Media
Part of A Better Guide to Běijīng’s Practical A-Z
The office that Chinese writers, artists, and journalists dread and hate most is the Chinese Communist Party’s Propaganda Department. In addition to its propaganda work within the party, this department, through its numerous bureaus, also supervises the country’s newspapers, publishing houses, radio and TV stations, movie industry, and the Internet. Except for the Military Commission, no department in the Party Central Committee wields more power than this office, which forms the core of the party’s leadership. Its absolute authority had gone unchallenged in the past, though even the Communists themselves understand the sinister role it has played. Luo Ruiqing, who was the first to head the Propaganda Department after the Communists came to power, once admitted: “To let the media serve politics means to tell lies, to deceive the above and delude the below, to defile public opinions, and to create nonsensical news.”
Ha Jin (金雪飞, Jīn Xuěfēi) in The American Scholar, August 2008
The state itself refers to all media work abroad as wai xuan, or “external propaganda.” On its official Web site — but only in Chinese — CCTV describes itself as “the mouthpiece of the Party and the government,” lists its main operations under the heading “propaganda situation,” and refers to its new foreign language channels as “reaching a new stage in external propaganda.” Xinhua — a self-depicted “news agency with Chinese characteristics” — describes its activities as “conducted from start to finish under the direct leadership of the central party authorities.” Its current director is the vice-chair of the Central Committee’s propaganda department. For the Party, propaganda is not a degraded form of information — it is information.
Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch quoted in the Wall Street Journal Asia, 30 January 2009
In 213 BCE the Qín dynasty ordered the destruction of ethical writings which were critical of authoritarianism. In the Hundred Flowers Movement, a liberation of artistic expression begun in 1956, and of political thought in 1957, the government encouraged intellectuals to speak out. The result was widespread condemnation of the Communist Party’s monopoly of power and the absence of human rights. Intellectuals and officials who made their views known were subsequently dismissed from their posts and exiled or imprisoned. In 1997 then-President Jiāng Zémín made speeches encouraging higher ethical standards amongst writers and journalists. This was ominous, since Jiāng’s definition of meeting higher ethical standards, as a People’s Daily article made clear, was that journalists should write bright and upbeat stories supporting the party line and socialism, rather then revealing the failings of society to foreigners. Current President Xí Jìnpíng has adopted the phrase ‘positive energy’ which he wants all media to exude. In 18 centuries nothing has changed.
When Hong Kong’s first post-reunification administrator Tung Chee-hwa was given the status of ‘state leader’, one of the perks was that his photograph would be guaranteed to appear larger than those of provincial leaders in Chinese newspapers. A free-er press was promised for the Běijīng Olympics of 2008, but domestic journalists, used to tight restrictions, found themselves under even more pressure than usual, while foreign reporters nominally given freedom during the Olympic period to travel and report at will were in some cases physically attacked and arrested. This period of press ‘freedom’ expired with the Olympics themselves.
The Chinese media are part of the same continuum as the education system and indeed the official tourism industry. Forbidden or highly restricted topics include universal values, press freedom (unless arguing against it), civil society, human rights (unless claiming they’ve been granted), the Party’s past and present errors, the hand-in-glove relationship of the crony capitalists and the Party, the (non-existent) independence of the judiciary, the ‘three Ts’ (Tibet, Táiwān, Tiān’ān Mén), Xīnjiāng, and a host of short-term and one-off topics that put the Party in a bad light. Journalists receive frequent instructions as to what line must be taken on certain stories, and which must be suppressed altogether. These instructions, known, after George Orwell’s 1984, as ‘Ministry of Truth’ or ‘Minitrue’ (真理部, Zhēnlǐ Bù) are frequently leaked to Hong Kong-based media monitors China Digital Times (chinadigitaltimes.net) and others. One example from February 2015: 查删境外网站传播的涉及商务部部长的摩根大通雇员负面消息. (Find and delete negative information from foreign websites involving the Minister of Commerce and J.P. Morgan.) Orwell’s ‘memory hole’ exists in real life.
In 2014 China had more journalists in jail than any other country, and began 2015 by enlisting the murderous attack on the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo magazine as an argument against press freedom. China was ranked 175th out of 180 states on the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index 2014.
Such is the Chinese thirst for genuine information about contemporary China, the true activities of its leaders, and China’s modern history that several Hong Kong bookshops do a brisk business selling books and magazines banned in the mainland that tackle those very subjects, to the point that few officials of any rank at all lack at least an article on their alleged corruption, names of their mistresses, etc. Some of the keenest shoppers are officials themselves, garnering information that may be used against their superiors or in the fight with their contemporaries for promotion. Unfortunately, a market having been detected, there are plenty of authors happy to pen accounts that satisfy their readers’ appetite for the lurid, and which may be no more accurate in one direction than the official press is in the opposite one. In 2015, however, five staff of the publisher Mighty Current and its outlet Causeway Bay Books were kidnapped from Hong Kong or while on holiday elsewhere, only to resurface months later in mainland China. Four were eventually allowed to return to Hong Kong, but one, Swedish national Guì Mǐnhǎi (桂敏海), also author of numerous scurrilous titles that brought him considerable wealth, remains in detention despite international protest.
