EXCLUSIVE China targets media's 'evil
trend' By Fong Tak-ho
HONG KONG
- Top officials from China's propaganda sector recently
convened a high-level meeting in central China's Henan
province and concluded that some people are "exploiting
the
Internet" to attack the government
and ruling Communist Party, Asia Times Online has
learned from an informed source in Beijing. China
experts say this session may signal the end of the
honeymoon of China's mass media and the new Beijing
leadership, which began after party chief and President
Hu Jintao replaced his hardline predecessor Jiang Zemin
as commander-in-chief. Authorities in Beijing now seem
determined to tighten the leash on traditional media, as
well as the vibrant and emerging cybermedia, the
Internet.
Henan province is the home and power
base of Li Changchun, a permanent member of the powerful
Central Politburo, according to the source, who spoke on
condition of anonymity.
The source revealed that
the meeting was held in November in the provincial
capital Zhengzhou and attended by propaganda chiefs from
a few provinces. The conference claimed that some people
with ulterior motives are maliciously using the Internet
to exaggerate dark sides of Chinese society and malign
certain officials. The meeting vowed to contain the
so-called "evil trend". The conference decision was
relayed to lower authorities, warning against
uncontrolled media, including the Internet.
The
Internet has become a formidable menace to incompetent
or corrupt Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. For
years the party has blocked whatever it deemed "harmful
or posing a threat to social stability". With the
emergence of the Internet, keeping the flow of
information under its absolute control has almost become
a mission impossible for Beijing, since cyberspace
sometimes slips beyond the grasp of propaganda
bureaucrats and technocrats.
Yet, the leash on
media and the Internet had seemed to loosen a bit after
former president Jiang Zemin stepped down in September
as military commander-in-chief and was replaced by his
moderate, reformist successor, President Hu Jintao.
Since then, Hu had enshrined the so-called "people
first" governance philosophy that centers on maximizing
the interests of the masses and makes listening to the
voices of the general public as is foundation. As a
result, the Internet, with almost unlimited editorial
freedom due to its nature, saw a deluge of articles
exposing the malfeasance of communist officials, who are
supposed to be "the people's diligent servant" in
Chinese parlance.
Some Internet reports might at
first appear as scandal-mongering journalism, but
eventually they sometimes do unearth and expose
something big. The uncovering of a suspected corruption
case in connection to a protege of Jiang's former
secretary is a case in point.
In October,
cyber-surfers in the southern city of Shenzhen
complained that pupils were being mobilized to watch a
movie called Life Translated, in which the
leading actress was the daughter of Shenzhen's deputy
party boss. People across the country immediately
criticized the authorities in the well-off city for
virtually forcing students to watch this film at the
price of 20 yuan each (US$2.40).
Further probing
proved Li Yizhen, the deputy party boss, at the center
of the political storm, to be a local political
heavyweight in charge of education, cultural development
and propaganda. Soon a large number of critiques emerged
on the Internet suggesting "conflicts of interests" and
"power abuse" in the authorities' insistent hard-sell of
the film.
As netizens went on with their online
investigation, there popped up more striking facts. When
she was as young as 14, Li Yizhen's daughter Li Qianni
had become one of the major shareholders of a company,
with her personal investment 3.5 million yuan (about
$422,000). Now Li and her mother own shares worth of
7.69 million yuan in three companies. Moreover, her
mother is the legal representative of an overseas agent.
All these indicate conflicts of interest and violations
of party rules that near kin of party officials are not
allowed to run companies in the field related to the
official's business area.
Acknowledging these
facts, Shenzhen authorities explained that neither Li
Qianni nor her mother had invested a single penny in two
of these three companies, which were shell companies for
receiving funding only. On the questions of violations
of party rules, the authorities answered with the
communist platitude that this indicated the father's
failure to see the problem's magnitude and the fact that
there remained much room for improvement in his
"political studies".
The public was never
convinced by these thin explanations: condemnations
continued flooding online forums. Some argued that even
though Li Yizhen was only indirectly involved in the
hard-selling of the film, that did not excuse him for
shirking his responsibility, since he failed to prevent
his subordinates from giving the green light to his
family. Others suspected that setting up shell companies
and making false contributions as investments to these
companies actually breached China's business laws. They
demanded thorough investigation of the matter, rejecting
the authorities' downplaying Li Yizhen's mistakes as
being due to inadequate "political studies".
