China’s Most Dangerous Woman Meets Her Most Dangerous Rival

mtj828 Propaganda and Media , ,

HuShuli  Guowengui

The event of the week is roughly the Chinese equivalence of this: the Huffington Post carries an in-depth story revealing that Donald Trump has built his business empire with the help of corrupt high-level officials at the NSA, who used illegal surveillance methods to crush his business competitors. Trump shoots back with a tweet accusing Arianna Huffington of adultery with his main business competitor and using her website to smear his name for the sake of her lover. He even asserts that Huffington and the man has a son out of wedlock and published the kid’s Social Security Number.

Now, replace the Huffington Post with Caixin Weekly, Arianna Huffington with Hu Shuli, and Donald Trump with Guo Wengui, the billionaire who owns Beijing’s landmark Pangu Plaza, and you get the picture. But to fully comprehend what’s going on, you need to have the mind of a Frank Underwood.

Guo Wengui is a name that was unknown to most people in China until the end of 2014. At that time, a nasty dispute between him and the former CEO of the Beida Founder group regarding top management appointments escalated into a mutual tattling that led to the latter’s arrest a few weeks later. Guo remote-controlled the fight from abroad and had thence forth stayed outside of China. According to Chinese media reports, this fight was a prelude to the downfall of a Deputy National Security Minister, who was a mutual friend of both of them and had used his special power in the security apparatus (a department that deploys China’s secret police) to protect their business interests.

These events put this otherwise low-key billionaire under the spotlight and arouse the interest of daring investigative journalists, including Ms. Hu Shuli’s Caixin team.(See their coverage of Guo Wengui in English)

Caixin Weekly, a leading news magazine in China, is known for its in-depth coverage of the country’s most hefty political and economic issues. Hu Shuli, the founder of Caixin, is considered the “female Godfather” of Chinese journalism and “the most dangerous woman in China.” She treads the fine line between truth-finding and China’s boundaries for freedom of expression, a tricky business of which she is a master. Under her leadership, Caixin has become the go-to place for authoritative reporting of all aspects of the Chinese society. Some also believe that her success so far is in large part due to her personal connections well up to the highest echelon of the Chinese leadership, a network that she cultivated back in the early 90s when she was a reporter for one of China’s earliest business newspapers. One of those contacts is Wang Qishan, then a reform-minded party upstart, and now President Xi’s anti-corruption tsar. (See Evan Osnos’s 2009 profile of Hu for the New Yorker)

Over the past one year or two, along with the intensification of the administration’s anti-corruption campaign, Caixin’s exclusive coverage of those fallen under the campaign’s hammer and anvil has won it applause and also a bit of disdain. Those applauding consider Caixin the standard bearer of journalistic professionalism in China. Those questioning it muse about the extent to which it is being used by one faction of the party against another. Its now legendary coverage of Zhou Yongkang, former member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the highest ranking official being charged so far, exemplifies these competing views. The report (an unprecedented full-volume coverage that amounts to a mini-biography) came out minutes after the official announcement of Zhou’s disgrace. On the one hand, the thoroughness of its investigations (a year-long process) immediately inspired a sense of awed respect among media observers all over the internet (later the lead journalists won awards for this report). But on the other hand, the seemingly unusual access enjoyed by Caixin journalists to sources surrounding one of China’s most sensitive political figures also brought questions regarding Caixin’s “special” role in the anti-corruption campaign.

Such mixed perceptions played out in a very big way last week, when Guo Wengui launched his nasty personal attack on Hu Shuli from abroad. The open letter he released through his company’s Weibo accounts (now deleted) asserts that Hu has ulterior motives in doing the investigative piece about him, namely to smear his name in order to benefit her “lover” the Founder group CEO currently under investigation. Furthermore, the letter goes sensual in detailing the “sexual relationship” between Hu and her lover, their “secret son” and even Hu’s sexual appetite. Besides that, he also accuses Hu of using her magazine as a tool to blackmail other enterprises in exchange of expensive advertisement contracts.

It is interesting that Guo picked Hu as his target, as Caixin was not the only media outlet that did investigative stories about him lately, nor the first to do so. Both Tencent’s Prism, a WeChat-based outlet for in-depth original stories, and Caijing Magazine did similar stories about Guo’s rise from a nobody in rural Shandong province to one of China’s richest business tycoons. All these stories depict Guo as a cunning, ruthless “street fighter” who builds up his wealth by crushing anybody in his way. He has torn down minister-level officials using secretly taped sex videos, and his partnership with high level officials in the national security apparatus was a key to his success.

Knowing Guo’s style, one probably would not be surprised by his move against Hu. After all, if his purpose is to stir up a controversy, Hu proves to be a more suitable target than lesser known journalists. And his tactic to play into voyeurism, the basest instinct on cyberspace, also seems to have paid off. Hu’s sympathizers were upset by how happily netizens are willing to spread the defamatory letter, even with stated “doubts”. Guo also tapped into another dark side of the Chinese cyberspace: its cynical attitude toward truth in general and the resulting disregard for the relative weight of evidence. In other words, many Chinese netizens tend to treat any given information with the same level of (dis)trust. Anything could be true or false, no matter what evidence you present. And this makes a fertile ground for character assassination. In 2012, a prolonged online campaign to discredit popular writer Han Han in effect pushed him out of debates on social affairs, even though the attackers produced no solid evidence to buttress their claims that all his previous writing was done by shadow writers. Hu’s supporters were quick to point out the outrageousness in Guo’s accusations, especially concerning she having a kid with the so-called lover. As a public figure constantly in the spotlight, it is pretty unfathomable that Hu could be pregnant at the age of 50 (based on the identity card information Guo disclosed of the “kid”) without catching the attention of the public. Many Hu’s defenders, among them are prominent editors and journalists, were disheartened by how gleefully even some media operatives spread this piece of junk.

