[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
REPORTING THE NEWS IN CHINA: FIRSTHAND ACCOUNTS AND CURRENT TRENDS
=======================================================================
ROUNDTABLE
before the
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 31, 2009
__________
Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
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CO N T E N T S
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Page
Opening statement of Douglas Grob, Cochairman's Senior Staff
Member, Congressional-Executive Commission on China............ 1
Liu, Lawrence, Senior Counsel, Congressional-Executive Commission
on China....................................................... 1
Ford, Jocelyn, 2007-2009 Chair, Media Freedoms Committee, Foreign
Correspondents' Club of China; freelance radio and multimedia
journalist..................................................... 3
McLaughlin, Kathleen E., Chair, Media Freedoms Committee and
Secretary, Foreign Correspondents' Club of China; China
Correspondent for BNA, Inc., and freelance journalist.......... 6
Esarey, Ashley, Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics, Whitman
College........................................................ 9
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements
McLaughlin, Kathleen E........................................... 26
Esarey, Ashley................................................... 28
Submissions for the Record
Prepared Statement of James Fallows, National Correspondent, The
Atlantic Magazine.............................................. 31
From the Atlantic, ``Their Own Worst Enemy,'' by James Fallows,
November 2008.................................................. 33
From the Atlantic, ``The Connection Has Been Reset,'' by James
Fallows, March 2008............................................ 38
From a Freedom House Special Report, Freedom At Issue, ``Speak No
Evil--Mass Media Control in Contemporary China,'' by Ashley
Esarey, February 2006.......................................... 44
From Asian Survey, Vol. XLVIII, No. 5, September/October 2008,
``Political Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere--Below the
Radar,'' by Ashley Esarey and Xiao Qiang....................... 56
REPORTING THE NEWS IN CHINA:
FIRSTHAND ACCOUNTS AND CURRENT TRENDS
----------
FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2009
Congressional-Executive
Commission on China,
Washington, DC.
The roundtable was convened, pursuant to notice, at 2:03
p.m., in room 628, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Douglas
Grob, Cochairman's Senior Staff Member, presiding.
Also present: Lawrence Liu, Senior Counsel.
OPENING STATEMENT OF DOUGLAS GROB, COCHAIRMAN'S SENIOR STAFF
MEMBER, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
Mr. Grob. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you very
much for attending the Congressional-Executive Commission on
China's ninth public roundtable for the 111th Congress. I'd
like to welcome you on behalf of Cochairman Sandy Levin, and
for our Staff Director, Charlotte Oldham Moore, I'd like to
welcome you on behalf of Chairman Byron Dorgan of the
Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
We're very pleased to see you here today. The House and
Senate, as you know, have been pulling very late nights
preparing to go out of session, so that you would take your
time at this busy juncture to be with us today is something
that we're grateful for, and that speaks to the importance of
the topic of our roundtable this morning: Reporting the News in
China: Firsthand Accounts and Current Trends.
I'd like to, at this point, turn the floor over to Lawrence
Liu, to my right, Senior Counsel with the Commission, and our
staff specialist on free expression, free flow of information,
and the Internet in China.
So, Lawrence, please.
STATEMENT OF LAWRENCE LIU, SENIOR COUNSEL, CONGRESSIONAL-
EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
Mr. Liu. We are convening this roundtable nearly a year
after China hosted the Olympics. The timing is significant
because it was the Olympics that prompted Chinese officials to
grant foreign journalists allowed into China new freedom to
report.
This past year has been significant for domestic and
foreign journalists in China for other reasons as well.
Journalists have had to contend with covering news amid the
global economic downturn and concerns from Chinese officials
over maintaining social stability.
2009 also contains a number of sensitive anniversaries in
China, including the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen
protests, the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama's flight into
exile, and the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's
Republic of China, to name a few.
The Internet continues to play a major role in shaping news
coverage, and earlier this month protests and violence broke
out in Xinjiang, testing the Chinese Government's commitment to
openness and transparency. We are lucky today to have a group
of panelists who can offer both a first-person perspective and
a broader analysis on the impact of these events on reporting
the news in China and what the last year has meant for press
freedom.
Before introducing the panelists, I want to take this brief
opportunity to let you know how the Commission has been
covering these issues. In connection with this roundtable we
have put out a quick brief that provides an overview of press
freedom issues in China. We publish ongoing analysis on our Web
site in a periodic newsletter. We recently wrote several pieces
analyzing the Chinese Government's attempts to require all
computers sold in China to come pre-installed with the Green
Dam filtering software. Finally, we will be issuing our 2009
Annual Report this October.
Now I would like to introduce the panelists. Sitting to my
left is Jocelyn Ford, a Beijing-based multimedia journalist.
During her eight years in China she served as Bureau Chief for
U.S. Public Radio's Marketplace, and you may have heard her on
other public radio shows such as Studio 360.
From 2007 to 2009, she chaired the Media Freedoms Committee
at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China. She also has the
unique perspective of having worked for the state-run China
Radio International. She is currently working on her first
documentary about a widowed Tibetan migrant worker.
Also sitting to my left is Kathleen McLaughlin, the
Beijing-based China correspondent for BNA, where she writes
about legislative and regulatory affairs in China. She is
currently head of the Media Freedoms Committee for the Foreign
Correspondents' Club of China. She has spent most of the past
decade covering news in China, and you may have seen her
articles also in the Far Eastern Economic Review and Christian
Science Monitor, including a recent piece on Uyghur workers
from the toy factory that sparked recent protests in Xinjiang.
And finally, sitting to my right is Ashley Esarey, a
Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics at Whitman College in
Washington State. In June, he completed the An Wang Post-
Doctoral Fellowship at Harvard, and previously was a professor
at Middlebury
College. He has done extensive research on China's media and
Internet, including for, Freedom House, and we have made copies
of two of his pieces available at the door. He is currently
working on a book: ``The Challenge of Truth: Media and Power in
Contemporary China.''
Mr. Grob. Thank you, Lawrence.
I'd just like to note that, unfortunately, James Fallows,
whom we had hoped to have with us today, has taken ill, we
learned this morning, and is unable to join us.
Also, I'd like to just mention, before I turn the floor
over to Jocelyn Ford for her remarks, that we'll proceed as
follows: our panelists will give brief statements, after which
we will open the floor to questions from the audience. We are
creating a transcript of this event to be published on our Web
site, so when we come to the Q&A we will have further
guidelines on how the Q&A will proceed.
But without further ado, I'd like to ask Jocelyn for her
remarks.
STATEMENT OF JOCELYN FORD, 2007-2009 CHAIR OF MEDIA FREEDOMS
COMMITTEE, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS' CLUB OF CHINA; FREELANCE
RADIO AND MULTIMEDIA JOURNALIST
Ms. Ford. Thank you for the introduction and thank you for
inviting us here.
Thank you, the audience, for your interest in this subject.
As China becomes more influential in the world it is
increasingly important for the world to have access to accurate
and timely information out of China. Unfortunately, China's
advances in openness have lagged behind its economic advances.
So, I'm glad that you all have an interest in this topic.
Today I will introduce the Foreign Correspondents' Club of
China, tell you what reporting was like before the Olympics as
well as how the Olympics changed reporting conditions for
foreign correspondents, and outline obstacles and issues we
still have to deal with.
The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China [FCCC], as we
know it today, was started around 1981. Today's membership
includes about 260 journalists from countries all over the
world. We also have associate members from embassies and
companies. Our activities are open to Chinese nationals, but we
do not have Chinese members. Chinese authorities consider the
Foreign Correspondents' Club of China an illegal organization.
As some of you may know, the Chinese Government requires
nonprofit associations and organizations to register. However,
the FCCC board has been told we are not welcome to register. To
register, we would need a government organ to support our
request and no government office is willing to do so.
First, let me give you the big picture about the Olympics.
If you talk to foreign correspondents who have been in China,
say, since the 1990s--I arrived in 2001--they will tell you
that reporting conditions are pretty good today. From a long-
term perspective, China has moved in the right direction.
Did the Olympics help improve working conditions for
foreign media faster than would have happened had China not
hosted the Games? Definitely yes. But the government is not
making its best effort to make good on the Olympic promises it
made to foreign media and on information openness. It would be
unrealistic to expect conditions to improve dramatically
overnight. Change does not happen that rapidly in any country,
and certainly not in China.
But in China, too often regulations and laws are often not
enforced. Sometimes it feels like we've gone two steps forward,
one step backward, two steps forward, and maybe three steps
backward. In general, China is moving in the right direction,
but it is important to remain vigilant. One example I hope
concerned parties will keep an eye on is the revised State
Secrets Law, which was recently opened for comment.
So what was it like reporting before the Olympics?
Officially, according to the rules, foreign correspondents were
required to get permission every time they wanted to leave
their home base, which in my case, as I was registered in
Beijing, would be Beijing. So if I wanted to go across the
country to interview somebody, according to the rules, I needed
to get permission.
Now, of course, when reporters try to cover a topic the
government wants to keep hushed up, say AIDS villages in Henan
Province, they will not be granted permission. So, as a result,
reporters played cat-and-mouse. The reporter might travel in
the middle of the night to the village, wrap up reporting by 2
o'clock in the morning, and leave, hopefully while the
officials were sleeping.
Reporting sometimes felt like cloak-and-dagger work,
without the daggers, of course. For example, in 2002 I went to
cover unrest in a northern oil town. Every time there was a
knock on my hotel door, my colleague feared it would be the
authorities who had come to detain us for being in the city
without permission. At the time, it was fairly safe to report
openly on non-controversial issues, even without permission,
but reporters covering stories the local or central government
regarded as ``sensitive'' would need to take extra precautions
to avoid being discovered and detained.
In the run-up to the Olympics, the Foreign Correspondents'
Club sought to lobby the Chinese Government to change some of
these restricting rules, and in 2006 three of us had an
informal meeting with a Foreign Ministry official. Remember,
we're an illegal organization, so we met as ``friends,'' not as
representatives of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China.
In that meeting we said that we would like to see scrapped
the rule that limits our ability to travel, and the official
said, ``Well, how about if, instead of getting permission to
go, you just sent a fax in advance announcing you are coming?
''
Presumably under such a system the sources the journalist
wished to interview might be barred from meeting the reporter.
So we said, if the fax notification was voluntary, that would
be fine. But it shouldn't be required.
