Politics

posts on political issues relevant to Greater China

Xi’s ten-year bid to remake China’s media

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Source: China Media Project (7/24/24)
Xi’s Ten-Year Bid to Remake China’s Media
Outside China, the idea of “media convergence,” the joining together of communication technologies on handheld devices, is now so much a way of life that few even talk about it. But for China’s leadership it is a concept with era-defining significance — having far-reaching consequences for the current and future exercise of power.
By David Bandurski

Xi Jinping opens the Chengdu Universiade in 2023. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

In recent years, the buzzword “media convergence,” or meiti ronghe (媒体融合), has abounded in official documents about public opinion and ideology in China. What does this term mean? And why is it important in a Chinese political context? The quick answer — it is about remaking information controls for the 21st century, and building a media system that is innovative, influential and serves the needs of the ruling party.

The idea of “media convergence” took off in official circles in China almost exactly 10 years ago as Xi Jinping sought to recast “mainstream media” (主流媒体) — referring narrowly in China’s political context to large CCP-controlled media groups, such as central and provincial daily newspapers and broadcasters — into modern communication behemoths for rapidly changing global media landscape. More insistently even than his predecessors, Xi believed it was crucial for the Party to maintain social and political control by seizing and shaping public opinion. To accomplish this in the face of 21st century communication technologies, built on 4G and eventually 5G mobile networks, the Party’s trusted “mainstream” media had to reinvent themselves while remaining loyal servants of the CCP agenda. Continue reading Xi’s ten-year bid to remake China’s media →

Why Chinese propaganda loves foreign travel bloggers (1)

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Good observations in this article. But somebody should write about the obvious, glaring parallels with Nazi tourism.

Just like China, the Nazis also organized foreigners to come and “see with their own eyes” to counter the accusations that the Nazis were doing anything wrong.

And huge numbers of foreign tourists did go to Goebbels Germany, which was similarly full of sightseeing spots, rich in cultural history, and helpful Nazis.

I wasn’t aware of just how striking these parallels are, but there are some outstanding books on this, such as Seeing Hitler’s Germany: Tourism in the Third Reich, by Kristin Semmens (2005), and Travelers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism 1919-1945, by Julia Boyd (2018) which lay out in great detail how the Nazis purposefully organized the tourism, to cover up their crimes by luring in foreigners to play the fool, just like in China now — where we now see lots of Americans marveling about how great is the food, and the bridges and the Autobahns, etcetera.

On X/Twitter, all the usual Chinese “diplomats” as well as the armies of propaganda officers under cover have all be directed to talk about tourists and vloggers almost more than they mention the Olympics.

Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Why Chinese propaganda loves foreign travel bloggers

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Source: NYT (7/31/24)
Why Chinese Propaganda Loves Foreign Travel Bloggers
Videos by influencers documenting their trips have been widely promoted on Chinese media — if they tell a certain story.
By Vivian Wang, Reporting from Beijing

Spend some time browsing YouTube or Instagram and you might come across a growing new genre: China travel vlogs.

There’s the American who made a four-hour “vlogumentary” about eating dumplings in Shanghai. There’s the German traveler marveling at how quickly China’s bullet trains accelerate. There’s a British couple admiring colorful traditional clothing in the far western region of Xinjiang. All have hundreds of thousands of views.

The videos are even more popular on Chinese social media. YouTube and Instagram are banned in China, but Chinese users have found ways to reshare them to Chinese sites, to avid followings. The bloggers have been interviewed by Chinese state media and their experiences promoted with trending hashtags such as “Foreign tourists have become our internet spokespeople.”

The emergence of these videos reflects the return of foreign travelers to China after the country isolated itself for three years during the Covid pandemic. The government has introduced a slew of visa-free policies to attract more tourists. Travel bloggers have leaped at the chance to see a country to which they previously had limited access.

