The return of China's censors
By David Fullbrook
LONDON - Trying to rein in reporters straining at the leash of censorship, Beijing is drafting a law that will impose heavy fines for unauthorized news of big disasters and social unrest. Wang Yongqing, vice minister of the legislative affairs office of the State Council, insisted the law would improve news by ordering officials to release information quickly while ensuring journalists reported accurately.
Trouble is, officials down in the provinces and counties are stuck in their ways, which usually means keeping hushed up anything that might do their careers or business deals damage. Nor does the central government set a particularly transparent example. Secrecy is still the default modus operandi. Bureaucrats can declare just about anything a state secret, including, so far, much of the proposed Law on Response to Contingencies.
Chinese journalists, meanwhile, have in recent years been lifting stones and shining lights into corners the government would prefer left dark. Reporters along with some brave officials helped break the coverup of the SARS epidemic that swept China in spring 2003, embarrassing China's leaders as they fumbled explanations to United Nations' health experts and fumed at bumbling mandarins. Reporters were perhaps emboldened by propaganda chief Li Changchun, a politburo member, telling them in January that year to "monitor some problems and issues in society".
SARS was by no means the first major incident of this decade where the media outpaced the censors. Joseph Fewsmith, of the Hoover Institution (a think tank at Stanford University), cites reports of 42 pupils killed in Jiangxi in 2001 while making fireworks at school for their teachers' business as a landmark story. Officials instinctively clammed up and tried to suppress the story, but public outrage was such that Zhu Rongji, premier at the time, stepped in, publicly apologizing.
Hu Jintao, who assumed the presidency from Jiang Zemin in 2003, and Wen Jiabao, Zhu's successor, both appeared gregarious compared with their predecessors. They cut a high media profile, from comforting victims of disasters to donning hard hats and overalls as they headed down coal mines. A dashing, eloquent and feisty spokesman took to the stage at the Foreign Ministry. Some wondered if they were ushering in more open times for China.
By 2005, however, the censors were back in favor. Laws and crackdowns swept websites and chat rooms. Police set up special cyber-patrol units, showing off their eager, fresh, university graduate cyber cops to foreign reporters in Guangdong. Academics and researchers were warned against publicly criticizing government policies. Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong resident who is senior China correspondent for Singapore's Straits Times, was jailed for "espionage", while Zhao Yan, a researcher for the New York Times, is on trial for "disclosing state secrets". This latest law is yet another shot in this ongoing crackdown.
It provides a legitimate, "softer" legal basis for bringing action against "errant" reporters, Chinese and foreign, emphasized Wang. That might help censors and police resort to less heavy-handed tactics for silencing reporters, which are at odds with practices in many Western countries and China's attempts to paint itself as a responsible, lawful power. It takes China another pigeon step closer to the sophisticated methods used by Singapore, where reporters who do not watch their words risk harsh penalties in the civil courts. Such methods helped Singapore rank 140, compared with China's 159, out of 167 on the Reporters without Borders press freedom index.
What explains the sharp swing in winds from spring to winter? Well Hu and Wen could have been playing most people for fools, crafting reformist images, while secretly emulating Mao Zedong and Leonid Brezhnev. That may be the case, but there are other dynamics at work.
It is well to remember that though China is an autocracy, its leaders have to cultivate loyalty, playing off factions, hoping they can keep support strong to see them and their aims through. This is, in part, a consequence of the procedures the Communist Party of China introduced to ensure orderly transfers of power between leaders, beginning with Jiang's retirement in 2003.
His Shanghai faction remains highly influential, however, because it fills about half the seats in the politburo. Remaining politburo members were picked by Hu and Wen, who are thought to harbor ideas and interests that may be at odds with Jiang's clique because they spent most of their careers in inland China, which remains desperately poor compared to the booming east coast cities.
Politburo members inherited from Jiang will not be around to look over Hu's shoulder after the 17th Party Congress next year, which is when they have to step down. In their place will come more friends of Hu to begin their two terms, with their second term overlapping with the first term of Hu's successor.
Hu has to watch his step in the run up to the 17th Party Congress at which he can consolidate power. Risks, then, are out. Daring new policies will be held back until after the congress. Reporters need to be muzzled. His clique, based on the youth league, has to keep support of the reformers, while winning over more traditional factions. Pushing on with economic reform, while then going after people, such as reporters and vocal netizens who cause the party to blush, is one way of doing this.
Only in 2008 will Hu feel comfortable in flying a reformist flag, if indeed he is a reformer. With the world heading to Beijing that year for the summer Olympic Games he may feel the time is ripe to relent, cutting reporters some slack.
Newspapers and reporters may not, however, wait until then. That China is resorting to fines to keep reporters in line suggests that it lacks the means to reliably monitor every newsroom in the country to stop unfavorable reports being printed or broadcast. Instead, it seems to be hoping that the threat of 50,000 yuan (US$6,250) to 100,000 yuan fines, which could bankrupt reporters, backed up with threats of the sack and possibly jail will keep them in line.
Their publishers, however, might decide to publish and be damned. After all, 100,000 yuan is not very much money to a large newspaper in a big eastern metropolis. Readers increasingly demand and expect big stories unraveling corruption, problems and even sex scandals. Newsstands hung with hundreds of magazines and newspapers bespeak tough competition for readers and advertisers, who increasingly look to the Internet.
Perhaps worst of all, many publishers are owned or controlled by local communist parties. Considering the short shrift they often give to many orders and policies emanating from Beijing, they cannot be counted upon to put party proclamations before profits.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved)