But the apparent ridiculousness of Guo’s accusations led some observers to wonder if a distraction is actually all that he wants. If Guo is indeed a shark fish in China’s muddy water as the media have suggested, why did he present something that is so blatant a lie? Maybe he has a message to send to someone else, one commentator bemuses, and maybe his actual target is not Hu but the person behind her. He is sending a coded warning to her patrons in the leadership that he is in possession of damaging materials not of her, but of them.

This leads some observers into believing that this fight is just the surface of much fiercer power struggles deep underneath. And it is in a way linked to the above-mentioned perception of Hu as being somehow protected or even “fed” by much larger forces that are currently driving the anti-corruption campaign. There are also speculations about who is actually behind Guo. But no matter whether such conjectures are true, one effect of this Guo-Hu feud is the further perpetuation of the public perception that the anti-corruption campaign is merely a factional struggle for power. For the leadership, such a perception can be damaging, as it undermines the legitimacy and moral high ground that the campaign occupies. That’s why until very recently, official media outlets such as the pro-Xi WeChat account under the People’s Daily have been pointedly rebutting claims that the campaign is a selective purge of political rivals. They argue that the campaign has actually indicted Xi’s previous colleagues and subordinates in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, something that’s overlooked by the Western media, particularly the New York Times. But they never clarify whether the purge is of a different nature, where the line is not drawn along personal connections, but between those “born red” and the “hired hands”. (See Evan Osnos’s most recent article “Born Red” for more details) As long as such doubts are not quenched, the campaign may always be seen by cynical bystanders as a grandiose dog fight.

Hu Shuli never responded to the controversy directly[1]. Her stellar reputation within China’s media establishment ensures that plenty of journalistic heavy weights come to her defense voluntarily either out of personal affection or out of a sense of solidarity. On Mar 30, one day after Guo’s open letter appeared on the internet, she quietly posted on her own Weibo account the links to the original Caixin report, without a single word of comment, as if to say: let the report speaks for itself.

[1] Although Caixin the company did send out a statement on Mar 30 saying they were initiating legal actions against Guo’s company for libel.

The Lee Kuan Yew Complex

mtj828 Foreign Policy , , , ,

I’ve never been to Singapore. The closest “Singaporean experience” I can get is to visit Suzhou, a city two hours of car drive away from Shanghai. In 1994 China and Singapore signed an agreement to co-develop the Suzhou Industrial Park, a tiny area of 278 square kilometers (by Chinese standard) to be modeled on Singapore’s success with Singaporean support in both capital and expertise. It is probably pure coincidence that they picked Suzhou as the location of this experiment, wherein a young, small “Garden City” would teach an ancient Chinese city most famous for its stunningly exquisite gardens how to develop. Nowadays, if you visit the SIP and the old Suzhou city, you can vividly see the difference: the former is built out of fresh blueprints, with glittering skyscrapers, newly paved six-lane roads and well-trimmed roadside greenery; the latter is weathered, more chaotic, with congested old-town blocks still filled with traditional buildings of black roof tiles and white walls, and, of course, gardens listed as World Heritage sites. (Below, Left: old town Suzhou, Right: Suzhou Industrial Park)

Suzhou SIP

The (unintended) symbolism in the cooperation between Suzhou and Singapore: the old learning from the new, the master from the student, the cultured from the unsophisticated, is not without a bit of irony and has an intrinsic “un-Asianness” in it. Yet in some very mystic way it has become a motif in the China-Singapore relationship. Maybe the best example is Lee Kuan Yew’s now well-known exchange with Deng Xiaoping, who was twenty years older than Lee and much more experienced in political struggles. During their 1978 meeting, Lee assured Deng that he had absolute confidence in China’s ability to do a better job than Singapore. “After all”, he said, “we are only the descendants of those poor, illiterate drifters from southern China’s Canton and Fujian provinces, while you get to keep the successors of the most gifted and well-educated.” Those comments reportedly struck Deng silent. Upon his return to China, which was on the verge of ruin after a decade of Cultural Revolution, Deng called on the country to “learn from Singapore.”

This episode, together with Lee’s other encounters with “generations of the Chinese leadership”, is repeatedly referred to by Chinese commentators over the past week, when news of his death finally landed. All of a sudden, a nation is obsessed by the late former Prime Minister of Singapore, a phenomenon that has perplexed some. The Chinese public’s reaction to the passing away of Lee Kuan Yew which is disproportionate to the size of his country again illustrates that perpetual motif which I can only describe as “the Lee Kuan Yew complex”.

One component of that complex is probably just a misplaced sense of ethnic goodwill. Many people in China liberally associate the ethnic Han Chinese with China the country, no matter whether the upbringing of the former has anything to do with the latter. This sometimes leads to an uncalled-for embrace that may confuse its subjects. For example, the Chinese public greeted Gary Locke (a Chinese American) with such a high tide of enthusiasm when he was appointed U.S. Ambassador to China in 2011 that both the Chinese media and he himself need to reaffirm publicly of his allegiance to the United States. If such show of emotions is just simple derivatives of the traditional filial piety that the Chinese expect from any of their extended “families”, then a sense of betrayal can emerge if that expectation is not met.

