Chinese Declare Internet Victory

If you've every wondered what your dad would sound like if he was put in charge of cleaning all the porn off the Interwebs then take a look at what Ren Xianliang had to say when his office issued forth a proclamation that the Internet is now like Disneyland, with barely a bad word to say about the CCP.

A study by an Internet opinion monitoring service under the party-owned People's Daily newspaper showed the number of posts by a sample of 100 opinion leaders declined by nearly 25 percent and were overtaken by posts from government microblog accounts.

Using his Jedi powers, Zhu Huaxin, general secretary of an Internet opinion monitoring service (such a thing does exist, apparently) weighed in, assuring us that positive energy (The Party) has regained control of the Intertubes, defeating negative powers (everyone else on planet Earth).

"The positive force on the Internet has preliminarily taken back the microphone, and the positive energy has overwhelmed the negative energy to uphold the online justice,"

The impressive statistics mean nothing, as was pointed out by a number of overseas analysts.  The mere fact that people aren't stupid enough to go public with their dissenting views means that they're being unpatriotic on more secure platforms, being driven underground and ultimately radicalised.  But then, the politicians in Beijing have already thought of that, right...?

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The Coming Collapse of Chinese Communism

A story that will gladden the heart of Gordon G. Chang runs in the Financial Times this morning, as eyebrows are being raised over the future of Chinese Communism - such as is it - at the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

A more significant change for an institution founded to enforce ideological purity is its relatively new role as an intellectual free-fire zone, where almost nothing is off-limits for discussion. “We just had a seminar with a big group of very influential party members and they were asking us how long we think the party will be in charge and what we have planned for when it collapses,” says one Party School professor who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak to foreign media. “To be honest, this is a question that everyone in China is asking but I’m afraid it is very difficult to answer.”

The blossoming Chinese middle class are a much different breed than the founding fathers of the People's Republic, with disposable incomes and a penchant for western "luxury goods".  The growing number of Chinese officials that have offshore bank accounts and property is a clear sign that they are ready to "bolt at a moment's notice", ready to leg it to another country should the system show signs of crumbling.

Document 9: Stop Calling Them Western Values

Doug Saunders of The Globe and Mail examines the use and promotion of "western values" in Chinese propaganda.

This sort of language has long been a familiar part of the Chinese state-controlled media, whose opinion articles frequently contrast these dangerous “Western” values with the “Confucian values” of deference to authority, social order, harmonious co-operation, common endeavour and unquestioning loyalty. Eastern and Western values, in this popular formula, are fire and ice.

Pointing out that the core tenents of Chinese communism is taken, lock, stock and barrel from a western idea determined by Western values in the first place, the arguement that the CCP is pursuing "Confucian values", like most ideologies that emanate from the Party these days, doesn't hold much water.  Saunders cites the now infamous "Document 9", a top secret memo that was leaked to the New York Times as an example of the short sighted attitude taken by the CCP in it's "anti-Western" stance.

A copy of Document No. 9 seen and verified by The New York Times places “Western constitutional democracy” at the top of its list of perils, then follows with more “subversive currents” to guard against: “promoting ‘universal values’ of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation (and) ardently pro-market ‘neo-liberalism.’” Across the country, cadres and mandarins are taking part in education sessions to fight against these threats.

 

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Shaping Public Opinion: Managing the Bo Xi Lai Trial

The Chinese government is keen to stage manage what could be the most stage managed trial in history, as Bo Xi Lai appears in the dock in Jinan today.

The only first hand coverage of the courtroom comes from official photos, news anchors and cameramen are relying on tweets from Weibo to provide commentary.

Censors are stuck with a difficult balancing act - the Party needs to show that it's cracking down with swift and unerring justice on those who take bribes, but they need to create as much positive buzz around the trial as possible.

Comparisons with the Gang of Four trial have been inevitably drawn, with commentators noting that in that trial, proceedings were broadcast across the country, but Jiang Qiang took the opportunity to exploit the media coverage to her own ends.  Given the large number of supporters that have gathered outside the courtroom, authorities were understandably reluctant to give  Bo an open mike.

