When President Xi Jinping paid a New Year’s visit to China Central Television in February, the welcoming banner on the wall ignited a controversy that has roiled Chinese politics for weeks.
“Our family name is the Party,” the banner read, in a display of fealty that many Chinese felt was excessive. Mr Xi took things a step further, saying that China’s media “must love the party, protect the party and closely align themselves with the party leadership in thought, politics and action”.
On the surface there was nothing unusual about the event at the state broadcaster. Control of the media is one of the pillars of power for the Chinese Communist party. Even the masthead of the flagship People’s Daily bears the distinctive bold calligraphy of Mao Zedong, the former leader.
But what outsiders might take for a declaration of fact has opened new battle lines in modern China, where media workers do not necessarily see themselves as the foot soldiers of the party.
Since Mr Xi’s remarks, the rift between media and the regime has grown wider. Eruptions of protest have flared among public intellectuals, even from those who are solidly loyal.
At stake is a delicate compromise reached in the post-Mao reform period, where the press has carved out a carefully circumscribed niche for dissent. That space has given Beijing what one expert refers to as a “steam valve” — a way for public debate to be held without growing out of control.
“It’s quite evident that ideology is being rolled back,” says Qiao Mu, a professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University. “This change appears in the form of media control and intimidation of journalists. But fundamentally it’s the politics that is changing.”
Chinese property mogul Ren Zhiqiang, a politically liberal princeling with 37m followers online, was the first to openly challenge Mr Xi. “When does the people’s government become the party’s government? Does it spend the money from the party?” he wrote in a posting to his followers. He followed up with a second broadside: “When all the media has a surname and does not represent the people’s interests, the people will be abandoned and forgotten.”
The reaction was loud and immediate. Mr Ren was even threatened with expulsion from the party by a local committee. The threat was a departure from the procedures of Mr Xi’s anti-corruption campaign, and reminded some commentators uncomfortably of the cultural revolution, which began 50 years ago in May.
Then late last month a mysterious open letter, published online and purportedly signed by “loyal Communist party members”, called for the Chinese president to resign. There is no way of verifying the letter’s source or authenticity, but it has led to the detention of up to 20 people and added to the layers of conspiracy theory and intrigue.
The heavy-handed reaction to both cases made clear the insecurities of the regime. “Those were two highly symbolic events that challenged Xi’s ruling status,” says Xiao Qiang, an expert on Chinese media at the University of California at Berkeley.
Behind the thrust-and-parry lies an attempt to reverse the deeper shift that has pulled Chinese media away from the close embrace of the party.
“Since the beginning of the reform period there has always been a limited amount of wriggle room or space” for the press, says David Bandurski at the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project. “It’s almost been an unspoken rule during this period that there’s not a blanket control or banning of any sort of disagreement with the party leadership. There’s been some mechanism internally for airing grievances.”
Christopher Johnson, an expert on China’s leadership at the Centre for International and Strategic Studies in Washington, describes the pre-Xi attitude towards the media as “within the family: ie, within the party’s propaganda apparatus, we can debate policies and the media serve as a check or feedback mechanism on central diktats”.
Now things have changed, he says. “Now Xi is saying: ‘You don’t even get to debate it within the family any more.’ That’s the signal change, and that’s what they’re pushing back against.”
Chinese journalists often refer to the limited freedom they are given using the term “boyi” or board game. The metaphor says a lot about how they view their jobs. A board game has well-known rules, says Mr Bandurski, “but you still can make a strategic play, whether it’s to say something unpopular or make a criticism”.
“The question now is: is there any sort of chess game possible? Are there any moves left for public intellectuals and journalists?”
Since coming to power in 2012, Mr Xi has shrunk the already claustrophobic zone of press freedoms, and solidified government control over the media. Social media were some of the first casualties, with the closure or muzzling of thousands of accounts on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. New laws make it easier to censor foreign internet sites while an anti-corruption purge has created a climate of fear within the elite and a reluctance to challenge Mr Xi.
However, the crackdown is colliding with a society which has tasted openness, says Mr Xiao. Increased commercial pressures on the media and the internet, despite being heavily censored, have pushed the boundaries of party control. “[Xi] has been trying to reverse the trend that Chinese official media have more and more voices and that some media personnel are pushing for political reform beyond the party’s tolerance,” he says.
Chinese media have changed considerably from the days when all outlets essentially spoke with one voice. As state funding has dried up, they have had to attract readers with original scoops, sensational headlines and celebrity news. The speed and scale of the internet adds to the pressure.
Journalists have also changed. During the 1927-49 Chinese civil war reporters who worked for Communist papers were often party members who felt an obligation to exhort on its behalf. But the urge to report rather than propagandise had taken root by 1989, when journalists at Tiananmen Square joined student demonstrators under a banner that read: “We want to tell the truth!”
Many in China feel that muckraking media stabilise the Communist party, by reining in the worst abuses of power and providing a check on ill-advised policies. Even critical journalism rarely targets officials above the provincial level and tends to steer clear of sensitive subjects such as foreign policy.
“We can point out the problems, but we can’t talk about the systematic roots of the problems,” says one journalist. That means that while the media are not allowed to mention democracy, freedom or political reform, they can report on routine scandals, such as the recent news about expired or spoiled vaccines resold to hospitals and clinics. Major anniversaries of politically sensitive events like the cultural revolution have to be carefully balanced to avoid straying from the party’s official history.
More conservative elements believe that exposing any misdeeds calls into question the party’s right to rule. Leaked directives from the propaganda authorities, dubbed the “Ministry of Truth” or “Mini-True” by Chinese netizens conversant with George Orwell’s 1984, reveal a continual tension as censors try to calibrate the impact of what they have allowed to be published.
Under Mr Xi, the tendency has been to tighten control over media outlets that were gaining confidence as a force for policy change. Journalists in return have become increasingly demoralised.
“Asking media to be surnamed ‘the Party’ is the exact opposite of our self-image,” one journalist says. Many people in the media had accepted that their organisations operate under restrictions set by the state, but they maintained their own standards of journalism and professionalism.
It is not known who penned the letter that called for Mr Xi’s resignation in personal, almost threatening terms, or whether it was the work of instigators hoping to trigger an overreaction. The security forces’ response shows they view outspoken Chinese journalists as a threat. A columnist named Jia Jia was detained by police and released a week later. Wen Yunchao, a New York-based human rights campaigner, said last week that three of his family members had been detained by police in China. He denies any role in helping publish the letter. Siblings of respected journalist Chang Ping, now living in Germany, were also detained after he wrote a column condemning the crackdown.
Journalists say they feel more threatened than at any time since the response to the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. The media have grudgingly acceded to their new, even more supine role. “These were not strong voices of protest, they were more like whimpers,” Mr Bandurski says. “There was a distinct edge of desperation.”
Last week, Yu Shaolei, former editor of the culture section at the Southern Metropolis Daily in Guangzhou, posted on Weibo that he had resigned.
