LONDON - Trying to rein in reporters
straining at the leash of censorship, Beijing is
drafting a law that will impose heavy fines for
unauthorized news of big disasters and social
unrest. Wang Yongqing, vice minister of the
legislative affairs office of the State Council,
insisted the law would improve news by ordering
officials to release information quickly while
ensuring journalists reported accurately.
Trouble is, officials down in the
provinces and counties are stuck in their ways,
which usually means keeping hushed up anything
that might do their careers or business deals
damage. Nor does the central government set a
particularly transparent example. Secrecy is still
the default modus operandi. Bureaucrats can
declare just about anything a state secret,
including, so far, much
of
the proposed Law on Response to Contingencies.
Chinese journalists, meanwhile, have in
recent years been lifting stones and shining
lights into corners the government would prefer
left dark. Reporters along with some brave
officials helped break the coverup of the SARS
epidemic that swept China in spring 2003,
embarrassing China's leaders as they fumbled
explanations to United Nations' health experts and
fumed at bumbling mandarins. Reporters were
perhaps emboldened by propaganda chief Li
Changchun, a politburo member, telling them in
January that year to "monitor some problems and
issues in society".
SARS was by no means
the first major incident of this decade where the
media outpaced the censors. Joseph Fewsmith, of
the Hoover Institution (a think tank at Stanford
University), cites reports of 42 pupils killed in
Jiangxi in 2001 while making fireworks at school
for their teachers' business as a landmark story.
Officials instinctively clammed up and tried to
suppress the story, but public outrage was such
that Zhu Rongji, premier at the time, stepped in,
publicly apologizing.
Hu Jintao, who
assumed the presidency from Jiang Zemin in 2003,
and Wen Jiabao, Zhu's successor, both appeared
gregarious compared with their predecessors. They
cut a high media profile, from comforting victims
of disasters to donning hard hats and overalls as
they headed down coal mines. A dashing, eloquent
and feisty spokesman took to the stage at the
Foreign Ministry. Some wondered if they were
ushering in more open times for China.
By
2005, however, the censors were back in favor.
Laws and crackdowns swept websites and chat rooms.
Police set up special cyber-patrol units, showing
off their eager, fresh, university graduate cyber
cops to foreign reporters in Guangdong. Academics
and researchers were warned against publicly
criticizing government policies. Ching Cheong, a
Hong Kong resident who is senior China
correspondent for Singapore's Straits Times, was
jailed for "espionage", while Zhao Yan, a
researcher for the New York Times, is on trial for
"disclosing state secrets". This latest law is yet
another shot in this ongoing crackdown.
It
provides a legitimate, "softer" legal basis for
bringing action against "errant" reporters,
Chinese and foreign, emphasized Wang. That might
help censors and police resort to less
heavy-handed tactics for silencing reporters,
which are at odds with practices in many Western
countries and China's attempts to paint itself as
a responsible, lawful power. It takes China
another pigeon step closer to the sophisticated
methods used by Singapore, where reporters who do
not watch their words risk harsh penalties in the
civil courts. Such methods helped Singapore rank
140, compared with China's 159, out of 167 on the
Reporters without Borders press freedom index.
What explains the sharp swing in winds
from spring to winter? Well Hu and Wen could have
been playing most people for fools, crafting
reformist images, while secretly emulating Mao
Zedong and Leonid Brezhnev. That may be the case,
but there are other dynamics at work.
It
is well to remember that though China is an
autocracy, its leaders have to cultivate loyalty,
playing off factions, hoping they can keep support
strong to see them and their aims through. This
is, in part, a consequence of the procedures the
Communist Party of China introduced to ensure
orderly transfers of power between leaders,
beginning with Jiang's retirement in 2003.
His Shanghai faction remains highly
influential, however, because it fills about half
the seats in the politburo. Remaining politburo
members were picked by Hu and Wen, who are thought
to harbor ideas and interests that may be at odds
with Jiang's clique because they spent most of
their careers in inland China, which remains
desperately poor compared to the booming east
coast cities.
Politburo members inherited
from Jiang will not be around to look over Hu's
shoulder after the 17th Party Congress next year,
which is when they have to step down. In their
place will come more friends of Hu to begin their
two terms, with their second term overlapping with
the first term of Hu's successor.
Hu has
to watch his step in the run up to the 17th Party
Congress at which he can consolidate power. Risks,
then, are out. Daring new policies will be held
back until after the congress. Reporters need to
be muzzled. His clique, based on the youth league,
has to keep support of the reformers, while
winning over more traditional factions. Pushing on
with economic reform, while then going after
people, such as reporters and vocal netizens who
cause the party to blush, is one way of doing
this.
Only in 2008 will Hu feel
comfortable in flying a reformist flag, if indeed
he is a reformer. With the world heading to
Beijing that year for the summer Olympic Games he
may feel the time is ripe to relent, cutting
reporters some slack.
Newspapers and
reporters may not, however, wait until then. That
China is resorting to fines to keep reporters in
line suggests that it lacks the means to reliably
monitor every newsroom in the country to stop
unfavorable reports being printed or broadcast.
Instead, it seems to be hoping that the threat of
50,000 yuan (US$6,250) to 100,000 yuan fines,
which could bankrupt reporters, backed up with
threats of the sack and possibly jail will keep
them in line.
Their publishers, however,
might decide to publish and be damned. After all,
100,000 yuan is not very much money to a large
newspaper in a big eastern metropolis. Readers
increasingly demand and expect big stories
unraveling corruption, problems and even sex
scandals. Newsstands hung with hundreds of
magazines and newspapers bespeak tough competition
for readers and advertisers, who increasingly look
to the Internet.
Perhaps worst of all,
many publishers are owned or controlled by local
communist parties. Considering the short shrift
they often give to many orders and policies
emanating from Beijing, they cannot be counted
upon to put party proclamations before profits.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing
.)