The official, at that meeting, told us that the government
was serious about its Olympic promise to allow unrestricted
media coverage and that it planned to have rules in place a
year in advance. We were very pleasantly surprised when those
rules came into play on January 1, 2007, a year and a half
ahead of the Games, and they went further than we had expected.
They did not require fax pre-notification. Basically the new
rules, which were called ``temporary rules'' for the Olympics,
allowed foreign correspondents to interview anybody who agreed
to be interviewed. Tibet was still off-limits, but otherwise we
could, according to the regulations, roam the country freely.
This was progress. Of course, as I said earlier, in China
implementation of laws and regulations is often a problem, and
the ``free reporting'' regulation is no exception.
After the regulation was brought into force in January 2007
there were a number of high-profile news stories, including the
Tibet unrest in March 2008 which Kathleen will be talking
about. In 2008, the FCCC confirmed 180 violations of the
regulation. We did not have the manpower to follow up on each
incident we were informed of, and I am sure there were many
more we didn't even hear about.
Foreign correspondents didn't know what to expect after the
Olympics were over. But the FCCC was pleased when the temporary
regulation, after a few amendments, was made permanent in
October 2008.
As can be expected, there are a lot of outstanding
problems, but overall correspondents feel empowered by the
regulations. When traveling around the country and officials
say reporters are not allowed on their turf, we can now say,
``Yes, we are, and here's the regulation.'' Sometimes it works.
Sometimes they say, ``Oh, okay, we can't disturb you.''
Sometimes, if reporters threaten to call the Foreign Ministry
to report local authorities are harassing them in violation of
the rules, the locals will back down. Other times they say ``We
don't care,'' or cite a local regulation restricting reporting,
which usually they can't present on paper.
We have surveyed our members over the years. A year ahead
of the Olympics, so about half a year after the new rules had
been implemented, about half of the respondents said that the
reporting environment was improving. We sent out a survey this
year, and the response was about the same. But obviously there
is also a lot of dissatisfaction. We asked how many thought
reporting conditions in China meet international standards, and
something like 95 percent of respondents said they do not think
China's reporting conditions are up to international standards.
The Olympics appear to have been a catalyst for the Chinese
Government to overhaul its approach to information control.
Instead of restraining foreign correspondents as they did under
the old rules, they now try to control our sources. The
intimidation has shifted from stopping correspondents from
conducting interviews, to stopping Chinese citizens from
speaking to us. The end result is we are still not able to
report freely.
Harassment of interviewees is our top concern. Treatment of
Chinese national news assistants who work for foreign
organizations is also a big concern. Kathleen will fill you in
on the details.
Before I close, I would like to mention some positive
changes that are worth noting but haven't received a lot of
attention. Chinese authorities are becoming more proactive, for
example, by holding more press conferences and media tours.
Though too often these events are used to push soft stories,
and reporters often do not feel they get adequate answers to
their questions, still, this is a step in the right direction.
It also suggests the Chinese Government believes it can achieve
its goals more effectively by controlling or influencing the
narrative, rather than by silence. Its practices are moving
closer to those in other influential countries.
The Olympics were also used to educate local officials
nationwide on new principles of openness. I had access to an
internal police circular for the Olympics with instructions for
handling foreign
correspondents. The police were told not to interfere when
foreign correspondents interview religious groups, activists,
environmental organizations, or other groups the government
traditionally sought to silence.
The directive, which I presume has expired with the
Olympics, however, said if the interviewee was a Falun Gong
practitioner, a Tibetan activist, a Uyghur or talking about
Taiwan independence, the correspondent should be allowed to
conduct the interview, but afterward the police should
blacklist the journalist and deal with the interviewee in
accordance with the law. Some news sources have been arrested
and put in jail, following trials that included ``speaking to a
foreign correspondent'' as evidence of wrongdoing.
But I've also been pleasantly surprised to find awareness
of the new policy of ``openness'' has reached some remote
areas. Last month I was attending a wedding in a small town in
the northeast corner of Inner Mongolia. I ran into a local
court official at the celebration, who was happy to describe
activities at his courthouse. I asked if I could do a video
interview with him for a story I was working on about rural
land disputes. He said, I could interview him since ``China has
media freedom [Xinwen Ziyou],'' but I would need to ask his
boss. His boss said I would need to apply to officials in the
next town over. I didn't have time. Still I was surprised to
hear him talk about media freedom, and he did let me film the
inside of the courthouse. When I first arrived in China in
2001, I don't think I would have heard the term, especially not
from a low court official in a remote corner of the country. So
I do think the message is seeping down to some people at lower
levels in China. I think that is a very positive Olympic result
that doesn't get highlighted a lot.
With that, I'll turn it over to Kathleen, who will give you
the details of what happens in the field.
Mr. Grob. Thank you very much, Jocelyn. Kathleen? Please.
STATEMENT OF KATHLEEN E. McLAUGHLIN, CHAIR, MEDIA FREEDOMS
COMMITTEE AND SECRETARY, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS' CLUB OF CHINA;
CHINA CORRESPONDENT FOR BNA, INC.; AND FREELANCE JOURNALIST
Ms. McLaughlin. Thank you. Thank you for inviting us here,
and thank you for coming. We appreciate it.
So, Jocelyn has kind of taken you through the history of
where we've been as foreign correspondents in China, and now
I'd like to give you some examples of what's been happening
lately and give you some ideas of what we're concerned about
into the future. In particular, I want to make clear that we
believe Chinese assistants and Chinese sources are coming under
increasing pressure, which is a real roadblock to free and open
reporting.
I also want to speak about the importance of free media for
global economic issues and how China's information controls
make it difficult for foreign correspondents to cover
everything, including the economy.
So let me start with a little story about something that
happened a couple of months ago, and this might give you an
idea of the new kind of interference and pressure we're facing
as journalists.
On June 3 and 4, Beijing's Tiananmen Square was filled with
hundreds of people. Walking onto the square, it appeared that
80 to 90 percent of the people were actually plainclothes
police and army. Nearly all of them carried umbrellas, and at
first glance it seemed the umbrellas were to block the hot sun
overhead. As the hours wore on and foreign journalists appeared
on the square to report about the 20th anniversary of the
crushing of the Tiananmen movement, it became clear that the
hundreds of umbrellas were there to serve a dual purpose: they
were used to physically block journalists and cameras from
filming on the square.
So while from a distance it appeared the square was full of
tourists with umbrellas, in fact, it was clear that something
else was going on. We didn't have any reports of journalists
being detained or arrested on the square that day, but we had a
lot of calls from people who had their pictures ruined by
plainclothes police with kind of pretty little parasols.
I think this is a good example of this sort of soft
harassment we've begun to see more of in recent months. It's
less dangerous and less direct than what we saw in the past,
but it's no less effective in preventing us from doing our
jobs.
Now, as Jocelyn mentioned, the Foreign Correspondents' Club
is in the midst of a new members' survey, and the results we're
getting are telling. Now, keep in mind we're not a polling firm
so these aren't scientific results, but they give us an idea of
the issues that are important to individual members.
As Jocelyn said, about half of the members who've taken the
survey so far do believe the reporting climate in China is
improving and it's heading in the right direction, and that's
consistent with what we've heard from the beginning.
Still, many are concerned about current issues. About two-
thirds of the correspondents have had some kind of interference
in doing their daily work, and more than two-thirds who work
with a Chinese research assistant say their employee has been
hassled or summoned for questioning by authorities in the last
year. We've also had several reports of sources facing
repercussions after talking to foreign journalists.
Now, with that, to give you an idea of how things might be
changing, let's go back to Tibet in March 2008. In the days
following the Lhasa riots, foreign correspondents were shut out
of Tibet. It's always been difficult for us to report in that
region given that entrance to Tibet requires a special permit.
All foreigners are required to get that permit, but journalists
are scrutinized pretty closely and often denied. Last spring
after the riots, foreign correspondents were not only shut out
of Tibet, but repeatedly detained, harassed, and sometimes
forcibly prevented from doing their jobs across the Tibetan
plateau. The FCCC took more than 40 cases in which
correspondents were prevented from working.
Outside of Tibet proper, the area that technically doesn't
require the special permit, foreign news crews were blocked and
Chinese staff intimidated, and in at least one case a driver
was threatened with arrest. So you can see it's not just
foreign correspondents being harassed, but also the Chinese
nationals involved in our work. And these are the people for
whom this kind of interference could have life-altering
consequences. So soft harassment, for example, where a police
officer inserts himself into an interview, making it clear
there may be consequences for the interviewee, has become
fairly routine.
In July 2008, I was the first American journalist allowed
to travel independently to Lhasa. I was allowed to move
relatively freely throughout the city. If anyone was following
or listening to me I didn't see them, but the city was so full
of police and military, the main obstacle I had is that most
residents, both Tibetan and Chinese, were simply too afraid to
talk to me. Access to Tibet and the region remains a problem to
this day for foreign correspondents.
Now, let's jump ahead to more than a year later, when we
faced something similar with the uprising in Xinjiang on July
5. As you know, nearly 200 people were killed when Uyghur
protests in the capital, Urumqi, turned violent.
What we saw in the days after marked a dramatic departure
from the government's closed-door policy toward foreign
journalists in Tibet. Journalists were immediately allowed into
Urumqi, and by most accounts they were given freedom to
interview and move about. There were some logistical problems
with the Internet and telephone access, but the general climate
marked a significant change.
We'd like to hope that the government recognized the value
of allowing foreign correspondents to report on the ground and
to see things with their own eyes. Covering Xinjiang, however,
was not without problems. Urumqi was relatively open, but the
far western city of Kashgar was, by all accounts, completely
closed. Officials denied the closure, but we've heard from
several journalists who traveled there that they were
intercepted and ordered to leave.
Also, 2,000 miles away in Shaoguan, the site of the toy
factory murders that sparked the Xinjiang riots, one local
driver of a foreign reporting crew was called in for police
questioning after the reporters left town. So, you can see
there was a spread on that issue, very different things
happening in Kashgar and Shaoguan than happened in Urumqi,
which was quite open. After covering and writing about
Xinjiang, two correspondents received anonymous death threats.
Now, given the shift and the fact that foreign journalists
were allowed to report rather openly in Urumqi, we do see a
real potential for change, but there are still these trouble
spots and continued problems. As the Chinese rules have more
aligned with international reporting standards, harassment and
intimidation may be going underground. By that, I mean the
pressure is falling more often on vulnerable Chinese sources
and staff.