But for China, the videos do more than help stimulate its economy. They are a chance for Beijing to hit back at what it calls an anti-China narrative in the West. China in recent years has encouraged locals to treat foreigners as potential spies; expanded its surveillance state; and expelled or arrested journalists at Chinese and foreign media outlets. But it points to the carefree travel videos as proof — from Westerners — that criticisms about those issues are manufactured. Continue reading Why Chinese propaganda loves foreign travel bloggers →

Thoughts from the Ice-Drinker’s Studio review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Leigh Jenco’s review of Thoughts from the Ice-Drinker’s Studio: Essays on China and the World, by Liang Qichao, edited and translated by Peter Zarrow. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/jenco/. My thanks to Michael Gibbs Hill, our translations/translation studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Thoughts from the Ice-Drinker’s Studio:
Essays on China and the World

By Liang Qichao
Edited and Translated by Peter Zarrow

Reviewed by Leigh Jenco
MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright July, 2024)

Liang Qichao. Thoughts From the Ice-Drinker’s Studio: Essays on China and the World Edited and translated by Peter Zarrow. Penguin Classics, 2023. 272 pp. ISBN: 9780241568781 (paperback); 9781802060140 (ebook).

As a political theorist who works on Chinese thought within the notoriously Eurocentric fields of political science and philosophy, I have been waiting a very long time for a volume like this one. Peter Zarrow has finally undertaken the considerable scholarly effort to translate, masterfully and lucidly, key essays from Liang Qichao 梁啟超, arguably the most influential figure of twentieth-century Chinese thought barring only Mao Zedong. We can now easily include in our introductory courses several weeks of key readings from the greatest mover-and-shaker to come out of the late Qing period—the figure who “invented political journalism, promoted democratic reforms, and introduced Western political theory to Chinese readers,” and “led China’s break from tradition” (ix). This volume is a real milestone.

Zarrow begins the volume with a brisk and accessible introduction that sketches the historical context without becoming bogged down in irrelevant detail. His translator’s note explains how he chose the essays to translate: he focuses on those that mainly deal with questions we would consider closer to political theory than to historiography or journalism (the other contributions for which Liang is known), and that are representative of Liang’s thinking at distinct junctures in his life. These junctures also organize the volume’s four parts: Early Reformist Thought (1896-1898), Radicalism (1899-1903), Cultural Reform (1904-1911), and Syncretism and Progress (1912-1929).  Long known as a bit of a plagiarist, Liang’s Chinese translations of Japanese-language material published under his own name are also not included in this volume, nor are his writings on literature or history, which have been published elsewhere (and Zarrow helpfully provides a bibliographic list). Continue reading Thoughts from the Ice-Drinker’s Studio review →

When Worlds Collide

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Soure: China Media Project (7/22/24)
When Worlds Collide
State media have released a short, AI-generated series on Douyin. It’s the meeting point of several tools the Party has been using to modernize media and propaganda.
By Alex Colville

Government and private tech have teamed up to create the first AI-generated sci-fi short-video series in China. “Sanxingdui: Future Apocalypse,” released on July 8, imagines a world far in the future where characters travel back to the Bronze Age Sanxingdui (三星堆) civilization of southern China. The series consists of 12 three-minute clips — generated with human guidance, edited through Douyin’s “Jimeng AI” (即梦AI) algorithm, and then released on their short video platform. The company has already reported views of over 20 million.

The series combines the slickness of Douyin tech with the media know-how of the State Council’s National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) and the Bona Film Group, one of China’s biggest production companies and a subsidiary of the state-owned mega-conglomerate Poly Group. At a press briefing, Bona executives explained how the Jimeng algorithm had generated video through the input of original images, responding to prompts on camera angles and movement speeds.

