Media Make Small Strides

In China, Media Make Small Strides
Officials See More Open but Controlled Reporting as Tool to Quell Unrest

By Maureen Fan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, December 28, 2008; A16

BEIJING -- This fall, a scholarly magazine that focuses on Communist Party history pushed the envelope again.

Editors, emboldened a few years ago after writing about a rarely mentioned former top official the party had purged, published a cover story about a former party chief banned from mention in state-controlled media because of his support for students during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Propaganda officials waited two months before visiting the magazine's director, Du Daozheng, an 85-year-old party loyalist. At his office, he said, they delivered a subtle message. "Mr. Du, you have been working so hard. And you are old now, right?" the men reportedly told Du, director of Yanhuang Chunqiu, last month. "The implication was that I should resign now," he said in an interview.

That Du and his publication were not treated as harshly as they would have been in years past was one sign of change for state-controlled media in today's China. But the encounter also serves as the latest example of the party's determination to control the media at a time when a financial downturn threatens to aggravate social tensions and several important anniversaries have made officials nervous about dissent.

Propaganda officials have cracked down on Chinese writers and journalists who signed an open letter, known as Charter '08, that calls for an end to one-party rule. More than 5,000 lawyers, activists, Nobel prize winners and leading Chinese scholars also have signed the petition. At the same time, officials have begun to see that more open reporting could be used to help quell unrest, so long as the media remain under the party's control.

"This year there is more openness in China's media, and more and more top officials support more openness," said Zhan Jiang, director of the journalism school at the China Youth University for Political Sciences.

"But the recent tense situation in the media may be caused by concerns about the current economic crisis, which is much worse than expected, and about the 20th anniversary of the June 4th incident next year," Zhan said, referring to the Tiananmen massacre.

In the summer, China hosted the Olympic Games, which showcased a modern, prosperous nation but also highlighted a repressive government unwilling to tolerate dissent. As China celebrated 30 years of opening up and reforming its economy this month, even the Olympic motto, "One World, One Dream," with its reference to universal values, sparked a debate over whether capitalistic Western values are bad for China.

Yanhuang Chunqiu, which supports gradual democratization, published a series of articles three years ago commemorating the birthday of Hu Yaobang, a former party chief and reformer whose death sparked the Tiananmen movement. Propaganda officials responded by destroying the remaining 5,000 copies of the 50,000-circulation magazine. Hu had not been banned from mention, and central government officials eventually held a small ceremony that month rehabilitating his public image.

This time, with circulation at 80,000, Du chose a more difficult subject: former secretary general Zhao Ziyang, a reformer fired in 1989 for siding with and trying to help the student demonstrators. The piece, written by a retired top editor of the official New China News Agency, was the first positive story about Zhao to appear since 1989. Although it did not mention the Tiananmen incident, the report was seen as a direct challenge to the government's version of the massacre and of Zhao's mistakes.

And yet Du was able to challenge the propaganda officials by reminding them that a group of retired senior leaders had elected him to run the magazine.

Thanks to the Internet and the increasing commercialization of Chinese media, the public has become more demanding of reform and less tolerant of corruption. Media organizations that depend on growing circulation or reform-minded publications such as Yanhuang Chunqiu reflect that.

At the same time, central government officials have failed to narrow a widening wealth gap and stem growing unrest. Rising unemployment, falling exports and imports, and concerns about housing bubbles and a plummeting stock market have prompted officials to stress the need to guide public opinion, requiring reporters to save their most sensitive investigations for "internal reference" and urging them to report the facts about riots and protests but not the causes.

President Hu Jintao said in June that news coverage of emergency incidents should be more timely, authoritative and transparent, but he stressed the need to adhere to party propaganda. "If the media guidance is correct, it is good for the party, the country and the public," Hu said in a visit to the official People's Daily newspaper.

Although some journalists viewed the remark as a signal allowing more open reporting, others said the openness is being pushed only by individual journalists.

"There are pockets of progress and areas journalists can clearly write about that they couldn't before, such as malfeasance and local corruption, but these areas are self-created and may not be sustainable," said Russell Leigh Moses, a Beijing-based analyst. "The whole tenor of Hu Jintao's leadership has been of centralization, and media control is part of that."

The warning to Du came as several journalists have been seized for investigating corruption or removed from their jobs for aggressive reporting.

This month, the Beijing News published security camera footage showing the arrest of a journalist with the Network News newspaper. Chief reporter Guan Jian was detained for two weeks at the behest of Shanxi public security officials without his family's knowledge, while another police department accepted a missing-person report from his relatives without telling them about his arrest.

"It is actually a terrorist act with violence and intention to fool the public," said Chang Ping, an editor at Southern Metropolis Weekly, criticizing the case in his blog.

Officials who routinely censor Internet access have also recently blocked the New York Times, the Voice of America, and Hong Kong publications Ming Pao and Asiaweek.

"What's the big deal? They are frightening themselves! They have no confidence in their regime," media commentator Li Datong, who was ousted as editor of Freezing Point, said of the officials. Li said officials stepped up trials and arrests this year, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In the past, local government officials at least pretended to accommodate reporters, veteran journalist Wang Keqin of the China Economic Times said. "Now . . . they pay no attention to journalists' requests for interviews or try every means to turn bad news into good or retaliate against journalists, sometimes physically," Wang said.

The reason might be that the stakes are higher, for journalists and corrupt officials, said Peter Herford, journalism professor at Shantou University in southern Guangdong province.

"There are more oxes to be gored at a higher level, and many more people are involved in this game," Herford said. "Reporters have also become more sophisticated. They're letting the easy stuff go and instead thinking, 'How do I make my mark?' If they bring down a provincial government official or part of an industry, in a sense, that's their protection."

More broadly, there has been a greater sense of openness over time, journalists said.

On Dec. 8, the Beijing News published a report accusing Shandong provincial officials of locking up in mental hospitals ordinary citizens seeking to file complaints. Allegations that the petitioners were forced to take medication were widely published in other media and prompted a critical editorial in the English-language China Daily, a broadsheet aimed at foreigners.

"Before opening and reform, there were only four pages in the official People's Daily. There were other party papers, but the pages were almost all the same. . . . Now, there are so many non-party papers, allowing different voices to be heard," said Yang Jisheng, deputy head of Yanhuang Chunqiu and a former senior correspondent for the New China News Agency. "If things are not better, how can I stand here and talk to you?"

Researcher Liu Songjie contributed to this report.