revealed to the Chinese readers of Hu Jia's arrest and sentencing. And the best known activists in the outside world are totally unknown to Chinese readers. - The press won't cover historical events that are highly sensitive politically, such as the Cultural revolution and the anti-rightist campaign of 1957. Some topics will only be treated from the official point of view. Amongst these : - Taiwan, relations with Kuomintang and the development of relations across theTaiwan strait. - Anything in relation to the Falungong, and religion in general. - Anything questioning the quality of the administration, unless a solution has allready been found by the authorities. Reports about trials or police enquiries will not appear. Similarly, strikes, or petitions, are not covered. - of course, the situation in Tibet and Xinjiang under Chinese rule also belong to this list. Access to international news is limited. Global events are closely watched. International news coverage consists mainly of news agency dispatches giving factual information. Occasionnaly, authorised analyses written by Chinese experts and reflecting the state of thinking at the helm of the country get published. Diplomatic issues are often treated with a delay of a few days, if not a few weeks. Nowadays, the Chinese readership can access most international news of some significance, unless the information has major implications for China. The most striking example of this was in September 2007, when the Chinese media did not cover the demonstrations led by the Burmese monks. A few days later, Chinese readers only had access to a delayed and short series of Xinhua dispatches, the only version allowed to be carried by all newspapers. My fifth point is that the political restrictions have an impact on journalistic genres and styles. Technically, some types of articles are totally absent from the Chinese press. A portrait of a Chinese political leader is something totally unheard of. An official shall generally not be quoted about a controversial topic. A newspaper will almost never publish interviews, and if it does, it will be almost exclusively by scholars or artists. In spite of all this, Chinese journalists are not shy of using the whole range of journalistic technics. They have ways to say things without being targeted. In the case of the Buremese demonstrations, some newspapers dutifully reproduced nothing but Xinhua dispatches, but gave as much information as possible in their headlines. It was remarkable, because Chinese headlines are rarely straightforward and informative. I'll now proceed to the second part of my observations : a big push for reform among journalists has occured. In the past decade, a very ambivalent situation has prevailed in the Chinese press. On the one hand, journalists have been watched, sanctionned, imprisoned. Information has been censored, newpapers and websites closed down. On the other hand, the Chinese press has exerted a big push for reform. Many reports appeared on issues long deemed to be sensitive. Nothing directly political ever gets published. But many articles about issues regarding people's livelihood which have far-reaching political implications do get published, especially when the authorities are willing to address these issues. The press has extended the coverage of current affairs in three main directions. First of all, the focus on the economy sometimes extends to social trends. A whole range of financial and economic newspapers now exist, and their coverage has regularly expanded to the social aspect of a growing economy. Articles on education, the health system, employment policies, transport, the environment, etc., can indeed be found in the most serious newspapers. I'll give a few examples : . In 2004, the Canton weekly Nanfang Zhoumo revealed the emergence of a shortage of labour forces in Guangdong province. Through this issue, this leading magazine was underlining the need for better salaries and working conditions for migrant workers. . In 2006, the news weekly Zhongguo Xinwen Zhoukan revealed that in the name of economic interest, some polluting industries were being moved from rich coastal provinces to poor provinces inland, willing to accept nuisances. . In 2007, the financial magazine Caijing raised the issue of aging demographics and the fact that some experts were questioning the one-child policy. These coverages may be incomplete or debatable, but their sheer existence indicates the scale of social issues. Not so long ago, very few details were given out on social issues. Secondly, debates among academics on sensitive issues are alloted more space. It may seem paradoxical today, but in recent years, the Chinese press has actually given some space to scholarly opinions on a few crucial issues, including human rights. . In 2004, in the Xinhua magazine Huanqiu, a few judicial officials and legal academics started voicing out their critics about the scale of the application of the death penalty, and called for a drastic reduction. The press revealed a few stories about executed convicts who were proved innocent afterwards. Shortly afterwards, the Chinese government decided to refer all death penalty revision appeals back to the Supreme Court. In doing so, they were responding to the scholar's demands. Allthough the number of executions is a state secret, there are reasons to believe that this figure did slightly drop in 2007. . At the end of 2007, in the weekly Nanfang Zhoumo, a number of legal experts and intellectuals jointly released an appeal, to eliminate laojiao, the system of reeducation through labour. This system of administrative detention has been denounced for decades by international human rights organisations. It remains to be seen whether the government is willing to move towards its elimination. But in both cases, the press has given space to debates taking place in the upper echelons of power, and ran stories about