This production process is a convergence of trends that the Chinese Communist Party has been pushing forward for years to modernize the media. To look at the show is to look at some of the first sprouts of the Party’s long-term goals for communication. Continue reading When Worlds Collide →

Chinese student pleads guilty to violating US espionage act

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Is it naivete or negligence? The American law professor commenting in the article below, Mary Ellen O’Connell at Notre Dame, either really is, or pretends to be,  unaware of Chinese law requiring Chinese citizens to obey all orders to spy for the Chinese state intelligence services — and, not to reveal the circumstances. And it’s just not conceivable that a Chinese grad student in Minnesota takes off on his own initiative, with a drone, to a US naval base in Virginia, to make a spy film. He must have been pressed into it by agents of the Chinese state, just like those lab-thieving students at U. Florida a few weeks ago. On the circumstances of the Virginia case, see also here. –Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: Nikkei (7/9/24)
Chinese student pleads guilty to violating U.S. espionage act
Shi Fengyun is accused of violating rarely used provisions of the Espionage Act
By MARRIAN ZHOU, Nikkei staff writer

Chinese 26-year-old Shi Fengyun pled guilty to espionage misdemeanors for flying a drone near a U.S. naval facility.   © Reuters

NORFOLK, Virginia — A Chinese student pleaded guilty to misdemeanor espionage charges at a federal courthouse here on Monday for taking photographs of U.S. military infrastructure using a drone.

Shi Fengyun, a 26-year-old graduate student from the University of Minnesota, walked into the courtroom in a light green and gray jacket and sports pants. He appeared nervous, taking several deep breaths while shaking his legs before he entered his plea.

Shi pleaded guilty to two out of six counts of violations under two provisions of the Espionage Act, which prohibits the photography of military installations and the use of unregistered drones to do so in national defense airspace. The U.S. Department of Justice dismissed the remaining four counts. Continue reading Chinese student pleads guilty to violating US espionage act →

‘Ink Girl,’ alive or dead?

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The number of people detained by China’s authorities that even family members are not told for years, whether they are alive or dead, is enormous — they include my fellow Swedish citizen Gui Minhai kidnapped by China 8 1/2 years ago, as well as untold numbers of disappeared Uyghurs. Dong Yaoqiong, whose case is raised here below, is also one example from among Chinese people. This sort of targeted news blackout is a particularly cruel weapon deployed by the Chinese regime.–Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: Bitter Winter (7/8/24)
The “Ink Girl” Six Years After: Is She Alive or Dead?
Dong Yaoqiong sprayed with ink a portrait of Xi Jinping on July 4, 2018, and was taken to a psychiatric hospital. Her friends ask the CCP to prove she is still alive.
by Hu Zimo

Dong Yaoqiong and the portrait of Xi Jinping she sprayed with ink. From X.

Dong Yaoqiong and the portrait of Xi Jinping she sprayed with ink. From X.

Remember Dong Yaoqiong, the famous “Ink Girl” from Shanghai? If you don’t, this means that the CCP’s repression, which has tried to systematically erase any trace of her from the web, has been successful. We at “Bitter Winter,” however, do remember Dong Yaoqiong. Remembering may be the only way to keep her alive—unless she already died.

On July 4, 2018, Dong, a then twenty-nine-year-old woman who had come to Shanghai from Hunan and worked in a real estate agency, filmed herself in the act of spraying ink on a poster of Xi Jinping, calling for democracy, and posted the video on Twitter, which is banned in China but widely accessed through VPN, particularly by college students.

Dong was arrested a few hours after she had posted the video and later taken to a psychiatric hospital, reportedly with the complicity of her mother, who signed a statement that her daughter was mentally ill. It is rumored the mother was rewarded with a new and better home. The Ink Girl’s father, Dong Jianbiao, criticized his wife and insisted Dong Yaoqiong was not insane. As a result, the father was also arrested. On September 23, 2022, it was announced that he had died of “natural causes” in jail. His body was quickly cremated, but not before relatives had seen it, covered with bruises and other signs of violence. Continue reading ‘Ink Girl,’ alive or dead? →

Private Revolutions review

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Source: NYT (7/5/24)
6 Years, 4 Raw Human Stories From the New China
In “Private Revolutions,” Yuan Yang follows the lives of women in a rapidly changing modern superpower.
By Michelle T. King (Michelle T. King is the author of “Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food.”)

PRIVATE REVOLUTIONS: Four Women Face China’s New Social Order, by Yuan Yang. Viking | 294 pp. | $30

There’s an unforgettable moment in Yuan Yang’s new book, when an idealistic university student is tasked with conducting a survey by going door-to-door to random addresses in Shenzhen, China’s manufacturing megalopolis.