Now, in recent months we have encountered a new couple of
trouble areas. At the beginning of the year, registered Chinese
staff of foreign news bureaus in Beijing were called in for
formal meetings and training, and potentially were lectured by
officials, who threatened them with revocation of their
accreditation, possibly losing their jobs. The new rules that
were issued at that time urged the news assistants to promote
positive news stories about China within their organizations.
Additionally, they were instructed that it was illegal for them
to conduct independent reporting activities.
The Foreign Correspondents' Club believes that this new
code of conduct discriminates against Chinese news assistants.
Foreign companies in other industries can freely hire PRC
citizens as full-fledged employees. In addition, the code is a
business restriction that places foreign media at a competitive
disadvantage. Chinese journalists in most developed nations can
hire local staff without these kinds of restrictions. In China,
foreign media are obliged to hire staff through the
government's Personnel Services Corporation, which then directs
their activities and holds regular meetings with the
assistants, I believe, to talk about how they conduct their
business.
Now, another troubling development comes in the financial
news sector. There is an area of tension that may stem from
foreign financial news services competition with China's home-
grown financial news wires. While political news is generally
considered more sensitive, financial news is coming under
greater scrutiny. Most financial indicators are widely
circulated before being officially released.
In the past, the leaked figures would often find their way
into Chinese and foreign media, but foreign media organizations
have now come under pressure, including an implicit threat to
be investigated under the state secrets law, for publishing
data that hasn't been officially released.
The tightening of these restrictions dates from the fall of
last year and the global financial crisis. At that point,
Chinese economists were urged to conform to the mainstream view
on the economy and speak less to the media. Controls over
publishing-leaked information were also tightened. This is a
situation we're watching closely because we're not quite sure
what direction it's headed in, but there is definitely an
increased pressure on foreign financial news wires operating in
China.
I will conclude my remarks now. So as you can see, we have
made a lot of gains in recent years and we still face some
critical issues, namely, trying to maintain the safety of
Chinese sources and staff while doing our job, and also
pressure over information that might present competition to
Chinese media, as well as the ongoing interference and
harassment of the kind we've seen for a number of years.
Thanks. I look forward to your discussion.
Mr. Grob. Thank you very much, Kathleen.
I'd like now to turn the floor over to Professor Esarey.
[The prepared statement of Ms. McLaughlin appears in the
appendix.]
STATEMENT OF ASHLEY ESAREY, VISITING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF
POLITICS, WHITMAN COLLEGE
Mr. Esarey. Thanks very much for inviting me. It's a great
pleasure to be here. Doug, thanks for moderating this panel;
Lawrence, thanks for making everything happen.
My remarks are going to be directed toward Chinese
journalism, which is the subject of my research. The first
thing I think you should know is that Chinese governments have
been controlling political information of a wide variety of
sorts for at least 1,000 years. So we're not talking about a
new phenomenon, we're talking about new ways to control
information in China. The primary way that you can control
information in this modern age is by controlling the mass
media, by controlling the Internet, cell phone text messages,
and so on.
The Chinese Government now faces a dilemma. The Chinese
Communist Party wants to modernize the country. It wants to
develop. In order to do so it has to allow some freedom of
information. However, by allowing freedom of information it
risks empowering critics; it risks giving activists a chance to
use blogs to launch social movements. In short, the Party risks
its unchallenged hegemony on political power. That's what is at
stake.
We also know, based on social science scholarship, that if
you allow media openness, it is likely to empower social
organizations, whether they are legal or illegal, and it's
often conducive to democratization. These are both things the
Communist Party is fighting very hard to stop.
A little bit of history: At the founding of the People's
Republic on October 1, 1949, the Chinese Communist Party made a
marked departure from all other Chinese governments in the past
in that it sought to control all political information in its
society. It sought a totalitarian model in which the Party
controlled the education system. Media organizations were
controlled. The Communist Party nationalized all foreign and
privately owned media; all so-called imperialist and
antirevolutionary/counterrevolutionary literature was seized by
the police and the postal service--what a scholar named Peter
Kenez has called the propaganda state was largely established
by about 1956.
There have been some exceptions in terms of the ways in
which information and the media have been controlled. The 100
Flowers Campaign and the Cultural Revolution are two
exceptions, but by and large the Party's ability to dominate
the media and political information have allowed it to get the
public to support its plan to radically change the Chinese into
a Socialist society.
Now, fast-forward to the death of Mao in 1976. Reformers,
led by Deng Xiaoping, were able to emerge and they were very
concerned about the media because, during the Cultural
Revolution, a very tumultuous period, media had been shut down;
the Party lost control of media, and media had become boring.
Deng and others believed that media could be commercialized and
propaganda could be repackaged to make it more attractive;
ultimately, the media commercialized sufficiently so that they
could be largely self-supporting. As the Party media
commercialized, its incentives began to change.
Commercialization of the Chinese press has led to a couple
of noteworthy developments. Although when we consider
liberalization in the Chinese media over the last 30 years,
we're not going to be talking about journalists challenging
President Hu Jintao about his policies or the nation's policies
toward Xinjiang. That sort of thing does not occur in the
Chinese press. Chinese leaders are never criticized by name.
With commercialization, however, media now care about the
public and they want to please consumers. That means that while
they must serve the Party and state organizations that control
them, they're also interested in investigative journalism when
they can make it happen. There have been interesting examples
of that. I'll just cite a couple.
One was reporting in 2003 about the murder of a graphic
artist, Sun Zhigang, in a detention center in Guangzhou. This
then led to a major change in national policy vis-a-vis migrant
workers. In 2007, there was a story done by Hunan Dianshi,
Hunan television, that led to the release of people being held
in slavery, as many as 600 people who were held in slavery in
brick kilns in Shanxi Province.
The most interesting example of media freedom, if you will,
in China, occurred after the Sichuan earthquake last May, when
the Communist Party Propaganda Department that guides media
content ordered media--local media, provincial media, municipal
media all around the country--not to go to the disaster area
and report on location. These orders were widely defied and
media went and reported on this very important news. That, I
think, many scholars saw as a breakthrough, because it was the
first time that we had seen widespread noncompliance with bans
for politically sensitive media coverage since, perhaps, the
Tiananmen demonstrations in 1989.
Windows of freedom have opened for Chinese media, but they
do not last long. They're often closed by the Communist Party's
Propaganda Department, when it's able to do so, or when the
government is able to portray its efforts as having effectively
dealt with the problem.
What about the Internet? How is that affecting things now?
Well, the Internet, as many of you know--I see there are a lot
of younger people here today--has lots of applications and
China is following the United States and other advanced
countries very rapidly in terms of its adoption of all sorts of
applications for using the Internet. Blogs are extremely
popular. There are 300 million Chinese Internet users. This is
an old statistic. It's a statistic from January of this year. I
say ``old'' because the number of Internet users increases so
rapidly that statistics are quickly out of date.
China has 300 million Internet users and 160 million
bloggers. That is a tremendous amount of bloggers. And these
bloggers are writing in ways that are totally different from
the mass media. They advocate democracy and political reform,
freedom of speech, and all sorts of other concepts that you
just can't see in the mass media. We've got good quantitative
data to demonstrate this.
These new media have been used by members of the middle
class in cities like Shanghai and Xiamen to organize protests.
Often cell phones are used to circulate messages very rapidly.
There are 650 million cell phone users in China. That is,
again, a statistic from December of last year.
So, Chinese use cell phones to access the Internet,
messages are circulated, and demonstrations can be organized.
The Chinese Government has maintained that ethno-nationalists
in Tibet, and certainly Xinjiang, have used this new media to a
very deadly effect. That has been the sort of critique of new
media power that we have seen by the central government
mouthpiece, Xinhua News Service.
My argument at the outset was that the Chinese Communist
Party has a dilemma, and the dilemma is: it must allow
information freedom if it wants to develop, yet if it allows
information
freedom it risks losing power. I think the sorts of measures
that Kathleen was talking about--new ways to keep foreign
journalists from being very active, new ways of harassing
assistants who work for foreign journalists--these measures
indicate that the old measures for information control aren't
working; they show us that the state believes that new measures
are necessary.
For the Internet, one of these new measures has been the
Green Dam software that the government tried to get installed
on all personal computers sold inside China. There was push-
back from the U.S. Government and, more quietly, from the
business community, but the largest push-back, at least public
push-back, came from Chinese Internet users themselves who felt
that this software represented an invasion of privacy, and the
government did suspend its attempt to impose this software on
all machines sold in China.
In China, we are seeing what David Shambaugh has argued is
a daily battle waged between state and society over what is fit
to know. Commercialization has changed the incentives of the
media. They must now please consumers to survive. Media that
were once the mouthpieces of Mao Zedong's government now
perform their propaganda role unwillingly. Commercial media
would like to compete with blogs and social networking sites
for the attention of the public, however, party restrictions
bar the media from doing this and sometimes this leaves
journalists as uncomfortable as a cat in a bag.
Ultimately, tight control over media content, in the
context of Internet freedom, contributes to disbelief, even
cynicism, toward state propaganda. The Chinese Communist Party
may control the messages in media reports, but this no longer
means the public believes the message.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Esarey appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Grob. Thank you, Ashley, for your remarks. I'd like to
thank all of our panelists for some very illuminating and
stimulating comments.
I'd like now to open the floor to questions from the
audience. If you have a question, please, if you would, raise
your hand, wait to be recognized, and wait a moment for the
microphone to come to you, or feel free to come to the
microphone.
I'll repeat that we are creating a transcript of this
event, which will be posted on our Web site, so, for that
reason, I'd like to ask that, if you do have a question, to
identify yourself. If you do not wish to identify yourself and
wish to be identified in the transcript only as ``audience
participant,'' that's fine. Just indicate that you do not wish
to identify yourself and we will respect that desire.
With that, questions, please? Yes, sir.
Mr. Wides. Thank you. I'm Burt Wides. Until January, I was,
for many years, a congressional staffer. Now I'm a private
citizen. A question basically for Kathleen and Jocelyn. You've
talked about a lot of modernizing. I've seen a lot of articles
about protests about houses being seized, democracy protesters,
lawyers. But the big lacuna is stories about Falun Gong in the
U.S. media.
Jocelyn mentioned that interviewers of the Falun Gong were
blacklisted or the interviewees were arrested. Well, we know
that many Falun Gong gravely risk both arrest and torture to
protest, so the fault must be on the U.S. media side. When
there are occasional stories, they seem compelled to give equal
time or treat equally the Chinese propaganda, which is contrary
to what the United Nations, the United States, all the human
rights groups have said.
