其次,任志強並非唯一一個質疑媒體將党的利益置於人民利益之上的人。 「中國政策」諮詢公司的 David Kelly 告訴《金融時報》說,任志強代表了社會中一個對習近平製造矛盾、強力壓制的領導風格「受夠了的趨勢」, 他敢於站出來說話。 懲罰有著三千七百萬粉絲的任志強也許會嚇住一些人,但是會在很多與他想法一致的人當中激起怨恨。 三月四日,一些號稱共產黨員的人發表了一封公開信,要求習近平辭職,其中指出他對待媒體的方式以及鼓勵「個人崇拜」等。 不幾天後,由中國最有影響的記者之一掌管的《財新》雜誌的英文網站不同尋常地公開了它的一篇文章受到審查的經過。 這篇被刪文章引述的一名政協成員呼籲擴大言論自由度,允許對党的領導人提出中肯意見。
FEATURE: Amid Signs of Xi’s Weakness, Appeals for Detained Activists Get Results
This article was also published in the Diplomat on April 7, 2016.
by Sarah Cook
Falun Gong practitioners Yao Gaofu and Liang Xin with their daughter during better times. According to Amnesty International, the elderly couple was detained in December 2015 when police raided their home and found boxes of printed materials related to their persecuted spiritual practice. They face potential indictment and trial in the coming weeks. Credit:Minghui.
Given the prodigious resources and brutality that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) employs against those it sees as a threat to its rule, one might conclude that the regime’s opponents are destined to fail. But just as conditions appear especially bleak, a new round of regime criticism emerges, including from state-media journalists and the ranks of the party itself. The past month has been chock-full of such dynamics. One apparent by-product has been the release of detained party critics.
These moments offer vivid reminders that China’s censors, secret police, and even President Xi Jinping may not be as all-powerful as they appear in the face of dedicated activists, international outcries, and the CCP’s own internal interest groups.
Over the last six weeks, several individuals who had been detained for what they said, wrote, or believed were set free. Chen Taihe, a law professor, was released from “residential surveillance” in late February and allowed to travel to the United States to reunite with his family. Zhang Kai, a prominent lawyer who had assisted Christians opposing a government campaign to remove crosses, announced on social media on March 24 that he had returned home. Jia Jia, a journalist who disappeared on March 15 in connection with an anonymous letter calling for Xi Jinping’s resignation, resurfaced after 12 days. And four of the five Hong Kong booksellers who were mysteriously detained in late 2015—apparently in response to controversial and salacious books on top Chinese officials—were no longer in mainland police custody as of early April.
Granted, the outcomes of the cases include considerable ambiguity. These individuals should never have been detained in the first place, most are still not completely free, and some were forced to cooperate with the authorities—including through televised confessions—to earn their release. Nevertheless, it is clear that the situation would have been much worse absent domestic and international pressure on their behalf.
Moreover, their releases are consistent with a broader pattern. Freedom House research has found that despite an atmosphere of tight political controls and new arrests, Chinese leaders made more concessions to international and domestic pressure on media and internet freedom issues in 2015 than in any other year in recent memory.
In the coming days and weeks, indictments, trials, and verdicts are expected in a slew of other, less well-known cases involving freedom of expression. A Uighur mother is charged with “leaking state secrets” for speaking to Radio Free Asia about her son, who disappeared into police custody in 2009. An elderly Falun Gong couple in Henan could face years in prison after police found four printers and several boxes of materials related to their persecuted spiritual movement during a raid on their home. Four mainland activists face charges for voicing solidarity with Hong Kong’s 2014 prodemocracy protesters in online posts or offline banners. And a Tibetan entrepreneur who advocated for bilingual education and protection of Tibetan culture, including in microblog posts and interviews with foreign media, has been charged with inciting separatism. The outcome of investigations involving editors and technical staff at Wujie, a government-run website in Xinjiang that posted the anonymous letter urging Xi’s resignation, also remains to be seen.
The many journalists and insiders who have spoken out against censorship and CCP media controls in recent weeks could face reprisals as well. These include staff at the financial news magazine Caixin, which exposed censors’ deletion of an article; former Xinhua reporter Zhou Fang, whose open letter denouncing censorship went viral online; professor Jiang Hong, television anchor Bai Yansong, actor Zhang Guoli, and other delegates to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference who raised their concerns during the official advisory body’s annual meeting last month; and of course, popular real-estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang, whose deleted microblog account catalyzed some of the recent pushback against Xi.
For the moment, any planned punishment for these individuals’ ideological “transgressions” appears to have been put on hold. Some analysts have attributed the pause, especially in Ren’s case, to a recent article that offered a careful defense of the principle of loyal criticism of the government. The piece was published on the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the party’s anticorruption agency, which is led by close Xi ally and Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Qishan.
Even as intraparty politicking unfolds behind the scenes, well-timed diplomatic pressure, foreign news reporting, and grassroots campaigns could provide much-needed protection for these and other Chinese citizens at risk of punishment for exercising their right to free expression.
Despite the Chinese government’s refrain that it handles prosecutions “according to law,” the outcomes of free expression cases in China are inevitably based on a political cost-benefit analysis somewhere in the party’s political-legal hierarchy. At a time when Xi is facing increased internal challenges to his authority, even as he attempts to tighten the screws on criticism inside and outside the party, the powers that be may be more susceptible than in the past to external calls for leniency.
For the sake of these individuals, their families, and the broader battle for democracy and human rights in the world’s most populous nation, it’s certainly worth a try.
Photo caption: Falun Gong practitioners Yao Gaofu and Liang Xin with their daughter during better times. According to Amnesty International, the elderly couple was detained in December 2015 when police raided their home and found boxes of printed materials related to their persecuted spiritual practice. They face potential indictment and trial in the coming weeks. Credit: Minghui
Sarah Cook is a senior research analyst at Freedom House and director of the China Media Bulletin.
PRINT / NEW MEDIA: Xi’s restrictive media policy faces resistance from journalists and regime insiders
Since Chinese president and Communist Party chief Xi Jinping visited flagship state media in mid-February and announced a more heavy-handed approach to censorship and propaganda, several incidents have signaled a degree of resistance—among both journalists and political elites—to the new policy and to the generally tighter information controls of recent years. Many of the emerging acts of defiance or criticism appear to have been catalyzed by specific cases of censorship, including efforts to silence and punish real-estate mogul and social-media celebrity Ren Zhiqiang.
Last month, throughout the two-week annual meetings of the National People’s Congress (China’s rubber-stamp parliament) and the advisory Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a number of CPPCC delegates voiced concern about the closing space for free expression and called for greater media freedom. Among these were Jiang Hong (a professor from Shanghai), Bai Yansong (a popular China Central Television anchor), and Zhang Guoli (an actor and television producer). On March 8, the English-language website of Caixin, a prominent financial magazine, published an article revealing that an item relaying Jiang’s views had been forcibly censored. Although that article was also taken down by the next day, with would-be readers directed to an error message, the rare act of overt resistance drew international and domestic attention.
Over the following weeks, at least four journalists or writers published critical open letters or resignation announcements. On March 11, Zhou Fang, a former journalist at the official Xinhua news agency, published a letter addressed to the NPC that called for an investigation of officials involved in online censorship. The next day, two vice presidents of the China Writers’ Association branch in the Jiangsu Province city of Suzhou—Jing Ge and Ye Mi—publicly resigned, posting messages on their Sina Weibo microblog accounts that were seen as expressions of deep discontent with the state of party-controlled Chinese literature. On March 28, Yu Shaolei, editor of the cultural section of the Southern Metropolis Daily, posted a note online announcing his resignation and explaining that he was “unable to bear your surname,” a reference to Xi’s February demand that all media toe the party line; the post was quickly deleted. Although censors deleted many of the above posts as well, at least some of their content circulated widely online, drawing supportive comments from netizens.
Separately, on March 1, an article appeared on the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the Communist Party’s internal anticorruption arm, with the title “A Thousand Yes-Men Cannot Equal One Honest Adviser.” The piece, published under the pseudonym Lei Si, draws on a range of historical examples to argue that “the ability to air opinions freely and to accept suggestions frequently determined the rise or fall of an empire.” It essentially offers a clear but indirect rebuttal of efforts under Xi to suppress even policy-based criticism among party cadres. As of April 5, the article was still accessible on the commission’s site, indicating that it likely had approval from high-level officials, possibly including CCDI head and Xi ally Wang Qishan. Several China observers stressed the significance of the article, inferring that even those closest to Xi may be sending the message that he is going too far. Others speculated that the article was an indirect critique by Xi’s allies of propaganda chief Liu Yunshan, published on the CCDI website because it was outside Liu’s control. Indeed, some analysts argued that Xi’s February visits to state media may have been part of a bid to reduce Liu’s influence rather than a simple attempt to rein in independent journalism.
NEW MEDIA: Online letter urging Xi’s resignation prompts arrests, speculation on party infighting
On March 4, an open letter that was published online called for Xi Jinping to step down as president and Communist Party leader, citing his handling of the media and encouragement of a “personality cult,” among other reasons. The item, whose anonymous authors claimed to be loyal party cadres, was posted on several dissident websites outside China and circulated via e-mail. But it also made a rare appearance within the so-called Great Firewall on Wujie, a news website jointly owned by the Xinjiang regional government and private investors. The letter was shared briefly on social media in China before it was deleted, and related search terms like “Xi Jinping + resign” or “Xi + open letter” were blocked on the Sina Weibo microblogging platform.
Nevertheless, security services’ efforts to trace the letter’s authors and distribution network continued for weeks, inadvertently drawing more attention to the document and its English translation, especially outside China. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the Chinese authorities detained at least 20 people in connection with the letter, including 16 from Wujie and a related technology company. On March 15, security forces took freelance journalist Jia Jia into custody, apparently because he had alerted Wujie editors to the letter’s presence on their site. Subsequently, family members of two prominent regime critics—U.S.-based blogger Wen Yunchao and Germany-based journalist Chang Ping—were detained. In both cases, police tried to use the men’s relatives to pressure them to censor themselves or admit to involvement in the letter affair. Amnesty International’s William Nee pointed out that the abduction of whole families represented a new escalation in such collective-punishment tactics. Following extensive coverage of the three cases in international and overseas Chinese media, Jia Jia was released, as were Chang and Wen’s families, though staff from Wujie remained in custody as of April 1.
In recent weeks, there has been much speculation among China watchers about the origin and authorship of the letter, with some raising the possibility that it represented a plot by rival cadres to discredit Xi. However, knowledgeable observers have pointed out that the style of writing is not typical of cadres, raising the suspicion that it was a collaborative effort between domestic and overseas activists. To some extent, the letter’s authenticity is of secondary importance. Many in the elite are believed to share similar concerns about Xi’s leadership style, and the dissemination of such ideas on the opening day of the annual National People’s Congress session was an embarrassment for Xi, as was the fact that it was reposted inside China. A second anonymous letter by 171 purported party cadres, also demanding Xi’s resignation, circulated online on March 29.
PRINT / NEW MEDIA: Censorship highlights: ‘Two Sessions,’ dystopian Hong Kong film, Panama Papers
The past month was a particularly active one for China’s censors as they sought to control news on a number of high-profile topics—and tackled a major typo.
‘Two Sessions’: According to the California-based website China Digital Times, a leaked directive from the Central Propaganda Department relayed 21 instructions to journalists on how to cover the “Two Sessions”—the simultaneous annual gatherings of the National People’s Congress and the advisory Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Reporters were told to avoid certain topics (like smog, defense spending, and delegates’ personal wealth) while emphasizing others (such as evidence of steady economic growth or President Xi Jinping’s participation in the sessions). Reporting on Xi hit a snag, however, when an article by the official Xinhua news agency referred to him as China’s “last leader” rather than its “top leader,” a glaring error that some commentators saw as another hint of internal discontent with Xi’s performance. The text was quickly replaced, but not before it was picked up by the media in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Separately, over the following weeks, circumventing the Great Firewall became more difficult than usual, and other censorship directives ordered the deletion of stories on tainted vaccines and documentaries about Saudi Arabia and 2015 chemical explosions in Tianjin.
‘Ten Years’: On April 3, the Hong Kong Film Awards Association granted its prize for best picture to Ten Years, an independent film depicting a dystopian future for the territory under Beijing’s rule. Although Chinese regulators had already restricted television coverage of the ceremony because of the film’s nomination, its receipt of the top award prompted a more thorough news blackout. Reports on the ceremony by Xinhua news agency and leading online portals like Netease, Sina, and Sohu simply omitted mention of the movie and the Best Film prize, while Baidu search queries turned up just one (possibly accidental) result from a Taiwanese newspaper.
Panama Papers: On April 4, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published its first reports based on a treasure trove of leaked documents that it dubbed the “Panama Papers.” The documents, from a law firm based in Panama, provided insights into the world of tax havens and shell companies employed by rich individuals to hide their wealth. Among the people named in the initial batch of articles on the trove were eight current or former members of the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee—including Xi Jinping—whose relatives had taken advantage of the law firm’s services. Although some of the assets in question, including the holdings of Xi’s brother-in-law, had already been uncovered by news outlets like Bloomberg and the New York Times, the renewed attention to them triggered netizen discussion and corresponding censorship. According to the BBC, at least 481 conversation threads on Sina Weibo were deleted within 24 hours, while screenshots show blank results for “Panama Papers” queries on search engines. China Digital Times published a leaked directive instructing editors to delete related reports, warning that “if material from foreign media attacking China is found on any website, it will be dealt with severely.” FreeWeibo noted that “Panama” was one of the most censored terms on Sina Weibo on April 4, second only to “Ten Years.”
HONG KONG: Missing booksellers reappear, but questions remain
Some of the five Hong Kong booksellers who vanished into Chinese custody in late 2015 have reappeared in the territory, though they may not be free. Between October and December, the five men went missing from different locations and later resurfaced in mainland China, where they were apparently in some form of detention. All were connected with the Hong Kong publisher Might Current Media and its Causeway Bay bookstore, which are known for controversial books about top Chinese officials. The methods allegedly used to bring them into China—including suspected extraterritorial “renditions” from Thailand and Hong Kong—prompted significant concern and criticism among Hong Kong residents and foreign governments. In February, all five appeared on either Chinese television or Hong Kong–based Phoenix Television, confessing crimes or renouncing their foreign citizenship. Since early March, three of the five men have resurfaced and visited Hong Kong at least briefly, urging police to cancel their missing persons reports, purchasing baby supplies, and praising their treatment by Chinese security services. They then returned to the mainland, where some of them have family. Gui Minhai, a Mighty Current co-owner who was abducted from Thailand and remains in Chinese police custody, seems to be bearing the brunt of the authorities’ investigation into “illegal business” activities. Despite the other booksellers’ claims that they are free to travel across the border and requests to tone down concern over their plight, observers, friends, and relatives remain suspicious of their circumstances. Meanwhile, the bookstore has closed, former owner and alleged abductee Lee Bo has told reporters that he would “not publish books” again, and the case continues to have a chilling effect on free expression in Hong Kong, particularly in the book-publishing industry.
BEYOND CHINA: ‘Intranet’ fears, Trump on ’89 massacre, UN scolding, ZTE reshuffle
New legislation provokes fear of a Chinese ‘intranet’: On March 28, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) released new draft legislation that would require domain names accessible in China to register with the government. The draft law’s vague wording provoked fears that such a system could effectively function as a “whitelist,” blocking access to any unapproved foreign-hosted websites and dramatically increasing Chinese users’ already high degree of isolation from the global internet. The MIIT quickly rejected such worries, telling Reuters that there had been a “misunderstanding.” Several Chinese and foreign experts said that despite the unclear wording, they believed the law’s intention was to tighten regulation of websites hosted in China, not overseas, though this would still represent an intensification of existing internet controls. The proposed law is open for public comment until April 25. Another set of rules, restricting the terms under which foreign companies can operate websites inside China, came into effect on March 10.
In Geneva, China draws UN criticism, urges Dalai Lama boycott: During a session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last month, the deteriorating conditions for human rights activists in China garnered rare high-profile attention from diplomats. In his annual speech to the council on the global human rights situation, High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein expressed specific concerns about conditions in China, including in Tibet and Xinjiang. This was followed by a rare joint statement by nine European countries, the United States, Australia, and Japan that was delivered by U.S. ambassador Keith Harper. The statement condemned, among other violations, the crackdown on rights lawyers and the recent extraterritorial abductions of journalists, cartoonists, and booksellers. China’s ambassador, Fu Cong, responded with a scathing speech accusing the United States of hypocrisy and warning that Western countries’ “politicization” of the council would doom it to failure like its institutional predecessor. The following day, the Dalai Lama appeared on a panel about civil society at the Geneva Graduate Institute, moderated by the UN deputy high commissioner for human rights. The Chinese mission in Geneva had urged diplomats and UN officials to stay away, but large numbers reportedly attended anyway.
ZTE reshuffles management to stem U.S. sanctions: On April 5, Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE announced the replacement of three of its top managers, including its chief executive. The overhaul comes after the U.S. Commerce Department imposed restrictions on the sale of U.S. technology to the company last month because it was found to have deliberately violated rules on exports of American-made goods to Iran, North Korea, and other countries subject to trade sanctions. According to the Wall Street Journal, the reshuffle is part of an agreement with the Commerce Department to remove executives allegedly involved in the violations in exchange for temporary removal of the sanctions on the company.
Activists react to Tiananmen massacre references in U.S. presidential race: During a debate among Republican Party presidential candidates on March 10, the moderator posed a question to Donald Trump regarding previous comments he had made expressing admiration for the Chinese Communist Party’s brutal suppression of prodemocracy protesters in 1989. Although Trump responded that he was not endorsing such violence per se, he reiterated that it was the act of a “strong” government, while referring to the protests as “riots.” A wide range of Chinese activists, netizens, and lawyers reacted with shock and disappointment to Trump’s remarks. In one open letter, a coalition of 27 groups said they were “appalled” by the statement and demanded an apology from Trump, adding that with such views, “he is not fit to be the president of the United States.” They also expressed appreciation for candidate John Kasich’s unequivocal condemnation of the massacre and gratitude for long-standing support by two other candidates, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, for Chinese human rights activists. (Rubio has since dropped out of the race.) Separately, exile cartoonist Rebel Pepper marked the occasion by posting on Twitter a drawing of Donald Trump in a tank running over a protester and declaring, “This is the best thing we imported from China.”
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
Reprisals against activists and insiders: Watch for any punishment of critics or regime insiders who have challenged Xi Jinping’s media control policy in recent weeks, as well as for updates on trials, sentences, or releases of activists and religious believers referenced in this month’s feature article (see above).
Panama Papers fallout: As new China-related revelations emerge from the Panama Papers and their details are translated into Chinese, watch for a continued battle between censors seeking to stem their circulation and netizens eager to share or obtain them. Watch for a tightening of the Great Firewall as more users are motivated to circumvent blocks, and for how the allegations affect party infighting—particularly whether they weaken Xi or provide motivation for unity among competing CCP factions that are all implicated in the documents.
Revised version of domain-name legislation: Following the end of the public comment period on April 25, watch for the publication of revisions to the proposed “Internet Domain Name Management Rules” by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The revised version may clarify uncertainties in the current draft and hopefully narrow the scope of new restrictions on websites accessible in China.
FEATURE: Xi Jinping Tech Speech Signals Tougher Times for Foreign Firms
by Sarah Cook
This article was also published in The Diplomat on May 17, 2016.
