荒诞者共和

David Bandurski
China Media Project
Journalism and Media Studies Centre, HKU
July 13, 2006

In a further sign of the growing influence of the Internet in China, and growing fears about the technology among local party officials, authorities in the southern city of Xinyi (信宜) apprehended three men accused of circulating "rumors" on the Internet about a serial rapist. Columnist and CMP fellow Yan Lieshan criticized the action today in Southern Metropolis Daily (more from ESWN), saying Xinyi officials showed no apparent concern for their own negligence in failing to issue timely warnings to the public (police have admitted a series of rapes in Xinyi between March 19 and May 31 this year, with a suspect taken into custody on July 3), instead misdirecting their focus to allegedly exaggerated Web postings.
News of the arrest and pending case against the three Web users recalled the recent Haicang PX story in Xiamen, in which city officials said they were mulling local curbs on Internet use after new media played an instrumental role in organizing popular oppositionto a proposed chemical plant in the city. An official from Xiamen's commercial bureau recently told media that "after opposition to the PX project, the government [in Xiamen] felt that content on the Internet should be [more tightly] controlled."
In his editorial, Yan Lieshan said China was "at a crossroads" and that greater acceptance and protection of public speech was needed in order to fight corruption and other evils. "If we want to change the state of affairs under which good cannot stamp out evil, the most effective and economical means is to give citizens a greater right to know, right to speak and right to monitor (知情权、发言权和监督权)," he said.
The key question in the Xinyi Web user arrests is whether netizens should be held personally accountable for the accuracy of their postings. In the Xinyi case, it seems, there was a basis for the postings, and it is Yan Lieshan's contention that, in the absense of official information on the case, it might in fact have been the buzz created by the three Web users in question that "moved the killer to show some restraint" (使犯罪分子有所收敛).
Selected portions of Yan Lieshan's editorial follow:
There's no need for me to conceal the fact that my original intention was to complain of the wrongs against the three Web users [in Xinyi]. But that's not all. I've already used this example to show that there is much greater danger in exposing local scandals. I could find a heap of examples just searching the Internet. I'm talking not just about informing and exposing of illegal activities, but of normal speech concerning local public affairs ...
It goes without saying that there are many abnormal or backward things happening in the political life of our society these days – corruption and bribery, trifling with impunity with [one's official] post. But it's those who inform, who expose crimes that live in fear ...
I'm completely with Professor Cai Dingjian on this point, that media are an instrumental factor in promoting social change, and that the government has a responsibility to respect the media and thereby the will of the people. What needs to be added is that the media he's referring to includes, of course, the new media and the Internet (postings, blogs, streaming video, etc.), including all of those citizens (interactive writers) who provide the media with information, viewpoints and "buzz" (人气).
It could be said that China's social transition is at a crossroads. If we want to change the state of affairs under which good cannot stamp out evil, the most effective and economical means is to give citizens a greater right to know, right to speak and right to monitor.

Nick Young
China Development Brief
2007-07-12

(China Development Brief is an independent publication established in 1996 to report on social development and civil society in China.)

Yesterday morning news of our current difficulties was injudiciously leaked to international media by a former associate. We had hoped to keep the wraps on this for some time while we tried to mobilise support with the Communist Party and Government of China; but now, alas the news is out, and we are not sure what the result will be.

For those not aware of the basics:-

On July 4 our Beijing office was visited by a joint delegation of a dozen officials from the Beijing Municipality Public Security Bureau, the Beijing Municipality Statistical Bureau, and the Beijing Municipality Cultural Marketing General Legal Implementation Team.

After investigations and interviews lasting around three hours, they ordered the Chinese edition of China Development Brief to cease publication forthwith. The authorities are now deciding what punishment to apply. It appears that initially they were considering a relatively modest fine.

I, as editor of the English language edition of China Development Brief, am deemed guilty of conducting “unauthorized surveys” in contravention of the 1983 Statistics Law, and have been ordered to desist. It was made perfectly clear to me that any report posted on this website (which is run off a UK server) would count as the output of an unauthorized survey.

I have since been interviewed by the police section responsible for supervising foreigners in China, and have sent them a personal statement explaining my situation.

This timing of this is unfortunate. I had decided a year ago that the time had come for me to leave China Development Brief, and we had worked out an ambitious localisation strategy for the English language publishing. I have always argued that it is important to get coherent, informed and independent Chinese voices into international debates about China—rather than those debates being dominated by Western voices that are often ill-informed and unsympathetic to the real difficulties of governing this huge and complicated country—and I hoped that China Development Brief could come to offer the world at large “the best in Chinese thinking on social development, in plain English.” We were about to appoint an expatriate transition Managing Editor with a mandate to develop a high-calibre team of Chinese writers who, at the end of two years, would assume formal ownership and editorial control. On July 3, the day before the police came, we received the last of the donor funding pledges that we needed, and were all set to proceed.

That project is now in grave peril, but I remain open to negotiation and discussion with the Chinese authorities.

Meanwhile, we have removed the subscription form from this site, as we are no longer in a position to guarantee that we will continue for another year. I am afraid that there is no possibility of returning subscription payments, as we have been living a hand to mouth existence for many months, with staff having to take on consultancy work on top of their normal duties in order to pay their own wages, and we have absolutely no reserves.

However, we do have a backlog of unfinished work and, if all else fails, in the coming months I will complete and post at least some of it.

Finally I would like to pay a warm tribute to my Chinese colleagues who have reacted to this series of unfortunate events calmly and courageously.

We remain hopeful that the authorities will recognise the value of their work, and find some way of allowing it to continue.

Positive Solutions
2007.07.03

In the main editing room of China Daily there is a wall, upon with the day’s newspaper is displayed for senior editors to add their comments. Predictably it is known as the “wall of shame”.
Usually there is little of interest on the wall. The senior editors will praise stories they like or are widely picked up by foreign media, while stories that contain editing errors or miss crucial information are criticized. Amusingly, stories are often praised for being “timely” – you would think this would not need to be said at a newspaper.

Read more...

Joel Martinsen
Danwei.org
June 26, 2007

Cross-talk performer Hou Yaowen died of a heart attack in Beijing over the weekend. Hou, son of the even more famous cross-talk master Hou Baolin, was 59.

Hou's sudden, premature death has had domestic media - both online and off - following the story to a degree that prompted entertainment journalist He Dong to mock the media circus on his blog. Here's a translation:

Read more...

Martha E. Gimenez
Department of Sociology
University of Colorado at Boulder
1978

The politicization of everyday life and social organization that apparently leaves no room for marginality and social isolation appear to indicate that, in China, ideology plays a unique and exceptional role, unlike that which it plays in capitalist societies. The presence of political ideology not only in political rituals, uniforms, posters, and portraits of theoreticians and political leaders, but also in the speech of the people, in their analysis of everyday affairs and everyday life, is a striking contrast to the self-centered individualistic perspective to which we are used to. Ideology, in China, is not only something people read about in books but something that people seem to consciously live and experience. Consequently, visiting China leads Westerners to find obvious and radical contrasts, in that respect, with their own experience. In my view, however, the differences should not be taken for granted but carefully examined to see whether there are differences at all.

It is my purpose in this essay to first relate my own experience and discuss the meaning of the following activities in which all people in China seem to be involved in one way or another: political work/ideological work/ideological education/propaganda. Secondly, I will explore the differences and similarities in the role of ideology in China and in capitalist societies.

Read more...