So my question is: why isn't U.S. headquarters, the bureau,
the individual journalist, concerned? Does blacklisting mean
they would be kicked out of the country? What is the reason for
that, in your view, and what can be done about it?
Mr. Grob. Thank you.
Ms. McLaughlin. I can't speak from personal experience on
that because I haven't covered Falun Gong myself. I also don't
know of any reporters who have been thrown out of China for
writing about it. There certainly is pressure on it. I have
heard of cases of journalists being called in by the Foreign
Ministry after writing about Falun Gong, but I can't really
answer why these reporters would approach the story the way
they do. I think it's an individual basis and it's probably
their own news judgment. Jocelyn may have more personal
experience with it, so I'll turn it over to you.
Ms. Ford. I have not covered any stories directly. I have
discussed this with some journalist colleagues, and all I can
say is that I think there are a lot of editorial-room decisions
or individual decisions by journalists. In the past there have
been journalists who were evicted from China. I believe the
most recent case, though, was around 1999. Since I arrived in
China in 2001, I am not aware of any journalists who have been
kicked out.
However, the government does put pressure on media groups
by withholding or delaying visas. Of course, this can be
difficult to pin down. But I am aware of journalists who were
told by the Foreign Ministry their visa was being delayed
because the Chinese Government was unhappy someone in their
organization had interviewed the Dalai Lama or then-president
of Taiwan Chen Shui-Bian. I don't think this is a new form of
pressure.
Mr. Wides. Do you think print or TV organizations have
reached agreements with Beijing----
Ms. Ford. I don't think so, personally. I have seen no
evidence of that.
Mr. Grob. Okay.
Ms. Ford. As some of you may know, petitioning is quite
common. In China, if somebody has a grievance, and the Chinese
court does not solve it for them, often they will call
journalists and petition or harass the journalist, expecting
the journalist to help
deliver justice. People who behave in this way often do not get
coverage. This is based on conversations with other
journalists. I have not received this kind of harassment
myself.
Mr. Guerra. Good afternoon. Thank you for convening this
event. My name is Robert Guerra. I'm the project director at
Freedom House's Internet Freedom Project, and for the last,
about, year and a half we've been covering the issues of
Internet freedom, and to do a report on China, have been
following very closely both the issues related to the Internet
in China, but also trying to find ways to get first-hand
reports of what Internet policy is like in China and trying to
have people there participate more effectively. It's good to
hear that bloggers and the use of the Internet are increasing.
Recent conversations and dialogues with people in China really
show that that's really a medium that's really being used to
bypass a lot of the blockages, both technological, to get news
across.
I have, kind of, probably two parts of questions. There
seem to be organizations that cover traditional media, but I'm
curious if there's anything that includes kind of the new media
and if there is anything that bloggers' organizations or news
organizations are trying to maybe help their Chinese blogging
colleagues somehow, because just as it said that bloggers might
present a new window, there are reports over the last week or
so that a lot of the bloggers and other Internet activists who
were involved in the Green Dam push-back are now being visited,
are maybe having computers seized, and whether that's a result
of that or other repression that's been taking place over the
last two weeks with other lawyers being arrested, kind of gets
me to the question, well, what can be done and how can the
traditional media maybe work with this newer media, given that
in Chinese it's the space that there is a window of possible
openness, but also, as some other colleagues say, that if there
are things that develop in China to control it, that might then
move itself to other parts of the world. So, China might set a
standard or might set--so I'm just curious what your thoughts
are. I would have thought to hear a little bit more about the
Internet, but then again, I follow it closely, so that's maybe
more of a passion. So I'm curious. And again, thank you for
convening this event.
Mr. Grob. Thank you.
Any takers?
Mr. Esarey. Sure. I'm a scholar, so when you ask, are there
organizations, the first thing that comes to mind are scholarly
organizations. This may be of little help to you, but there's
an organization called the Conference for Internet Research in
China and they have annual conferences and they follow Internet
developments very quickly, pretty well, and they have some
things. But you're looking for organizations of bloggers in
China. They have begun working together both inside and outside
China. The blog is a distinctive personal medium and it's one
that allows a lot of inter-linkages to other blogs and other
Web sites that a blogger wants to affiliate him or herself
with.
So you do sort of see these organic communities emerging.
For example, there's a blogger named Ai Weiwei, who has been
trying to document the number of children who died in Sichuan
as a result of faulty construction of schools. He has
encountered all sorts of difficulties from the government. His
blog postings have been erased, his blogs have been shut down,
he's been harassed, he's monitored, his volunteers are
harassed. So, you do have that sort of a thing, but other
bloggers follow his activities and say, wow, that's
interesting, and sometimes link to his blog and give his
blogging significance through the larger inter-linkages on the
Internet.
But the main difference between a blogger and, say, a
journalist in China is that journalists are dependent upon
their activities to pay the rent, pay their mortgages, send
their children to school. They can be fired if they don't do
what their bosses or the Communist Party Propaganda Department
wants them to do. Bloggers aren't like that. They don't depend
on their blogs for any source of personal income, so they have
a lot more freedom.
They don't get instructions from the Propaganda Department
about what they can say and what they can't say. They may look
online to see what other bloggers are writing by doing some
searches, but they are much more free. They're just
qualitatively vastly freer in the way that they express
themselves. And they privately own their medium. So there may
be a way to work with bloggers or to help them, but it's
unclear how international organizations could maybe work with
bloggers in ways that don't lead them to receive more scrutiny
and more harassment and result in the more rapid shut down of
their sites.
Mr. Grob. Jocelyn?
Ms. Ford. I'll just add to that. Are you familiar with
[deleted]? Okay. So he has an annual blogging conference that
you're probably familiar with.
Mr. Guerra. That's the one to which I was referring.
Ms. Ford. Okay.
Mr. Guerra. Unless you mean the one in China that he's held
at Hangzhou and other places in the past.
Ms. Ford. Yes. Yes. That's the same.
Mr. Guerra. I think he's one of many sponsors.
Ms. Ford. Right. He's one of the organizers of that.
Ms. McLaughlin. From the foreign media perspective, I can
tell you that the Chinese Government Ministry of Foreign
Affairs has not yet approved any journalist accreditations for
online media, and I know there have been some applications. So
it's a new world for them from that aspect as well. No one has
told me the reason on the record for that, but I'll just tell
you that they're not accrediting any online-only media at this
point.
Mr. Grob. Yes, sir?
Mr. Gibson. Jeff Gibson, Georgetown University. I have two
questions for our distinguished practitioners and scholars, one
political, one demographic. The demographic. You all mentioned
that China has more than 300 million-plus Internet users and
close to 700 million cellular phone users, our panelists told
us. Looking 10, 20 years down the line, what do you think the
implications of that connectivity, that's more than three times
the U.S. population, is?
There was an interesting article in, I think it was Global
Times a couple of months ago called ``The Alternative Cyber-
Universe,'' and it talked about how Tudou and other Chinese
Internet sites may not even be known by the majority of
Americans, but have more users than like a Facebook or a
Twitter. So that's my demographic question.
The political one is: have you all seen an increasing
sophistication in state media messaging? I'm curious, looking
back at the Sichuan earthquake, last winter's cold snap, the
Tibetan riots, and most recently the Xinjiang riots. Thank you.
Mr. Grob. Thank you.
Ms. Ford. Sophistication? Absolutely. Ogilvy and Xinhua
have opened an education program to help teach the government
how to spin in a more sophisticated way. When I worked for
China state radio in 2001, the policy was to promote ``happy''
news, or positive feel-good stories. These would account for at
least 80 percent of the stories. I think we've seen a shift in
that. I believe the government propaganda strategists think if
they allow enough negative news through, the positive news will
enjoy greater credibility. That's my own interpretation. I have
not confirmed this with policymakers.
I think China's news business is becoming increasingly
sophisticated in this way. I don't know if any of you are
familiar with the new English-language publication, the Global
Times, which is published under the People's Daily umbrella.
They are moving much closer toward Western-style journalism
than the China Daily, the English-language daily based in
Beijing. The editors say their goal is to be a watchdog, to the
extent possible. I've been impressed that they seek to provide
balance and to fill in the holes in news stories. They will
report when officials decline to reply. They are reporting more
diverse views, and views that oppose some government policies.
Some stories, however, do not meet the same standards, and may
serve propaganda purposes.
Mr. Esarey. Yes. I'd just like to say something in regard
to Mr. Gibson's first question about demographics, which I
think is really a political question: how are the demographics
that we're seeing now in terms of Internet use and cell phone
use going to play out down the line when the trajectory of
usership continues to climb? In maybe 5 or 10 years, almost
every Chinese will have a cell phone. Instead of 20 percent of
the population being online, we'll see 40 percent, or 50
percent, or 60 percent. How is that going to change things?
Nobody has good answers to this question.
I think I would make two observations, because no one can
predict the future, right? At least not very reliably most of
the time. My observations are that if you've got a lot of
freedom on the Internet, despite blockages on sites and
harassment of bloggers and so forth, bloggers are still very
free, compared to a tightly controlled traditional media--
newspapers, magazines, television stations, and so forth.
People are going to tune out official media sources. They're
going to tune them out and they're going to go to the Internet
for what they consider to be the unvarnished truth, or at the
very least, for information that's unmediated by the state.
If the traditional media does not respond by liberalizing
its content, it's going to lose market share. Believe me, they
don't want that. So I think you'll see more push-back from
journalists who want to report the kind of news Chinese
consumers would like to see.
Mr. Grob. Let me jump in and ask a point of clarification,
drawing on Jocelyn's point about liberalization on the one
hand, and sophisticated creation of the illusion of
liberalization, on the other. Do you have any thoughts on what
might trigger one versus the other?
Mr. Esarey. Oh, I think the regime has been trying to
create sophisticated illusions of freedom for a long time,
really since the founding of the country. Making media
interesting has been a priority since the early 1950s. It has
just been very difficult to achieve with party committees
controlling all the media. But some Chinese journalists have
said the investigative journalism that we're seeing is really
like opium. One Chinese journalist used this expression, ``it's
opium,'' because investigative journalism makes people believe
that there is freedom, when in fact there isn't very much in
the media today.
Mr. Grob. Yes, sir? Just as a reminder, since time is
running short, if I could ask you to keep your questions to one
question, and to make sure it is a question and not a comment.