Vocal Chinese nationalists on the internet apparently cannot let go of Lee’s record of what they consider as “de-Chinesization”. One of them even names it as Lee’s “biggest sin against the Chinese ethnicity”, for he “used the force of the state to crush the people’s identification with the Chinese culture, and turned them towards Western cultures for their identity.” Other nationalists do not hold such an ethnocentric point of view, but they do not regard highly of Lee either. For them, his opportunistic approach towards communist China speaks to his foxy nature: “On the one hand, he took advantage of the Chinese market to advance the Singaporean economy, on the other hand, he urged Western powers to contain China.” These commentators believe that at least in terms of foreign policy China has nothing to learn from Singapore, as a “tiny city state can make a profit out of the chaos, how can a major power attach itself to others?”

But Lee Kuan Yew proves to be a conundrum for the Chinese nationalists, as his authoritarian rule of Singapore provides inspirations that are otherwise hard to resist. The People’s Daily’s WeChat account, for example, describes Lee’s crusade against media freedom, especially his handling of Western media reports, with a tone of envy. In the post titled “Why does the Western press not dare to criticize Lee Kwan Yew’s Singapore,” the author maintains that China has a lot to learn from Lee’s intimidating way of handling media organizations.

Liberal-leaning Chinese netizens are more consistent with their comments about Lee. They tend to view Lee’s political legacy, especially its admiration by some Chinese leaders, with alarm and wariness. For them, Lee’s political legacy is far from set in stone as “the effectiveness of the current Singaporean system so far has been built on Lee’s authoritarian charisma, and the lack of corruption is more because of his self-restraint.” To discredit the assertion that Singapore’s success is a slap on the face of “Western values”, they circulate one of Lee’s famous quotes that “Singapore’s success is less about Confucius values but rather the result of the rule of law left by the British.” One prominent Chinese lawyer got so alarmed that he spoke allegorically of “our own Lee Kuan Yew at home.” His Weibo account was quickly rescinded after that. This looks like something that Lee Kuan Yew would have done.

So far the most balanced and nuanced account of Lee Kuan Yew’s political legacy in mainstream Chinese media is provided by Caijing Magazine. In his in-depth rundown of Lee’s career, commentator Ma Guochuan depicts Lee predominantly as a pragmatic politician not bound by any doctrines. In that, Lee found a “soul-mate” in Deng Xiaoping. And that is probably his biggest contribution to the opening up and reform of China after 1978: his pragmatism inspired and encouraged Deng to take on his ideologist rivals and ultimately take a utilitarian approach to China’s development. Ma did not turn a blind eye towards the downside of Lee’s authoritarian rule. He notes that PAP’s domination of Singapore politics is increasingly being challenged and that the new generation is getting more impatient with the slow pace of political reform. But most importantly, Ma’s account goes beyond the simplistic caricatures of the nationalists and liberals alike, and depicts Lee as having true insights about the challenges that China faces. His warning for a visiting Chinese leader that too much emphasis on patriotic values might actually undermine China’s strategic interest in maintaining a peaceful external environment and a stable internal environment sounds particularly relevant now.

The difficulty for the Chinese society to come to terms with a complicated figure like Lee Kuan Yew mirrors the same difficulty it has to make sense of China itself. For a long time, Lee’s Singapore serves as a reference point for a China that just opened its gate to the world. Deng’s pragmatic Singaporean vision is a core component of the “reform consensus” that has concentrated the country’s energy for three decades. Now that consensus is full of cracks, the energy is dissipating and the schizophrenia about Lee Kuan Yew is a sign of that. In this new round of soul-searching for renewed affirmation of its own course, China comes to the dying Lee Kuan Yew again, only with pickier eyes. Ditto to authoritarian ruthlessness. A more global cultural identity? No thanks.

The substances of Lee’s political wisdom no longer matters that much. What matters now is his stance as a staunch challenger of Western universalism and an advocate for the ill-defined “Asian values.” In his keynote speech at the annual Boao Asia Forum yesterday, President Xi paid tribute to Lee Kuan Yew for his contribution to “Asia’s peace and development.” But in a speech titled “Towards a Community of Common Destiny,” the President seems to have chosen to omit the fact that Lee’s recipe for peace in Asia has never been a so-called community of shared interests (let alone common destiny). It has always been the cool-headed check-and-balance of major powers.

A Sort-of-Crimean-Problem that China Doesn’t Want

mtj828 Foreign Policy , ,

Kokang

Image Courtesy of Reuters

When it comes to Chinese foreign policy, there is always a debate about whether the regime manipulates or is actually influenced by public opinion. I would argue that reality is much more complex than this simple dichotomy suggests. Recent Chinese response to the conflict between the Burmese military and the Kokang rebels near the China/Myanmar border illustrates that complexity.

On Mar 13, bombs reportedly coming from the Burmese Air Force jets descended upon innocent Chinese farmers working in sugarcane fields near the border, killing five and leaving the other eight severely injured. The incident rattles the Chinese cyberspace. It not only directs national attention to a war that had been hitherto unknown to many, but also unleashes a mixture of feelings made of anger, confusion and frustration.

In Feb this year, fighting resumed between ethnic Chinese insurgents and the Burmese military in the semi-autonomous region of Kokang bordering China’s Yunnan province, escalating a conflict that had been more or less dormant since the 2009 fight that drove out Peng Jiasheng, the leader of the insurgents. This legendary eighty-year-old self-professed “King of Kokang,” who used to be a member of the Burmese communist party, had been in exile thenceforth until he reappeared with his army in Feb to “reclaim Kokang”, reigniting the fire of war in the region. As a result, China, particularly the border province of Yunnan, has to cope with the consequence, with the influx of refugees and now casualties of its own people.