In one poor neighborhood, the female student asks a young man, living in a tiny apartment with four other adults and a baby, to rate his current job satisfaction. His immediate reaction is to ask whether she has been sent by the Communist Party.

Though she denies it, he responds, “I’m guessing they did send you, so let’s just say we are completely, utterly satisfied with everything in our lives.”

That story, which takes place in the early 2010s, highlights Yang’s concern with the fate of China’s laborers, as well as the class distinctions that structure the encounter.

In 2016, Yang returned to China, where she had spent her early childhood, to work as a journalist for The Financial Times. Over the next six years, Yang followed four young women as they navigated what she calls China’s “new social order.” All of them, like Yang, were born in the late 1980s and 1990s, coming-of-age after the “optimistic giddiness” of their parents’ generation, one characterized by increasing prosperity in the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms in the 1980s. Continue reading Private Revolutions review →

Crackdown on extreme nationalism

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Source: China Digital Times (7/3/24)
Chinese Social Media Platforms Launch Crackdown on Extreme Nationalism and Xenophobic Hate-Speech after Fatal Suzhou Stabbing
By

Chinese social media platforms have announced a belated crackdown on “extreme nationalism” and xenophobic hate-speech online, following last week’s fatal stabbing at a school bus stop in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, in which a Japanese mother and child were injured by a knife-wielding man, and Chinese school bus attendant Hu Youping was killed after trying to intervene. Just two weeks earlier, four visiting American teachers were stabbed and injured by another man at a public park in Jilin, in northeastern China. Both stabbings are believed to have been motivated by xenophobic sentiment, and many online commenters have witheringly described the attackers as “modern-day Boxers,” referring to the anti-foreign rebels who launched the Boxer Rebellion approximately 125 years ago.

In the last few weeks, CDT editors have compiled numerous essays, articles, and netizen comments pointing out apparent links between the recent spate of attacks and the vitriolic anti-Japanese and other xenophobic content that is tolerated on Chinese television, social media, and even in school textbooks. It is worth nothing that several of these essays were censored and taken offline in the days following the Suzhou attack. The hate-speech crackdown announced by social media platforms this week seems to reflect a belated realization that xenophobic online content may be fueling hatred and even radicalizing some individuals to carry out offline attacks. Continue reading Crackdown on extreme nationalism →

Netizens reflect on anti-Japanese propaganda

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Source: China Digital Times (6/26/24)
Netizens Reflect on Anti-Japanese Propaganda after Stabbing at School Bus Stop
By Alexander Boyd

A stabbing at a school bus stop in Eastern China that left two Japanese nationals and a Chinese national injured is the latest instance of anti-foreigner violence to rock China in the last month. Two weeks ago, four instructors from Iowa’s Cornell College were stabbed in a park in northern China. Details of this latest attack are sparse: a Japanese mother and her child were stabbed while waiting for a school bus to Suzhou’s Japanese School, a school for Japanese children that follows a Japanese curriculum. Both sustained minor injuries. A Chinese bystander who attempted to prevent the attacker from boarding the school bus was grievously injured and remains in the hospital as of publication. On Weibo, reactions to the news ranged from despair over xenophobic propaganda to admiration of the Chinese bystander’s bravery. Particular ire focused on a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson’s insistence that this attack—like the one in Jilin—was “random”:

Cor-Universe：When certain emotions get stirred up, they can lead to murder.

吃瓜的专业群众SH：If we don’t reform our education and propaganda systems, there’ll only be more of these “Boxers” going forward.

迷路的羊羔：Xenophobic propaganda: scares off foreign business → leading to job losses→ which inspire attacks on foreigners → scaring off more foreign businesses → causing more job losses → leading to even more xenophobic propaganda → scaring off more businesses → thus more job loss … I term this an “Okamoto cycle.” [A reference to a 2022 incident in which Chinese men, the Six Okamoto Gentlemen, opened up a Japanese convenience store franchise and then pretended to be anti-Japanese to drum up business.]