Thank you.
Mr. Ausbuck. My name is Dave Ausbuck. I don't know if this
is related, but I thought it was, so I'd ask it. Next year, the
Chinese are hosting a major World's Fair exhibition in
Shanghai. The theme is ``Better Cities, Better Life.'' So I
guess the question I have for you is, have you detected any
sense of they're going to allow--if you know what a World's
Fair is, it's all the countries, and even the nongovernmental
organizations, even religions, come by and have pavilions and
are free to put out their own content. This seems to me the
first time I've ever heard about a World's Fair being hosted in
a non-democratic, authoritarian country.
The question I have: do you know of any plans to censor?
Most exhibits there are in the form of videos about these
countries. They're celebrating cities which are traditionally
known for more freedom of expression and diversity and
tolerance.
So do you know of any plans to censor the exhibits there
and the expression there at the expo that you know of, or have
you detected any sense that they will be more tolerant of
freedom of expression there at the World's Fair next year?
Mr. Grob. Thank you. That's an excellent question. Maybe,
Kathleen? Thank you.
Ms. McLaughlin. I don't have a great answer for you because
I haven't heard about any--it's a great question. It wouldn't
surprise me if there were some censorship because there was
during the Olympics last year, as you know. Messages about
Tibet, Tibetan flags, things of that nature were barred from
the Olympics, so it wouldn't surprise me if the same sort of
thing happened. But I haven't heard of it as yet. So, something
to watch out for.
Mr. Liu. Let me just ask as a followup to that question,
because you raised this very interesting notion of the
significance or the distinction in media coverage in cities
versus in less urban areas and the notion that a city is--in
some sense it's of necessity, in some sense by design--more
diverse, more tolerant.
To what extent have our practitioners seen any noticeable
or detectable difference along the urban-rural divide in the
coverage of stories in China or how the media operate, or the
rules that apply, or the Party and the government's approach
toward journalists along spatial lines, specifically urban and
rural?
Ms. McLaughlin. I can just speak from my own experience on
that. It is oftentimes easier to report in rural areas because
people tend to be economically less well off and therefore have
less to lose, so they will be more honest with you. However,
the flip-side is, local officials and local governments tend to
be more restrictive, maybe not as aware of the new regulations,
so there's a little bit of a dichotomy there. People would be
more open, but at the same time local officials might be more
closed. That's just my own personal experience.
Ms. Ford. My experience in talking with Chinese colleagues
is that, yes, it's much easier to push the envelope in urban
areas than in rural areas. Maybe some of you have lived in
China. I often feel like I'm time traveling when I leave
Beijing and get off the beaten track. I feel like I am going
back 5 or 10 years. The government mentality often, as Kathleen
said, is from a different era. But recently I've become more
optimistic. I mentioned the example from Inner Mongolia. I was
very surprised that, in a tiny town, a local court official was
parroting something about media freedom. ``Wow! '' I thought,
``This is progress.'' At least he knows the terminology.
Thanks.
Mr. Grob. Yes, ma'am?
Ms. Earp. Madeleine Earp, Committee to Protect Journalists.
My question for the panel is: What advice would you give, or do
you give, to foreign journalists who are navigating this new
environment of soft harassment that you mentioned? Should they
continue to approach sources and news assistants if there's the
potential for there to be retribution from officials afterward?
Thank you.
Ms. Ford. The question was for pressure on assistants
specifically, or in general?
Ms. Earp. Assistants and sources.
Ms. Ford. Assistants and sources. Okay. It's very important
that journalists understand the risks and are able to read the
tea leaves because regulations and laws are spottily enforced.
I feel strongly that reporters should not assume the source is
aware of the various risks. Correspondents should evaluate the
risk and make sure their sources are willing to shoulder them.
Of course, journalists also may not be aware of the risks.
I was fortunate to be able to hire an assistant who not
only was extremely savvy about risks, but also had a relative
who was in a position to help her out should we run into
trouble. I felt more comfortable when I was going into risky
territory because I didn't need to worry about her so much. But
you can't always have that.
I think it's very important that correspondents discuss the
risks with assistants and evaluate what the assistants are
willing to do. I want to be clear there are many stories that
aren't sensitive.
It is also important to discuss communications. I assume
that all phone calls could be intercepted and listened to. It
doesn't mean the authorities are listening to every phone call,
but if I am calling a sensitive source I assume that the
source's phone is being listened to and therefore I will be
followed and watched after I have contact with that person. The
FCCC actually has some guides online and we've printed wallet
cards about what to do, how to protect yourself and how to
protect your sources.
A lot of people forget that managing communications
carefully is extremely important. Sources have been arrested,
detained, or questioned because of what was said on a
telephone.
Mr. Grob. Let me just ask a followup to some of the things
you just said that also go back to the prior question. That is,
displaying my own ignorance here, just to put China in
perspective internationally, what do we know about other
authoritarian states--do some have a less heavy-handed approach
toward the media? Can we get some broader, either historical or
global context here, and how do we place China along a spectrum
in that regard?
Ms. Ford. I'm sure the Committee to Protect Journalists is
in a better position to address that, but let me take a stab. I
often open talks by saying that though correspondents in China
face many obstacles, it is a lot safer to report in China, for
example, than, say, in the Philippines. Most foreign
correspondents, I believe, assume the worst that will happen is
they could get kicked out of the country. The greater danger,
of course, is for our sources. But the reporters in China--
again, other people have the statistics--may be more likely to
be jailed than in many countries. I think it's important to
keep this in perspective.
Having said that, though our lives are not as much at risk
as journalists in other countries like the Philippines and
Iraq, we all want you to pay attention to the issues we're
concerned about.
Mr. Grob. Yes?
Ms. Vandenbrink. Rachel Vandenbrink, Radio Free Asia. Could
you please perhaps explain why reporters haven't been able to
get access to interview Uyghurs in order to get an accurate
casualty count in the recent protests? Also, how did the
blocking of Internet and phone access to Xinjiang affect the
reporting environment for foreign reporters?
Ms. McLaughlin. I can try and take that. You're talking
about a casualty count in Urumqi, correct? I wasn't in Urumqi.
I can't tell you who was or wasn't interviewed. I assume that,
you know, just a random sort of Uyghur that you could interview
on the street wouldn't be able to give you a verifiable,
confirmed casualty number. So I think you're relying on
official statistics there. That's my best guess.
And what was your second question? I'm sorry.
Ms. Vandenbrink. About the blocking of Internet access and
telephone access.
Ms. McLaughlin. Right. So Internet access was cut
completely, is my understanding. Telephone access was very
spotty. What the local government did for foreign journalists
was set up a media center and gave them Internet access, so
that's how they were able to access it there. A lot of people
were filing via satellite phones, which I believe are not
technically legal. Is that right?
Ms. Ford. That's my understanding.
Ms. McLaughlin. Right. But they were allowing the foreign
journalists to use satellite phones, so there was a lot of that
going on. I can tell you my own experience reporting in
Shaoguan, the toy factory murder site. It wasn't possible to
interview Uyghurs because they were completely restricted from
access. We couldn't talk to them. The interview requests were
denied. They were not out walking on the streets. We couldn't
ask them how many people were killed in the toy factory because
they just weren't there. I think the situation is a lot
different in Urumqi proper because it would be difficult to get
one single person who could give you a verified casualty count.
Mr. Grob. Jocelyn?
Ms. Ford. Perhaps a clarification. I think international
phone calls were blocked, but local----
Ms. McLaughlin. Local phone calls were spotty.
Ms. Ford. Okay. Spotty. But international--some people were
sending the message off to somebody else who did have Internet
connection and would post something online. So, there was sort
of a relay.
Mr. Liu. I just want to follow up with another question
about the role that the U.S. Government may, or may not be able
to play in terms of supporting the ability of foreign
journalists in China to report freely. When there have been
restrictions in the past, the U.S. Government has at times made
statements in support of allowing journalists unfettered access
to certain areas that had been closed off. Have you found those
statements to be at all helpful? If you have any suggestions as
far as what role the U.S. Government can play, that would be
helpful, bearing in mind that we also, I imagine, do not want
to be seen as interfering as well in terms of the sort of
separation between the state and the press. Yes?
Ms. Ford. Thank you for that question. I'm sorry. I have
been on vacation so I haven't been paying so much attention to
the news. But I regard the open comment period on the state
secret regulation as a very positive move. I don't know if the
U.S. Government made a comment. But I think encouraging open
comments on regulations regarding media and then actually
participating in the process and encouraging an opening up of
the process is very positive.
China ratified the U.N. Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights but did not pass it. I just want to say, if there's one
thing you walk out of here with, it's this: as long as Chinese
citizens are not free to talk to foreign correspondents, we are
not free to report.
So I think the issue really is, how can we encourage a
situation where Chinese citizens are free to speak to us
without retribution. Ratification--again, not everything is
implemented perfectly, but ratification--encouraging
ratification of international agreements, I think, is a
positive step. At least it gives us more to fight with.
When I created the wallet card outlining legal rights of
foreign correspondents in China, I sought advice from a number
of lawyers. We're not always aware of changing laws, and we
don't try to use them. To the best of my knowledge no foreign
correspondent has ever sought to sue government authorities for
rights violations, or for compensation for injuries suffered at
the hands of authorities who tried to stop legal reporting
activities. Regardless of whether the journalist is likely to
win such a case, a lawsuit would generate a headline, and draw
attention to illegal actions on the part of authorities.
I do think the U.S. Government could engage in more
dialogue with China on how to balance national security
interests and freedom of information. The FCCC is seeking to
promote a gold standard for international reporting conditions.
All we can do is express our views and hope that the Chinese
Government takes them into consideration and looks for the best
international practices.
So, I think any sort of exchange on these issues,
especially protection of sources, would be worthwhile. About
130 countries around the world have some sort of protection,
legal or otherwise, for news sources. You cannot have a free
media without protection of sources. So, I think encouraging
this kind of dialogue with China would be useful. Any
activities that promote the view that the free flow of
information can help solve social problems, such as unrest,
would be worthwhile. It's important to reiterate the view that
nations that respect and protect the free flow of information
are more likely to enjoy wide international respect.
Mr. Grob. On that note, if you had the ability to recommend
a single coordinated message that Members of the Congress and
administration officials could deliver regarding press freedom
to Chinese officials, say, during visits to China, whether it
be to officials at the central level or at the local level,
what would be the one-sentence message that they could deliver
that you think would be most important, most effective? And I'm
talking about both in public and private conversations, that
would be most important or most effective in terms of advancing
press freedom and media freedom in China. Anybody?