When Chinese president and Communist Party chief Xi Jinping gave a speech on cybersecurity and information technology last month, international media noted that even as Xi called for greater tolerance of online criticism, censors were restricting Chinese internet users from posting negative comments about his remarks. However, foreign reporters overlooked other important points in the April 19 speech, including hints that the Chinese government will be intensifying its efforts to reduce foreign—and especially American—involvement in China’s IT sector.
In the early parts of his speech, Xi indeed urges officials to engage with citizens more frequently via the internet and to be “a bit more tolerant and patient” when doing so. But the remark is made in the context of calls to “strengthen governance in cyberspace” and enhance “internet supervision.”
Meanwhile, party officials continue to punish or silence critics of Xi and the central government, including dissenting party members. Less than two weeks after Xi’s address, it was reported that real-estate mogul and social-media commentator Ren Zhiqiang was being placed on probation for one year, an apparent reprisal for his online rebuttal of Xi’s hard-line February speech on media policy.
Instead, after the passing reference to greater tolerance, Xi dedicates much of the April 19 speech (14 paragraphs) to the need for China make quick “breakthroughs in core technology” and strengthen the presence of indigenous Chinese products in related fields. The term “core technology” is not clearly defined, but Xi says it includes “asymmetric” and “disruptive” technology. At one point, in a passage replete with military metaphors, Xi refers to certain American companies—Microsoft, Intel, Google, and Apple—as “backbone enterprises” with a “coordinated impact” that Chinese companies and state enterprises should strive to overtake by joining forces.
Xi does not call for foreign technologies and expertise to be completely shut out of China. In the final section of the speech, he notes in unusually candid fashion that China is suffering from a grave “brain drain,” and urges technology firms to build “talent structures” that can recruit experts from many countries and draw Chinese expatriates back home.
Nevertheless, the thrust of the speech matches a broader pattern in which Beijing has sought to exclude foreign companies and technology and promote Chinese alternatives, wherever and whenever it becomes feasible. The push for self-reliance seemed to gain urgency after Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations of American cyberespionage activity, but it is hardly new.
Analyst Bill Bishop noted this undercurrent in the speech, warning in his Sinocism newsletter that “US tech firms should be under no illusions that there has been any change in the long-term agenda to de-Americanize China’s IT stack.” Indeed, days before the address, Apple’s iBooks Store and iTunes Movies applications were shut down in China, only six months after they had been launched with government approval.
Shareholders and employees of global, and especially American, technology firms should take heed of Xi’s words. The speech indicates that U.S. technology companies are unlikely to make serious headway in the Chinese market under the current political leadership. Far from laying the groundwork for future expansion in China, acts like promoting Xi’s book of quotations, partnering with the Chinese government to improve surveillance capacity, or hiring former Chinese military engineers may simply make U.S. tech industry leaders appear foolish in light of Beijing’s stated goals. Such behavior also conveys a message of abandonment to Chinese internet users inside and outside the country who share Silicon Valley ideals of openness, free expression, creativity, and global communication.
Beyond the toll on foreign firms, internet users inside China are also clearly harmed by the kinds of restrictive, inward-looking policies their government is pursuing. They are unable to enjoy a range of convenient and cutting-edge international services, excluded from the global online community, denied privacy from the prying eyes of Chinese security agencies, and left without the benefits that might arise from real competition between Chinese and international companies. Over time, cutting off Chinese users, developers, and entrepreneurs from global tech giants like Apple could also harm the broader national economy.
Despite these potentially negative domestic implications, the speech is unlikely to generate the kind of internal backlash that followed Xi’s media policy speech in February. Instead, the backlash is more likely to come from abroad, as the space for foreign companies in China’s lucrative tech sector continues to shrink in the face of arbitrary regulation and website blocking.
Perhaps that is one reason why the English-language report on the speech by the official Xinhua news agency—which formed the basis of most initial foreign media coverage—downplayed these aspects of Xi’s remarks.
Sarah Cook is a Senior Research Analyst for East Asia at Freedom House and director of the China Media Bulletin.
NEW MEDIA:New blocks on foreign content as U.S. calls Chinese censorship a trade barrier
On March 31, U.S. officials for the first time included China’s internet filtering system on an annual list of trade impediments, according to an April 7 report by the New York Times. The entry in the National Trade Estimate Report, published by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, said that over the last year “outright blocking of websites appears to have worsened” and that such actions “posed a significant burden to foreign suppliers, hurting both Internet sites themselves and users who often depend on them for business.” It noted the arbitrariness of Chinese government decisions to block certain websites, citing a seemingly innocuous home-improvement site as one of many that had been “swept up by the Great Firewall.”
Despite the renewed attention to the negative implications of censorship for international trade, Chinese officials proceeded to block a series of foreign websites and online services over the following month. Beginning on April 2 and April 5, respectively, the English-language websites of the Economist and Time magazine were rendered inaccessible to users inside China, with the Economist’s WeChat app also reportedly suspended. In both cases, the catalyst appeared to be cover images that drew comparisons between Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong, with references to an emerging personality cult. A week later, Medium, a platform for sharing articles, was similarly blocked, perhaps due to the circulation on Chinese social media of content related to the Panama Papers, and the possibility that the platform could be used to share items from media outlets blocked in China. In another block that may be more significant for large numbers of Chinese users, Apple’s iBooks Store and iTunes Movie services became inaccessible in mid-April, just six months after being launched in China with government approval. A week later, DisneyLife, a streaming service for films and other material, offered in partnership with China’s Alibaba, went offline after only five months. The incidents represent real setbacks for two foreign companies that have had greater success in the Chinese market than most of their competitors.
NEW MEDIA:Internet regulation updates: New WeChat rules, online TV crackdown, Baidu ad scandal
Internal WeChat restrictions: On April 12, the messaging application WeChat alerted users to a new set of rules that would be implemented to control content on the platform. Users violating the rules could be subject to punishments including a permanent account ban. Some of the rules limit circulation of content that is often restricted on social media around the world, such as references to sexual abuse or posts meant to harass fellow users. Others seemed designed to protect WeChat’s own business, like a ban on linking to external games. However, a number of provisions, including those targeting “rumors,” open the door to a potentially significant uptick in censorship of political, social, and religious content. In recent years, WeChat has gained popularity among Chinese internet users, including intellectuals, activists, lawyers, and journalists, in part because its censorship is seen as less intense than on the microblogging service Sina Weibo. Monitoring the degree of censorship on WeChat is much more difficult than on Sina, however, because most WeChat communication is fragmented into small, private circles.
Reality TV and live online streaming: On April 14, state broadcaster China Central Television announced that all the major live-streaming platforms were under investigation by the Ministry of Culture. Authorities accuse the increasingly popular services of hosting too much content that is vulgar, violent, or likely to incite criminal activity. Three days later, the State Administration for Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television announced that children—and particularly children of celebrities—will henceforth be barred from participating in reality television shows. On April 19, Papi Jiang, a young woman who rose to become one of the country’s most popular web celebrities thanks to her three-minute comical video rants on a variety of topics, was ordered to take down most of her videos because of her use of foul language. She quickly posted an apology on her Sina Weibo account, which has 11 million followers, and promised to change her ways. Chinese internet users’ reactions to these measures were mixed. Some welcomed a possible reduction in vulgar language, cleavage, and spam advertising on video services and social-media platforms. Others expressed disappointment at the extensive restrictions on seemingly innocuous entertainment content, and puzzlement at the specificity of certain rules, like a ban on erotic eating of bananas, which could be circumvented if streamers simply “start eating cucumbers.”
Baidu medical ad scandal: The ethics of search-engine results became a hot topic in China after the death of a college student who sought out a questionable cancer treatment based on an advertisement that appeared on the search engine Baidu. Wei Zexi passed away on April 14 after his family spent 200,000 yuan ($30,700) on the ineffective treatment. His story went viral online and sparked netizen accusations that the company was placing profits ahead of user safety. Government regulators took action against the company on May 2, and following an investigation, Baidu committed to policy changes, including inspection of all medical information from advertisers and a new mechanism for compensating users for any misleading information. The firm also expressed remorse and removed 126 million advertisements and over 2,000 medical institutions found to be out of compliance. This isn’t the first time that netizens have criticized Baidu’s medical advertising practices. In January, tens of thousands of users pledged to boycott the company after learning that it sold the right to moderate medical discussion forums to unqualified individuals and businesses with a clear conflict of interest.
NEW MEDIA: Authorities and citizens clash over medical parole, state media defamation, and free expression
Allies pressure government on medical care for jailed activist Guo Feixiong: On April 26, the sister of Guo Feixiong, a prominent Guangdong activist serving a six-year prison sentence for speaking at a press freedom protest in 2013, visited Guo in prison. She reported that his health had severely deteriorated and that medical attention was not being provided. In response, a group of activists launched a relay hunger strike beginning on May 4. Each day, one person fasts for 24 hours with the goal of pressing the Chinese authorities to concede to two demands: 1) that Guo be released for medical treatment, and 2) that his medical records from before and during his detention be made public. According to Ai Wu, one of the activists involved in the campaign, as of May 6 at least 1,000 people had signed a corresponding petition calling for Guo’s release. The petition cites several prominent individuals inside and outside China as its sponsors, including blind activist Chen Guangcheng, rights advocate Hu Jia, online commentator Murong Xuecun, and journalist Xiao Shu.
Mainland activists jailed for solidarity with Hong Kong protesters: On April 8, roughly a year and a half after the outbreak of prodemocracy protests in Hong Kong, four activists in Guangdong Province were sentenced to prison for expressing support—via online posts or photos—for Hong Kongers’ demands for greater political freedom, according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders. Wang Mo, Xie Fengxia, Zhang Rongping, and Liang Qinhui were jailed for terms ranging from 18 months to four and a half years on the political charge of “inciting subversion of state power.” They had initially been charged with the lesser crime of “picking quarrels and provoking troubles.” On April 21, activist Su Changlan was put on trial, also in Guangdong, for similar online posts.
Mother of detained activist files—then rescinds—defamation suit against state media: In early April, the mother of detained labor rights activist Zeng Feiyang filed a lawsuit against the official Xinhua news agency over a December 2015 article that she claims defamed her son’s character and formed part of a coordinated smear campaign. The suit, which asks for removal of the article in question from Xinhua’s website, a public apology, and 1 million yuan ($150,000) in compensation, also named local police and the Guangzhou detention center where Zeng is being held as defendants. Zeng’s mother, Chen Wenying, told Quartz that after the news reports, even old friends and family started questioning Zeng’s morality and efforts to help workers. On May 1, however, the South China Morning Post reported that Chen had been forced to drop the suit due to pressure from court authorities and threats that her grandson’s employment would be harmed. The lawsuit and its dismissal are a particularly blatant example of the close collusion between China’s flagship state media and the Communist Party’s security apparatus.
Uighur sentenced to prison for watching film about Muslims: On May 9, Radio Free Asia reported that Eli Yasin, a Uighur man from Aksu prefecture in Xinjiang, had been sentenced to seven years in prison in February, apparently for watching a “politically sensitive” film about Muslim migration. The exact nature of the movie remains unclear, but the fact that Yasin and several relatives viewed it reportedly led some officials to believe that they were planning to go abroad and “wage jihad.” A security official from the family’s village who spoke to Radio Free Asia was skeptical of such conclusions, stating that “as a security chief, I am having a hard time explaining these charges to the people in my village.” Several of Yasin’s relatives were detained with him in May 2015 and may remain in custody. In recent years, Uighurs have been severely punished for producing or disseminating any information about Islam or Uighur history that departs from the Communist Party line, but this is one of the harshest documented punishments for merely consuming content deemed extremist by the Chinese authorities.
HONG KONG: Editor’s firing, museum closure add to press freedom concerns
A public opinion survey conducted last month by the University of Hong Kong found that residents’ satisfaction with the state of press freedom in the territory was at its lowest point since the 1997 handover to China, with one-third of respondents stating that they found the current situation unsatisfactory. The sudden April 20 firing of an editor at Ming Pao, a leading Chinese-language newspaper, further fueled such concerns.
Chief executive editor Keung Kwok-yuen was abruptly dismissed from his position in what management said was a cost-cutting measure. Journalists at the paper responded angrily and voiced suspicion that the decision was a reprisal for a front-page report the same day linking top Hong Kong businessmen and politicians to new revelations in the Panama Papers. On April 24 and 25, five columnists protested the firing by publishing blank articles in the paper’s print edition. On May 2, over 400 journalists and community activists held a street demonstration, during which the Hong Kong Journalists Association’s chairwoman read an open letter from eight journalist groups demanding Keung’s reinstatement.
The strong reaction to Keung’s firing may have been amplified by a series of news items in the week prior to his dismissal that reinforced fears of deteriorating freedom of expression in the territory. On April 14, Agence France-Presse reported that a museum commemorating the 1989 massacre of prodemocracy protesters in Beijing would be closing amid legal complaints from the building’s other tenants, which museum supporters said were politically motivated. Three days later, the South China Morning Post reported that a theater group dedicated to raising awareness about the 1989 events was receiving notably fewer requests for performances at schools compared with previous years, and expressed concerns that teachers were coming under pressure not to invite them. On April 15, the Post reported that the publisher of the first English-language account of Hong Kong’s 2014 Occupy Central prodemocracy protest movement had faced difficulties finding a printer. It noted that two companies turned down the job due to the subject matter, and a third agreed to print the book on condition of anonymity. The latter incident reflects a broader chilling effect in the territory’s publishing sector since the suspicious 2015 detention in China of five Hong Kong booksellers whose products were critical of or embarrassing to Communist Party leaders.
BEYOND CHINA: Twitter hire, India visas, S. Korea dance show, U.S. counterpropaganda bill
Twitter hires ex-military engineer to lead Greater China outreach: On April 14, Twitter announced that it had hired Kathy Chen as its managing director for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The popular microblogging platform is blocked in China but has emerged as an important avenue for sharing uncensored information among tens of thousands of Chinese who are able to circumvent the so-called Great Firewall. Chen’s appointment quickly stirred controversy among Chinese activists and international observers. Many pointed to her past work as an engineer in the People’s Liberation Army and with technology companies that have links to the public security apparatus, arguing that she may be a member of the Chinese Communist Party who was hired mainly for her government connections. Adding to concerns that her work at Twitter might support the party’s propaganda and censorship policies, some of her first tweets called for cooperation with state media outlets. In one such message, she echoed language used by President Xi Jinping, writing, “let’s work together to tell great China story to the world!” Until the day she assumed her post, Chen had not been active on Twitter. The company defended the decision to hire her, but an article in the nationalistic state-run newspaper Global Times also came to her defense, which didn’t help her case in the eyes of skeptics.
Uighur, Chinese activists denied entry to India: At the end of April, a network of Chinese, Tibetan, and Uighur representatives participated in an interethnic, interfaith conference in Dharamsala, India, organized by the Washington, DC–based prodemocracy group Initiatives for China. This was the first time the annual meeting had been held outside the United States or Taiwan. While dozens of individuals from around the world participated, at least three Uighur and Chinese activists were denied entry into India, fueling fears that they had been barred because of Chinese government pressure. Dolkun Isa, a leader of the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress; Lu Jinghua, a U.S.-based dissident; and Ray Wong, a former student leader in Hong Kong, reported having their visas denied or revoked. Indian authorities claimed that their paperwork had been incomplete, but the last-minute change in Isa’s case and past instances of individuals encountering travel blocks led the three to believe that they had been refused entry as a result of pressure, or at least misinformation, by the Chinese government.
Dance performance canceled in South Korea after Chinese embassy pressure: On May 4, a court in Seoul issued a last-minute ruling canceling a series of classical Chinese dance and music shows by Shen Yun Performing Arts at KBS Hall. The ruling explicitly cited threats by the Chinese embassy aimed at the theater owner. The New York–based performance group says its mission is to revive China’s five-millennia-old traditional culture, much of which has been destroyed under Communist rule. Along with dances portraying scenes from the imperial past or literary classics, some of the pieces depict the story of Falun Gong persecution in modern China or attacks on Buddhist temples during the Cultural Revolution. Such themes have put Shen Yun on the Chinese Communist Party’s target list, prompting more than 60 attempts by Chinese officials to obstruct the show worldwide in recent years. While the pressure sometimes leads to cancelations, this month’s incident in South Korea stood out in at least two respects. First, the same court that issued the cancelation order had ruled in favor of the performance going forward just two weeks earlier, raising questions about what additional pressure may have been applied by Chinese or Korean officials in the interim. Second, the court’s rationale cited the potential financial losses that the Korean Broadcasting System—the owner of KBS Hall—could incur if Beijing retaliated by obstructing its access to the Chinese market, where the firm’s television dramas are popular. The judge argued that such losses would far outweigh the compensation the firm might need to pay Shen Yun for lost ticket sales, setting a dangerous precedent in which potential earnings from content broadcast inside China are explicitly used to justify restrictions on free expression outside China.
Counterpropaganda bill introduced in U.S. Senate: On March 16, a bill titled the Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016 was introduced in the U.S. Senate and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. Sponsored by Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, and Senator Christopher Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, the bill notes that foreign governments—including those of China and Russia—use disinformation and propaganda to undermine the national security interests of the United States and its allies. The measure calls for the establishment of a Center for Information Analysis and Response to coordinate research on foreign governments’ “information warfare” efforts and develop a whole-of-government American response. The center would be funded by an initial appropriation of $20 million, which would also support research by outside think tanks, academic institutions, and nongovernmental organizations in the United States and abroad. Claire Chu of the Washington, DC–based think tank Project 2049 writes in the National Interest that although the U.S. Congress has a long history of countering Russian propaganda, this is “the first time Congress has introduced policy measures to directly address the threat of China’s aggressive comprehensive information operations doctrine.”
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
Real-world impact of Xi speech, U.S. trade barrier designation: Following the U.S. trade representative’s identification of Chinese internet censorship as a trade barrier on March 31, watch for any practical implications of this designation, including more robust U.S. efforts to challenge the arbitrary blocking of American websites and technology services. Also watch for additional restrictions on U.S. tech companies operating in China following Xi Jinping’s April 19 speech.
Increased WeChat censorship: Following the popular social-media service’s April 12 announcement of new rules governing content, watch for anecdotal reports of an increase in censorship and deleted posts, including on previously tolerated social, political, or religious topics.
Effect of foreign NGO law on journalism, free expression: On April 28, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee passed a law on Management of Foreign Non-Governmental Organizations’ Activities within Mainland China. The new legislation was widely criticized for its likely impact on both foreign and Chinese civil society groups and the interaction between them. Although most of its provisions do not directly relate to free expression, some elements could damage media and internet freedom through restrictions on foreign trainings for Chinese journalists, limitations affecting NGO websites, punishments for disseminating content deemed “politically sensitive,” and monitoring by public security agencies that entails technical surveillance. Watch for new restrictions of this kind and any broader chilling effect, on both civil society in China and Hong Kong–based groups that are active on the mainland.