The fallout of this ongoing clash in China’s cyberspace proves to be interesting in a few aspects:

First of all, the incident was reported by the Chinese media quickly after it happened, setting it in contrast to a similar case in the Northeastern province of Jilin bordering North Korea, where a defected North Korean soldier killed Chinese villagers on Dec 27, 2014. Only after the South Korean media exposed the killing in Jan 2015 did the Chinese public become aware of the incident. The silence of Chinese authorities triggered discontent even from pro-government media outlets such as the Global Times, which published an editorial lamenting the erosion of the government’s credibility by such unnecessary cover-ups. The Chinese authority’s handling of the Jilin case implies some reluctance of making it a subject of public scrutiny, which might further undermine its (increasingly unpopular) effort in maintaining a friendly relationship with the North Korean regime. The relative transparency with the Yunnan incident can be read as an improvement in response to criticisms of the Jilin case. Or we can see it as evidence for the authority’s “willingness” to entertain some public venting of sentiments to gain certain foreign policy leverage. But what could be the closest to reality is this: the genuine difficulty of keeping it under the lid, which is related to the point below.

If you look at all the foreign policy challenges that China is facing today, the Sino-US relationship, the Sino-Japanese relationship, the South China Sea disputes, The Myanmar border conflict is unique in a very important aspect: one party of the conflict has direct access to influence public opinion in China.

The majority of people living in the Kokang region is ethnic Chinese. They speak and write Chinese; they do business with the Chinese; many of them have relatives and friends on the other side of the border; schools in the region even use official Chinese textbooks. It is therefore not surprising that they also use Weibo, the Chinese microblogging site. It is through Weibo that the on-goings of the conflicts is broadcasted to a Chinese audience in a real-time, seemingly unfiltered way. Weibo accounts such as the “Kokang Reversion” openly takes the position of Peng’s army, advocating for full autonomy of the region. Other accounts appear to belong to actual Kokang militants. An open letter attributed to Peng also circulates widely on Chinese social media. In the letter, Peng appeals strongly to Chinese nationalism by depicting the Kokang people as being suppressed and persecuted by the Burmese. The tactic seems to work to some extent, as some Chinese netizens show sympathy to Peng’s cause. Many of them invokes Indonesia’s brutal 1998 riot against its ethnic Chinese community.

This creates another interesting spectacle of the incident’s repercussions on line: the split between a purely nationalist response and a national-interest-centered response. The former is directly fueled by the appeal of Chinese ethnic solidarity, the latter fashions itself as a more realist, cool-headed approach to safeguard bigger strategic interests for China. Global Times’s Feb 16 editorial perfectly represents the latter view point. Even though it was published before the bombing, apparently it was already concerned with sympathetic domestic public opinion toward the Kokang insurgents squeezing China’s foreign policy maneuvering space. The editorial claims that “Kokang is not Crimea”, and implicitly warns “those who would like to drag China into Myanmar’s internal affairs”, maintaining that the peace and stability of the region is in line with China’s national interest. A popular commentary on guancha.cn further advances this argument by spelling out what an official editorial can’t say. It brands Peng Jiasheng as a trouble-maker or even “traitor of the Han Chinese” for his provocative behaviors destabilizing a whole region that is of strategic importance to China. It even goes on to suggest that Peng is supported by U.S-backed elements in the neighboring Kachin State to sabotage China’s geo-political interests in Myanmar. The commentator prescribes full support from China to the Burmese central government to battle the insurgents in order to return peace to the region as soon as possible, so that China could more safety access the Indian Ocean.

There are indications that the Chinese central government is ill-prepared for the bombing (and the intensified anti-Myanmar sentiments on-line). Criticism about the government’s slow response abounds. If as the Gloabl Times’s editorial has suggested, China’s official stance on the conflict is that of non-intervention and pro-territorial-integrity (i.e. pro-Burmese central government), then the bombing and the ensuing public outcry is definitely not something that the Chinese government wants to see. When the potent nationalist sentiment is ignited, it becomes harder to sell a non-intervention policy based on abstract national interest calculations.

As expected, China’s foreign ministry, its Deputy Chairman of the Central Military Committee and its Premier all had to respond publicly to the bombing. The Deputy Chairman’s warning to his Burmese counterpart was particularly strong-worded. His words were quickly followed by the Chinese air force’s move to step up border patrol along the conflict-inflicted borderline.

It is hard to say at this moment how China’s response to the bombing will affect the on-going war. But the de facto effect of China’s strengthened defense of its border, barring any direct intervention, could be more breathing space for the insurgents. Ironically, this might further perpetuate the situation in Kokang, something that China tries to avoid.

It looks like the Chinese government has a genuine problem of balancing its foreign policy with public opinion this time. Amid this challenging situation, some commentators try to ride on the tide and advocate for a more proactive involvement of China in Myanmar’s national reconciliation process, even citing Thailand’s mediation of a peace accord between the Malaysia government and the Malayan Communist Party as a precedent:

“China could be bolder and more assertive in its mediation of the Burmese peace process. There is no need at all to act illicitly. This is in accordance with the ‘new normal’ of Chinese foreign policy.”

In Hong Kong, a Shallow Blog of Reconciliation Has Deep Implications

mtj828 Hongkong, Taiwan and Ethnic Issues , ,

Fanshuike

(Image Courtesy of Apple Daily)

“Do Hong Kong people detest all mainlanders? No! Basically, we resent those whom our mainland brothers also resent: the ‘rich rednecks’(土豪), who are loud everywhere they go, have no taste, and are bad-mannered and self-centered.”