Events that attract massive amounts of public interest, both in China and abroad are a key part of the CCP's charm offensive.  Maintaining a tight grip on the official media outlets to satisfy the Politburo that it's done a good job all round does little to inspire confidence in what should be a golden opportunity for a CCP reboot.

 

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Extravagant Government Galas Banned

More bad news for government officials - the Politburo has banned the once popular government galas in their latest move to show how connected to the people they are.

"Evening galas, especially those funded with state finances, easily encourage unhealthy practices and harm the image of the party and the government, and there are many public complaints about this," says the circular.

Editorials across the country predictably echoed their approval, The People's Daily noting that

"Our country still has 128 million people living below the poverty line, and per capita GDP is still behind in world rankings. With slowing fiscal revenue growth and rising demand for livelihood improvement, governments at all levels should firmly establish a mentality of living frugally and use limited funds where they are needed most by the masses,"

TV stations who produce overly sensational pieces should be "exposed by the media", as should pesky celebs who book only to cancel at the last minute, or any stars who demand wages deemed to be too high.  "Severe punishments" await those who dare to transgress...

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VIDEO: Red Reign Trailer

A trailer for a documentary exploring the the organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners is available online.

Falun Gong, a offshoot of Buddhist Qi Gong, has been illegal since 1992 in mainland China.  "By the late '90s there were more than 100 million practicing Falun Gong members," said director Masha Savitz,"It made [Communist officials] very nervous, and jealous ... the Communist party cannot have people not afraid of them. That’s how they control people."

Savitz follows David Matas, the co-author of Red Harvest, an investigation in forced organ donated using detained Falun Gong practitioners.  The director says that she was motivated to confront the issue "head on" after reporting on a speech made by Matas on the subject.

The Communist Party's refusal to acknowledge the religious group, made it difficult to obtain reliable interviews and information about the extent of the problem in China, so the documentary makers relied on first-hand accounts and personal connections.  The frank and graphic descriptions left her shaken, "I almost couldn't bare it,", she said, talking about the last few days of editing before the film was ready for screening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwe_jxzomiw

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Thoughtful Global Times Editorial Provokes Unexpected Anger

The number one selling book in a Hong Kong store that specializes in selling book banned on the Chinese mainland is an apocalyptic novel entitled “2014: The Great Collapse”.  The story focuses on the fictionalized account of the downfall of the Chinese Communist Party.  It was something that hit a little too close to home when the CCP held meetings in April to discuss the problems facing the future of the Party.

Strengthening the Party has been a top priority of late, a task ideally suited to our good friends at The Global Times, who this week warned on “battles and bloodshed" should the Party ever collapse.  The hardy netizens on Sina Weibo didn't take too kindly to this kind of thing, The Global Times is usually more thoughtful when writing it's editorials after all.

 

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CCTV's Greatest Hits

Rare is the day that CCTV contains actual news about China, the editorial staff at the station routinely concoct fake stories, use fake footage (sometimes culled from Hollywood movies) and use fake people to keep everyone happy and safe in the knowledge that they living in a socialist paradise.  Here’s a run-down of some the worst news gathering not seen since…well…ever, really.

Top Gun

Not happy with the use of actual real news footage, CCTV spliced in a scene of a missile destroying a plane.  The video was posted on the myriad thousand video sharing sites around China, along with various, non-too-complimentary comments.  The Wall Street Journal reported that the video might have actually been part of the promotional materials used by a jet manufacturer.



Taking a leaf from the Chinese Book of Effective PR, a spokesman promptly denied that they used the footage to beef up its advertising.  “It’s impossible and unnecessary for us to do anything like that,” Ding Zhiyong, AVIC’s director of public relations, told China Real Time, “The J-10 is an accomplishment we’re proud of–why would we even need to use ‘Top Gun’ footage?”.  Thankfully, once the tweets had hit the fan in the Chinese blogosphere, no one at CCTV was available for comment because of the Chinese New Year, and the story blew over quite conveniently.

The $12 Apartment




For anyone who has lived in Beijing, the housing market is something that weigh s heavily on the mind.  Contracts are often worth more than the paper they’re hurriedly printed on, landlords greed can often mean that people are thrown out of their houses with a few days to find a new place to live because the landlord is selling the place, and the government is trying to contain a rapidly expanding property bubble.