Ms. Ford. You're challenging. If I could do a one-sentence
message I'd probably be working for a PR firm and be making a
lot of money. I usually get 40 seconds on the radio, so can I
do 40 seconds? In all seriousness, I think encouraging the idea
that diversity of views, tolerance of different views, and
discussion of different views is a way to solve problems. It is
not what creates the problems.
In China we often hear the argument that open discussion
leads to social unrest, hence the controls. I think it would be
useful to promote case studies from other countries where
dialogue with an ethnic group that felt it was being unfairly
treated helped reduce tensions. Does that help answer your
question?
Mr. Grob. Yes. Thank you.
Ms. Ford. So I can get that PR job? This is on the record.
I should be careful, huh?
Mr. Esarey. I have a one-sentence comment. That is improve
journalistic professionalism. I mean, by supporting the
training of Chinese journalists and inviting them to come to
the United States to work in the U.S. media organizations and
learn about our values concerning the news and strategies for
reporting the news; improving journalistic professionalism
could also occur through better training for the U.S.
journalists who go to China. This goes back to Madeleine Earp's
question, which is, how do you avoid this reliance on
assistants?
Well, one way is to really bone up on your Chinese language
ability to read and speak fluently enough to do a lot of your
own
reporting. I think probably half, if not more, of the foreign
journalists working in China are not truly fluent in Chinese.
That's something that could be improved with more training,
more journalistic professionalism of a different sort, I
suppose.
Ms. Ford. May I comment? There is often a division of labor
between assistants and foreign correspondents. I don't have an
assistant now. When I worked with an assistant, we analyzed
every situation and discussed whether an individual or
organization was more likely to open up to a foreigner or more
likely to open up to a Chinese national. The language issue is
not the only consideration here. Sometimes, it is safer for the
source to speak to a Chinese. Being seen with a foreigner would
be more risky. Some
Chinese feel more comfortable speaking to foreigners about
sensitive issues. I agree training is important, but training
should
include how to deal with delicate situations, and how to make
prudent decisions when there are no clear rules, because, of
course, rule of law is not implemented to the degree that one
would like.
Ms. McLaughlin. While we are concerned about harassment of
assistants, really the other core issue is harassment of
sources. That is happening where the correspondent is
completely fluent in Chinese. Maybe he's even ethnically
Chinese. You have sources being harassed and suffering
repercussions for talking to foreign journalists, and that just
shouldn't happen.
Ms. Ford. Sorry. May I add one more thing. In fact, foreign
journalists of Chinese descent often face very different
pressures from foreign journalists who look like me--and since
the audio is being recorded: I don't look Asian. So I think
that one needs to have a very broad understanding of how to get
information safely and all the tactics go into the toolbox.
Reporters need to be prudent in choosing a strategy. Of course,
the ideal situation would be to have laws fully enforced and
the new regulations for foreign journalists and the
constitutional right to freedom of speech upheld. If this were
to happen, I think a lot would be solved.
Mr. Grob. Questions? Yes, sir.
Mr. Martin. I'll try to speak up. Michael Martin from the
Congressional Research Service. Ashley, earlier you mentioned
about the cynicism of the public in China toward the state-run
media. There is a growing non-state run media in China. Caijing
magazine recently featured in the New Yorker, for example, is
one source. Then, also, you have the Western media that is also
operating inside China. There are some indications that
cynicism is bleeding over to the private and to the Western
media--for example, the anti-CNN Web page which is out there--
and critiquing Western coverage of events in China. I was
wondering if the panelists would like to comment on cynicism
and the view inside China toward media in general, and how much
they discriminate against state-run, the domestic private, and
then the Western media sources. Thank you.
Mr. Grob. Wow. We have six minutes left and that could be
another panel. But Ashley?
Mr. Esarey. Sure. Michael, thanks very much for your
question. Caijing is an excellent magazine. It's technically
registered with a state organization, although it has
shareholders and it operates like a private corporation. Its
reporting is definitely fueled by the motivation to make a
profit. But I think the keys to its success have been excellent
political savvy, tremendous management, and paying journalists
good salaries, as opposed to the more common practice of
rewarding only the reporting that is politically acceptable.
The anti-CNN situation is pretty complex. There is a lot of
information available about the people who are involved in this
movement, if you can call it that. Some of them have now
rejected the movement and left it. There is definitely some
dissension among the people who are involved.
Does that reflect a sort of cynicism? I think anti-CNN is
more related to the manifestation of nationalism on the Chinese
Internet today. The anti-CNN thing was about Jack Cafferty, a
commentator for CNN, who made a deprecating remark about the
quality of Chinese leaders. The Chinese state actually kicked
into gear its Party operators. They're called the 50-Cent
Party, wumao dang. These people posted nationalistic comments
attacking CNN on lots of Web portals, according to research by
David Bandursky in Hong Kong. So I think the anti-CNN situation
is complex.
As far as the mainstream media goes, Party media will lose
circulation unless it commercializes and caters to nationalist
tastes. Often within media groups you have Party media that are
broadcasting more propaganda and commercialized media that are
trying to raise revenue through reports that please consumers
in various ways.
Ms. Ford. A quick question and a comment. I do believe the
anti-Western media campaign has had a tremendous and long-
lasting effect. I often hear from Chinese now that foreign
reports are not so credible. Before, Western media was the
golden city on the hill and some Chinese thought they could
believe everything that appeared in overseas media, which is
probably not quite accurate either. It wasn't just one mistake
that led to this distrust of Western media on certain issues.
I think the message many Chinese took home was that the
foreign media is against China. I don't think that was the
reason most of the mistakes were made, but foreign media did
little to explain or provide context.
There should've been more reports analyzing why the
mistakes were made. Having worked as a foreign correspondent
and having fought against stereotypes held by my U.S.-based
editors regarding countries I've reported from, I can say China
is not the only country that suffers from inaccurate reporting.
Yes, the media also needs a watchdog, or an ombudsman. Nobody
is perfect in the world. Inaccurate reporting is not
exclusively a China problem. There was also little mention at
the time that reporting is likely to be more accurate if
reporters have access to news sites, and sources are free to
talk without intimidation or fear of reprisal. The accuracy of
reporting would also be helped if China stopped manipulating
its media for propaganda purposes.
Mr. Grob. Thank you.
Any more questions? [No response].
Mr. Grob. Well, let me just put this question to our
panelists. Members of Congress and administration officials
travel to China. They interact with the Chinese media, they
interact with the foreign media while they are in China. I know
that some Members and administration officials--for instance,
Speaker Pelosi, Secretary Clinton--have even engaged in Web
chats and other sorts of online activities during trips to
China. What advice would you give to a Member of Congress or an
administration official who is about to head to China for even
just a short trip? What's the most important thing that they
would need to keep in mind, that they might not ordinarily know
about, regarding how to interact with the media in China, and
how to prepare for their encounters with the media in China?
Ms. Ford. May I? I actually have an interesting anecdote
about Speaker of the House Pelosi's visit. I received a call
from a journalist in southern China who wanted to interview
her. The journalist told me she thought she needed a connection
to get the interview, and she thought I had connections at the
embassy. I said, she could go talk to the embassy directly,
that's the way America worked. Well, I don't know how true this
is. But in America, at least the front door should be open so
they should try a front-on approach. I think outreach by
American Senators and Members of Congress to local journalists
would be very well received.
Again, recently the same person said she felt that there
were fewer controls on what they could do as a local newspaper
with international reporting. She really wanted to beef up her
team and she was asking me how to do that. So, I think there
are tremendous opportunities. I suggested she write an e-mail.
By the time she sent the e-mail Pelosi's visit was almost over.
She never got a response. So, I think if American delegations
are open to all media, and not just the most famous outlets,
they may find a lot of interest.
Mr. Grob. Thank you very much.
Kathleen, did you have something to add?
Ms. McLaughlin. I guess my advice would just be to be open
and honest and don't censor yourself when you're in China. I'm
not accusing anyone of having done that, but I think it's
helpful if people speak out about what they believe in when
they're there.
Mr. Grob. And for the last word, since it is 3:29 p.m.
Mr. Esarey. I would just urge our elected representatives
to recognize that their public remarks can very easily be
misconstrued in a media that is subject to close scrutiny and
tight political control. So try to be sure--I would urge them
to try to be sure that the message they want to get across gets
across and to actually read the Chinese press coverage that
results from their visits, and complain if they feel like their
remarks were not properly translated. Of course, the ideal
scenario would be for our representatives to bring their own
translators. That leaves a lot less room for things to kind of
go sideways in terms of communication. But if they're trying to
get information, I think the best way is informal interaction--
dinners, the fun stuff.
Mr. Grob. Well, the fun stuff. On that note, we'll end this
fun stuff. It's 3:30.
I thank you all very much for attending our roundtable
today. I thank our panelists for some outstanding insights, and
some wonderful, illustrative anecdotes, and some real concrete
recommendations and thought-provoking ideas to take with us
going forward.
I'd like to thank our Senior Counsel, Lawrence Liu, for
putting this together, and our staff, for your logistical
support.
With that, the ninth CECC roundtable of the 111th Congress
is adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 3:30 p.m. the roundtable was concluded.]
A P P E N D I X
=======================================================================
Prepared Statements
----------
Prepared Statement of Kathleen E. McLaughlin
july 31, 2009
Good afternoon. Thanks for inviting us to talk about this important
issue. Jocelyn has taken you through where we've been as foreign
correspondents in China, and I'd like to take you forward with the
issues we continue to face. In particular, I want to make clear that we
believe Chinese assistants and sources are coming under increasing
pressure, a real roadblock to free and open reporting.
I also want to speak about the importance of free media for global
economic issues and how China's information controls make it difficult
for foreign correspondents to cover everything, including the economy.
tiananmen 20th anniversary: the umbrella men
On June 3 and 4 this year, Beijing's Tiananmen Square was filled
with hundreds of people. Walking on to the square, it appeared that 80-
90 percent of them were plainclothes army and police. Nearly all
carried umbrellas, at first glance, to block them from the hot sun
overhead.
As the hours wore on and foreign journalists appeared on the square
to report about the 20th anniversary of the crushing of the Tiananmen
democracy movement, it became clear that the hundreds of umbrellas
served a dual purpose. They were used to physically block journalists
and cameras from filming on the square. So, while from a distance, it
appeared the square was full of tourists, up-close, it was clear that
something else was going on.