This is a quote from a widely read post on WeChat this week which is supposedly written by a Hong Kong author. The post is a response to an earlier incident that has once again rattled the cyberspace in both Hong Kong and mainland China.

On Mar 9, video footage of an act of aggression against innocent passers-by in Tuen Mun, Hong Kong, started to spread on social media. In the video, a group of Hong Kong youngsters, some of them masked, were shown bullying a woman and her little daughter from mainland China, whom they considered “parallel traders.” The little girl was terribly scared while her mother angrily quarreled with the offenders. There are also reports about the same group of bullies going after an old man who later turned out to be a native.

This is just another episode of the ominous drama that has been unfolding in front of the eyes of this country in recent years, from the milk powder frenzy to ugly confrontations at popular shopping locations, where Hong Kong nativists harassed shoppers from mainland China with abusive languages such as “locusts”. Even though many incidents look trivial in the details (some of them concern individual mainlanders’ etiquette in public space), when amplified by print and social media, the collective effect is a rapid alienation of the two communities (mainland and Hong Kong) from each other.

New incidents like the one on Mar 9 only rubs salt in the old wound. Not surprisingly, the Chinese cyberspace is filled with vitriolic comments and abuses that do not deserve much analysis. What interest me more are the spontaneous attempts at reconciliation on social media, which are different from the official posturing and clumsy off-line efforts. Some of such attempts use the usual tactic of distancing the “mainstream Hong Kong society” from the obvious act of extreme, showing evidence that the majority of the Hong Kong public condemns such behaviors. Even though it might be true in this particular case, it has limited effect on mainland Chinese netizens who have long associated the perceived hostility with the Hong Kong society as a whole. Some liberal commentators on Weibo tried to discount the mainlanders’ indignation by challenging them about their reactions to atrocities within the mainland. But such a provocative stance only further agitates those who are rightly offended.

This is when the aforementioned WeChat post appeared. To turn around a prevailing mood of mutual resentment, the author makes use of a story that happened almost in parallel with the bullying incident: a mainland laborer in transit from Singapore was stranded at Hong Kong International Airport after he missed his next flight. The man was so hungry that he pulled out an electric rice cooker from his luggage to cook meal in the middle of the airport. But instead of scolding him for “bad manners”, the local people extended helping hands to him after learning of his misfortune. Building on such a show of goodwill by the Hong Kong public, the author tries to strike a tone of reconciliation by invoking a vague sense of “class solidarity” as is shown by the quote at the beginning. By explaining the resentment in such terms, the author seems to be appealing to a sentiment on the mainland (a general loathing toward the newly rich) that he believes cuts across the Hong Kong/mainland divide. What the post also does, though, is throwing the entire Occupy movement under the bus in order to appease the uneasy mainlanders (“Most of Hong Kong people don’t care about politics. Only a tiny bunch of them gets ‘high’ with such things — and they had all shown up at last year’s Occupy Central activities.”).

If this vague invocation of “class solidarity” is more of a superficial show of goodwill to deflect tension, what it does highlight is the overall absence of such “value outreach” in Hong Kong’s social movements for the past few years.

Actually there have been serious arguments for the Occupy movement to proactively tap into the prevailing moods on the mainland to advance its objectives. In the middle of the intense stand-off last year, author and fellow blogger Joe Studwell wrote on the Financial Times that the movement should try to “resonate with (President Xi Jinping)’s mindset” instead of backing him into a corner. To do so, he argues that the movement should turn its focus to Hong Kong’s “tycoon economy” and the cartels that have been ripping off the ordinary people and strangling competition. He implies that China’s top leader, with his own anti-monopoly sentiments, might be more sympathetic to such a line of campaigning.

I’m not sure if Xi really cares that much about monopoly in Hong Kong. And it is probably too risky for a whole movement to play into the mindset of a single person. Nonetheless, the argument is still refreshing in the sense that it is one of the very few that have stressed the importance for the Hong Kong social movement to connect with the “zeitgeist” on the mainland. But what makes this argument unique also underlines the ironic truth that it is probably very far from a shared idea among the movement’s leaders. The consequence is a missed opportunity in creating real resonance between the two societies that could have made the movement much more politically potent for those in power.

In her in-depth piece tracing the intellectual evolution of both Taiwan’s Sunflower movement and Hong Kong’s Occupy movement, commentator Zhang Jieping recounts how, over the course of time, a set of complex forces re-shaping both societies’ socio-economic orders get reduced to a simplistic, politically charged concept of the threatening “China factors.” And by over-emphasizing the “China factors” in a multi-facet movement that is as much about resisting the erosion of local  governance systems as about fighting an unjust domestic economic order, activists run the risk of alienating a constituency that could have proved helpful for their struggles, as authorities in China increasingly need to accommodate public opinion in decision making. That might be the price of lumping individual milk powder shoppers together with power-wielding oligarchs.

Throughout the Occupy movement that garnered the entire world’s attention, public opinion on the mainland was distinctively characterized by a deep “antipathy” if not outright hostility. Even if much of it can be attributed to the heavy censorship and biased coverage by mainstream Chinese media, it is still disheartening to see the movement failing big in relating to an audience that had been equally disgruntled by political corruption, economic inequality and social injustices.

