Propagandists vs the Internet in
China By Fong Tak-ho
HONG
KONG - In a country where the Communist Party still
tries - increasingly without success - to control just
about everything, especially the media, the Internet is
slipping beyond its grasp. Enraged, the party
propagandists have declared war on the Internet
deployed, it claims, as a weapon against the state.
China has recently heard a rise in calls from
the propaganda sector for tougher regulation of the
Internet, the rising and vibrant cyber-medium that
sometimes slips beyond the grasp of the ruling Communist
Party. The first major call was issued in an unusual
meeting last month attended by senior propaganda chiefs,
who vowed that the Internet in China has been
"exploiting by those with ulterior motives" to malign
the government and the party. Less than four weeks
later, the party's major mouthpiece, the People's Daily,
toed the line, slamming the cyber-media with a critique
on December 8. The piece claimed that some "hostile
forces" have been maliciously using the Internet for the
purpose of splitting and destabilizing society,
resulting in possible harm to China's economy and
foreign investment.
Nonetheless, these
propaganda officials could appear oversensitive or
prickly, since they have been obsessed with a myth that
mass media should always dance to the Communist Party's
tune (and at one time the media slavishly and invariably
did so) - or at least not fly in the face of the party's
latest doctrines and pronouncements. General obedience
is still largely the case concerning the traditional
media that are all funded, fostered and administered by
the party. In a strict sense, there really are no
private media in China. But somehow (by its very nature
in the ether of cyber-space), the Internet as an
emerging platform of communication, has managed to
escape the party's manipulation. Some websites and words
can be blocked, but not all communication can be
stifled. Thus the Internet plays an indispensable role
in making heard the complaints and groans from the
grassroots - often ignored by mainstream media - and in
addressing injustices, virtually forcing officials to
redress some of the most egregious.
Over the
past two years, a few righteous people who have stepped
up to the plate to confront the party's pressure and
suppression of dissenting voices have successfully
employed the Internet as their most powerful tool to
unearth the truth covered up by authorities, help
provide justice to the wrongly accused, and put the
guilty in jail. This trend of using the Internet for
justice first became clear in the 2003 severe acute
respiratory syndrome (SARS) crisis. Then the Internet
publicized the case of Sun Zhigang, who was beaten to
death by "public servants"; then there were the
fabricated charges against two newspaper executives who
head a crusading newspaper in exposing Chinese society's
"dark sides" that the party endeavors to cloak.
Resonating the party's platitude, the said
People's Daily piece warned against the negative sides
of growing Internet use in China, as it is laden with
confrontations between the good - always the Communist
Party and its rightful decisions - and the bad who
always engage in mud-slinging against the party and
government. The truth is, however, the battle is between
releasing full and appropriate information that the
people have the right to know and the authorities'
coverups. The most prominent case is the crusade against
SARS and the government coverup.
Starting from
early last year, reports of the spread of SARS began to
hit the headlines. Based on the figures now certified,
the SARS virus reared its ugly head and went wild in
Beijing as early as April 2003, as confirmed also by
quite a few online reports. Fully aware of the problem's
magnitude, the then health minister Zhang Wenkang
nonetheless downplayed the issue on the ground of
defending China's image in the international community.
Denying the rapid spread of the epidemic in a press
conference on April 3, he stressed that infected areas
had been brought under control. He only admitted to the
existence of 12 patients, including three who had died
from the disease.
Soon the authorities' big lies
were negated when a valiant military doctor, Jiang
Yanyong, published a letter on the Internet that
revealed the true picture of the epidemic in the
capital. In just the one hospital where Jiang was
working, 60 patients reportedly had contracted SARS,
including six who died, by April 3. The outspoken doctor
said he and his colleagues felt great indignation about
the health minister's distorted understatement of the
SARS problem. He spread his message via the Internet,
nationwide and worldwide.
Through the
almost-impossible-to-filter Internet, the letter sent a
shock to the whole country, as well as to the top
echelons in Beijing. Only two weeks after Zhang
Wenkang's bold statement, he was removed from his
position as health minister, a move widely regarded as
unprecedented in the Communist Party's history. To stop
the epidemic head-on, the authorities significantly
improved the reporting mechanism and began to update the
public with the latest information in fighting SARS on a
daily basis. The courage to recognize and correct the
mistake and timely efforts to enhance governance
transparency during the anti-SARS battle have been
hailed as among the most sagacious decisions made by the
new leadership of Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu
Jintao and the key to Beijing's success in combating the
epidemic. But it was initiated by a doctor using the
Internet to tell the truth.