them in real time. My third point is that the coverage of general news, scandals and tragedies has greatly developed. In the last decade, the Chinese press seems to have taken up the role of orchestrating public outcries against bad practices at various levels of the government. Scandals of all sorts have been denounced, such as corruption cases, the modern slavery or ecological disasters. Chinese journalists have clearly expressed that the excessive control of the press is actually detrimental to good governance. . In February 2008, the bad weather in the south of the country during the Spring festival yearly holiday season provided the occasion to run a few editorials raising the issue of the State's responsibility in the lack of relief response in case of such an apparently benign crisis. The time is not so far when no disaster ever appeared in Chinese newspapers. Nowadays, Chinese reporters justify their exposing a situation by invoking the common good. I have now reached the last part of my observations : in the past years the Chinese press displayed signs of a greater role for Chinese journalists. In the past few years, two key events in China have been extensively covered by the press, making it apparent even to the Chinese government that its control of the press could actually be detrimental to a smooth handling of crises. The first event was the health crisis known as the SARS crisis. In China itself, it clearly revealed the risks of a news blackout. At the beginning of 2003, newspapers in the South of China reported a mysterious illness, that had been creating a panic since November. The health authorities then resorted to an old habit and orchestrated a news blackout. But in March, the illness spread to Hong Kong, and questions arose about the SARS from the rest of the world. A military doctor, Jiang Yanyong, revealed the scale of the epidemic to a German magazine, Der Spiegel. The exposure to the rest of the world then prompted a change. The government stopped denying the scale of the crisis and started tackling the problem with a little more openness and efficiency. These events were a turning point for the press. The words « transparency » « responsibility » and « public opinion » appeared in Chinese editorials. When Chinese authorities have been tempted to totally cover up this type of information, editorials now often recall the SARS crisis in order to warn them of the consequences of a news blackout. The second event is the one known as the Sun Zhigang affair. In May 2003, Sun Zhigang, a young designer with no residence permit in Canton, was arrested by the police for being a migrant illegally staying in Canton. He was taken to a repatriation center for migrants, where he was beaten to death. The story was revealed by the local newspaper Nanfang Dushi Bao, and was then quickly taken up by the entire Chinese press. A public outcry then followed, and legal scholars stepped in to demand the abolition of the repatriation centers for migrants. They were abolished in the following months. On the one hand, it was a happy ending : this outcome could be construed as the sign of the emergence of a fourth estate in China. On the other hand, the media outcry actually coincided with a preexistent political concern on the part of the Party as well as the society about the status of migrants as « second class citizens » in China. The disappearance of the repatriation centers was most probably allready in the pipeline. The Sun Zhigang affair was used as a showcase of the government's rare responsiveness to a hot issue. Anyhow, Sun Zhigang's story was exemplary and is still widely cited as a model of scandal exposure with a political effect in China. . In January 2008, a passerby was beaten to death by city guards (chengguan) in Wuhan as he was taking pictures of a scene of violence. The press exposed the disproportionate use of force by city guards. A great number of columns recalled the Sun Zhigang affair. They were formulating the hope that like in the Sun Zhigang affair, an unlawful death would limit the excessive use of force against simple citizens. Of course, Sun Zhigang's story doesn't stop there. Shortly afterwards, three journalists from Nanfang Dushi Bao were detained, officially on economic grounds. The recent release of Chen Yizhong, the former director of the daily, is a relief. But more significantly, the two others were released earlier, following an unprecedented mobilisation of Chinese journalists who signed a petition in their favour, and international pressure. This wasn't reported in the Chinese newspapers. The Sun Zhigang affair is officially treated as an apparent success story of the Chinese journalists in their watchdog function. But whenever journalists overstep the implicit limits, they pay a high price for it. In conclusion, the Chinese press, with its extraordinary commercial expansion in the past decade, is very diverse in terms of editorial angles as well. Whether the enormous efforts of some Chinese journalists to play a greater role in the public life will or not lead to a little more transparency and less control remains to be seen. But so far, it doesn't seem to be the case. In the past few weeks, China's press has sunk into ideology again. It is obsessed with so-called Tibetan independantists and « splittists ». Nevertheless, some Chinese intellectuals signed a petition in favour of negotiations with the Dalai Lama, and had it published on the Internet. And in the Chinese press itself, a couple of courageous editorialists have written about Tibet with opinions differing from the official point of view. They have clearly taken a position in favour of the opening of talks with the Dalai Lama. This was deemed to be an absolute forbidden topic. This means that some journalists believe it is safe to express such an opinion, or that it is worth taking the risk. The future will tell us whether they were right or not. |