As the Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek has reminded the Hong Kong students, “Without economic rights, without social justice and solidarity, a ballot is merely a fetish.” Even if class solidarity might be just a myth, a value-based alliance is still worth exploring for those who truly care about the future of both societies. At least some mainland netizens are making efforts in this direction.

 

 

For Party Propaganda, a “New Normal” Is in Play?

mtj828 Propaganda and Media , ,

The air over the Great Hall of the People these days feels qualitatively different from a few years ago. If you’ve been in China long enough to remember the “twin sessions”[1] under the previous administration, you may be struck by the re-connection between what’s being discussed within the walls of the Great Hall and what’s being talked about on the street, concrete or cyber, today.

It wasn’t like this a few years ago, especially at sessions where there were no leadership changes. We Chinese call these sessions “small-year sessions” just to highlight the inconsequential nature of such gatherings of two rubber-stamp institutions. In those “good old days”, two distinctive conversations happened in parallel: the one within the Great Hall was stubbornly boring and hollow, the one outside was marked by smart-ass cynicism. The cleavage between the two was so wide that it can be seen from space. For many years what dominated media and internet spaces during such sessions had been so-called “silly proposals” (雷人提案) and pictures like this:

twinsessions

The shift to a new pattern happens like taking an airplane: you don’t feel too much when it takes off, but the next moment you look outside the window, you are 8 miles above ground.

It all started with the CPPCC opening press conference last year (can anyone still recollect one single CPPCC opening press conference under the Hu-Wen administration?). At that occasion, CPPCC spokesperson Lu Xinhua responded to a question about rumors concerning former Politburo member Zhou Yongkang by famously saying “you know what I mean”(你懂的), an expression popular on social media. This clever, delicate response to a question that people actually cared about marked that initial hand-shake between the two separate universes.

If in the future, books are to be written about this administration, its decisive re-invention of party propaganda should definitely be a key component of the bigger story. We can debate about whether it is a blessing or curse for the Chinese society. What’s indisputable is its formidable ability to focus and shape public opinion for its own purposes.

We’ve briefly addressed this topic in a previous post. But at the twin sessions this year, things get clearer for us to see how orchestrated a party-led PR campaign can be. Once again, Lu Xinhua plays forward for the team. Since the CPPCC session always opens first, his opening press conference occupies a unique spot that can set the tone for the coming two weeks. And he doesn’t disappoint. Resorting to yet another social media catch-phrase, this time he describes the party’s anti-corruption campaign as “capricious” (任性), and indicates that no one enjoys impunity. Such head-line-friendly sound-bites are almost like a reservation for newspaper and website front page spaces. Soon, they ushered in the actual dinner guests. Barely one hour had passed since Lu’s cute statement when the military’s leading website released information condemning fourteen high-level military officers on corruption charges. The national press corp struggled a bit in recognizing some of the obscure names (some even mistook one officer for a different person). But they did not fail to recognize Major General Guo Zhenggang, the son of a former deputy chairman of the Central Military Committee.  If we stick to the dinner metaphor, what happened next was a national feast on the bodies of the poor father and son. There are playful allusions as expected. But more prepared media outlets quickly handed out dense investigative pieces about the fallen general, his wife and their shadowy businesses. These articles appeared literally minutes after the official announcement, prompting some observers to complain half-jokingly that “I cannot write such an investigative piece in five minutes.” You know what I mean.

If this is fishery, whoever is behind this campaign is not baiting but rather bottom trawling public attention. Tai Kung Pao’s website is more explicit about what is going on: “In previous twin sessions, based on some kind of ‘stability” considerations, they would often try to deflect attention from any particular issue. But under the anti-corruption campaign of the current administration, they would rather warm-up the issue beforehand, then use the twin conference to stir up a focused and heated discussion, in order to align the thinking and consolidate the consensus.”

What’s more revealing is the fact that even when people talk about show business representatives this year, (celebrities such as Jackie Chan, who attend the sessions as “political advisers”), their focus is still on corruption. It used to be the case that these celebrities add “flavor” to a hopelessly dull meeting. Now they are fully integrated to an overarching grand narrative. Plenty of spotlight has been thrown on the fate of star comedian Huang Hong, who made his name from popular comedy sketches at the annual Spring Festival Galas.  As he sat inside the Great Hall this week, news came that he was dismissed as the head of the People’s Liberation Army Bayi Film Studio. It fueled speculations about his entanglement with fallen leaders of the military. The faded luster of former A-list singers such as Song Zuying and Tan Jing, both CPPCC members, also becomes a source of curious amusement. A brilliant treatise on-line ventures a theory linking the leadership’s new propaganda ambitions with the decline of previously treasured propaganda singers. It argues that:

“The top leader needs to establish his authority in a range of areas. He will not tolerate a long-time situation of crumbling party discipline and crass party art. Revitalizing the art and propaganda apparatus so that more political songs can be accepted by the general public is certainly part of his agenda.”

Until more evidence emerges from behind the scene, we can’t really tell if what we are seeing now is truly well-choreographed communication maneuvers or just events that coincidentally bumped into each other. A West-Wing-style comms team serving the current leadership might just be a fantasy. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that the evolution of party propaganda into more sophisticated forms, sometimes unrecognizable as propaganda, is happening. The sleeping elephant is waking up and wants to reclaim the room now.

 

P.S. “Under the Dome” is now officially censored, even though the discussion about it is still lingering in a big way on the internet. Is it being seen as a distraction to the twin sessions? Only THEY will know.

[1] “Twin sessions” refers to the annual National People’s Congress (NPC) and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) sessions, a two-week event stretching from early to mid-March every year.