CCTV9, the only English-language television channel available in most hotel rooms, although you’ll be lucky to find any button tuned to it, is not about informing you, but like CCTV International which you may be able to receive at home via satellite or cable, is simply about burnishing the Party’s image. As with print media, the only thing that can be learned is what it is the Party wants you to believe, not what is actually the truth.
It’s occasionally candid, but mostly turgid and full of childish phrases such as, ‘A seminar was held to denounce…’, ‘goes against historical trends’, ‘refutes anti-China forces’, and so on. There are parodies of journalism, and tame expats appear acting like (and being treated as) performing seals under the entirely false impression that if they say nice things about China they’ll do better business. Other channels are no better. If you have an interest in Chinese traditional remedies, ‘Chinese Medicine’ on CCTV4 will show you animal testing to ‘prove’ that it works. There’s also plenty of China travel material in which every corner of the country is shown to be perfect.
The censors (still known by the acronym SARFT although renamed as the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television) interfere mightily even in entertainment programming, deciding who may appear on reality shows, and clamping down on contests in which the general public is invited to vote — too close to democracy. Some channels run a constant series of propaganda films from every period that show the Party as just and heroic, and rewrite history as necessary, including recent supposed blockbusters that failed to find an audience in Chinese cinemas.
Foreign-managed hotels carry the main international news channels in several languages and assorted Western and Hong Kong movie channels. But when the BBC reports on China the screen will go black until the report is over.
No newspaper in China can be put on sale, be distributed, or sell advertising without a licence from the government for each process. The main English-language window onto the grey corridors of the political mind remains China Daily, a dull mix of hypocrisy, cant, propaganda and window dressing, mixed with a few sports results and other items from around the world, some genuine stories from foreign agencies, and others simply plundered from foreign media without credit. This is distributed free to tourist hotels so that you can have a little propaganda with breakfast. Or you might receive relative newcomer the Global Times, an offshoot of the People’s Daily (人民日报, Rénmín Rìbào), just occasionally a little more frank, but in general little different.
Production is always up, Western quality standards have always been obtained, and the minorities are always happy. China Daily dwells on social problems overseas and may calmly inform you (without intending to suggest that you should do anything other than stay in China and spend your money) that you are involved in a racist conspiracy with other Western nations to suppress China. Meanwhile the native wit, intellectual acumen and high cultural level of the Chinese is given regular praise — ‘Some people even claim using chopsticks explains the high intelligence level of the Chinese people.’
Typical headlines are ‘Frozen food consumption up in Liáoníng Province’, ‘Nation values relationship with Venezuela’, and ‘US adheres to one-China policy’. China Daily is less likely to report ‘700 dead in floods’, but rather, ‘Despite floods, output up’. Articles contain such riveting information as, ‘The development of socialist morality should be stressed and strengthened during the process of building a well-off society in an all-round way,’
The paper employs foreigners to polish text, but with articles that think the past tense of ‘to fly’ is ‘flied’ and headlines like the tautological ‘Illegal fishing in Yangtze banned’, it’s not easy to tell. Or perhaps this example recognizes the truth that something being illegal and its actually being restricted are two different matters in China.
Foreign newspapers and news magazines have limited circulation in the business centres and club lounges of foreign-run hotels, but are hard if not impossible to find otherwise, and will sometimes have fallen victim to the censor’s scissors. But there’s no difficulty in importing foreign magazines for your own use, as long as these are not in quantities that suggest you plan to distribute them.
A number of free English-language listings magazines, mostly monthly, are available in hotel lobbies and at cafés and restaurants frequented by expats. Some of these are Chinese publications wanting to reach the same market, and which have little clue. The others contain much on schools, shopping, and socialising of interest to resident foreigners rather than visitors, but also reviews of newly opened restaurants (although precious little Chinese food), bars, and clubs, and previews of entertainment events, although expect a preference for self-consciously hip language apparently targeting teenagers. The content of a restaurant review is not always entirely independent of that restaurant’s advertising expenditure. Sometimes publishing licenses are barely legal, the foreign partners who understand the expat market find themselves suddenly locked out by the Chinese partner, and some accuse their competitors of deliberately stirring up trouble with the authorities over technicalities. (Disclosure: the present author was once briefly Editor-in-Chief of one of these titles.)
Those picking up Time Out Běijīng (www.timeoutbeijing.com) should not expect the attention to detail or crisp writing of the Londoners’ bible, although the design is the same. But in general it’s a bit more sober and a little better written than its competitors. Perhaps the most comprehensive and best-informed although mostly sloppily written and lazily researched is The Beijinger (www.thebeijinger.com). Its website is contantly updated although often very slow to load overseas, and it does keep up-to-date with practical developments of interest to the visitor such as new metro line openings.
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