美国分析人士 Bill Bishop注意到了习近平讲话中的这个暗流，并在他的中国新闻简报Sinocism中警告说，“长期来看，中国的目的是在中国信息科技行业去美国化，美国科技公司对此不应该报任何幻想。” 的确，在这个讲话前几天，苹果的书店和电影两个应用都被关闭，而这两个应用六个月前才在获得中国政府许可后登场。
虽然人们开始再次注意审查对国际贸易的负面影响，但是中国官员在接下来的一个月里继续封锁了一系列外国网站和网上服务。4月2日和5日，英语网站《经济学人》和《时代》杂志分别被封锁，《经济学人》的微信应用据说也被封了。这两个新闻网站被封，看来都源于他们的封面图片将习近平和毛泽东加以比较，指出越来越显著的习近平个人崇拜现象。一星期后，一个用于分享文章的平台Medium也被封锁，原因可能是在中国社交媒体上传播有关巴拿马文件的内容，以及这个平台可以被用于分享被中国封锁的外媒上的内容。4月中，苹果的网上书店网站iBooks Store 和网上电影网站iTunes Movie也被封，尽管这两个服务六个月前才在中国获准上市。这两个服务被封影响到大量中国用户。一个星期后，一个与中国的阿里巴巴公司合作推出的网络电影和其它内容网站DisneyLife才运作了五个月后就被下线。这些事件对这两个外国公司来说都是较大的打击，而它们之前比大多数竞争者都在中国享有更大的市场准入。
美國分析人士 Bill Bishop注意到了習近平講話中的這個暗流，並在他的中國新聞簡報Sinocism中警告說，“長期來看，中國的目的是在中國資訊科技行業去美國化，美國科技公司對此不應該報任何幻想。” 的確，在這個講話前幾天，蘋果的書店和電影兩個應用都被關閉，而這兩個應用六個月前才在獲得中國政府許可後登場。
雖然人們開始再次注意審查對國際貿易的負面影響，但是中國官員在接下來的一個月裡繼續封鎖了一系列外國網站和網上服務。4月2日和5日，英語網站《經濟學人》和《時代》雜誌分別被封鎖，《經濟學人》的微信應用據說也被封了。這兩個新聞網站被封，看來都源於他們的封面圖片將習近平和毛澤東加以比較，指出越來越顯著的習近平個人崇拜現象。一星期後，一個用於分享文章的平臺Medium也被封鎖，原因可能是在中國社交媒體上傳播有關巴拿馬檔的內容，以及這個平臺可以被用於分享被中國封鎖的外媒上的內容。4月中，蘋果的網上書店網站iBooks Store 和網上電影網站iTunes Movie也被封，儘管這兩個服務六個月前才在中國獲准上市。這兩個服務被封影響到大量中國用戶。一個星期後，一個與中國的阿裡巴巴公司合作推出的網路電影和其它內容網站DisneyLife才運作了五個月後就被下線。這些事件對這兩個外國公司來說都是較大的打擊，而它們之前比大多數競爭者都在中國享有更大的市場准入。
FEATURE: China’s Latest Crackdown: A New Chapter in a Larger Assault on Dissent
by Sarah Cook
This article was also published in The Diplomat on September 7, 2016.
For over a year, the Chinese government led by President Xi Jinping has pursued an aggressive campaign against human rights lawyers, their assistants, and the larger “rights defense movement” they represent. The effort came to a head last month with the conviction of four lawyers and activists after farcical trials, a new round of demonizing propaganda, and apparently coerced media interviews by two prominent female detainees. Some international news outlets, rights groups, and scholars have characterized the campaign as the “harshest crackdown on human rights and civil society in decades.” But, as dismaying as the assault is for these activists, their families, and the cause of free expression and rule of law in China, such labeling is inaccurate, or at the very least misleading.
The crackdown on legal activists is disturbing and highlights the expansion of repression to new targets under Xi, but focusing on the Communist party’s latest victims has the effect of erasing critical context. The scale and severity of this assault pales in comparison to the party’s campaigns of persecution against millions of religious believers and ethnic minorities over the past 20 years. To overlook this vast population of existing targets is to distort the nature of repression and dissent in China today. Ironically, such skewed analysis also risks inadvertently reinforcing the very censorship and impunity surrounding these groups that the human rights lawyers have sacrificed so much to combat.
Differences in scale
Since July 2015, the starting point of the latest crackdown, over 300 lawyers and activists have been swept into police custody. Most were subsequently released following varying periods of detention, abuse, and interrogation. Disturbingly, 19 remained in custody a year later, including 15 who faced serious politically motivated charges of “subversion” or “inciting subversion.” It is in this context that prominent attorney Zhou Shifeng and activist Hu Shigen were sentenced to seven and seven and a half years in prison, respectively, in early August. The impact of their punishment reaches far beyond the legal community, generating negative ramifications for their clients and the broader cause of freedom in China.
Still, even 300-plus detentions pale in comparison to the number of people abducted and imprisoned in the CCP’s campaigns against Uighurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and Christians.
The scale of the repressive forces deployed against Falun Gong is itself mind-boggling. In 1999, when Jiang Zemin initiated the party’s project to eradicate the spiritual and meditation practice, its followers numbered at least 70 million, according to the government, international media, and the group’s own estimates. Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been sent to labor camps, prisons, and extralegal detention centers for practicing Falun Gong or advocating on its behalf.
Even today, Falun Gong adherents make up a significant proportion of prisoners of conscience in China. Recent Freedom House analysis of Chinese court documents found over 800 cases of Falun Gong practitioners sentenced to prison since January 2014. In the first half of 2016 alone, 59 people around the country were sentenced for Falun Gong–related activities, according to available published verdicts. Notably, all of them were punished for exercising their right to free expression—for example, by disseminating leaflets or DVDs about Falun Gong, human rights abuses, or the CCP’s broader history of persecution against Chinese people—highlighting the close connection between religious persecution and restrictions on dissent.
In Tibet, after a series of predominantly peaceful antigovernment protests across the plateau in 2008, thousands of Tibetans—including many monks—were detained and over 100 were sentenced to prison. More recently, even in years without widespread unrest, large-scale arrests have continued to take place. A May 2016 Human Rights Watch report analyzed 479 cases of Tibetans detained between 2013 and 2015 for political offenses. The vast majority were taken into custody for peaceful acts of dissent, online or in the streets. One-third were subsequently prosecuted, with some sentenced to prison for up to 13 years.
In the case of Uighurs, precise statistics on suppression of clearly nonviolent dissent are harder to isolate. But given the Chinese government’s use of charges like “terrorism” or “separatism” in prominent cases involving peaceful critiques of government policies, it seems reasonable to conclude that many of the 592 Uighurs tried on security charges in 2013–14 (according to government sources cited by the Duihua Foundation) were not committing violent acts of terrorism. Moreover, some 12,000 trials were held in Xinjiang during those two years for individuals accused of social order offenses that are often used to punish individuals who disseminate banned information, participate in peaceful protests, or challenge government bans on religious observance. And at least some of the thousands of young men who were forcibly disappeared by security forces after interethnic riots broke out in Xinjiang in 2009 remain missing today.
Display honoring the memory of Tibetan lama Tenzin Delek Rinpoche. The respected religious leader died in Chinese custody in July 2015 when serving a life sentence on trumped up charges, one of numerous Tibetans, Uighurs, Falun Gong practitioners, and Christians to have died due to official abuse over the past two years. Credit: France-Tibet.
Differences in severity
The detained lawyers have evidently suffered abuse in custody. It is otherwise difficult to explain the change in attitude toward their work after their arrest and in subsequent media interviews. Thankfully, however, no lawyer has yet died in custody or in the wake of such abuse.
By contrast, well-documented cases of religious or ethnic minority activists dying due to mistreatment in custody or the use of excessive force by security officers come to light each year. A prominent Tibetan lama died in prison under mysterious circumstances in July 2015. A 45-year-old Falun Gong practitioner was killed by police within 10 days of being detained in April 2016. That same month, the wife of a Christian pastor was buried alive by a bulldozer while trying to block the demolition of a church. These are only a few examples of the many deaths over the past two years.
Familiar propaganda and pressure tactics
One of the most striking and worrisome aspects of the crackdown on lawyers has been the extraordinary tactics employed to discredit them and pressure them to renounce their own activism: smear campaigns in state media, flashy infographics, framing as puppets of “hostile foreign forces,” forced confessions or denunciations in media interviews, and reprisals against targets’ families. The broad deployment of such tactics against human rights lawyers is certainly new. But their use by the Chinese government against perceived dissidents is not.
The launch of the anti–Falun Gong campaign in 1999 was accompanied by media blitzes demonizing the group, fabricated allegations against adherents and the discipline’s founder, televised show trials, and videos of detained practitioners renouncing their beliefs.
More recently, collective punishment tactics have appeared in Tibetan areas, with families or even whole villages facing economic reprisals when a self-immolation or an antigovernment protest occurs in their midst. The siblings and children of expatriate Uighur activists and journalists have been detained and imprisoned. And a common government narrative, particularly regarding Tibet and Xinjiang, blames overseas activists or religious leaders for inciting unrest within China’s borders.
Persecution in perspective
The Chinese government’s latest crackdown on human rights lawyers, journalists, and civil society leaders is heartrending, troubling, and one of the most important developments in Chinese politics over the past year. But placing it in the proper context of the party’s overall assault on a wide range of dissent—including the religious variety—is critical if the world is to make sense of what is happening in China and avoid playing into the CCP’s divide-and-conquer strategy.
Having courageously represented victims of religious persecution, the detained lawyers understand better than anyone the horrors these communities have suffered and their significance for Chinese society. The causes and consequences of the attorneys’ own treatment cannot be fully appreciated without a clear understanding of the abuses they are being jailed for resisting. And such campaigns cannot be stopped without international recognition of the diverse segments of civil society who are sacrificing to make China a freer and more just country for future generations.
Sarah Cook is a senior research analyst for East Asia at Freedom House, director of its China Media Bulletin, and author of an upcoming report on religious persecution and dissent in China.
PRINT / BROADCAST MEDIA: Rights defense activists sentenced, ‘confess’ to China and Hong Kong media
Over 300 rights defense lawyers and activists were detained on and around July 9, 2015. One year later, 19 remained in custody, with the majority facing political charges of “subversion” or “inciting subversion,” including several connected to the Beijing Fengrui Law Firm, the focus of last year’s crackdown. Fengrui director Zhou Shifeng and three other activists were tried and sentenced in Tianjin during the first week of August. All four pleaded guilty, though outside observers believe they were coerced. Portions of their confessions in court were broadcast on state television, but some segments, including statements praising China’s legal system that may have included an undercurrent of sarcasm, were removed from published transcripts.
Alongside Chinese state media coverage, some of the most prominent “709” detainees have given confession-style interviews to Hong Kong broadcasters and newspapers. Coming just months after four of five detained Hong Kong booksellers “confessed” on Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV, the trend highlights Beijing’s increased influence on media outlets in the special autonomous region. Hong Kong’s English-language South China Morning Post published an interview with female legal assistant Zhao Wei on July 11 in which she told the paper that she “regretted her civil rights activism” and “truly wanted to repent.” The Post was acquired by the mainland internet mogul Jack Ma in April.
On August 1, Wang Yu, a female attorney connected to Fengrui, gave an “exclusive” interview to another Hong Kong paper, the Oriental Daily. She condemned “Western values and notions of democracy” and the rights defense work on which she had built her career, and stated that she “won’t acknowledge, won’t recognize, and won’t accept” an international human rights award. (Wang was recently honored by both the International Association of Lawyers and the American Bar Association.) Wang also appeared on Phoenix TV, where she blamed “foreign forces” for using Fengrui to undermine the Chinese government. After the Oriental Daily interview was published, intellectual Mo Zhixu announced on Twitter that he would stop contributing articles to the paper, explaining, “Their article supports the party-state, acting as a tool.” Reinforcing suspicions that the media denunciations were coerced, Zhang Kai, a human rights lawyer who had made comments critical of the lawyers and activists sentenced in early August during media interviews, including with Phoenix TV, later issued a statement withdrawing his remarks and saying he had made them against his will.
Other propaganda initiatives have sought to bolster the Chinese government’s case against the “709” lawyers. During the trials in Tianjin at the beginning of August, Beijing Dujia Media released a video montage warning that activists in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the mainland have received financial backing from the United States to start “color revolutions” in China. Lei Xiying, a doctoral candidate at Australia National University, spearheaded the project. He told Australia’s Fairfax Media that the “709” detainees had infuriated ordinary Chinese people. “The trials exposed them receiving training from overseas forces, accepting funds from foreign forces, and maliciously spreading rumours,” he said. The Chinese Supreme People’s Court shared the video, which was viewed over 10 million times within 24 hours of its release.
NEW MEDIA: Netizens react to Rio Olympics
Throughout the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro last month, stories of individual Chinese athletes’ struggles dominated social media in China. As Britain surpassed China in the medal count, a leaked propaganda directive instructed the media to report less on the “miseries” of athletes and more on their “patriotic spirit.” Some netizens shared the state’s disappointment, though many others argued that the public should appreciate the work and sacrifice that brought these athletes to Rio in the first place. The stories of two athletes in particular captured the attention of Chinese netizens:
● ‘Drug cheat’ fallout: Within days of the Olympics’ opening, Australian swimmer Mack Horton said of his Chinese rival Sun Yang that he had “no time or respect for drug cheats,” alluding to Sun’s three-month suspension in 2014 after he tested positive for a banned substance. (Sun claims the substance was contained in his heart medication.) Horton went on to win gold in the 400-meter freestyle, and Sun wept in front of the cameras. Chinese netizens demanded an apology. The “little pinks” (小粉红), a grassroots group of young, mostly female, nationalistic netizens circumvented the Great Firewall to bombard Horton’s social media accounts with denunciations. Horton’s staff soon turned off the comment functions on his accounts and began deleting the hundreds of thousands of messages. Chinese state media chimed in as well. The Global Times called Australia “a country at the fringes of civilization” and “Britain’s offshore prison.”
● Fu Yuanhui’s primordial power: An emotive, honest female swimmer soon washed away sore feelings and took the Chinese internet by storm. Fu Yuanhui’s exuberant facial expressions and turns of phrase went viral. The attention started with a poolside China Central Television (CCTV) interview, in which Fu credited her “primordial power” (洪荒之力) with qualifying her for the finals in 100-meter backstroke. She was soon dubbed “primordial girl” by Chinese netizens, and memes of her choicest looks and quotes spread online. She continued to make waves in subsequent CCTV interviews. After the final, she didn’t realize until halfway through the post-race interview that she had won bronze. When the reporter let her know she had won, she beamed, saying she was glad she had persevered. By this point, Fu already had international admirers, but it was a later defeat that truly resonated around the world. Her team failed to qualify in the 4x100 relay, and she was dejected—and doubled over—during the interview following the race. “It looks like your stomach really hurts right now,” the reporter said. “Yeah,” Fu replied, “because my period started last night.” Fu’s frankness thrilled female viewers in China, who started an online conversation about tampons, and smashed a taboo on the subject for female athletes worldwide. Fu’s politics, though, are not quite so liberal. On August 25, she went to Beijing’s Great Hall of the People as part of an Olympic delegation and shook hands with President Xi Jinping. “I won’t wash my hands,” she told her seven million followers on the Sina Weibo microblogging platform.
NEW MEDIA: Censorship updates: News restrictions, liberal party journal closure, ‘Xi’ beetle
New rules clamp down on online news: The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued a number of rules for news websites in July and August, following the abrupt replacement of CAC head Lu Wei by Xu Lin at the end of June. On July 3, the CAC announced that online media cannot publish news gathered from social media without approval, as part of an ongoing campaign against the spread of “rumors” online. Major internet companies soon faced greater restrictions on producing independent content, after a July 9 typo at Tencent turned the headline “Xi Jinping Delivers Important Speech” into one implying that Xi had “flipped out” when doing so, a difference of only one Chinese character (习近平发飚重要讲话). The gaffe was not just an embarrassment, but proof that Tencent staff had not copied the headline from state media as they were supposed to. The editor in chief of Tencent news was fired. The CAC announced on July 24 that Tencent, along with Sina, NetEase, and Phoenix, had “seriously violated laws and regulations” and would be fined for producing their own news content. Several weeks later, the CAC further stated that the editors in chief of news portals and media sites would be held responsible for the proper management of content, and that websites would be required to implement round-the-clock monitoring of content to guarantee conformity with laws and regulations. While many of the new rules simply reinforced policies dating to the presidency of Hu Jintao, the China Media Project’s David Bandurski argued that they were “part of a far more serious push to strengthen Party control across media platforms” and reflected an effort to impose control not only on information but also on innovative ways of relaying it. During July and August, several inventive features on privately owned internet portals that served to aggregate or explain news were shut down. The latest restrictions echo Xi’s comments on news control and internet management in February and April.
Dissolution of liberal journal ‘Yanhuang Chunqiu’: After several years of struggle to maintain its editorial integrity, Yanhuang Chunqiu was effectively taken over by its parent organization, the Chinese National Academy of Arts, in July. The journal, founded in 1991, had tackled politically sensitive topics including alternative versions of history and calls for constitutional reforms, protected in part by support from some retired Communist Party officials. Longtime publisher and party member Du Daozheng and other key staff were displaced by the National Academy. In mid-July, academy staff camped out in the Yanhuang Chunqiu offices and changed the passwords for the journal’s website. The old guard did not easily concede control, however. Led by Du, former staff issued a statement on July 17 condemning the academy for violating its contract with Yanhuang Chunqiu and announcing the dissolution of the journal. The former staff tried to sue, but in August a Beijing court rejected the case. Yanhuang Chunqiu’s takeover and ultimate dissolution occurred after years of pressure on this unusually moderate voice among magazines published by Communist Party cadres. Du attempted to hand over leadership in 2014 to Hu Deping, the son of the late reformist Hu Yaobang, whose death in April 1989 sparked prodemocracy protests in Tiananmen Square. However, bureaucratic entanglements kept Hu from taking the post, and Du, 93, stayed on until his recent dismissal. He told the New York Times that the academy’s takeover “resembles methods used in the Cultural Revolution.”
Censorship directive highlights: Official directives on coverage of a range of news stories were leaked in July and August. One emerged after Wang Chengbin, a professor at the Czech University of Life Sciences, discovered a species of beetle in Hainan and named it Rhyzodiastes (Temoana) xii—the “xii” at the end being a nod to Xi Jinping. A leaked July 11 directive demanded the deletion of the article “Entomologists Report: Scholars Use ‘Daddy Xi’ to Name a New Type of Beetle.” State media have been using the nickname “Daddy Xi” for several years, but it is now being downplayed. The Chinese translation of the beetle’s scientific name and several unflattering nicknames for Xi were also blocked from search results on social media. Another directive sought to suppress unsanctioned nationalist protests. After the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled against China on a territorial dispute in the South China Sea, Chinese citizens boycotted the U.S. companies KFC and Apple. (While the Philippines was the plaintiff, many in China believed the United States to be working behind the scenes.) A July 18 directive ordered media and internet companies not to “hype or spread information related to illegal rallies and demonstrations.” A few weeks later, thousands of residents of Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province, demonstrated in the streets after learning that a nuclear waste processing plant was slated for construction nearby. The local government later promised to suspend the project. A directive leaked on August 11 instructed websites to delete a Sohu article suggesting that the supposed suspension could be a “perfunctory tactic to manage public opinion pressure.” A leaked notice circulated on WeChat also revealed that Lianyungang port workers were being pressured to pledge not to participate in protests. Similar pledges were imposed on government employees in Kunming following environmental protests there in May 2013.