千里虽遥：Random attacks happen randomly, but xenophobic social media videos that incite hatred against everyday people and businesses should be brought under control.

你的眼我的脸：Why are these “random attacks” happening so regularly?

紫雨hz-1974：Once the Boxers rise up, it’s hard to suppress them. Continue reading Netizens reflect on anti-Japanese propaganda →

Bookstores as sites of subtle protest

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Source: China Digital Times (6/18/24)
Bookstores Become Sites of Subtle Protest Against Xi Jinping
By 

The novel “Changing of the Guard” displayed at left, alongside “Study Outline for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”

Chinese bookstore shelf arrangements rarely go viral—that is, unless they contain a hidden message calling for Xi Jinping to step down. Since Xi has risen to power, placing Xi’s works next to other books to make a political point has become a relatively common, low-key mode of political dissent. It’s often unclear whether the juxtapositions are created by bookstore employees or the product of cheeky swaps by politically astute customers—or simply accidental.

The latest incident occurred last week. A photograph taken inside a Hangzhou bookshop showed the novel “Changing of the Guard” displayed next to the 2023 edition of “Study Outline for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” a juxtaposition that some read as an implicit call for Xi to step down:

The novel itself is not a work of secret dissent, but rather a paean to Party governance. Written by Zhang Ping, a former vice-president of the Party-dominated China Writers Association, the novel is set in the fictional city of Linjin. The novel’s plot centers on unprecedented rain and flooding striking the city just as the provincial and municipal authorities are set to undergo a leadership transition. Yet put alongside Xi’s works, the implication is obvious.

Previous instances have seen Xi’s books paired with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, novels by Ernest Hemingway, childhood psychology books, Winnie the Pooh, books on Hitler, and studies of China’s imperial system. CDT has compiled a slideshow of the works: Continue reading Bookstores as sites of subtle protest →

Shangyuan Art Museum demolition

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Below is a link to a very good documentary by Chen Jiaping 陈家坪. He climbed in to join us at the demolition site of Shangyuan Art Museum last Saturday, June 15. The local powers were paranoid that day. Invitations to a party on the ruins had been circulating. So they tried to block off exit and entry. But they could not prevent this excellent film:

https://www.xiaohongshu.com/discovery/item/66717a1d000000001c0374e2

I have been documenting the demolition with poems and photos on my WeChat. The poems can be found on the following blog posts:

SOUND 声音
https://banianerguotoukeyihe.com/2024/06/18/sound-%e5%a3%b0%e9%9f%b3/
美 BEAUTIFUL
https://banianerguotoukeyihe.com/2024/06/17/%e7%be%8e-beautiful/
躲 HIDING
https://banianerguotoukeyihe.com/2024/06/16/%e8%ba%b2-hiding/
SHANGYUAN ART MUSEUM 上苑艺术馆
https://banianerguotoukeyihe.com/2024/06/14/%e4%b8%8a%e8%8b%91%e8%89%ba%e6%9c%af%e9%a6%86-shangyuan-art-museum/
IT HAS BEGUN 开始了 DAS IST DER ANFANG
https://banianerguotoukeyihe.com/2024/06/13/anfang-%e5%bc%80%e5%a7%8b%e4%ba%86/
DEMOLISH 拆
https://banianerguotoukeyihe.com/2024/06/04/%e6%8b%86-demolish/

Thank you for watching, reading and circulating!

Martin Winter 维马丁
in the ruins of Shangyuan Art Museum

#MeToo journalist sentenced to 5 years

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Source: The Guardian (6/14/24)
China #MeToo journalist sentenced to five years in jail, supporters say
Sophia Huang Xueqin, who reported on #MeToo movement and Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, sentenced along with labour activist Wang Jianbing
By  in Taipei

Sophia Huang Xueqin, a freelance journalist who reported on China’s MeToo movement and the Hong Kong democracy protests, has been sentenced to five years in jail. Photograph: Thomas Yau/SCMP/Getty Images

A Chinese court has sentenced the prominent #MeToo journalist Sophia Huang Xueqin to five years in jail and the labour activist Wang Jianbing to three and a half years, almost 1,000 days after they were detained on allegations of inciting state subversion, according to supporters.