What “Under the Dome” tells us about where China stands on air pollution

mtj828 Environment and Science , , , ,

ChaiJing

Three days ago something very unusual happened on the internet in this country. Almost overnight, hundreds of millions of smart phone screens here were occupied by just one person and one thing: Chai Jing’s nearly-2-hour documentary on air pollution, called “Under the Dome.”

Who’s Chai Jing? She is a former reporter of CCTV’s prime-time news program “News Investigation,” which is sort of China’s 60 Minutes. So roughly speaking she can also be considered China’s Katie Couric, only more famous. A while ago she quit her enviable job and gave birth to a daughter. After being away from the spotlight for over a year, she came back with this documentary that adopts the format of a long TED talk, or (if you still remember) Al Gore’s award-winning documentary on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth. What she did was standing in front of a studio audience, narrated a fascinating personal story about trying to figure out the smog problem for the sake of her little child who was born with a benign tumor, with the help of state-of-the-art visual aid technologies. To answer three basic questions (What is smog? Where does it come from? What shall we do about it?), she interviewed dozens of top experts and officials in China, visited LA and London to learn from their experience, and consulted tons of scientific literature, all in the capacity of an individual citizen. She claimed that she spent 1 million Chinese yuan (about 160,000 USD) out of her own pocket to make this documentary. And the Chinese public responded to her initiative with absolute enthusiasm: One estimate puts it at more than 175 million clicks within merely 48 hours, a jaw-dropping performance for a serious, lengthy piece of hardcore journalism.

No compliment would be too flattering for such a tremendous public service that Chai Jing has done. And the viewership of her documentary probably has already surpassed that of An Inconvenient Truth, which won Al Gore an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize. And just like An Inconvenient Truth, Under the Dome has a very clear intention of influencing public opinion on an issue that is so crucial to this country now. So appreciation and admiration aside, a critical question arises: what kind of impact does the documentary has on Chinese public opinion about air pollution? What does it tell us about where the country stands on this issue?

What we should all be painfully aware of is the tragic irony that Al Gore’s award-winning documentary, no matter how “critically acclaimed” it was, seemed to have ZERO impact on widespread public opinion about climate change. What’s worse, some claim that “(its impact on) public opinion was to increase public skepticism about climate science and polarize public support for both climate and clean energy action,” largely due to Gore’s messaging of “sacrifice” which made him a partisan target (and climate change a collateral damage). This should be a dire warning to anyone who believes that you can sway public opinion just by presenting “solid facts.” It’s the frame, stupid!

Apparently Chai Jing entered the venture with an assumption that there had already been a strong consensus within the Chinese society about tackling air pollution, all she needs to do is to build on this consensus and give the country a little nudge towards action:

“Easily put, everybody wants to breathe clean air. No consensus is stronger in this society than this one. That’s the source of my confidence,” she told People’s Daily’s official website which arranged an exclusive interview with her PRIOR to the release of her documentary.

Even though it is probably too early to make a conclusive analysis of its impact, so far the public response to the documentary shows that the consensus is there, but with certain tensions that may threaten to tear it apart.

What becomes immediately very clear after the release of the show is the official backing it enjoys. And that constitutes a major component of Chai’s “consensus.” The fact that People’s Daily’s official website was one of the first on-line channels to distribute the documentary speaks to the unprecedented level of official support. Other social media channels run by the People’s Daily, such as Xiake Island (a WeChat account), also did not hold back their endorsement, proclaiming that the country’s decision makers should “get used to” this mode of agenda setting. The Global Times’ official Weibo account even criticized those who questioned Chai’s motives as “not genuinely patriotic.” Official endorsement of the documentary was so strong that some observers started to wonder about the true intention underneath. One of them ruminates openly about whether it is the top leadership’s strategy to claim an alternative source of legitimacy by attributing the slowing economy to a noble “war against pollution.”

If the authority’s support was unprecedented, the general public’s reaction was by no means surprising. Chai Jing is a household name in this country and the personal touch of her documentary only makes it more powerful and appealing. A browse of comments under her documentary on Tencent shows overwhelmingly positive reaction to her effort. Many commentators were deeply touched by her account of a personal journey from an indifferent citizen to a deeply concerned mother. A widely read post on Zhihu.com expressed another mother’s strong determination to follow Chai’s lead in taking personal actions to protect her own child. The CEO of one of China’s largest portal websites, Sohu.com, immediately heeded Chai’s call to refrain from driving cars for short-distance errands. And such a sense of agency is a refreshingly new element that she introduced to the public mentality.

Strong official endorsement plus wide public support, this is what assures us that an anti-smog consensus is still “sound”. But is it sound enough to carry tough, unpopular, drastic measures? The documentary actually helps us to run a “stress test” of this precious consensus and disturbing cracks did emerge.

If accusations of hypocrisy (that Chai Jing is a smoker) can be readily dismissed as cheap excuses to continue doing nothing about pollution, there are challenges which should be taken more seriously. Some reactions to the documentary suggest that air pollution may get caught in the entrenched fight between the “liberals (Chinese right)” and “conservatives (Chinese left)” in China’s net space due to Chai’s long time (perceived) affiliation with the former. This may have the effect of alienating or even agitating a still powerful faction in online opinion. For example, the Left’s major criticism of Chai is her advocacy of loosening up the monopoly of state-owned energy companies and allowing more competition so that cleaner energy sources could gain more ground. This triggered guarded reactions from those conservative Leftists who emphasize China’s energy security and state control. A more extreme reaction that got many nods today branded Chai Jing as an agent of a “sinister Green agenda” that intended to undermine China’s industrial strength. This illustrates the real possibility (albeit small at this moment) of an opposition to the entire environmental agenda based on ideology, which is different from the kind of interest-driven opposition from industries that might be affected (see the oil industry’s reaction to the documentary). In a country without partisan politics, how far an ideology-based, sweepingly anti-environmental opposition can go is something interesting to watch.