I think this is a good example of the kind of ``soft harassment''
we've begun to see more of in recent months. It's less dangerous and
less direct than what we saw in the past, but no less effective in
preventing foreign correspondents from doing our jobs.
continuing and new hurdles
The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China is in the midst of a new
member survey right now and the results we're getting are interesting.
The results are not scientific, but give us an idea of what individual
members face:
About half of members who've taken the survey so far think the
reporting climate in China is improving, which is consistent with when
we first started asking this question. Still, many are concerned about
pressing issues. About two-thirds of them have had some kind of
official interference in their work over the past year. More than two-
thirds of those who work with a research assistant say their employee
has been hassled or summoned for questioning by authorities. We've had
several reports of sources facing repercussions.
problems in covering tibet in 2008
To give you an idea of how things might be changing, let's go back
to Tibet in March of 2008. In the days following the Lhasa riots,
foreign correspondents were shut out of Tibet. It's always been
difficult for us to report in that region, given that entrance to Tibet
requires a special permit. All foreigners are required to get a permit.
Journalists are scrutinized more closely and often denied.
Last spring, foreign correspondents were repeatedly detained,
harassed and sometimes forcibly prevented from doing their jobs across
the Tibetan plateau. The FCCC logged more than 40 cases in which
foreign correspondents were prevented from working. Outside of Tibet
proper--the area that technically doesn't require special travel
permits--foreign news crews were blocked and Chinese staff intimidated,
and in at least one case, threatened with arrest.
So you can see, it's not just foreign correspondents being
harassed, but also the Chinese nationals involved in our work--people
for whom police action can have life-altering consequences. We seem to
be witnessing a trend toward harassing and intimidating these people
more--blocking them from talking to us, warning them against helping
us. Soft harassment, for example, where a police officer inserts
himself into an interview, making it clear there may be consequences
for the interviewee, has become fairly routine.
In July of 2008, I was the first American journalist to travel
independently to Lhasa, I was allowed to move freely throughout the
city. If anyone was following or listening to me, I didn't see them.
But the city was so full of police and military, the main obstacle I
had is that most residents--both Tibetan and Chinese--were too afraid
to talk to me.
Access to Tibet and the region remains a problem to this day.
xinjiang riots and coverage
More than a year later, we faced something similar with the
uprising in Xinjiang on July 5. As you know, nearly 200 people were
killed when Uighur protests in the capital Urumqi turned violent. What
we saw in the days after marked a dramatic departure from the
government's closed-door policy toward foreign journalists in Tibet.
Journalists were immediately allowed into Urumqi, and by most
accounts, given freedom to interview and move about. There were
logistical problems, but the general climate marked a significant
change.
We'd like to hope the government recognized the value in allowing
foreign correspondents to report on the ground.
Covering Xinjiang was not without problems. While Urumqi was
relatively open, the far western city of Kashgar was closed. Officials
denied the closure, but we've heard from several journalists attempting
to travel to there, who were intercepted and ordered to leave.
Also, 2,000 miles away in Shaoguan, site of the toy factory murders
that sparked the Xinjiang riots, the local driver of one foreign
reporting crew was called in for police questioning after the reporters
left town.
Additionally, two correspondents received anonymous death threats
after writing about the Xinjiang unrest.
Given the shift and the fact that foreign journalists were allowed
to report rather openly in Urumqi, we do see real potential for change.
But there are trouble spots and continued problems.
As the rules have more aligned with international reporting
standards, harassment and intimidation may be ``going underground. ``
The pressure seems more often directed at vulnerable Chinese sources
and staff.
emerging issues, pressure on chinese staff
And in recent months, we've encountered a few new trouble areas:
At the beginning of the year, registered Chinese staff of foreign
news bureaus in Beijing were called in for official meetings and
training. New rules were issued to the assistants about proper
behavior, including urging them to ``promote positive stories about
China'' within their organizations. They were instructed that it was
illegal for them to conduct independent reporting.
We believe this new code of conduct discriminates against Chinese
news assistants. Foreign companies in other industries can freely hire
PRC citizens as full-fledged employees. In addition, the code is a
business restriction that places foreign media at a competitive
disadvantage. Chinese journalists in most developed nations can hire
local staff without such restrictions. In China, foreign media are
obliged to hire staff through the government's Personnel Services
Corporation.
financial news services
Another troubling development is ongoing pressure on foreign
financial news services--an area of tension that may stem from
competition with China's homegrown financial news wires.
While political news is generally considered more sensitive,
financial news is coming under greater scrutiny. Most financial
indicators are widely circulated before being officially released. In
the past, leaked figures would often find their way into Chinese and
foreign media. But foreign media organizations have come under
pressure--including an implicit threat to investigate under the state
secrets laws--for publishing data not yet officially released.
The tightening of restrictions dates from the fall of 2008, and the
global financial crisis. At that point, Chinese economists were urged
to conform to the mainstream view on the economy and speak less to the
media; controls over publishing leaked information were tightened.
conclusion
So as you can see, while we've made significant gains, we still
face critical issues: Namely Trying to maintain the safety of sources
and Chinese staff, pressure over information that might present
competition to Chinese media, and ongoing interference and harassment
of the type we've seen for years.
Thanks and I look forward to your questions.
______
Prepared Statement of Ashley Esarey
july 31, 2009
I am delighted that the Congressional Executive Commission on China
has organized a panel to discuss how the news is reported in China by
Chinese and American journalists.
China has a tradition of state censorship that goes back more than
1000 years. The current political regime, led by the Chinese Communist
Party, has controlled political information far more effectively than
any government in the country's history. Yet Beijing's rulers face a
dilemma. On the one hand, freedom of information is invaluable for
making business decisions in the global economy, technological
transfers, and scholarly exchange. On the other hand, media freedom has
facilitated democracy movements in countries such as Mexico, Hungary,
Taiwan, Indonesia, and Czechoslovakia. Media freedom is good for
China's economy and public welfare but likely to weaken the CCP's
political hegemony, as journalists expose policy failures and political
activists use the Internet to organize demonstrations. The CCP controls
Chinese media because its primary objective is to remain in power. In
the last three decades, however, media commercialization, the growth of
journalistic professionalism, cell phone use, and the Internet have
made information control more difficult than ever.
mao-era media
Since the founding of the People's Republic on October 1, 1949, the
CCP has sought to dominate all forms of political communication. The
Central Propaganda Department of the Communist Party guided policies
that placed media under party leadership, nationalized privately owned
media, and divested foreign newspapers of the right to publish in
China. Police, customs agents, and postal workers confiscated
``imperialist'' and ``counter-revolutionary'' literature.
In the early 1950s, the People's Daily newspaper emerged as the
mouthpiece of the Communist Party Central Committee and bellwether for
the views of Mao Zedong and other national leaders. Xinhua News Service
assumed a central role in disseminating carefully vetted reports around
the country. Media at central, provincial, and municipal levels became
``mouthpieces'' of the CCP. Working though the State Press and
Publications Administration, the Central Propaganda Department
orchestrated the closure of media that did not comply with party
directives. By 1956, China had established what Peter Kenez has called
a ``propaganda state,'' with the country's entire media industry and
education system firmly under party control. Mao's media proved to be
effective tools for mobilizing the public in support of China's
socialist transformation. While the stability of China's propaganda
system was punctuated by events, such as the Hundred Flowers Campaign
(1956-57), and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), leaders
with the upper hand in Chinese politics have tightly controlled media
content and operations.
media commercialization in the reform era
The death of Mao made possible the ascent of reformers, led by Deng
Xiaoping. Far from an advocate of media freedom, Deng supported
measures to commercialize the media industry so as to make it
profitable and more attractive to consumers. The goal of
commercialization was to revitalize media's propaganda role by
repackaging the news. Party and state institutions retained power over
commercial media by controlling ownership, personnel appointments, and
cracking down on media that failed comply with content directives
issued by central and local branches of the Propaganda Department. The
result was a media system that combined the characteristics of Soviet-
style media with Western media management strategies. My analysis of
the newspaper content from 1980 to 2003 has shown that commercial
media, in some cases, grew freer to criticize minor political problems,
without jettisoning their propaganda role or challenging party leaders
with substantial power to repress offending journalists.
Media commercialization during the Reform Era (1978-present)
changed the incentives for media, which recognized that freer, less
doctrinaire reporting appeals to the public. When opportunities
appeared, greater media freedom has emerged, although local, rather
than central, officials are the targets of critical news reports. In
colloquial parlance, Chinese media ``swat flies'' but do not ``hit
tigers.'' Powerful political and economic interests can coerce or bribe
media to abandon potentially embarrassing stories.
Nevertheless, studies by Chinese communications scholars have
documented a new ethos of professionalism among Chinese journalists.
Strict adherence to the party line does not always trump the public's
right to know about a natural disaster or the spread of a disease.
Journalists who believe in their professional obligation to inform the
public have found work in media, such as the Southern Metropolitan
News, Southern Weekend, or Caijing Magazine. These media have
encouraged reporters to push the limits of central government
restrictions. Notable examples of investigative stories with a national
impact have been reporting on the 2003 murder of graphic artist Sun
Zhigang in a detention center for migrant workers, the 2007 exposure of
slavery in brick kilns in Shanxi Province, and reports about the shoddy
construction of school buildings that led to the deaths of thousands of
children during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In the latter case,
journalists from around China refused to comply with bans against going
to Sichuan to report on location. Windows of freedom, so to speak, have
been flung open and media have challenged the actions of local
government before the Propaganda Department could regain control.
The government at all levels is concerned with public opinion and
seeks to conceal interventions in news reporting. Those who reveal acts
of censorship take great risks in doing so. With few exceptions, media
respect government bans on reporting certain stories; journalists
eschew politically sensitive reporting. Rife corruption among
journalists and a salary scale that rewards reporters for politically
correct reports contribute to self-censorship.\1\ Nonetheless, a few
journalists have succeeded in shedding light on isolated problems and
acts of injustice; this has been done by reporting the news before the
government issues a ban.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Ashley Esarey, ``Speak No Evil: Mass Media Control in
Contemporary China'', Freedom at Issue: A Special Freedom House Report,
February 2006, http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/special--report/
33.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the internet and media freedom
The growing wealth of Chinese citizens has given hundreds of
millions of people the means to acquire new information and
communications technologies for personal use. At least 650 million
Chinese use cellular telephones--and more than 100 million use cell
phones to access the Internet. Three hundred million Chinese have gone
online, a number equivalent to the population of the United States.