Massive pressure
from pointed criticism online has also swayed the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) central caucus in its
tackling many controversial issues aside from the SARS
crisis. A good example is the assault and death of Sun
Zhigang.
Sun, 27, was an employee of Guangzhou
Daqi Clothing Ltd after his graduation from Artistic
Design Department at Wuhan Institute of Science and
Technology. Around 10pm on March 17, 2003, he was
hanging about the streets without his identity card at
hand, only to get interrogated by a policeman on patrol.
He then was mistakenly sent to a government-run asylum
or center for tramps and the mentally ill. On the
evening of March 18, Sun claimed to suffer a sudden
heart attack and was transferred to a health center
exclusively for the asylum's residents, where he was
beaten to death by other patients, aided and abetted by
several health-center staff, shortly before dawn on
March 20, Internet reports revealed.
Soon the
death of Sun Zhigang was spotlighted in cyberspace, and
that got the attention of Beijing. Eventually, 18
suspects implicated in the murder were arrested and
convicted in June. In addition, the two-decades-old
asylum legislation was annulled, setting a precedent for
revising or revoking regulations that conflict with the
national constitution. The abolished law, Methods of
Accommodating and Repatriating Wanderers and Beggars in
Urban Areas, was enacted in 1982, stipulating that
outcasts and beggars must be kept in detention in
asylums and sent back to their home towns, contradicting
the constitutional protection of personal freedom.
However, Southern City News (Nanfang Dushi Bao),
which scooped all other domestic newspapers to disclose
the fast-spreading SARS epidemic and the killing of Sun
Zhigang, has been tightly gagged and brutally and
unjustly punished. Yu Huafeng, chief executive officer
of the daily newspaper, was prosecuted for offering and
accepting bribes. On March 19 this year, he was found
guilty and sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment in the
first trial. Managing editor Cheng Yizhong was also
arrested on charges of corruption and detained while an
investigation was under way.
The abrupt probe
into the top management of the Southern City News -
publicized on the Internet - stirred up a cauldron of
resentment within society and cast a shadow over the
reform-leaning image of China established by the
seemingly mild administration of President Hu Jintao and
Premier Wen Jiabao. When comments piled up in online
forums to voice support for the two crusading editors, a
few scholars even organized a campaign collecting
signatures of supporters for free journalism.
As
the lawsuit incurred much skepticism from the legal
profession and pressure from Beijing, Yu Huafeng was
given a commuted sentence of eight years in jail in the
second trial on June 15. Cheng Yizhong was also released
from detention on the grounds of insufficient evidence
in the evidently trumped-up corruption
charges.
The shrill criticisms leveled at the CCP
governments must have touched the raw nerves of
conservative leaders. In particular, an essay popular
among Internet users titled "A Crusade Against the
Propaganda Department", authored by Jiao Guobiao, a
journalism professor at Peking University, points out
that the bottleneck for the development of China's
social civilization is the party's Propaganda
Department, which has been set up to control the
ideology and the speech of the masses. Professor Jiao
has been suspended from lecturing and may have been
listed among the alleged "seditious rumormongers"
accused in the highly critical editorial in the People's
Daily of December 8.
Back on July 20, the
People's Daily as an official mouthpiece nonetheless had
heralded an article written by a scholar at the Party
Central Academy - where principal CCP cadres were
indoctrinated and groomed - apparently in favor of
further political reform for democracy, discipline and
justice.
"As the reform has come this far, the
resistance no longer derives from outmoded stereotyped
ideas, but from the invisible interest groups that have
taken shape for years. Some of them may have even been
revolutionaries in the past," the article read. "To
check if a certain activity reforms or tends to reform,
we can not judge from the banner it carries, but from
whether it benefits the vastest majority of people."
According to the same article, while the
national economic progress is gaining momentum, the
general public does make the same rapid headway in
pursuit of freedom and democracy; development will not
make sense, if it is merely in the interests of certain
regions, individuals and groups. "Only the brave will
prevail in a close infighting," the now-outdated
editorial said, describing the bumpy course of China's
political reform. Still, many heroes will continue to
fight for truth, justice and freedom.
(Copyright
2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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