HONG KONG: Student leaders avoid jail, opposition gains seats despite restrictions
On July 21, a Hong Kong court found three student leaders guilty for their roles in the Umbrella Movement, a series of protests demanding electoral reform in which participants occupied sections of the city for 79 days during the fall of 2014. All three avoided jail time, however. Joshua Wong, the founder of the student activist group Scholarism, and former Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS) leader Alex Chow were both found guilty of illegally entering a restricted area outside the city government headquarters on September 26, 2014. That action marked the start of citywide demonstrations; protesters used umbrellas to protect themselves from police pepper spray several days later, giving the movement its name. Wong was sentenced to 80 hours of community service. Chow was given a three-week suspended jail sentence, allowing him to proceed with his plans to study abroad. Nathan Law, also formerly of the HKFS, was found guilty of inciting others to take part in the storming of the government building’s plaza. Law was sentenced to 120 hours of community service. Although all three were spared jail time, international human rights groups criticized the convictions as infringements on freedom of expression and assembly. Had Law been given a prison sentence, he would have been ineligible to run in the September 5 Legislative Council elections. Law is president of Demosistō, the prodemocracy political party that grew out of Scholarism, and of which Wong is secretary general.
Demosistō “aims to achieve democratic self-determination” for Hong Kong, but does not directly call for independence from China. In July, the Hong Kong Electoral Commission had said that all candidates would be required to sign a pledge to uphold the Basic Law, the city’s equivalent of a constitution, which declares Hong Kong an “inalienable part of China.” Six candidates from explicitly pro-independence parties were later barred from running. Anonymous sources told Reuters that the commission acted under pressure from Beijing. “They laid down a direct order, that this pro-independence movement must be purged,” one source said.
Some pro-independence candidates creatively omitted certain terms from their campaign materials, fearing their inclusion would hamper distribution by the post office. Chan Chak-to, a candidate for Kowloon East, said a section of his leaflet read “My political belief is ---,” while criticizing the Electoral Commission for “suppressing freedom of speech and exercising political censorship.” He told the South China Morning Post that he had prepared other leaflets to give to voters on the street, more explicitly stating that “Independence is the only way for HongKongers to have a say over Hong Kong.”
The ultimate results of the elections suggest that the Hong Kong and Beijing governments’ heavy-handed efforts to suppress political competition and debate backfired. Several candidates supporting independence or self-determination, including Nathan Law, won seats in the new legislature, while the prodemocracy opposition camp as a whole increased its share of seats and retained enough votes to block various types of legislation.
BEYOND CHINA: UK-China media partnership, K-Pop reprisals, Australian Mao concert, Hollywood struggles
‘Daily Mail’ and ‘People’s Daily’ partnership draws scrutiny: On August 12, the Daily Mail Online’s Australian website ran an article accompanied by a message that it was “produced in partnership with The People’s Daily.” It was the first product of a March 2015 cross-publishing agreement between the politically conservative, gossip-friendly British newspaper and the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party to have garnered attention from other media and press freedom advocates. Under the agreement, each paper may publish up to 40 articles per week from the other. The Mail Online has 15.1 million visitors per day, making it one of the world’s most clicked-on English-language newspaper sites. As the British outlet came under international criticism for providing party propaganda with a global platform, Mail Online editorial chief Martin Clarke defended the move as a “copy-swap,” with no monetary exchange involved or negative impact on the Mail’s independence. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) noted, however, that the Mail generally steers clear of coverage that China would find politically sensitive.
K-Pop stars caught in missile defense crossfire: The television broadcast of a concert in Jiangsu Province featuring South Korean boy band iKON and pop star Psy was censored following Seoul’s July 8 agreement with Washington to install a U.S. missile defense system in Seongju. The United States and South Korea assert that the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system is meant to protect against North Korean military aggression, but Beijing insists that THAAD is a threat to China’s national security. A public appearance in Beijing by stars of the popular Korean television drama Uncontrollably Fond was also canceled, and screenings of the Korean horror film Train to Busan were suspended indefinitely. Guangdong Province television stations reported that the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT) had given them verbal notice that programs featuring K-pop stars would not be approved. In spite of the retaliatory bans, Chinese fans of all things Hallyu have continued to find ways around the censorship online. Meanwhile, non-Chinese fans were disappointed by some of their favorite Chinese-born K-pop stars when they shared their support for China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea on social media.
Mao commemoration concerts canceled in Australia: Concerts in tribute to Mao Zedong scheduled in two major Australian cities were canceled after a backlash from many in the Chinese Australian community. The program, entitled “Glory and Dream: In Commemoration of the 40th Anniversary of the Death of Chairman Mao,” promised to share the story of “a national leader forever in the hearts of Chinese people and a hero in the eyes of people all over the world” at the Sydney Town Hall on September 6 and the Melbourne Town Hall on September 9, according to an advertisement circulated in local Chinese-language newspapers. Sponsors included media companies and local associations with close ties to the Chinese government. Many Chinese migrants objected to an event meant to glorify the architect of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which were responsible for upwards of 30 million deaths from 1958 to 1976. A petition on Change.org to stop the Sydney concert, created by the Embrace Australian Values Alliance, received nearly 3,000 signatures. Alliance spokesperson Zhong Jinjiang told Radio Free Asia that “business prospects” motivated many of the “opportunists” behind the concerts. Both cities canceled the concerts around August 25. Sydney officials cited “safety concerns” for the cancelation. Melbourne made no statement on why its concert was canceled.
Hollywood wins and losses: Hollywood blockbusters continue to struggle with seemingly arbitrary decisions by Chinese regulators, which can affect billions of dollars in revenue. The Warner Brothers film Suicide Squad may have beaten Guardians of the Galaxy in box office sales, if only it had been released in China. There is still no release date on the China Film Group’s calendar. The reason for keeping Suicide Squad out of China is unclear, though its dark tone or certain characters could be to blame. Despite his rocky past with China’s film censors, director Martin Scorsese is set to release his gangster film The Irishman in China. Scorsese’s films were temporarily banned as a result of his work on “Kundun,” a biographical feature about the Dalai Lama, in 1997. China is the second-largest box office market in the world, but Hollywood only reaps 20 to 25 percent in returns on its Chinese releases, compared with 40 to 50 percent in other parts of the world. Many box offices around the globe are owned by China’s Dalian Wanda Group, the world’s largest operator of chain movie theaters. Wanda chief executive Wang Jianlin announced in August that two billion-dollar deals with U.S. film companies are firming up, though he gave no specifics. Wanda purchased a controlling stake in the Hollywood production company Legendary Entertainment in January.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
Long-term impact of G20 controls: As China hosted leaders of the Group of 20 economic powers in Hangzhou on September 4–5, a range of measures were reportedly imposed on the city’s residents and perceived sources of dissent, including bans on unofficial church worship and a weeklong holiday to encourage people to leave town. Following past high-profile international events hosted in China—such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, or the 2014 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit—certain related measures, from activist arrests to surveillance technology, have continued to infringe on Chinese citizens’ rights even years later. Watch for any G20 controls that remain in place after world leaders have departed.
More online censorship under new cyberspace chief: Given the tightened controls imposed over online news portals since Xu Lin replaced Lu Wei as head of the Cyberspace Administration of China, watch for additional restrictions on internet communications or punishments meted out to companies for insufficient policing of reporters and users in the coming months.
Hong Kong election repercussions: Following Legislative Council elections whose results are certain to displease Beijing, watch for renewed attempts to discredit, marginalize, or intimidate opposition political voices, particularly those espousing self-determination or independence for the territory. Also watch for greater efforts by Beijing to influence the selection of a new Hong Kong chief executive in early 2017, including media manipulation and targeted cyberattacks.
FEATURE: Willing proxies give China’s censors a global reach
by Sarah Cook
This article was also published in the Diplomat on November 2, 2016.
This new four-page weekly insert by the Chinese state media outlet Yunnan Daily in India's 152-year-old Daily Pioneer is one of many recent examples of Chinese propaganda and censorship extending beyond China's borders.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has further extended its control over media and information beyond China’s borders for at least decade now. But occasionally there is a spike in international censorship and propaganda activity that offers fresh insight into how the long-term process is unfolding. One such uptick occurred over the past three months. A review of over two dozen incidents and news reports on this theme emerging since September indicates that private citizens and nongovernmental institutions are playing a growing role in advancing Beijing’s agenda, through either active promotion or passive concessions.
A first critical group of nonstate actors involved in amplifying the CCP message are nationalist Chinese internet users whose comments, indirectly shaped by state media narratives, may result in economic reprisals against Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and foreign celebrities and brands that are perceived to have supported causes despised by the CCP. In late October, Taiwanese actress Irene Chen was removed from a Chinese film in mid-production after netizens dug up Facebook remarks from 2014 in which she backed Taiwan’s Sunflower protest movement against growing Chinese media influence on the island. The internet users said they would refuse to watch a film whose star they accused of backing Taiwanese independence. British cosmetics brand Lush came under similar fire earlier in the month, after it was reported to have supported a group campaigning to end human rights abuses in Tibet. Reflecting some Chinese netizens’ sentiments, one user wrote, “Tibetan separatism supporter, please get out of the Chinese market.”
A second influential group comprises wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs with close ties to party leaders who are increasingly investing in media and filmmaking industries outside mainland China. Two of the most prominent businessmen, Wang Jianlin and Jack Ma, recently announced new financing, production, and dissemination deals with Sony Pictures and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners, respectively. It remains to be seen whether they will use their newfound economic leverage to implement content changes favorable to the CCP, but past experiences involving Beijing-friendly media owners suggest that such adjustments are only a matter of time.
Lastly, members of overseas Chinese communities themselves have taken part in blatant displays of pro-CCP sentiment. These include an initiative in Australia to hold concerts glorifying Mao, a gala in California to celebrate Mao’s Long March, and an anti–Dalai Lama protest in Milan. Australian lawmaker Sam Dastyari resigned from the Senate leadership in September over a scandal dubbed “cash for comment,” in which he was accused of publicly backing Beijing’s position on the South China Sea in exchange for political donations from Chinese-Australian businessmen with close CCP ties.
Proxies for the Chinese government are not restricted to ethnic Chinese, however. Foreign governments, politicians, international organizations, and academic institutions have also toed the CCP line for various reasons. During the last two months, under apparent pressure from Beijing, the Thai government barred entry to Hong Kong democracy activist and Beijing critic Joshua Wong, Indian authorities detained dozens of pro-Tibetan protesters surrounding a visit to Goa by Chinese president Xi Jinping, New Zealand’s deputy prime minister canceled meetings with veteran Hong Kong democrats Martin Lee and Anson Chan, and the UN-affiliated aviation agency refused to accredit Taiwanese journalists to cover its annual assembly.
A series of other actions that were criticized by free expression and democracy activists entailed less clear influence from Beijing but nonetheless served to promote its narratives. These included a decision by Bloomberg News to remove the online version of its award-winning 2012 investigation into the assets of Xi’s relatives, the 152-year-old Indian newspaper Daily Pioneer’s introduction of a customized four-page weekly supplement from the Chinese state media outlet Yunnan Daily, and Vancouver’s mayor donning a red scarf and flying the Chinese flag at city hall in a display with obvious pro-CCP overtones.
Democratic societies, with their emphasis on an open exchange of information and opinions, are vulnerable to intrusive, state-sponsored propaganda efforts that present themselves as just another, equally valid perspective. Similarly, attempts at transnational censorship exploit democracies’ culture of civility, in which speech deemed “offensive” to a given group or community is avoided whenever possible. But a firm and thoughtful adherence to the principles of transparency, freedom of expression, and freedom of association is often enough to resist Beijing’s attempts to impose its will overseas.
Indeed, in another notable set of incidents over the past two months, international actors have successfully rebuffed pressure to self-censor, opposed censorious decisions, or tackled news topics that are sensitive to Beijing. Slovakia’s president and 50 Czech parliamentarians met with the Dalai Lama, and the Milan government granted the Tibetan spiritual leader honorary citizenship despite protests from Chinese authorities. India’s federal government confirmed the Dalai Lama’s right to travel freely within the country, including to a region that China claims is disputed territory. And in September, a popular Australian news site ran a three-article investigative series about the torture, brainwashing, and apparent killing for organs of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience in China. Meanwhile, media outlets, human rights groups, and some politicians around the world condemned the cowardly treatment of Hong Kong democrats by officials in Thailand and New Zealand.
Some policymakers have taken steps to respond more systematically to Beijing’s growing influence. In September, 16 members of the U.S. Congress urged the Government Accountability Office to consider expanding reviews of foreign investments given “concerns about propaganda and control of the media.” In Australia, following the Dastyari scandal and media investigations showing that Chinese businesses are the largest source of foreign money in the country’s politics, some lawmakers have called for a ban on foreign political donations, which are currently legal.
These policy suggestions highlight the fact that Beijing’s influence on the global information landscape often depends on raw economic pressure and incentives. Individuals and institutions in democratic countries can respond effectively by shining a light on the operation of such leverage, pre-emptively setting rules to protect free expression, and speaking out in defense of their own societies’ fundamental values. The CCP will no doubt continue its transnational censorship and propaganda efforts, but at the very least, those living in democracies can refuse to do the party’s work for it.
Sarah Cook is a Senior Research Analyst for East Asia at Freedom House and director of its China Media Bulletin.
BROADCAST / NEW MEDIA: Restrictions, mockery, and netizen reactions accompany U.S. presidential debates
The Chinese government appears to have adopted a two-track strategy toward coverage of the U.S. presidential election, and particularly the debates, reflecting its uncertainty about the process’s popular appeal in China. On the one hand, Chinese state media have highlighted the more scandalous elements of this election season to disparage the American democratic system and promote the Communist Party’s model of authoritarianism. On the other hand, the authorities have limited live streaming of the presidential debates, apparently fearing unfettered discussion of them online.
The day after the second debate on October 9, Xinhua, the official news agency, ran an editorial titled “The American Election Has Plunged to New Depths,” calling American politics a “farce” and the debates a “freak show.” Global Times, the nationalistic tabloid owned by the party mouthpiece People’s Daily, ran a seriesofarticles describing America’s democracy as “decaying” and the debates as “trite” and “spectator sport.” China Central Television’s Weibo feed portrayed the debates as a boxing match. These criticisms are largely in line with the Communist Party’s long-standing propaganda narratives, notesDavid Bandurski of the China Media Project, although the 2016 election has provided fresh fodder for such arguments.
Nevertheless, streaming of the presidential debates was tightly managed. Caixin and NetEase, two popular news sites in China, initially set up live streams of the first debate, but regulators pulled the plug soon after it began. The web portal Sina was allowed to feature all three debates (1, 2, 3), and some U.S.-based news sites were surprisingly accessible. The first debate, shown via Sina’s Weibo microblogging platform, attracted 45,000 “likes” and 15,000 comments. But even this limited openness soon dissipated. The second debate was placed in a less prominent location and only received 667 comments, while the third was buried on the portal.
Selective access to the wider world has shaped Chinese perceptions of the U.S. presidential election. You Tianlong, a doctoral student who runs a Chinese-language podcast about the campaign, told the New York Times that “the biggest misunderstanding is that many Chinese take House of Cards too seriously.” “Another misunderstanding,” he adds, “is derived from the negative propaganda many Chinese have absorbed over the years, that is, that American politics is controlled by money or big capitalists and that politicians are just puppets controlled by capitalists.” Others, including those outside China, have offered a different perspective. The only Chinese-American at the second debate, a microbiologist who escaped religious persecution in China, said she was “excited to see the center of the democratic process” and thought there was “no question about which system is better.”
Earlier in the election cycle, many netizens in China appeared to think that Donald Trump was the more desirable candidate, despite his many negative comments about China. But a Pew Research Center poll released in early October indicated that Hillary Clinton was viewed more favorably (37 percent to Trump’s 22 percent). Others have made light of the fact that there is so much discussion about democracy in a system still ruled by the autocratic Communist Party; one user wrote that Chinese discussing the debates is like “a group of eunuchs talking about sex.”
BROADCAST / NEW MEDIA: Authorities stifle news of Wukan crackdown
In mid-September, nearly five years after the first democratic uprising in the southern Chinese village of Wukan, battalions of riot police were dispatched to the hamlet to suppress protests with tear gas and rubber bullets. The cause of the unrest was the same as in the previous conflict: the expropriation of collectively owned land by real estate developers in league with Communist Party officials. Adding to villagers’ resentment were government attempts to discredit the village’s democratically elected mayor, Lin Zulian, as corrupt. His coerced confession was aired on national television, and he was sentenced to more than three years in prison in June. Moreover, compared with 2011, official efforts to suppress news of the crackdown were more comprehensive and effective.
The authorities prevented local residents from establishing a safe location from which international correspondents could cover the conflict, as they did successfully in 2011. Foreign journalists were quickly identified and expelled, news of the protests and their suppression were not reported in Chinese media, anyone who dared to publicize the news was threatened, and official outlets promulgated their own—often deeply misleading—version of events. In a September 12 article in the official Nanfang Daily, Mayor Yang Xusong of Shanwei, the prefecture-level city that includes Wukan, summarized the official narrative, asserting that “as of now, all of the legitimate demands by Wukan villagers regarding land issues that can be resolved have already been resolved according to the law.”
In a tactic that the China Media Project’s David Bandurski called a “cynical and perverse ploy,” local officials issued targeted propaganda regarding the role of armed police forces. The day before the crackdown, authorities dispatched teams of cleanup officers and spin doctors to make a show of helping out the local populace. But upon closer examination, the Public Security Frontier Defense Corps, shown sweeping the streets, was the same unit deployed the next day to conduct nighttime raids on supposed village troublemakers, hauling suspects out of bed in their underwear and detaining them.
Adding a transnational dimension to official efforts to restrict the flow of information, police in Guangdong Province detained the father of U.S.-based Wukan activist Zhuang Liehong and had him urge his son “not to stir things up overseas.” Zhuang has been based in New York since 2014, and has staged frequent protests outside the United Nations.
Despite the robust censorship, some news and striking images of the crackdown reached international audiences. Video and photographs uploaded by villagers show protesters pockmarked by rubber bullets, splayed across hospital beds with bloody injuries, or in the case of an 80-year-old grandmother, beaten unconscious in the street and carried to the hospital by fellow protesters, according to the Hong Kong–based Apple Daily. Meanwhile, social media remained a vehicle for some netizens to share eyewitness accounts and vent anger and mistrust regarding the official version of events. “Heaven is watching everything we do,” one user wrote in response to a post about a spate of arrests. “What crime did my grandmother commit? Did you really have to arrest her at 4 a.m.?”
PRINT / NEW MEDIA: Censorship updates: Key websites shut or banned, coverage of deaths and penalties muted
Prominent discussion platform shuttered: One of China’s few neutral platforms for public debate, Consensus Net (www.21ccom.net), was suddenly closed on October 1 for “transmitting incorrect thoughts.” The closure came with no warning and minimal explanation. Consensus Net had been a thriving site of discussion about China’s present and future, used by scholars, journalists, and officials and regularly consulted by outside observers interested in public debate within the country. Debate on the website was always carefully circumscribed, given that it was run by a Chinese company; the ultimate trigger for the closure remains unclear. The director of the company, Zhou Zhixing, wrote on the WeChat instant-messaging application that “the authorities want us to close… we’re helpless,” according to Radio France Internationale.