There are now over 160 million bloggers in China, according to Chinese
official statistics released early this year. Content analysis research
has shown that political expression in Chinese blogs is much freer than
mass media; debates among ``netizens'' (wangmin) pertain to a variety
of politically sensitive issues. The number of blog sites that mention
keywords, such as ``democracy'' and political reform'' or ``freedom of
speech'' and ``the Internet'' has increased exponentially over the last
five years. The organizers of social movements by members of the middle
class in Shanghai and Xiamen or the ethno-nationalists in Tibet and
Xinjiang have utilized blogs, emails, instant messaging, and cell phone
text messages to rally support for causes domestically and
internationally. These actions have made the CCP fear the power of new
media.
The Chinese Propaganda Department, the Ministry of Information
Industry, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of State
Security have been at the front line of governmental efforts to control
the Internet through the promulgation of restrictive laws, the use of
computerized filters to eliminate content, and monitoring by the
police. While the government has supported e-commerce and e-government,
it has also trained party operatives to post content in online spaces,
with the goal of ``guiding public opinion.''
In June 2009, the central government announced a regulation
requiring personal computer manufacturers to install software that
restricts Web access on all computers sold in the People's Republic.
Called ``Green Dam Youth Escort,'' the software aimed to plug leaks
that have spouted in the Great Firewall of China, the moniker for
country's elaborate system of Internet controls. ``Green Dam'' was
designed to censor pornography and politically sensitive content, but
could also be used to collect data on individual Internet users.
Chinese media reported the software had been installed on more than
50 million machines. Complaints by Chinese users of the software,
bloggers and Chinese media, however, were strident: The software, some
argued, was a rushed job that had not been adequately tested and might
make computers vulnerable to hackers; others expressed dismay about the
invasion of privacy or worried they might have to pay user fees in the
future. Pushback by the United States Commerce Department and the
international business community may also have influenced the Ministry
of Information Industry's June 30 decision to suspend mandatory
installation of the software. At a July 1 celebration by activists who
had opposed the software, artist and blogger Ai Weiwei called the
government's change of heart a ``victory for public opinion.'' \2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Kathrin Hille, ``Chinese Bloggers Hail Green Dam Victory,''
Financial Times, July 1, 2009.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
summary
In the words of David Shambaugh, ``a daily battle is waged between
the state and society over `what is fit to know.' This contest reflects
and constitutes a central contradiction in Chinese politics--between
the needs of a rapidly modernizing economy and pluralizing society on
the one hand and the desire by the party-state to maintain absolute
political power on the other.'' \3\ The outcome of this contest remains
to be seen. In the near term, pressures are mounting for more
information freedom. Chinese citizens, as resistance to Green Dam
shows, have become more assertive in protecting the power they have
gained from new communications technologies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ David Shambaugh, ``China's Propaganda System: Institutions,
Processes and Efficiency,'' The China Journal, No. 57, January 2007, p.
25.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Commercialization in China's media industry has created the
imperative for media to please consumers in order to survive. Media
that were once the mouthpieces of Mao Zedong's government now perform
their propaganda role unwillingly. Commercial mass media would like to
compete with blogs and social networking sites for the attention of the
public. Party restrictions bar media from doing so, leaving journalists
feeling as uncomfortable as a cat in a bag. Tight control over media
content, in the context of Internet freedom, contributes to disbelief,
even cynicism toward state propaganda. The CCP controls the message in
media reports, but this no longer means the public believes the
message.
Submissions for the Record
----------
Prepared Statement of James Fallows, National Correspondent, The
Atlantic Magazine
july 31, 2009
My name is James Fallows; I am a national correspondent for the
Atlantic Monthly, returned two weeks ago to Washington, DC after a
three-year assignment in China. During that time I wrote many articles
about China as well as a book, and had experiences dealing with both
public and private organizations in China as a reporter. I am sorry
that a sudden case of flu and laryngitis prevents me from making my
comments in person today. Instead I will send a brief statement
covering the points I intended to make. I would welcome an opportunity
to answer any further questions or to join you another time.
In my introductory statement I intended to make three points about
the current state of reportage and public discussion in China. In
addition, I have supplied to the Commission staff reprints of two
relevant articles I wrote for The Atlantic while in China. The first,
called ``The Connection Has Been Reset'' (March 2008), was about the
technological and political underpinnings of the system of Internet
control known informally as ``the Great Firewall.'' The second, ``Their
Own Worst Enemy'' (November 2008) examined the reasons for the Chinese
central government's often self-defeating attempts to control the way
it is portrayed in international media.
The three points I offer for discussion are these:
(1) The Chinese system of media control, as it affects foreign and
domestic reporters working inside the country and the information
available to the Chinese public about their country and the outside
world, should not be thought of as consistent, airtight, centrally
coordinated, or reflecting a carefully thought-out long-term strategy.
Instead it should be understood as episodic, hit-or-miss, rigid in some
places and lax in others, and highly variable by region, time, and
personality of those in charge.
Anyone who has worked in China has illustrations of apparently
illogical or inexplicable variations in media control policy. One day,
a set of web sites with information about ``sensitive'' subjects will
be blanked out by the Great Firewall; the next day, they will be
available. During the violence in Tibet in 2008, CNN coverage was
generally cut off as soon as anyone mentioned the word ``Tibet'';
meanwhile, similar BBC reports were through unhindered. During that
same period of violence, Tibet was generally closed to foreign
correspondents; this year, during the violence in Xinjiang, the
government organized press tours for international reporters.
The Beijing Olympics was replete with such contradictory episodes,
the most famous of which involved the ``authorized'' protest zones. (As
was widely reported around the world, the central government set aside
zones for authorized demonstrations and protests during the Games, as a
sign of its openness and international spirit; then, local security
authorities turned down all requests for authorization and arrested
some people who applied.) In my own case, I dealt frequently with
government officials who were fully aware that (for no apparent reason)
I had been denied a regular journalist visa and was working as a
journalist in China on a variety of ``business'' and educational visas.
The inconsistency was fine, as long as I wasn't otherwise in trouble.
Of course central guidance does come down about media and Internet
censorship; of course there is some coordination. My point is that
outsiders sometimes miss the irregularity and oddities of the
``control'' system, which make press coverage both easier and harder.
It is easier in that there is often a side door when the front door is
closed. It is harder in that uncertainty about what might cause trouble
leads people to be more careful than they might otherwise be. If you
never know where the line is, you take care not to cross it.
(2) The government is most successful in justifying its media
controls when it positions them as defenses against foreign criticism
of China as a whole. This approach is of course not unique to China or
its government. But in my experience it is particularly important to
bear in mind there, because the theme comes up so often in the foreign
reporters' work within China and is always a potential factor.
For reasons familiar to all of us, daily life in modern China
doesn't naturally support strong feelings of nationalistic unity among
the highly diverse and often fractious billion-plus people of the
country. People are focused on their families, their businesses, they
regional or local rivalries or ambitions. It is easiest to make people
feel and at as ``we Chinese'' in response to the idea of being
disrespected, unfairly treated, or victimized by the outside world.
Again, unity in response to foreign challenge is hardly unique to
China. But the role of the Western press is unusually
important here, since in my experience it is one of the most reliable
levers the government can pull to induce nationalistic solidarity. (The
other reliable lever is anti-Japanese sentiment, but that's a problem
of its own.)
I believe that every foreign reporter working in China has had the
experience of crossing a certain line in reaction from the Chinese
public--especially from the ``netizen'' part of the public with
recourse to blogs and email. If discussion of certain problems in China
is seen as ``pro-Chinese,'' in the sense of helping Chinese people deal
with local pollution issues (or unfair labor practices, or water
shortages, etc.), that is fine. But at a certain point, discussion of
problems can shift to being seen as ``anti-Chinese'' or, in the famous
epithet, ``hurting the feelings of the Chinese people.'' This is
obvious in starkest form in the organized effort against CNN because of
its coverage of the Tibetan violence and the disruption of the Olympic
torch relay. I believe awareness of potentially hostile and voluminous
reaction from web-based fenqing, the much discussed ``angry youth,'' is
somewhere in the consciousness of most foreign reporters working in
China--along with the numerous friendships and supportive relationships
most foreign reporters make with individual Chinese people.
I mention this phenomenon because of the unusual public-private
interaction it seems to represent. When web-based campaigns against
foreign reporters or news organizations flare up in China, they seem
genuinely to involve private individuals or informal bands of netizens.
But clearly the government plays a crucial role in setting the
conditions for this reaction: in its control of information and media,
for instance in the educational program which gives nearly all citizens
of the PRC the same understanding of the history of Tibet; in the
version of the news that comes through the officials newspapers and
broadcast channels; and in the ``hurting the feelings of the Chinese
people'' denunciations it issues of the foreign media.
The most recent illustration of this pattern is domestic discussion
of the H1N1 ``swine flu'' issue. China's quarantine policy is far
stricter than that of any other country, and out of line with what the
WHO and other organizations have recommended. But I found that when I
pointed this out in dispatches for the Atlantic, I was deluged with
complaints from Chinese netizens about ``disrespect'' for a government
that was being far more scrupulous with its public health preparations
than was the lax Western world.
In short, the Chinese public is highly intelligent, argumentative,
eager to gain and exchange information. But it operates in
circumstances that favor the government's ability to shunt the
discussion away from criticism of its policies.
(3) The spread of the Internet through China has made it both
harder and easier for the government to keep discussion within limits
it desires. I know that other witnesses intend to address this issue,
and I discuss it at length in my ``Connection Has Been Reset'' article
that I have submitted. I believe that the outside world is well past
the period in which people automatically assumed that the spread of
information technology would undermine authoritarian regimes. The
additional point I'd made about press coverage is that the same dual
aspect affects foreign reporters' work in the country. It is vastly
easier to make connections and find information now, because of the
Internet and related technology, than it was in the mid-1980s when I
first worked in East Asia. But now reporters have the complication of
knowing that their work is being read not simply by government minders
but by large number of Chinese readers, some of whom know just enough
English to misunderstand what a report is saying. This is a complex
phenomenon that I'll be happy to discuss in other circumstances.
There are many more aspects of this complex topic to examine. I am
sorry not to be able to join you in person today, but I look forward to
another opportunity.