After some bureaucrats leveled accusations at
the Zhengzhou propaganda conference that certain
communist cadres teamed up with anti-communist enemies
and propagated naming-name libels through the Internet,
political observers suspected that the accusation was
actually broached behind the scenes by Li Changchun, who
had just visited Shenzhen recently and surveyed the
local cultural development in company with Li Yizhen,
the party official.
As chief of the party's
ideological work, Li Changchun has been sounding the
alarm against the alleged "Westernization and splittism"
attempts by capitalistic demons. At a symposium on
August 21 to study the theories of Deng Xiaoping,
deceased paramount CCP leader, he called upon all
communist comrades to strengthen the Marxist
convictions, "Guard against foreign hostile machinations
to Westernize and split China" and "Stay sober in
politics and determined in faith."
When
announcing the collusion charge at the Zhengzhou
meeting, the accuser cited as an example the recently
eased suppression of Falungong, an alleged "evil cult"
purged and banned in China since 1999. Founded in the
early 1990s by Li Hongzhi, a poorly educated farmer,
Falungong promotes ethical nobility and teaches its
members to practice Qi Gong, a wholesome martial art of
inhalation and exhalation. However, Li Hongzhi gradually
managed to convert his organization into a superstitious
religion, sanctified himself as God and created an
obsessive personality cult. The organization then
evolved into a spiritual movement that attempted to
interfere with China's politics by rallying disciples to
beleaguer Zhongnanhai, the central power enclave of the
CCP. Finally, the siege incurred an overwhelming
crackdown on Falungong nationwide. Since mid-October,
however, quite a few government-run websites have not
been updated on the Falungong issue.
Despite the
absence of concrete evidence, the subtle power contest
between reform-leaning President Hu Jintao and his
conservative predecessor Jiang Zemin has been thrown
into stark relief again. While the latter adopted a hard
line in stifling Falungong and political dissent, the
former seemed to prefer a velvet-glove-clad iron fist in
coping with dissidents pursuing democracy. The gaping
divergence between the two men also is reflected in
President Hu redoubling his efforts in the
anti-corruption campaign as well as the establishment of
democracy, discipline and transparency inside the CCP,
but Jiang has insisted that the pace of such internal
party reform should be slowed down.
By
coincidence or not, Huang Liman, Jiang's former
secretary, is now the CCP secretary of Shenzhen, the
city that is still under the shadow of the power-abuse
scandal surrounding deputy party boss Li Yizhen. During
this year's Spring Festival, the traditional New Year
according to Chinese lunar calendar, Jiang even spent a
12-day vacation in Shenzhen, accompanied by his former
colleague, Madame Huang.
Recently, many official
mouthpiece websites including www.people.com.cn and
www.cctv.com have simultaneously reprinted an article
that criticizes the heated debates about Chinese
governance in cyberspace, saying they mostly focus on
the dark side of society, on official corruption and on
other negative factors. The article said drastic,
radical rhetoric tends to make bad news spread faster
and more widely than any good news, a phenomenon
exacerbated by such modern and advanced technology as
the Internet. The official editorial points out that
communist propaganda is facing a grave new challenge
under the multifaceted media environment. It said the
image of the CCP and its administration and the effort
to lure foreign investment will be ruined once negative
public opinions, fanned by the Internet, burst out of
control.
On the other hand, the editorial admits
that it would be unadvisable to demonize or vilify the
Internet tool. "Counterattacks including rigid
refutation and even legal action should be made to
malicious rumor-mongers and libelers, while prudent
analysis should be given to those emotional, ex parte,
extreme but well-meant remarks," it stressed.
The Internet has been developing in China for a
decade. Official statistics indicate that more than 90
million people in the nation of 1.3 billion have access
to the cyberworld. The size of the netizen population of
China is only next to that of the United States.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)
Internet" to attack the government
and ruling Communist Party, Asia Times Online has
learned from an informed source in Beijing. China
experts say this session may signal the end of the
honeymoon of China's mass media and the new Beijing
leadership, which began after party chief and President
Hu Jintao replaced his hardline predecessor Jiang Zemin
as commander-in-chief. Authorities in Beijing now seem
determined to tighten the leash on traditional media, as
well as the vibrant and emerging cybermedia, the
Internet. 