Commercial news outlet’s website blacklisted: On October 11, Chinese media regulators issued a directive that significantly narrowed the distribution channels for Caixin Online, the multimedia website of the respected business publication Caixin. The notice suspended for two months the publication’s inclusion on the “List of Work Units Approved for Online Republication,” meaning other websites cannot repost its content. The order’s immediate trigger appears to have been Caixin’s recent reporting on dissent among Chinese lawyers regarding new restrictions on the profession, although the notice published by China Digital Times referred to the outlet’s longer track record of violating “news and propaganda discipline.” The restrictions will likely have negative financial implications for Caixin as fewer readers are directed to the site. Separately, Hong Kong and mainland media reported that the Beijing Times (京华时报), once known for hard-hitting investigative reporting, will be shut down and integrated into the Beijing Morning Post (北京晨報), a spinoff of the municipal party mouthpiece Beijing Daily (北京日报). The move is the latest in a gradual process aimed at bringing the paper under the direct control of municipal party cadres.
Censorship restricts news of fatal incidents, activist persecution: A series of directives to news outlets and examples of social media censorship since August illustrate how the Chinese government’s controls affect coverage of life-and-death issues and restrict discussion of punishments meted out to rights advocates. Demographer and prominent author Yi Fuxian reported having half a dozen social media accounts muzzled in August after a decade of documenting China’s family planning policies. A September 13 directive forbade reporting on a poverty-stricken woman from Gansu Province who killed her four children and poisoned herself. And in the days after improperly stored explosives detonated on October 24 and ripped through a village in Shaanxi Province, killing at least 14 people and hospitalizing over 100, no detailed stories on the tragedy were independently reported by Chinese media. Instead, outlets were only allowed to reprint copy from Xinhua, most of which was dedicated to the Communist Party’s relief efforts. Separately, discussion of two high-profile incidents involving prominent rights activists was restricted on social media. After Xia Lin, a lawyer who has represented multiple well-known dissidents, was sentenced to 12 years in prison on September 22, Sina Weibo posts about the case were deleted. Two weeks later, searches for the name of Hong Kong student leader Joshua Wong were blocked on Weibo after he was abruptly denied entry to Thailand.
HONG KONG: Prodemocracy politicians, artists face reprisals at home and abroad
Tensions are running high in Hong Kong after September 5 elections for the Legislative Council (LegCo), which featured a record turnout rate of 58 percent and landmark victories for pro-independence candidates. An October 12 swearing-in ceremony turned raucous when some outspoken new members, particularly those from the pro-independence group Youngspiration, used their oath to mock mainland China and oppose its authority over Hong Kong. One fudged her pronunciation of “People’s Republic of China” in a derogatory way, while another made reference to a “Hong Kong nation,” words that do not appear in the official text. In a move that generated its own controversy, Chief Executive Leung Chung-ying launched legal proceedings to determine whether the members in question could take their seats.
Meanwhile, a wide range of prodemocracy politicians, activists, and artists from Hong Kong have faced increased harassment at home and abroad, joining other perceived Communist Party “enemies”—like Tibetan and Falun Gong activists—who have long endured such treatment.
The two young legislators were the target of a fierce smear campaign by Chinese state media and pro-Beijing outlets in Hong Kong, and thousands of pro-China activists mobilized outside the LegCo building, calling the pro-independence politicians “running dogs.” A group of protesters surrounded a reporter with Hong Kong Free Press, temporarily seized his camera, and stole his memory card.
The animosity toward prodemocracy forces in Hong Kong leaked over into the arts. The director of the two-hour documentary film Yellowing, which depicts the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the encroaching mainland Chinese presence, reported being unable to secure screenings in major local cinemas. By mid-September, the music of outspoken pop singer Denise Ho had been removed from mainland Chinese music and video streaming websites, including the Chinese iTunes store.
In other cases, reprisals against prodemocracy activists reached beyond Hong Kong’s and China’s borders. On October 10, veteran LegCo member Leung Kwok-hung (often known as “Long Hair”) was barred entry to Macau and detained. Five days earlier, Joshua Wong, the face of the Umbrella Movement, was barred from entering Thailand at the apparent behest of Chinese authorities, and was issued strict instructions by Thai authorities about what he could and could not say when speaking to a university crowd via Skype. Even senior, mainstream Hong Kong democracy figures have been affected. In late October, the New Zealand deputy prime minister’s scheduled meeting with Anson Chan and Martin Lee was canceled at the last minute because it was determined to be “diplomatically sensitive,” almost certainly a reference to objections from China.
News of these and other efforts to infringe on free expression in Hong Kong have sharply reduced public confidence in the press, according to the University of Hong Kong Public Opinion Programme. A survey of over 1,000 Hong Kong residents conducted in late September found a net satisfaction with news media of only 23 percent, the lowest since 1993; some 49 percent of respondents said they believed that the media practice self-censorship.
BEYOND CHINA: Hacking trends, U.S. internet outage, foreign media pressure, Hollywood gains
Commercial hacking from China declines: According to cybersecurity experts, there has been a sharp dip in the amount of commercial hacking by Chinese state actors recently. Dmitri Alperovitch, cofounder of the network security firm Crowdstrike, called the drop of over 90 percent in the last year “the biggest success we've had in this arena in 30 years.” The decrease has been so sharp and unexpected that FireEye, another major cybersecurity provider, had to lay off 10 percent of its staff in August. There is some debate about the extent to which this was caused by the U.S. Justice Department’s tactic of publicly charging five Chinese military hackers in 2014 or a cybersecurity agreement signed by presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping in September 2015. James A. Lewis, who focuses on cybersecurity policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, argues that the shift was already in motion before the bilateral agreement. He told MIT Technology Review: “It’s not that China’s living up to the agreement because they’re living up to the agreement.… They’re living up to the agreement because they’re trying to modernize the [military] and reduce corruption.” Despite the decline in commercial espionage, experts say Chinese authorities have continued to engage in more politically motivated hacking.
Chinese-built devices linked to U.S. internet outage: On October 16, an internet disruption across the East Coast of the United States prevented millions of users from accessing popular websites like Twitter, Netflix, and Amazon for several hours. The outage was caused by a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack on Dyn, a company that hosts backbone internet infrastructure. Further investigation revealed that large numbers of Chinese-made camera devices connected to the internet were hijacked to carry out the cyberattack, though there was no indication that the manufacturers played any intentional role in the breach.
Harassment of foreign journalists fuels self-censorship: On September 22, PEN America released a 35,000-word report on foreign media organizations in China, outlining the constraints they face, the harassment journalists encounter, and the retaliation that can follow reporting on topics the Chinese government considers forbidden. At some outlets, this pressure has led to an increase in internal vetting of stories that could be politically sensitive, with the result that “the story gets softened.” The report found that news organizations are more proactive in self-censoring their Chinese coverage than previously, in some cases pitching their Chinese editions as strictly focused on finance and business while eschewing potentially sensitive political content.
Chinese access to foreign films expanding: China’s silent ban on American actor Brad Pitt, stemming from his 1997 appearance in Seven Years in Tibet, appears to have been lifted amid reports that he will travel to China in mid-November to promote the World War II thriller Allied. As Hollywood directors and producers seek to have their films shown in the world’s second-largest market, they are increasingly attuned to the Communist Party’s political preferences, including depictions of Tibet. This was reportedly the reason why the mystical character The Ancient One in Doctor Strange, the latest Marvel film, was played by a white British actress rather than a male Tibetan, as suggested in the original comics. C. Robert Cargill, a screenwriter for the film, said “if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place and that he’s Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people.” The good news for Marvel is that the film got a release date in China, joining 38 other films to be released during 2016, four more than the official quota allows. Chinese officials claimed, however, that the quota had not been surpassed, and that some foreign films were classified instead as “cultural exchange products.” Some observers expect even more foreign films to be allowed into China in 2018, after the rules are renegotiated in February next year. But this may not be good news for global audiences, who some observers fear will have their Hollywood fare increasingly prepared for the tastes of Chinese censors.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
U.S. election coverage and censorship: With U.S. general elections set to occur on November 8, watch for state media coverage of the polls and the degree of censorship on Chinese netizen reactions. In particular, should Hillary Clinton emerge victorious, watch for any Chinese state media exploitation of Donald Trump’s uncorroborated assertions about election rigging to further discredit American democracy.
Communist Party plenum’s media implications: On October 27, the party concluded an annual four-day plenum. Media reports and official readouts highlight a focus on increasing intraparty discipline and affirming Xi as the “core” leader, a title his predecessor Hu Jintao did not obtain. Watch for any implications for media and free expression, including new reprisals against cadres who voice criticism of Xi or the CCP Central Committee, and new elements of a “personality cult” surrounding the “core” leader.
Holiday season prison sentences: As the holiday season approaches in the United States and other Western countries, several high-profile activists are awaiting trial—especially human rights lawyers. Watch for trials and prison sentences that conveniently coincide with the periods around Thanksgiving and Christmas, when many foreign journalists and politicians are busy with family celebrations. In past years, punishments for prominent activists like Liu Xiaobo, Pu Zhiqiang, and Guo Feixiong have been meted out on or around such dates of reduced international scrutiny.
FEATURE: Beijing’s top censorship priorities in 2016
by Sarah Cook
A version of this article was published in Foreign Policy on December 16, 2016.
China sprawling and sophisticated system of censorship is well-known. But it would be a mistake to conclude that the system is static, suppressing news on a standard list of politically sensitive topics. Freedom House analysis of leaked party directives to media outlets shows that from one year to the next, there are notable shifts in the types of stories that Chinese government censors are most interested in squelching or amplifying. In 2016, for example, protecting official reputations and influencing coverage of foreign affairs outranked economics compared to 2015.
On an almost daily basis, China’s ruling Communist Party and its state apparatus relay detailed instructions to news outlets, websites, and social media administrators throughout the country on whether and how to cover breaking news stories and related commentary.
A sampling of these are leaked each year and published by the California-based website China Digital Times. The collection is not exhaustive, but given the opacity of Chinese government decision-making, the orders offer unique insights into party leaders’ priorities and their favored methods of “guiding public opinion” in a changing technological landscape.
For the past three years, Freedom House has analyzed hundreds of these leaked directives, including all of those from 2016 that were available in CDT’s collection as of December 1. A total of 86 were found in 2016 to have ordered “negative” actions, such as deleting an article, declining to send reporters to cover a news event, or closing the relevant comment sections on websites. Another eight directives ordered strictly “positive” actions to promote the party line, such as covering specific topics or using only copy from the official Xinhua news agency on a given story. It is difficult to verify the orders’ authenticity beyond the efforts of the CDT staff, but the leaked documents often match visible shifts in coverage and are generally treated as credible by observers of Chinese media.
The most commonly targeted categories of emerging news in 2016 were as follows:
Party and official reputation: A total of 19 directives restricted circulation of content or news that would undermine the public image of individual officials or the party’s activities, including four directives designed to curb disrespectful or humorous references to Chinese president Xi Jinping. An additional four directives ordered “positive” actions related to Xi’s image, including one from July instructing all websites to promote an article describing how Xi’s speech on the party’s 95th anniversary evoked a “strong response.”
Health and safety: A total of 18 directives restricted coverage of man-made accidents, environmental pollution, or food and drug safety. Even investigations by favored commercial news outlets were not spared. “Do not reprint or hype The Paper’s article ‘Hundreds of Millions of Yuan in Unrefrigerated Vaccines Flow into 18 Provinces: Possibly Affect Human Life,’” reads one order from March. Other directives barred coverage on the anniversary of fatal chemical explosions in Tianjin and stymied reporting on a medical advertising scandal that was widely blamed for the death of a young cancer patient.
Foreign affairs: In a year that included elections in the United States and Taiwan, nuclear provocations by North Korea, and rising tensions in the South China Sea, 15 directives sought to curtail Chinese audiences’ access to news about events occurring outside of mainland China. Elections and referendums—which might draw attention to the Communist Party’s lack of democratic credentials—emerged as particularly touchy topics. Nine directives restricted coverage of developments such as the U.S. presidential debates, the election of opposition candidate Tsai Ing-wen as president of Taiwan, and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.
Official wrongdoing: A total of 13 directives restricted coverage of official wrongdoing, including news of Chinese elites’ overseas assets as revealed in the Panama Papers, incidents of embezzlement, and high-level corruption cases like the sentencing of former security czar Zhou Yongkang in June. Five directives restricted coverage of police misconduct, including one wrongful execution and one suspicious death in custody.
Media and censorship: Eleven directives restricted circulation of content from less tightly controlled media sources (like the commercial outlet Caixin or a popular Korean drama) or to reporting on information controls themselves, such as the prosecution of a journalist or the dissolution of journal Yanhuang Chunqiu, run by party members who tackled sensitive political debates.
Civil society: Six directives restricted coverage of civil society, including an ongoing crackdown on human rights lawyers that was part of a broader assault on China’s “rights defense” movement during the year.
The remaining directives sought to control reporting on the economy, seemingly benign government policies, and events in Hong Kong.
Last January, Freedom House conducted a similar analysis of 75 censorship and propaganda directives published during 2015. A comparison of the most censored topics from that period and from 2016 suggests a number of possible changes in Communist Party priorities:
Rank
Topic
Direction of ranking change
1
Party and official reputation
↑ (4 spots)
2
Health and safety
↓ (1 spot)
3
Foreign affairs
↑ (5 spots)
4
Official wrongdoing
↓ (1 spot)
5
Media and censorship
No change
6
Civil society
No change
7
Economics
↓ (6 spots)
The changes in 2016 appear to reflect increased political attention to certain official narratives, such as Xi’s drive to increase “positive energy” in the media sphere, as well as concerns over Xi’s personal reputation as he consolidates significant power in his own hands. Meanwhile, other factors that drove censorship in 2015 may have receded. Notably, there was no repetition of the previous year’s dramatic stock-market crashes and a number of journalists who aggressively covered financial news have left the profession. Thus, censors’ need to impose extraordinary restrictions on reporting of the economy appears to have eased.
As for the methods employed by censors to reduce public attention on targeted stories, a particularly popular tactic in 2016—evident in 22 of the directives—was instructing editors and web portals to downplay a story that might otherwise garner significant public attention, or whose popularity may have already exceeded party leaders’ tolerance levels.
The actions ordered included generic “don’t hype” instructions, bans on special features or homepage spotlights, and highly specific directions on the ranking of top stories. One leaked order from May 2016 declared that a certain story “must be kept no higher than seventh” on lists of top news items. Compared with other censorship methods, like deleting users’ social media posts, this kind of behind-the-scenes manipulation is less visible and therefore less costly to the party in terms of generating netizen resentment, apparently adding to its attractiveness.
Looking ahead to 2017, Chinese citizens’ need for timely, accurate information about the very topics targeted for censorship in these directives—excessive police force, foreign affairs, and the actions of their own leaders—is only set to grow. The country’s journalists, netizens, technologists, and the international community will have to find new, creative ways to produce and disseminate news in a political environment that is increasingly hostile to such efforts.
Sarah Cook is a senior research analyst for East Asia at Freedom House and directs its monthly China Media Bulletin.
PRINT / NEW MEDIA: Independent journalism in China struggles to survive
A multiyear decline in conditions for investigative journalism and liberal commentary in China accelerated during 2016, contributing to a privileged market position for more tightly controlled and state-affiliated outlets.
First, a number of publications and an online forum that had survived previous rounds of repression were shuttered or severely penalized. Yanhuang Chunqiu, a journal founded in 1991 and run by party cadres, was known as an unusually moderate voice within the party, but it was dissolved in July. The Beijing Times, once admired for its hard-hitting investigative reporting, will reportedly be shut down and integrated into the tamer Beijing Morning Post. In October, Consensus Net (www.21ccom.net), one of China’s few neutral platforms for public debate among intellectuals, journalists, and officials, was suddenly closed. Ten days later, Chinese media regulators issued a directive that significantly narrowed the distribution channels for the website of respected business publication Caixin by barring others from reposting its content for two months.
Second, commercial web portals—like Tencent, Sina, and Netease—were put under increased pressure to refrain from producing their own news content, even via aggregations, a change that particularly affects the hundreds of millions of Chinese internet users who turn to these sites as a first stop for information. In a series of announcements over the summer, the Cyberspace Administration of China declared that the portals had “seriously violated laws and regulations” and would be fined for producing their own news content, that their editors would henceforth be personally responsible for slip-ups, and that gathering news from social media without approval was no longer allowed.
Third, limits on the political and commercial space for independent journalism, along with several high-profile prison sentences for professional journalists in recent years, have affected the personal career decisions of individual reporters. Many of the country’s top investigative journalists—such as Wang Keqin and Luo Changping—whose past muckraking has made national and international headlines have left the profession in favor of safer, although often still socially meaningful, occupations.
The result of these changes, writes Ying Chan, founding director of the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre, is that “investigative journalism in China … is struggling to survive today.”
Having marginalized independent content, the Communist Party is attempting to fill the vacuum by promoting digital outlets like The Paper as appealing news sources. Launched in Shanghai in 2015, The Paper is supervised by censors and funded by the state, but it is given leeway to make its product attractive to readers. According to former journalist Fang Kecheng, it features “the face of commercial media, and the heart of Party media.”
In 2016, the publication’s owners rolled out an English-language affiliate called Sixth Tone. Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian of Foreign Policy described it as “Vox … acquired by the Chinese Communist Party.” It has a smooth web interface with snappy headlines, and stories that try to reveal something of the everyday life of Chinese people, but many of its articles ultimately avoid key contextual information that would reflect negatively on China’s political system. Separately, given these political and market dynamics, the independent English-language website The Nanfang announced its closure in December after nearly seven years in operation, citing a lack of profitability. The result is one more state-controlled voice, and one less independent voice, in the English-language Chinese news sector.
Although media scholars like Zhan Jiang say there is little left of professional watchdog journalism in China, some Chinese reporters are still serving their society by upholding the standards of their profession. A speech by President Xi Jinping in February urging greater media loyalty was met with a flurry of pushback. Among other actions, former Xinhua journalist Zhou Fang released an open letter that called for an investigation of officials involved in censorship, Caixin published a censorship exposé, and three quasi-official writers resigned in protest. Meanwhile, The Paper has run into its own challenges, with its founding chief executive and a group of senior reporters departing during the year to launch a new online news video company in which they are permitted to own shares.
News organizations based outside of China are also working to fill some of the voids left by the decline of investigative reporting in the country. Over the past year, foreign news companies, cross-border networks like the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and overseas outlets with grassroots contacts like Radio Free Asia and New Tang Dynasty Television have uncovered cases of financial mismanagement, repression in ethnic minority areas, and a range of human rights abuses.
PRINT / NEW MEDIA: Minorities outnumber activists, journalists in expression-related incarcerations
To gain a better understanding of the Chinese government’s efforts to control public debate and information flows, Freedom House collected data on Chinese citizens who were sentenced to prison in 2016 for exercising their right to free expression. Drawing on media reports, alerts from human rights groups, a sample of court verdicts, and the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s Political Prisoner Database, Freedom House researchers identified 111 individuals imprisoned between January and December 2016 for peacefully expressing their views or sharing information with fellow citizens. This total is not comprehensive, particularly given the difficulties of obtaining information about events in ethnic minority regions like Tibet and Xinjiang. Nor does it include the large number of individuals in pretrial detention, or those still serving prison terms from previous years.
Nevertheless, even from this limited sample, a number of notable dynamics are evident:
Religious and ethnic minorities targeted: Of the 111 people imprisoned in 2016 for exercising their right to free expression, 80 were members of an ethnic minority or actively involved in a religious community. Falun Gong practitioners made up a particularly large contingent, with 68 cases identified. This partly reflects the Communist Party’s fierce persecution of the group as well as Freedom House’s access to a collection of court verdicts from a Chinese government database that involved Falun Gong cases. The other individuals in this subset of 80 cases were seven Tibetans, three Uighurs, and unusually, two Chinese Buddhists, including one monk.