One of the misguided efforts that the CCP made was to stage an interview with a Beijing resident claiming that the apartment in which she lived had a monthly rent of a mere 77RMB for a princely 45 square meter pad (to compare, this author’s apartment in Chongwenmen is 3300RMB per month for 68 square meters).  Hu Jin Tao replied that the glorious Chinese Communist Party was doing everything it could to help people on low incomes live, well, like they weren’t on a low income, proclaiming “The party and the government pay great attention on improving people’s livelihood. Now we’ve adopted series of measures, and more are expected to come to improve lives of low-income families.”

Internet users were not happy, and soon uncovered a series of photos that showed the esteemed apartment owner, Mrs. Guo and her daughter taking not-so-low-income jollies to places like Shanghai, Dalian and Xiamen.  The broadcast ultimately backfired, deepened the discontent within the Chinese middle classes who have had to cope with increasingly high rents.  The problem got so bad that the government ordered the story and comments to be scrubbed from all discussion forums and social network sites.

Google Porn

The Chinese government is very proud of the fact that it has a clean and harmonious Internet environment.  Yes, in a country of 1.3 billion people, it’s forbidden to look at porn, and of course, the CCP Propaganda Department is anxious not only to establish itself as the thin red line, but also point out that looking at porn on the Internet is worse than eating babies in church, or drowning bag loads of kittens in the Yangtze.  To wit, the CCTV “current affairs show”, Focus Interview, broadcast an interview with a student who was addicted to looking at X-rated imaged on the web.  In a delicious twist, the interviewee pointed out that most of the images were to be found on the Chinese governments favorite search engine, Google.

Chinese netizens – all 300 million of them – were unimpressed and just a little skeptical of the claims.  A little searching around (probably using Google) uncovered the evil plot – Gao Ye, the student being interviewed was actually one of Focus Interviews’s own interns.  The Internet monitors in Beijing promptly added the words “Gao Ye” to their keyword blacklists, which in turn managed to grind the most of the Chinese Internet traffic to a halt since “gao” means “tall” and “ye” means “also”.

BTCC Spring Festival Fire

Ove the Spring Festival in 2009, a fireworks display went out of control and turned the Beijing Television Cultural Center in a massive roman candle that could be seen for miles around.  In the ensuing investigation, it was discovered that officials at CCTV had authorized the display, but hadn’t applied for permits from the local Beijing government, not only that, but they had ignored repeated warnings from the police  that the fireworks would be too powerful and dangerous.  As it turned out the fireworks were too dangerous (who would’ve guessed?) and the resulting inferno raged for 5 hours, killed one firefighter and completely destroyed the $731 million building.

Arrests immediately followed, including the former head of CCTV's construction bureau, 50-year-old Xu We.  Attempts to clamp down on the news story also followed, resulting in a wave of criticism from Chinese netizens and the international press. In a leaked memo to the New York Times, Beijing authorities had apparently ordered "No photos, no video clips, no in-depth reports…the news should be put on news areas only and the comments posting areas should be closed".  The reason?  The fire was said to symbolize bad luck for the coming New Year.

James Fallows, of The Atlantic wrote, “that the perils of the fireworks and firecrackers are more than a joke.... that people responsible appear to have been CCTV employees; and that the whole subsequent matter of investigating, publicizing, making sense of, and drawing omens from an unignorable spectacle involving the country's leading propaganda/communication outlet and the city's most distinctive new landmark will say a lot about the emotional and political state of China right now.”

Spring Festival Utility Men

And finally, the epic CCTV Spring Festival Gala raised it’s ugly head once again earlier this month, and while it’s becoming less and less popular, and turning into more of three hour infomercial, more fun can be had spotting people in the audience.  While typically, the sponsors of the show will have their CEO’s given the best seats, it’s the “ordinary people” – carefully vetted members of the public and “utility men” that netizens have the most fun with.



Yes, although CCTV has had the bright idea of using actors as fake members of the public, they haven’t really thought the whole thing through, and have used the same actors in the same shows for, er, the past 10 years.  One can only assume that they’ve been hoping that no one will catch on.  The bad news is of course that, well, people caught on.  And so did a lot of western news sources. Chinese netizens helpfully posted screen grabs of the utility men in a series of photos going all the way back to 2001.