Class is another potent element that has the potential to rift the existing consensus. Some criticizes the documentary for “completely representing the perspective of an urban middle class,” for them “smog is an enemy that has nothing positive associated with it. But if you interview a steel worker, he may say ‘I would rather have this smog than losing my job.’” None of these oppositions at this moment shakes the consensus that air pollution is a problem. However, they might have a larger impact on how the society chooses to tackle it. Actually a debate is already happening around whether Chai’s documentary prescribes the right medicine to China’s smog problem, with coal industry representatives arguing that existing measures, if fully implemented, are sufficient to render the air breathable, and environmentalists arguing that Chai did not go far enough in advocating for renewables.

When Al Gore made An Inconvenient Truth, his biggest challenge was to overcome that self-denial which was paralyzing climate politics in the United States. Chai Jing faced a completely different public opinion landscape. And her challenge (and responsibility) is how to steer that consensus, which is at the same time strong and vulnerable.

Tiger-hunting, Season 2

mtj828 Propaganda and Media ,

The new administration of President Xi is known for being communications savvy. Previous social media stunts, including the “surprise visit” to a dumpling place in Beijing and the mysteriously viral animation introducing the Chinese political system, all mark an important departure from the Party’s rigid, hard-sell style of official communications.

But this week, the Central Disciplinary Committee makes people wonder if the administration went too far in the riddle-laden playfulness of its anti-corruption campaign, by releasing an article on its official website lambasting a corrupt Qing Dynasty prince regent who died more than a hundred years ago.

Ever since the President declared that the campaign would spare “no tigers or flies”, many have fallen prey of the anti-corruption apparatus. These include a former Politburo Standing Committee member, a deputy chairman of the Central Military Committee and former President Hu Jingtao’s chief of staff. All “big tigers.”

Observers have summarized the communications “ritual” of the “hunting” process after Zhou Yongkang’s downfall: first, government-controlled media release peripheral information, then they allow rumors to spread on social media without much hindrance, so that the public is fully psychologically prepared when the official news comes out. No surprise or wild speculations.

Such a sophisticated manner to “massage” the public psyche to avoid destabilizing speculations has won the President and his anti-corruption czar Wang Qishan (who was said to be a big fan of Netflix’s House of Cards) admiration for their abilities to have things under control. Therefore, it is no surprise that when the Feb 26 article appeared on-line, the public was automatically cued to ask: is the next tiger already within the hunter’s range?

Some immediately tried to decipher the code through the name of the accused prince regent. As he’s dubbed “Prince Regent Qing”, was this an allusion to someone who may also has that character in his name? Clever netizens were virtually giggling when they thought they had identified the alluded figure, former Politburo Standing Committee member Zeng QINGhong, who was said to be closely associated with the disgraced Zhou Yongkang. But phonetics seems to be too cheap a trick that the Committee could play. More learned commentators dug deeper into the article and summarized interesting facts about the Prince Regent: He was a prime minister, and a favorite of his boss (the country’s de-factor ruler, Empress Dowager Cixi); He deposited a considerable asset in foreign banks and even the Western media at that time considered it disgraceful; he was good at handling scandals, and was able to come out of big scandals bruiseless; He was keen in cultivating his patronage circles. These clues led netizens to believe that the article might be targeted at some other heavy-weights, say a former Prime Minister.

But could the enthusiastic observers be over-interpreting that article? There is at least some evidence that the article might be just part of a routine effort to educate the Chinese officialdom using historical anecdotes. For a moment, observers might have mistaken the author, a Mr. Xi Hua, for a pseudonym representing the President’s team. After all, hiding behind pseudonyms to attack political rivals has been a political tactic since as early as the Cultural Revolution. But a few mouse clicks reveals that Xi Hua is an actual person who just happens to share the same surname with the President. As a mid-level official who worked within the Party Disciplinary system, Xi Hua has a reputation for writing about corruption-related stories of the Ming and Qing dynasties, apparently using his leisure time. His talent has attracted high level recognition, which might be attributed for his article’s appearance on the Central Disciplinary Committee’s official website.

There are people who don’t buy that this is just another random educational article. “(Wang Qishan) never plays random. The fact that the Committee has released such an article means that Zeng has already been “locked on”. Now it’s time for some public opinion warming up.”

Official media determined to be elusive. Xiake Island, a Wechat account run by the International Edition of People’s Daily, published a “cute” article pretending that the editor was interviewing the Prince Regent face-to-face. In the interview, the Prince Regent defended himself against the accusations made by Mr. Xi Hua using somewhat flawed arguments. The intention of this interview? Nobody knows.

Finally there are those who are tired of the hunter’s game. “Wasn’t Prince Regent Qing’s accumulation of power and wealth the result of the Empress Dowager’s favoritism and the political system of that time? The relevance of his personal dispositions almost had nothing to do with it,” said one disillusioned commentator.

Another tried to come to term with the Committee’s riddle with an allegory, “The great writer Lu Xun once described the wickedness of a cat. After it caught a mouse, it did not devour it immediately but teased it until it exhausted to near death. And now it wants us to guess who the mouse is.”