Grassroots activists top professional journalists: Among the 31 individuals who were not members of an ethnic minority or religious group, only three were professional journalists, with just one still employed at a media outlet when detained. The others included 17 grassroots activists, five bloggers, four petitioners, one lawyer, and one publisher. Five of the imprisoned activists were detained in 2014 for expressing their solidarity with prodemocracy protesters in Hong Kong, and were sentenced in April 2016. In another case, three activists were sentenced for organizing an “advocacy tour” intended to encourage civic activism and promote democracy and the rule of law.
Sentences averaged 3.4 years:The sentences imposed for expression-related crimes during 2016 ranged from 6 months to 19 years. Five people were sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. Zhang Haitao, who was given the longest sentence in the cases reviewed, was punished for his 200 microblog posts and content he provided to overseas media outlets, including comments criticizing Chinese government policies in Xinjiang.
Expression in a variety of media penalized:Of the 111 cases examined, 45 involved online expression, 36 focused on homemade materials, 28 stemmed from public speech, and 2 related to print media. The large number of citizens sentenced to jail because of their internet activity—including via social media applications like Sina Weibo or Tencent’s WeChat or QQ—reflects the tight controls imposed on Chinese cyberspace. The 64 cases centered on homemade materials and public speech show that many citizens turn to offline methods to communicate politically sensitive ideas. These included handing out leaflets, raising banners, or simply calling publicly for greater freedom. Falun Gong practitioners accounted for 36 cases that involved producing and disseminating leaflets and VCDs with information about the practice and the abuses its adherents have suffered. The Tibetans and Uighurs in the sample, by contrast, were punished for walking in public while holding up banned images of the Dalai Lama and accessing information about Islam on their smartphones, respectively.
Geographic distribution:The five provinces with the largest number of cases are Guangdong (15), Shandong (13), Hubei (9), Fujian (7), and Hunan (7). In Guangdong, 8 out of the 15 individuals incarcerated were activists. By contrast, citizens sentenced to prison in Shandong, Hubei, Fujian, and Hunan were mostly religious believers.
Taken together, the above findings reflect a shift from the past two years, when a relatively large contingent of professional journalists were detained or sentenced to prison, and a return to the trends in previous years, in which ethnic minorities, religious believers, and online activists bore the brunt of prosecutions for free expression. The data also highlight the need for greater international monitoring of prosecutions for informal, offline expression, in addition to the more high-profile cases linked to internet activity and journalism.
NEW MEDIA: Censors tighten grip on WeChat, video streaming, and foreign tech firms
China’s already robust internet controls expanded in reach and sophistication in 2016, affecting new parts of the technology sector.
WeChat censorship:When the Chinese authorities tightened censorship and increased reprisals on the microblogging platform Sina Weibo in 2013, many users shifted to Tencent’s WeChat, an instant messaging tool. WeChat was perceived as both more private and more free in terms of the content users could share. Since then, the gap between the applications has shrunk, and reports of censorship on WeChat increased further in 2016. A set of rules promulgated by the application’s administrators in April included, among standard prohibitions on spam and fraud, a series of more politically charged injunctions against “spreading rumors” or “obviously biased headlines.” On November 30, University of Toronto researchers published a report revealing that users are no longer informed when their messages are blocked, a change from previous years. In addition, the study found that WeChat censorship is often dynamic and responsive to the context in which words appear, and that mainland Chinese users who leave the country and use WeChat on international phone numbers are subject to the same censorship as in China, so long as they initially registered with a Chinese phone number.
Online streaming restrictions:Online video streaming was once a largely unregulated media sector in China, but state restrictions have gradually caught up with the market, particularly over the last year. In January and February, a number of popular video series—such as Go Princess Go, which features time travel and gender swapping, as well as the gay-themed drama Addicted—were removed from the internet. In March, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT), China’s main media regulator, said that online television programs would be subject to the same strict content standards as traditional television. In July, SAPPRFT increased restrictions on foreign content that were first rolled out in 2014, sharply limiting the amount of foreign-inspired programming. Regulators also tightened the rules on personal live video streaming, punishing web celebrity Papi Jiang for foul language in May. In November, the Cyberspace Administration of China formalized a regulation requiring firms that provide personal live-stream services to log user data for 60 days and cooperate in national security investigations. A week after the rules came into effect, state media reported that thousands of accounts had been shuttered for violent or vulgar content.
Cybersecurity law’s effects on foreign firms:On November 7, the Chinese government adopted a new law that Human Rights Watch called “regressive” and “abusive” due to provisions that will entrench censorship and surveillance online generally, with particularly serious implications for foreign internet firms that seek to operate in China. Critics’ concerns center on requirements that companies store personal user information in-country, fully enforce real-name registration, submit to government audits, and provide “technical support” to help with official investigations. Some of these actions may have already been tacitly expected, but the new law elevates and strictly enforces them. The mandate for government security inspections and a provision empowering authorities to review data before transfer out of the country have raised concerns about the disclosure of corporate secrets and hindrances to daily business activity. The law, which will come into effect in June 2017, follows a series of other restrictions on foreign applications and websites during 2016, including the sudden shutdown of Chinese users’ access to Apple’s iTunes and iBooks stores in April.
HONG KONG: Interference from Beijing brings media chill
Beijing’s influence over Hong Kong increased throughout the year, leading to an unprecedented chilling effect on the media landscape, the publishing industry, and freedom of expression in general.
One catalyst of heightened self-censorship was the detention of five independent booksellers by Chinese authorities, including one who was abducted directly from Hong Kong, a blatant violation of the “one country, two systems” principle governing relations between Hong Kong and mainland China. In the aftermath of the abductions, the space for publishing, printing, or selling books that are critical of China’s leaders or government shrank significantly. Such books were removed from airports, a key retail location favored by travelers from China, and tighter customs controls reduced the number of Chinese coming to Hong Kong to buy books.
Fierce censorship in China of the award-winning dystopian film Ten Years apparently also fed self-censorship in the territory, with many Hong Kong cinemas later refusing to screen a locally produced film about the prodemocracy Umbrella Movement. In the news media sector, fears that the sale of the English-language South China Morning Post to Chinese internet tycoon Jack Ma in late 2015 would result in coverage more favorable to Beijing were partially realized. Notably, an apparently coerced interview with a detained human rights legal assistant yielded comparisons to Chinese state media, and the shuttering of the Chinese-language version of the paper’s website, Nanzao.com, and its social media accounts resulted in speculation that Chinese officials were interested in eliminating that content in particular.
Concerns about Beijing’s growing efforts to curb freedoms in Hong Kong were amplified by developments in the political sphere, as the central government openly intervened to ensure that two newly elected localist legislators would not take their seats after altering their oaths of office as a form of protest. The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress issued an uninvited interpretation of Hong Kong’s Basic Law on November 7 to effectively block Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching from assuming their positions in the Legislative Council, or LegCo. (Hong Kong’s High Court later issued its own decisionbarring them from office on November 15.) Hong Kong officials then initiated new legal action—relying on Beijing’s interpretation of the Basic Law and likely at the prompting of Beijing’s Liaison Office—seeking to challenge the oaths given by four well-known prodemocracy lawmakers. In the latter cases, unlike the first two, LegCo president Andrew Leung had either accepted the oaths or allowed the lawmakers to retake them, and they have formally taken their seats. The apparent effort to purge the legislature of established prodemocracy figures—in addition to the two pro-independence newcomers—is unprecedented and a threat to Hong Kong’s remaining political autonomy. If it succeeds, it could have long-term implications for politics and stability in the territory, especially if the democratic camp loses its ability to veto certain legislation as a result.
Despite the negative trajectory, some developments left room for optimism. Widely disliked Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-ying announced on December 9 that he will not be standing for reelection next year, raising the possibility that a more conciliatory figure may step forward. Hong Kong’s Ombudsman ruled that journalists for digital-only media should have as much access as their print colleagues to government press resources and venues, according to Hong Kong Free Press on December 6. To break through the chill on the book publishing market, Mei Fong, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, chose to self-publish a new book on China’s one-child policy. And U.S. lawmakers have proposed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which could generate its own deterrent effect by identifying and punishing Chinese officials “who are responsible for suppressing basic freedoms in Hong Kong.”
BEYOND CHINA: ‘Cyber sovereignty,’ Confucius classrooms, some concessions
Last month’s China Media Bulletin highlighted the recent evolution of the Communist Party’s methods for influencing foreign media, the film industry, and international cultural events, often with the assistance of proxies. For this annual summary, three other trends related to the intersection between Chinese information controls and the international community deserve notice:
‘Cyber sovereignty’ and the Russian connection: Continuing a trend from 2014, President Xi Jinping opened an international internet conference in the city of Wuzhen in November by laying out a vision of the internet that differs greatly from the current open and international model, instead emphasizing “cyber sovereignty” and governments’ right to regulate content within their borders. During 2016, the Chinese authorities increasingly cooperated with their Russian counterparts to promote this approach, including at the “Seventh International Safe Internet Forum” hosted in Moscow in April. As Russia’s government has sought to increase control over its swath of the internet, it has reportedly turned to Beijing for assistance. Russian officials met throughout the year with Chinese internet regulators and technologists, including former Cyberspace Administration of China head Lu Wei and Fang Binxing, the architect of China’s so-called Great Firewall filtering system. The Russian authorities subsequently introduced or adopted a number of legislative and technical measures with the apparent aim of building its own walled-in internet, known as the “Red Web.”
Confucius classrooms for a younger generation: The spread of Confucius Institutes—Chinese state-sponsored learning centers typically based in foreign universities—continued to spark controversy and resistance in some quarters because of concerns over their negative impact on academic freedom or discriminatory hiring practices. But hundreds of Confucius classrooms are also being established at elementary and high schools around the world. These programs reach a demographic that is far more susceptible to soft messaging and conditioning, and grade-school teachers and administrators are even less prepared than university officials to manage subtle indoctrination by a foreign power. In 2016, Confucius classrooms were opened in Pakistan, Cyprus, Portugal, Angola, Ghana, England, Scotland, India, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and several U.S. states, including Arizona (in kindergarten) and Oregon. Scandals, including charges of fraud and embezzlement, have arisen due to a systemic lack of transparency. There have also been complaints by parents that the programs amount to “infiltration of the Chinese Communist Party into the … public school system.”
Limited concessions: China’s determination to control information and influence public opinion yielded to international norms and pressure in a number of cases. Commercial cyberattacks on U.S. companies, a major plank in China’s strategy for rapid technological industrialization, eased considerably during the year. A number of civil society advocates, including Chen Taihe, a law professor, and Zhang Kai, a well-known rights lawyer, were released after periods of detention following international appeals on their behalf. And a visa was granted to New York Times journalist Keith Bradsher, allowing him to assume the role of Shanghai bureau chief. These concessions were fairly limited compared with previous years, and important legislation—like the Cybersecurity Law and a law on foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—were passed with few changes despite significant international criticism. Nevertheless, in the cases where concessions were made, the combination of high-level and multilateral pressure from abroad seems to have made a difference, underscoring the importance of such efforts.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR IN 2017
Increased censorship around 19th Party Congress:In late 2017, the Communist Party will hold its 19th Congress, during which most members of the Politburo Standing Committee are likely to be replaced and a possible successor to Xi may be named. As observers speculate on appointments, whether Xi will choose a successor, and which internal struggles are gaining momentum in the run-up to the summit, watch for censorship of these topics. During the congress itself, watch for sweeping and tight controls on a wide range of reporting and expression, as well as temporary or long-term detention of activists in Beijing.
Implementation of cybersecurity, NGO legislation:Two laws adopted in 2016— the Cybersecurity Law and the Foreign NGO Management Law—will go into effect in 2017 and are expected to negatively affect free expression and online privacy. As implementation unfolds, watch for specific examples of the laws’ provisions being used to suppress peaceful dissent, identify and punish internet users, or obstruct the activities of foreign tech companies and civil society groups.
Hong Kong trajectory under new executive: In March 2017, a new Hong Kong chief executive will be elected through a process that favors pro-Beijing interests. Under the current executive, Leung Chun-ying, media freedom in Hong Kong has notably declined, due to both Beijing’s influence and the local government’s own aversion to transparency and inclusive media engagement. In 2017, watch for restrictions on free expression and political participation that emerge during the election cycle, as well as for any changes to media policy under Leung’s successor.
FEATURE: Preparing for China’s next internet crackdown
by Sarah Cook
This article was also published by the Diplomat on May 22, 2017.
China’s new Cybersecurity Law takes effect on June 1. Together with regulations issued over the past month by the Cyber Administration of China (CAC)—including on news reporting and commentary—the new legal landscape threatens to tighten what is already one of the world’s most restrictive online environments. What happens next will depend on a combination of Chinese government actions, citizen pushback, and international readiness.
Past experience suggests that the government’s enforcement of the regulations will be uneven and selective but a worst-case scenario would include three features.
First, social media accounts would be closed on a large scale across multiple platforms. This has already been taking place in a more piecemeal fashion. Since 2013, online opinion leaders with millions of microblog followers on Sina Weibo have had their accounts shuttered. In March 2014, dozens of public accounts on WeChat that shared information on current affairs were closed or suspended. More recently, some journalists and academics have reported having their personal WeChat accounts shuttered. Under the new rules, millions of social media accounts sharing information on even apolitical news topics could be subject to such censorship.
Second, there would be an increase in arrests of ordinary users, including based on private information obtained by Chinese security forces from internet companies. The foreign business community and internet freedom advocates have expressed concern regarding the Cybersecurity Law’s requirement that user data be stored on servers inside China, which would make users more vulnerable to having their private communications seized or used for prosecutions.
The Chinese authorities have made clear that they are willing to imprison ordinary citizens based on content shared or viewed via social media. A February 2017 Freedom House study on religious freedom found that Falun Gong practitioners had been jailed for posting messages about the spiritual group or human rights abuses to WeChat or QQ, and that young Uighurs had been imprisoned for viewing online videos about Islam. Last month, Wang Jiangfeng of Shandong Province was sentenced to two years in prison for referring to “Steamed Bun Xi”—a banned nickname for President Xi Jinping—in a group message on WeChat.
Third, full enforcement would mean greater government control over private media companies and news portals. The CAC rules promulgated on May 2 significantly restrict the space for investment and editorial input by foreigners, requiring editors in chief, for example, to be Chinese passport holders. They also mention “special management shares.” According to former journalist Feng Kecheng, now a media studies doctoral candidate in the United States, private web companies that provide news may have to issue such special shares to the government and possibly grant it a seat on their boards.
These provisions reflect Chinese leaders’ attempts to bring the online news industry into closer alignment with the domestic print and broadcast sectors, in which all outlets are owned by the state or party.
Yet some Chinese media observers remain cautiously optimistic, since it is doubtful that the CAC will close millions of WeChat, Weibo, and QQ accounts or imprison tens of thousands of people for sharing “unlicensed” news.
Meanwhile, online businesses and news websites, which must still compete for users, are likely to continue dragging their feet on compliance and might engage in outright defiance. In August 2015, following deadly chemical explosions in Tianjin, several news portals produced original reporting about the cause of the blasts, although they were technically barred from doing so even under previous regulations.
Netizens, technologists, and their counterparts outside China will continue to develop ways to disseminate uncensored information on important topics and protect user privacy. Last month, Radio Free Asia reported that as local governments in Hebei and Guangdong Provinces stepped up monitoring of public Wi-Fi hotspots, a free mobile application called WiFi Master Key—which encrypts user activity—was downloaded over 900 million times. Similarly, after Apple was pressured to remove the New York Times mobile app from its stores in China, downloads for a less easily blocked Android version continued unobstructed.
China’s internet is still a contested space. Indeed, regime insecurity about this contestation is precisely what is driving the latest effort to consolidate control. “Online, the government is fighting like a cornered beast,” says journalist Zhu Xinxin. “They can’t exercise total control over online public opinion.”
President Xi is facing simultaneous political and economic pressures, raising the stakes of the struggle, but it is precisely during times of crisis that Chinese netizens have shown a greater tendency to seek out uncensored information. This occurred in 2012, amid a national scandal centered on Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai; in 2014, when Instagram was blocked at the height of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution; and in 2015, following the Tianjin explosions.
All those with an interest in Chinese people’s access to information—whether they are foreign governments, technology companies, civil society groups, or ordinary citizens—should be prepared with contingency plans and funding to support circumvention tools and other means of getting uncensored news into and out of China at critical moments.
With a major party congress approaching in the fall, environmental problems multiplying, and North Korea advancing its nuclear program, the next moment of crisis in China might be just around the corner.
In lawyers crackdown, authorities punish online speech, foreign media contacts
Since July 2015, the Chinese authorities have been engaged in a fierce crackdown on the country’s contingent of human rights lawyers, often referred to as the “709 crackdown,” for its launch on July 9. In addition to its implications for the rule of law, the effort has had a strong media dimension, including smear campaigns on state media, televised “confessions” by detainees, and the punishment of lawyers for peaceful online activism.
This trend has continued and intensified since March. Lawyers and their families have been penalized for what were once routine and somewhat tolerated forms of legal activism in China, including exposing the torture of an activist in custody and speaking to foreign media. Meanwhile, further evidence of severe abuse in custody has emerged as additional lawyers are released or forced to make televised “confessions.” An April 13 study by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab found that conversations about the persecution are being heavily censored on the popular messaging application WeChat.
Developments in the cases of four lawyers in particular epitomize the censorship and propaganda dimensions of the crackdown:
Xie Yang: The 44-year-old Xie, a lawyer from Hunan Province who was indefatigable in demanding fair trials for his clients, was detained in July 2015 on suspicion of “subversion of state power” and “disrupting court order.” In a series of transcripts released earlier this year, he provided a detailed account of torture he reported suffering in custody in mid-2016. However, the Chinese authorities allowed him to return home on bail after he pleaded guilty on May 8 and stated in court that he had not been tortured. That statement, apparently made under duress, was posted online via Sina Weibo, and in a subsequent “confession” broadcast on Hunan TV, Xie said he had worked with foreign media to sensationalize cases. His wife and children fled to the United States in March.
Jiang Tianyong: A veteran rights lawyer and one of the most prominent in the rights defense (weiquan) movement, Jiang has taken on sensitive political cases for over a decade. He was detained in late November 2016 on suspicion of divulging state secrets, among other charges; no charges have been formally filed to date. While in detention at an undisclosed location in March, Jiang was apparently forced to confess to state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) that he helped fabricate Xie Yang’s account of torture. Jiang remains in custody.
Chen Jiangang: Chen, one of Xie’s defense lawyers, took detailed notes in January in a meeting which Xie during which the detainee described the torture he had been subjected to. Chen later transcribed the account and published it online. When state media produced Jiang’s confession and other items labeling the torture allegations “fake news,” Chen gave interviews with foreign media, made video statements attesting to their veracity, and raised pointed questions about the official account. On May 3, Chen was himself detained (along with his wife, two children, and two friends) while visiting Yunnan Province, but was soon freed after nearly 100 fellow lawyers signed a statement urging his immediate release.
Li Heping: One of China’s first human rights lawyers, Li for years defended individuals deprived of their rights, including Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, petitioners, and others. He was taken into custody on July 10, 2015. On April 28 this year, Li was handed a suspended sentence after a secret trial. According to Reuters, the court said Li had “used the internet and foreign media to smear and attack state organs and the legal system,” among other supposed offenses. Ten days later, he was finally allowed to reunite with his family, though colleagues said he appeared gaunt and seemed to have aged considerably during his nearly two years in custody.
Another well-known lawyer, Wang Quanzhang, was detained on August 3, 2015, and remains in custody on charges of “subversion of state power.”
Although Li Heping and Xie Yang faced abuse and dubious convictions, the fact that they were given suspended sentences rather than jail time is likely due to the high level of international pressure put on the Chinese government on their behalf. Their cases thus echo the December 2015 release of prominent attorney Pu Zhiqiang, also after a suspended sentence, and highlight the importance of international attention for those like Wang who are still in custody.
New rules tighten control over online news
On May 2, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) promulgated strict new rules for the licensing, surveillance, and operation of online news outlets. The regulations—titled “Internet News Information Service Management Regulations”—apply to reporting and commentary on news related to politics, the economy, military and foreign affairs, and “sudden social incidents.” They will come into effect on June 1. Overall, they appear aimed at making structural changes to the online sphere to more closely mimic the heavily controlled and state-owned traditional media sector.
The rules apply to a wide range of online information sources—including news websites, applications, forums, microblogs, livestreaming services, and public accounts on social media platforms. These entities will be required to obtain a license and meet certain conditions, such as being based in China, having a Chinese citizen as editor in chief, having specialized editorial personnel, and “having complete internet news information service management structures.” The rules also bar foreign capital from funding internet news agencies. Violators are subject to fines of up to 30,000 yuan ($4,350) and potential criminal prosecution.
In the past, many online information distribution channels, like public accounts on the WeChat messaging platform, were not as tightly regulated as traditional media. Some did not even exist when the previous version of the rules was promulgated in 2005. Major web portals such as Tencent, Sina, and NetEase have also traditionally been given greater flexibility than print and broadcast media to repackage and publish official news stories. Under the new regulations, such portals will now need to “clearly indicate the news information’s source, original author, original title, real name of the editor, etc.” Moreover, only outlets funded with state capital and staffed by government-accredited journalists will be allowed to engage in newsgathering activities.
The regulations are also significant for explicitly bringing online news, information dissemination, and related law enforcement under the supervision of the CAC rather than the State Council Information Office. The CAC is supervised by a Communist Party leading group headed by President Xi Jinping himself. David Bandurski of the China Media Project at Hong Kong University notes that the rules put the agency at the heart of “defending the political and ideological line” in China.
The news management rules are part of a larger package of regulations linked to the new Cybersecurity Law, which is scheduled to take effect on June 1. They come on the heels of several other laws and restrictions on online content issued over the past year, including, since January, a “clean-up campaign” aimed at domestic VPNs (virtual private networks) that are used to circumvent China’s internet filtering.
Netizen conversations: Student death, anticorruption show, Great Firewall game
● Media cover-up on boy’s death leads to protests, online outcry: After the suspicious death of 14-year-old student Zhao Xin in Luzhou, Sichuan Province, on April 1, angry crowds gathered to protest what they alleged was police negligence and a cover-up. The police said they ruled out homicide, but locals claim that the boy was likely beaten to death by bullies, specifically classmates who are the children of politically connected Communist Party figures. As video clips of Zhao’s severely bruised body spread online, local authorities issued a censorship directive on April 2 requiring all websites to “immediately delete information related to the death” and stating that “only official reports may be published.” Netizens were furious with the secrecy surrounding the case and attributed the protests to the information blockade as much as to the death itself. “The mass protests in Luzhou are not because of the death,” wrote Sina Weibo user @Zhoupenglaoshi, “but because of your approach to handling the case, joining forces with the school to cover it up.”
● New television show promotes Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign: The popular television program In the Name of the People, which debuted on March 28 on Hunan TV, has put a new face on China’s anticorruption campaign. The series was funded by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and is the first drama series since 2004 to feature Communist Party corruption as one of its central themes. Within a week, the show’s online versions had racked up 500 million views. The program highlights the work of anticorruption investigators unraveling a realistic network of political deal-making, treachery, and embezzlement in the fictional city of Jingzhou. The drama delves deeply into topics that are often off-limits to Chinese entertainment programs: officials amassing vast sums of cash, corrupt party chiefs fleeing for the United States, and the murky ties between political power and private wealth in China. But it does so in a way that appears to reinforce justifications for one-party rule, as long as the right people are in charge. Still, the character who has become the show’s most popular is Li Dakang, an earnest but flawed party chief seeking economic growth at any cost, rather than the officials leading the party’s antigraft efforts. Online shops have opened to sell various paraphernalia associated with the Li character.
● Game invites viewers to smash the Great Firewall: Shoot-’em-ups have long been a popular video game genre in China, but for the first time users will now have the opportunity to destroy China’s famous internet firewall—symbolically, of course. A forthcoming game, called simply The_Wall, features a protagonist who charges through corridors with a gun, shooting guards and breaking through walls and padlocks to liberate websites like “www.Googlee.com” and “www.Facebookk.com.” The game trailer, in English and Chinese, proffers the challenge: “If you were born inside The Wall, will you be docile enough to accept its protection? Or would you like to break the wall?” Images from the game show a line of slaves being led around by bosses, before one of them breaks free. The game appears to have been produced by Chinese developers under the name ZuoBuLai Game Studios. It has yet to be released, but its trailer posted on Steam, a gaming platform with 15 million users in China, quickly received over a hundred comments from Chinese netizens, many of them supporting the concept.
HONG KONG: Pressure on dissent increases amid press freedom decline
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s former chief secretary for administration, was chosen as the new chief executive of the semi-autonomous region by a limited electoral committee on March 26, despite trailing another candidate, former finance chief John Tsang, by up to 20 percentage points in public opinion polls.
Lam will take office July 1, a day that marks the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to the People’s Republic of China, as well as Chinese president Xi Jinping’s first visit to the territory since assuming leadership of the Communist Party in November 2012. In the run-up to these high-profile events, Hong Kong authorities have taken several unprecedented steps that suppress dissent, including:
the denial of permission for a coalition of prodemocracy activists to hold their annual rally in Victoria Park in July, as is customary, and a decision to grant a pro-Beijing group access to the park instead;
the arrest of nine prodemocracy activists and legislators for a protest on November 6, in which thousands took to the streets to register their discontent with a bid to disqualify two lawmakers who supported Hong Kong independence;
the arrest of Cheng Chung-tai, a member of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, after he inverted the flags of China and Hong Kong in the council chamber on October 19.
These incidents come in the context of a broader decline in media freedom in Hong Kong. On April 28, Freedom House published the 2017 edition of its annual Freedom of the Press report, in which Hong Kong’s score declined by three points and its global ranking fell from 76 to 80 out of 199 countries and territories assessed. The decline was due to increased mainland interference in local media as well as multiple attacks on journalists during demonstrations.
Free expression and democracy advocates have sought to push back against the growing controls. On May 5, three prominent Hong Kongers—former Legislative Council member Martin Lee, student activist Joshua Wong, and bookseller Lam Wing-kee—testified before the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Lam, who was held in China from October 2015 to June 2016, told reporters the day after the hearing that he plans to reopen his business in Taiwan later this year. He described the project as “a symbol of resistance.” The same ethos is animating a museum commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. In April, the organization behind the museum reopened in a new Hong Kong venue, this time in a residential area, after it was forced to close its previous downtown location last summer. Pressure from the Chinese authorities on the building owner, while not proven, had been widely suspected.
BEYOND CHINA: Confucius Institutes, Netflix market entry, Chinese global media influence
New U.S. report highlights problems at Confucius Institutes: On April 26, the U.S. National Association of Scholars published a new report on China’s Confucius Institutes, concluding that they are a “trojan horse” for the Communist Party’s political influence. The report, which includes detailed case studies of 13 institutes in New York and New Jersey, is the most comprehensive examination of the subject to date. While the institutes are on the surface a means of cultural diplomacy, providing Chinese-language courses and other educational programs, report author Rachelle Peterson argues that their goal is actually to “subvert American higher education.” According to the study, Confucius Institutes take advantage of the financial need of foreign universities, placing their own staff and curriculums on campus while restricting academic freedom, obstructing transparency, encouraging self-censorship, and engaging in discriminatory hiring practices.
Outspoken tycoon faces obstacles when airing grievances in exile:Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire now living in exile, recently made the unusual decision to go public with criticism of sitting Communist Party officials, accusing many of corruption. He has encountered a number of obstacles when sharing his views: His Facebook and Twitter accounts were briefly suspended, and a live interview with Voice of America’s Chinese service was unexpectedly terminated mid-broadcast. Guo made his money in real estate with help from one of China’s top domestic intelligence officials, Ma Jian, who in turn received hefty kickbacks. Guo’s allegations of corruption at the highest levels of the regime, including accusations against antigraft chief and Xi Jinping ally Wang Qishan, have so far proven impossible to verify. Guo’s bombastic attitude and flaunting of wealth on social media also raise questions about his credibility and agenda. Nevertheless, the unusual episode at Voice of America (several senior staff members were suspended after the interview with Guo) has fueled concerns about the extent of Beijing’s reach abroad.
Netflix finds way into China, plans release of Joshua Wong documentary: On April 26, the U.S.-based video streaming company Netflix announced a deal allowing Chinese counterpart iQiyi to offer Netflix content to its 20 million subscribers in China. Meanwhile, Netflix is also following through with the planned release of a documentary about young Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong—Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower—on May 26, though iQiyi is unlikely to pass such a politically sensitive video along to its Chinese viewers. Netflix bought the film’s global rights after its preview at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The company had previously attempted to penetrate the Chinese market on its own, but was stymied by the country’s thicket of regulations and content controls.
Apple removes media app from stores in China, Taiwan: In April, Apple removed from its Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China app stores the satirical news program China Uncensored, produced by the New York–based New Tang Dynasty Television. Following pressure from Reporters Without Borders and internet petitions, access to the application was reportedly restored in early May—at least for Hong Kong and Taiwanese users. Both decisions were made behind closed doors, with no explanation from Apple. The U.S. technology giant has previously made concessions to Chinese censors regarding its app store offerings as the price of doing business in the country, but this marked the first ban that extended to Hong Kong and Taiwan. The company continues to face Chinese government pressure over other apps that are still available to users in China. On April 19, Xinhua reported that officials from three Chinese government agencies planned to summon Apple executives about live-streaming video software that could be used to bypass China’s internet firewall.
U.S. commission hears testimony on China’s expanding global media influence: The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission held a hearing on May 4 about China’s expanding information controls, global media influence, and cyberwarfare strategy. The second session featured Dan Southerland, formerly of Radio Free Asia; Shanthi Kalathil, with the National Endowment for Democracy; and Freedom House’s Sarah Cook. Cook’s testimony offered details on the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to establish dominance over Chinese-language television programming in the United States, as well as the financial and editorial impact of its influence operations on major American media outlets. She outlined various “carrot and stick” tactics employed by Chinese authorities and recommended measures that U.S. officials could adopt in response.
FEATURED PRISONER: Zhang Haitao
Zhang, a Han Chinese resident of Urumqi, was detained on June 26, 2015. On January 15, 2016, a court in Xinjiang sentenced him to 19 years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power” and “providing intelligence to overseas entities.” The sentence was especially harsh considering that the activities cited in the verdict entailed relatively minor acts of free expression. Specifically, the verdict cited 69 WeChat posts and 209 Twitter messages (including retweets) that were critical of the Chinese Communist Party and its policies, including in Xinjiang. The decision also cited a few interviews Zhang had given to overseas news services like Radio Free Asia, relaying accounts of the heavy security presence on the streets of Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. The court also claimed that he had registered to be a reporter for the U.S.-based citizen journalism website Boxun and had shared photos of security forces. All of the examples appear to have been expressions of views or sharing of easily accessible public information. Nevertheless, in December 2016, the full 19-year sentence was upheld on appeal.
The timing of Zhang’s imprisonment has been especially difficult for his family. His son was born when Zhang was already in detention and was only one month old when his father was sentenced. Last month, the U.S.-based website ChinaChange.org published a detailed account by his wife describing the experience of traveling from Henan to visit him at Xinjiang’s Shaya Prison. She reported that he had lost weight, but that leg shackles he had previously been restrained with were removed and he appeared in relatively good spirits.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
Internet rules implementation: As the Cybersecurity Law and related regulations come into effect June 1, watch for how systematically they are enforced, instances of expanded online censorship and surveillance, and how the Chinese authorities interpret some of the vaguely worded provisions.
Tiananmen massacre anniversary: June 4, 2017 will mark 28 years since soldiers fired on peaceful demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and surrounding areas. In past years, the sensitive date has been the focus of particularly tight censorship, testing of new online control methods, and detention of citizens commemorating the anniversary, even in private. Watch for similar clampdowns this year, particularly given the generally tense political atmosphere.
Xi Jinping’s visit to Hong Kong: When former Chinese president Hu Jintao visited Hong Kong in 2012 to swear in Leung Chun-ying as chief executive on the 15th anniversary of the territory’s return to China, tens of thousands of people participated in protests, security was tight, and police detained several demonstrators and a journalist. In the context of even greater mainland–Hong Kong tensions today, Xi Jinping’s July visit is likely to be more fraught. Watch for additional restrictions on basic freedoms before and during the visit, akin to the recent denial of permission for prodemocracy groups’ annual July 1 rally in Victoria Park.
TAKE ACTION
Share the China Media Bulletin: Help friends and colleagues better understand China’s changing media and censorship landscape.
Access uncensored content: Find an overview comparing popular circumvention tools and information on how to access them via GreatFire.org, here or here.
Support a prisoner: Four Chinese activists and one Taiwanese man held in China for exercising their right to free expression are the focus of Amnesty International letter-writing campaigns. Details on adding your voice can be found here and here.
这些规定引人注目的地方还在于，明确地将网络新闻、信息传播和相关执法工作置于“互联网信息办公室”（CAC）的监督之下，而非国务院新闻办公室（State Council Information Office）。互联网信息办公室则归属一个由习近平主席亲自领衔的党的领导小组监督。香港大学中国传媒研究计划的大卫·班德斯基（David Bandurski）注意到，这些规定将这个办公室置于在中国“捍卫政治和思想路线”的核心地位。
美国发表新报告，孔子学院问题多：4月26日，美国全国学者联合会（National Association of Scholars）就中国的孔子学院问题发表了一份新的报告，结论指出这些学院是中共发挥政治影响力的“特洛伊木马”。这份报告是有关这个问题迄今为止最为全面的检讨，包括了对纽约和新泽西的13所孔子学院的详尽个案研究。尽管这些学院表面上是一种文化外交手段，提供中文课程和其他教育项目，报告作者罗谢尔·彼得森（Rachelle Peterson）认为，它们的目标实际上是“颠覆美国高等教育。”根据这项研究，孔子学院利用外国大学的资金需求，在校园里安插自己的人员和课程，限制学术自由，妨碍透明度，鼓励自我审查并实行歧视性雇佣政策。
這些規定引人注目的地方還在於，明確地將網路新聞、資訊傳播和相關執法工作置於“互聯網資訊辦公室”（CAC）的監督之下，而非國務院新聞辦公室（State Council Information Office）。互聯網資訊辦公室則歸屬一個由習近平主席親自領銜的党的領導小組監督。香港大學中國傳媒研究計畫的大衛·班德斯基（David Bandurski）注意到，這些規定將這個辦公室置於在中國“捍衛政治和思想路線”的核心地位。
美國發表新報告，孔子學院問題多：4月26日，美國全國學者聯合會（National Association of Scholars）就中國的孔子學院問題發表了一份新的報告，結論指出這些學院是中共發揮政治影響力的“特洛伊木馬”。這份報告是有關這個問題迄今為止最為全面的檢討，包括了對紐約和新澤西的13所孔子學院的詳盡個案研究。儘管這些學院表面上是一種文化外交手段，提供中文課程和其他教育項目，報告作者羅謝爾·彼得森（Rachelle Peterson）認為，它們的目標實際上是“顛覆美國高等教育。”根據這項研究，孔子學院利用外國大學的資金需求，在校園裡安插自己的人員和課程，限制學術自由，妨礙透明度，鼓勵自我審查並實行歧視性雇傭政策。
FEATURE: On Display in July: China’s Newest Censorship Methods
A month riddled with perilous anniversaries offers a showcase for upgraded internet controls.
By Sarah Cook
Screenshot of a message sent by popular virtual private network (VPN) provider Green to its customers announcing its closure July 1 due to new restrictions on mobile phone applications offering VPN services. Credit: Comparitech
July, more than most other months, is loaded with politically sensitive anniversaries that keep Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censors and security forces on their toes.
First comes the July 1 anniversary of Hong Kong’s transfer from British to Chinese rule. Then there is July 5, marking the 2009 ethnic violence in the Xinjiang region that sparked an unprecedented crackdown on its mostly Muslim Uighur population. The very next day, July 6, is the Dalai Lama’s birthday, and July 9 is the second anniversary of a sweeping repressive action against China’s human rights lawyers. Finally there is July 20, the date in 1999 when the CCP banned the popular spiritual practice Falun Gong and began a massive—and often violent—campaign to eradicate it.
This year, the anniversaries overlap with other news stories that Beijing likely wants to quash, including an international uproar surrounding democracy activist Liu Xiaobo’s belated release on medical parole with terminal cancer, and a campaign by exiled tycoon Guo Wengui to publicize corruption allegations involving top Chinese leaders.
It is not surprising in these circumstances that the CCP has tightened information controls. But the party has not simply intensified its efforts in the short term. It has also gradually adapted its methods to a changing technological environment, one in which mobile phones, social media applications, and digital surveillance are critical features.
The result is a new level of intrusiveness and sophistication, as well as danger for populations that are already at risk of severe human rights violations.
Cutting off access to circumvention tools
One of the escalating restrictions that may have the widest reach is a crackdown on virtual private networks (VPNs), which allow users to bypass official censorship. Several VPN applications have been disabled or removed from online stores since July 1. In a June 22 message to customers, prominent VPN provider Green said that after receiving “a notice from the higher authorities,” it planned to cease operations on July 1, causing a ripple of conversations on social media about what circumvention tools could still be used. The latest initiative builds on increasing official efforts to stop the dissemination of such tools, including some that the authorities had long tolerated.
The applications’ removal will have the secondary effect of cutting off software updates for users, leaving their devices more vulnerable to hacking. And while many use VPNs to access uncensored news or blocked social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, the tools are also used for security purposes, to protect businesses and activists from pervasive state surveillance.
Inspecting the personal communications of minorities
Other recent controls have focused on ethnic and religious minorities. In Xinjiang, authorities in a district of the regional capital Urumqi issued a notice on June 27 instructing all residents and business owners to submit their “personal ID cards, cell phones, external drives, portable hard drives, notebook computers, and media storage cards” to the local police post for “registration and scanning” by August 1. One district employee told Radio Free Asia that the campaign was taking place throughout the city. The goal is ostensibly to identify and purge any “terrorist videos,” but the action violates the privacy rights of Urumqi’s three million residents and exposes them to punishment for a host of other possible offenses, including those related to peaceful religious or political expression.
In Tibet, the instant-messaging application WeChat has become increasingly popular in recent years, as it has across China. But using it to communicate about the Dalai Lama or his birthday is difficult and dangerous. A test conducted in January by the Canada-based Citizen Lab found that the Tibetan spelling for “Dalai Lama” was automatically deleted in WeChat messages. Meanwhile, at least two Tibetans are known to have been jailed for participating in a WeChat group commemorating the spiritual leader’s 80th birthday in 2015. After a new spate of self-immolation protests took place in early 2017, Tibetans in Sichuan Province report that police are monitoring communication on the platform more closely and detaining those suspected of sharing information about self-immolations with overseas contacts.
New tactics and new targets
These developments reflect a broader trend identified in a recent Freedom House report on religion in China. The study found that Chinese government tactics of religious control and persecution have been changing to incorporate new technologies and match the evolving communication habits of the public. Even in the absence of sensitive anniversaries, various modes of electronic surveillance have expanded dramatically at sites of worship and public spaces frequented by religious believers.
The CCP’s information controls also appear to be spreading to traditionally less persecuted groups, like state-sanctioned churches and non-Uighur residents of Xinjiang. Since March, authorities in Zhejiang have reportedly been implementing a campaign to install surveillance cameras in churches and possibly Buddhist temples, in some cases sparking altercations with police and violence against congregants. In Urumqi, the order to turn in digital devices for inspection applies to ethnic Han and Kazakh residents as well as Uighurs, while local Kazakhs have reported increased monitoring and some prosecutions related to expressions of their Muslim faith in recent months.
The information arms race
The Chinese government’s actions are partly a response to creative initiatives by minority activists to share their stories and perspectives in a heavily restrictive information environment.
“It is a nonstop game of cat-and-mouse,” journalist Nithin Coca wrote in a June 27 article about China’s high-tech war on Tibetan communication. “As the Tibet movement’s digital-security abilities and training improve, the Chinese government implements more-sophisticated hacking techniques.”
Similarly, as Falun Gong practitioners devise new means of disseminating information to debunk vilifying state propaganda and expose abuses they have suffered, security forces have adapted by increasing electronic surveillance and deploying geolocation technology to find and arrest them. Local authorities in places like Jiangsu province have also upgraded anti-Falun Gong propaganda efforts, deploying LED rolling screens, cartoons, microblogs, and QQ messaging—including in schools—last month to demonize Falun Gong and other banned religious groups.
A vicious circle
The result of the escalating controls is that there are even fewer avenues for persecuted groups and individuals to defend themselves, offer alternatives to the party line, or expose violence committed by officials. Meanwhile, other Chinese interested in knowing more about these and other censored topics find it increasingly difficult—and risky—to obtain information.
There is also a cost to the CCP. Such aggressive “stability maintenance” methods ultimately increase tensions with key populations, intensify resentment of the party’s heavy-handed rule, and inspire antigovernment activism and even violence, including among otherwise apolitical citizens.
From that perspective, while the CCP’s efforts may successfully silence some critics this year, party leaders may face an even more daunting challenge next July.
[Photo caption: Screenshot of a message sent by popular virtual private network (VPN) provider Green to its customers announcing its closure July 1 due to new restrictions on mobile phone applications offering VPN services. Credit: Comparitech]
Cybersecurity law implementation reinforces fears and uncertainty
Last month, two Chinese government agencies began enforcing new laws and regulations that will further restrict expression online. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) on June 1 started implementing parts of the Cybersecurity Law that came into effect on that date, while rolling out new rules to limit the dissemination of news via the internet. Later in the month, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT), China’s primary media regulator, imposed restrictions on several major websites.
CAC’s regulatory actions in the first month of the new law were expansive and aggressive, reinforcing some of the worst fears of its critics. Already, two of the three potential scenarios outlined in the last issue of the China Media Bulletin have come to fruition: the shuttering of numerous apolitical social media accounts, and pressure on private internet companies to more closely toe the party line. (No new reports of large-scale arrests of users have emerged so far.)
On June 1, public social media accounts were banned from republishing news without a permit. On June 7, under apparent CAC pressure, Chinese technology firms shuttered an estimated 80 Sina Weibo and WeChat accounts that relayed celebrity gossip or other entertainment news, some with millions of followers. The move represented an expansion of censorship to a news sector long viewed as relatively free.
On June 22, SAPPRFT ordered three major websites, including Sina Weibo, to stop streaming audio and video with political and social content deemed to be in violation of state regulations. It is unclear whether CAC and SAPPRFT were coordinating their actions—or competing, as one analysis suggested.
The sudden reprimands left online companies uncertain, immediately hurt Sina’s stock price, and led to a lawsuit against the Nasdaq-listed Sina Weibo by investors in the United States. Mostly, however, China’s top internet companies quickly capitulated to the demands, “closing down hundreds of mobile video platforms, firing thousands of journalists, and promising to promote state media opinions,” according to the Financial Times.
Foreign firms are still attempting to understand exactly how the new law will affect them—in terms of both their interface with users and the infrastructural changes they may be forced to implement. An executive with the Finnish technology firm Nokia told the New York Times that foreign companies are experiencing “a lot of confusion” about the specifics of the new rules, including a requirement that they store data collected in China within its borders.
Nevertheless, international pushback by business groups and individual companies may have at least delayed the inevitable: CAC announced that it will require compliance with the rules on cross-border data flows only by the end of next year.
Liu Xiaobo medical parole sparks censorship, criticism
China’s only Nobel Peace Prize laureate, democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo, was granted medical parole from his 11-year prison term on June 26 after he was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. Liu was sentenced in 2009 for “inciting subversion of state power.” He won the Nobel Prize the following year. One of his lawyers said he had already been diagnosed in May, indicating that the authorities deliberately withheld the information.
The news of Liu’s illness and release immediately sparked a flurry of activity among observers and supporters outside China: Media outlets published articles, human rights groups issued statements, and foreign governments urged China to allow Liu to seek treatment abroad, offering to host him and his wife, who has been under house arrest since 2010.
On June 29, 154 other Nobel laureates—many of them in the medical profession—signed a joint letter asking for Liu to be allowed to leave China. In Hong Kong, prodemocracy activists incorporated calls for Liu’s freedom into demonstrations marking the 20th anniversary of the territory’s handover from Britain to China.
Inside China, information about Liu and his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize has long been heavily censored. The impact of these efforts was reflected in reports that Chinese tourists asked the Hong Kong protesters who Liu was. The news blackout on the mainland was reinforced on June 28 when, according to China Digital Times, a censorship directive ordered all websites not to “report, comment, or repost on Liu Xiaobo’s medical parole or related matters.” Nevertheless, the activist community rallied on his behalf, with over 500 Chinese intellectuals signing a petition calling for his release.
The Chinese government reacted to the domestic and international pressure in a variety of ways. Government spokespeople claimed that Liu was now too ill to travel, and limited his and family members’ ability to speak to outsiders, though they did allow his wife, Liu Xia, to leave house arrest in Beijing to visit him and invited foreign medical experts to help treat him. On June 28, the U.S.-based dissident news website Boxun posted a three-minute YouTube video showing Liu Xiaobo’s treatment in prison. Boxun noted that the video was “probably deliberately leaked by official sources,” in an apparent attempt to dispel criticism that Liu had been denied proper medical attention. The nationalistic state-owned newspaper Global Times published twoarticlesdisparaging Liu (only in English). Meanwhile, at least one signatory of the Chinese activists’ petition—a poet from Guangzhou—was reportedly taken away by police, and the phone line of another was blocked.
As of July 6, Liu’s condition appeared to be deteriorating, with Reuters reporting that a family member said his time was limited. Indeed, on July 13, Liu passed away at a Chinese hospital in Shenyang.
While Liu is the most prominent dissident to be released from prison on the verge of death, his treatment fits a larger pattern in which prison authorities attempt to avoid responsibility for having a political prisoner die in custody. The death of activist Cao Shunli in 2010 was similar, as are numerous reported incidents involving Tibetans and Falun Gong practitioners.
Censorship updates: Landslide coverage, table tennis protest, AlphaGo game
Landslide complaints: On June 26, censors ordered the deletion of an article by commercial news outlet Caixin about residents seeking accountability after a devastating landslide in Xinmo village, Sichuan Province. At least 10 people were killed in the disaster, with over 90 missing. The villagers blamed the government for eight years of inaction as the danger grew. A few days later, Reuters reported that half a dozen Chinese journalists covering the landslide had been recalled on the evening of June 25, after their editors said they had received orders from the Chinese Communist Party’s Propaganda Department to cease coverage.
Table tennis protest: After top table tennis players boycotted their matches at a major tournament in Chengdu on June 23 to protest their coach’s forcible promotion, they expressed their frustration on Sina Weibo. Those posts were later deleted, and the players issued an apology, saying that “benefit to the motherland comes before all else.” The same day, a directive was reportedly issued to “all websites” not to report on the incident.
Man vs. computer Go match: Live streaming of a game of Go—the ancient Chinese board game involving strategic placement of black and white stones on a grid—was strictly forbidden by Chinese censors in late May. The match in question was between Chinese Go prodigy Ke Jie and Google’s artificial intelligence program AlphaGo, which proved that it has become stronger than any human player of the complex game. There were multiple ironies in the episode, including that the match took place in the Chinese city of Wuzhen, host to the country’s annual cyberspace regulation conference, and that China has been attempting to build its own artificial intelligence industry. Some speculated that the censorship was part of a longer-term effort to reduce U.S.-based Google’s profile in China. A number of streaming sites showed boards replicating the two players’ moves, but without live shots of the event.
HONG KONG: Xi visit on handover anniversary prompts arrests, curbs on protests
Chinese leader Xi Jinping made a rare visit to Hong Kong to mark the 20th anniversary of the former British colony’s handover to the People’s Republic of China on July 1. Ahead of Xi’s arrival on June 29, protests were organized by prodemocracy and localist groups to call for fully democratic elections and the release of mainland democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo for medical treatment abroad.
In the run-up to the anniversary on July 1, there were numerous reports of restrictions on those wishing to express critical views on China or draw Xi’s attention to their causes, including:
A ban on protest slogans and images, especially in parts of the city that Xi would visit.
The detention of protesters at Golden Bauhinia Square—the site of the flag-raising ceremony for Xi’s visit. About two dozen young activists staged the protest on June 29, with some chaining themselves to the sculpture at the center of the square; police removed them after a standoff that lasted several hours.
The prohibition of a planned June 30 gathering by those opposed to Chinese rule at Hong Kong Clock Tower.
July 1 began with Xi inspecting thousands of Chinese troops stationed in Hong Kong and then attending the swearing-in ceremony of the territory’s new chief executive, Carrie Lam. In a speech, Xi took a hard line on Hong Kongers who wish to distance the territory from China or support rights activists on the mainland. Xi warned that “any attempt to endanger China’s sovereignty and security, challenge the power of the central government,” or “use Hong Kong to carry out infiltration and sabotage against the mainland is an act that crosses the red line and is absolutely impermissible.” This marked the first time that a Chinese leader had used the term “red line” on such issues, implying that in the future, localist activists could face more serious penalties.
Xi also claimed that “the people of Hong Kong enjoy more extensive democratic rights and freedoms than at any other time in its history,” despite a widely acknowledged deterioration of press freedom and other civil liberties in recent years. Lam notably delivered her own speech in Mandarin, the dominant language on the mainland, as opposed to the Cantonese spoken by most Hong Kongers.
In another worrying official statement, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry said on June 30 that the Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which China pledged not to interfere with fundamental rights and freedoms in Hong Kong after the handover, was “history and of no practical significance.”
Xi departed the city soon after the swearing-in ceremony, missing the annual protest march by prodemocracy and Chinese activist groups, though the tense atmosphere and heavy police presence that characterized Xi’s visit remained. Police reportedly failed to protect prodemocracy activists from pro-China thugs who attacked them, and even detained several of the protest leaders, allegedly beating them inside a police van. Avery Ng, chair of the League of Social Democrats, told the media that activists had suffered “a whole new level of intimidation and direct violence” surrounding Xi’s visit.
Despite the tensions, protest restrictions, and arrests, the anniversary still illustrated Hong Kong’s greater freedom of expression relative to the mainland: Protesters were seen with cardboard cutouts of Xi holding a yellow umbrella, numerous marchers punched blow-up dolls of former chief executive Leung Chun-ying, a Falun Gong marching band made an appearance, and Hong Kong journalists who got close enough to Xi Jinping asked whether he was going to release Liu Xiaobo.
BEYOND CHINA: Soft power in Australia, U.S. Dalai Lama warning, ‘BoJack Horseman’ censored
Influence operations in Australia: China’s aggressive—and often covert—push for “soft power” in Australia was the focus of a series of high-profile reports published in June. Australian media, including Fairfax and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, shed light on questionable donations to Australian politicians by Chinese billionaires with murky backgrounds, attempts to guide and influence government policy toward China, and Chinese diplomatic outposts’ role in controlling Chinese students at Australian universities through proxy student groups. A documentary titled Power and Influence: The Hard Edge of China’s Soft Power that aired in early June featured one leader of a Chinese student association, Lu Lipin, saying that if dissident students were organizing a protest, she would “definitely” inform the embassy, “just to keep all the students safe and to do it for China as well.” Chinese Communist Party authorities also exert enormous influence over the Chinese-language Australian press; most such publications—with notable exceptions run by dissident communities—are pro-Beijing. Chinese state-run media have increasingly sought to collaborate with mainstream English-language outlets in the country.
Chinese film removed from French festival: Have a Nice Day, a film by the Chinese director Liu Jian, was dropped on May 30 from the French animation festival Annecy under pressure from the Chinese authorities. The festival directors initially refused to comply, but when the film’s producers made the request themselves, the organizers felt they had to agree lest the dispute endanger the film’s team in China. “We’re disappointed about the official pressures that have prevented us from presenting this remarkable film this year and we hope that international audiences will soon have the possibility to see it,” said a statement from festival directors. The film follows a set of characters chasing a bag of money in a small Chinese town and may have been deemed politically sensitive because it shows a dark underside of Chinese society.
Dalai Lama’s U.S. university speech: The Dalai Lama delivered the commencement address at the University of California San Diego on June 17, telling students that they should use their knowledge as “a source of peace.” Although the speech went ahead without incident, the university’s branch of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association—which analysts believe is often managed from afar by Chinese consular officials—had previously staged a protest against the Tibetan spiritual leader’s planned appearance. China’s nationalistic state-owned newspaper Global Times ran an article attacking the U.S. school’s Indian American chancellor for the choice of speaker and urging the Chinese government to “not issue visas to the chancellor and not recognize diplomas … by the university in China.” This prompted a curt rebuttal from U.S. senator Dianne Feinstein of California: “I find it unconscionable that a reporter for the Global Times, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, would threaten UC San Diego and its chancellor and students for inviting the Dalai Lama to speak.”
Netflix animated series removed from Chinese platform: The Chinese video platform iQiyi removed the Netflix programBoJack Horseman from its site without explanation in late June, just two days after it went online. iQiyi was Netflix’s sole partner for its content in China after a failed attempt to break into the China market on its own. Precisely what about BoJack Horseman—an animated show centered on an anthropomorphized horse’s search for meaning—irked Chinese censors is unclear. The series had established a cult following online, however, with Chinese users posting screenshots and creating memes with their favorite lines.
FEATURED PRISONERS: Yao Guofu and Liang Xin
Yao and his wife Liang were detained on December 5, 2015, when at least 30 plainclothes police broke into their apartment in Nanyang, Henan Province. According to Amnesty International, the officers also confiscated computers, printers, and boxes filled with material related to Falun Gong, the banned spiritual and meditation discipline practiced by the couple. On December 12, 2016, they were each sentenced to 4.5 years in prison and fined 10,000 yuan ($1,470).
They were charged with “using a heterodox religion to undermine implementation of the law,” an offense often invoked to jail Falun Gong adherents. The specific allegations cited in the verdict are that Liang and Yao had used a VPN on their home computer to search Falun Gong–related websites and disseminated printed and electronic Falun Gong materials to the public, including: a collection of 162 books, 47 CDs, 3200 flyers, and 214 desk calendars. The verdict also notes 380 audio files, 235 videos, and 817 documents related to Falun Gong found on their computer.
The couple’s case is tied to a larger trend involving what one scholarly account likened to a “Chinese samizdat.” Freedom House has verified more than 50 similar cases since January 2016 of Falun Gong adherents being sentenced to prison for circulating such prohibited content—a peaceful exercise of their rights to free expression and access to information.
Both Yao and Liang are currently imprisoned in Henan Province. Liang marked her 63rd birthday in custody on June 25. According to the couple’s daughter, who resides in the United States, both have been permitted to receive visits from family members, but they have lost weight; Yao has been beaten and forced to engage in prison labor, and his wife’s heart disease and high blood pressure, which had eased when she took up Falun Gong, have apparently worsened in custody.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
Leaks and censorship during August leadership retreat: Each August, Chinese Communist Party leaders depart Beijing for the resort town of Beidaihe, meeting in secret and making decisions on personnel and policy. This year’s retreat may be especially significant given that the 19th Party Congress—which could involve naming Xi’s eventual successor—is scheduled for the fall. Watch for leaks surrounding important decisions, plotting, and infighting, as well as censorship of any such information.
Xu Zhiyong release, Wang Quanzhang condition: Prominent rights attorney Xu Zhiyong is scheduled for release from prison on July 15. Xu was detained in 2013 and subsequently sentenced to four years in prison for disturbing public order and “public spaces on the internet” due to his role in organizing nonviolent protests under the banner of the New Citizens Movement. Separately, Wang Quanzhang is the only rights lawyer detained nearly two years ago—as part of what came to be known as the “709” crackdown—who remains in incommunicado detention. His family and lawyer have been denied access, adding to fears that he has been badly tortured, but they were notified that he is being charged with “subverting state power.” Watch for censorship surrounding Xu’s release, reports of continued surveillance or restrictions affecting him and his family, and any news regarding Wang’s condition and potential release or sentencing.
New Hong Kong chief executive’s approach to press freedom and dissent: On July 1, Carrie Lam was sworn in as Hong Kong’s first female chief executive. Her predecessor’s tenure was marked not only by increasing Chinese government encroachment on free expression in Hong Kong, but also by a restrictive approach to the press from the Hong Kong authorities themselves, including curbs on journalists’ access to official information and exclusion of digital media from government press conferences. As Lam begins her term, watch for whether her administration takes a more open approach to the media, presses charges against prodemocracy activists detained during Xi Jinping’s visit, or reintroduces controversial security legislation under Article 23 of the Basic Law.
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Support a prisoner: Two Chinese activists, one Canadian citizen, and one Taiwanese NGO worker being held in China for exercising their right to free expression are the focus of international petitions or letter-writing campaigns. Visit the relevant link to add your voice on behalf of Liu Xiaobo, Huang Qi, Sun Qian, or Lee Ming-Cheh.
考虑到中国共产党对资源的全面控制，考虑到它使用如何残暴的手段对待那些它认为对其统治构成威胁的人，我们也许会认为反对这个政权的人必然会失败。但是就在局面显得尤其惨淡的时候，又出现了新一轮对政权的批评，包括来自国家媒体记者的批评以及来自党内的批评。过去一个月我们看到了好几个这样的事例。一个明显的副产品是一些被拘押的批评者获得释放。
考慮到中國共產黨對資源的全面控制，考慮到它使用如何殘暴的手段對待那些它認為對其統治構成威脅的人，我們也許會認為反對這個政權的人必然會失敗。但是就在局面顯得尤其慘澹的時候，又出現了新一輪對政權的批評，包括來自國家媒體記者的批評以及來自黨內的批評。過去一個月我們看到了好幾個這樣的事例。一個明顯的副產品是一些被拘押的批評者獲得釋放。