On Friday, supporters of the pair said the court had found them guilty and given Huang the maximum sentence. The jail terms would take into account the time they had already spent in detention. A copy of the verdict said Huang was also deprived of political rights for four years and fined $100,000 RMB (£10,800). Wang faced three years of deprivation of political rights and was fined $50,000 RMB.

Huang told the court she intended to appeal, the supporters said.

“[The sentence] was longer than we expected,” said a spokesperson for the campaign group Free Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing, asking to remain anonymous for safety concerns. “I don’t think it should have been this severe, and it is completely unnecessary. So we support Huang Xueqin’s intention to appeal.”

Just one day’s notice was given of Friday’s hearing, and the public and media were kept away by a heavy police presence of both uniformed and plain clothed officers, as well as court workers and large barriers. The closed-door trial began in September last year, two years after their arrest. Continue reading #MeToo journalist sentenced to 5 years →

Recollections of June 4th beyond Beijing

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Source: China Digital Times (6/5/24)
Memories of a Massacre: Recollections of June Fourth Beyond Beijing
By

Despite near absolute censorship of any mention of the Tiananmen Massacre within China, memories of June Fourth still persist. On the 35th anniversary of the 1989 student movement’s suppression, a number of people who lived through the era published personal recollections to overseas websites. CDT has archived their essays and translated selected excerpts from each.

Jiang Xue, a leading Chinese journalist now reporting from exile, published a mix of reportage and memoir in Wainao (WHYNOT), a Chinese-language online magazine. She recalled how the events played out in her small hometown in Gansu, hundreds of miles from the events in Beijing. She remembered solidarity and initial permissiveness, followed by a crackdown on public mourning:

That summer, we all gathered anxiously to listen to Voice of America, straining for any and all news out of Beijing about the student movement. One day in March, our class leader brought our entire class to a blackboard at the school gate and posted our school’s first big-character poster. To this day, I remember the crude blue characters written in a fountain pen on a large white paper: “Down with corruption, punish profiteering bureaucrats, support the student sit-in.”

[…] Before the massacre, the movement on the square was in full swing. One day, my classmates entrusted me to go to the town post office to donate our 14.5 yuan student fund. Writing on the post office’s crude desk, I put down the address: “The Tiananmen Square student sit-in.” The postal workers helped me fill out the remittance, which went smoothly. Nobody said, “This address is unclear, it won’t arrive.” That day, all of us, including the postal workers, knew without a doubt: The students on Tiananmen Square would receive the money. Continue reading Recollections of June 4th beyond Beijing →

Taiwan factcheckers

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Source: The Guardian (6/4/24)
From beef noodles to bots: Taiwan’s factcheckers on fighting Chinese disinformation and ‘unstoppable’ AI
Taiwan is the target of more disinformation from abroad than any other democracy, according to University of Gothenburg study
By Elaine Chan

A person uses her mobile phone outside a restaurant in Taipei. Experts blame China for much of the disinformation aimed at Taiwan. Photograph: Ann Wang/Reuters

Charles Yeh’s battle with disinformation in Taiwan began with a bowl of beef noodles. Nine years ago, the Taiwanese engineer was at a restaurant with his family when his mother-in-law started picking the green onions out of her food. Asked what she was doing, she explained that onions can harm your liver. She knew this, she said, because she had received text messages telling her so.

Yeh was puzzled by this. His family had always happily eaten green onions. So he decided to set the record straight.

He put the truth in a blog post and circulated it among family and friends through the messaging app Line. They shared it more broadly, and soon he received requests from strangers asking to be connected to his personal Line account.

“There wasn’t much of a factchecking concept in Taiwan then, but I realised there was a demand. I could also help resolve people’s problems,” Yeh said. So he continued, and in 2015 launched the website MyGoPen, which means, “don’t be fooled again” in Taiwanese.

Within two years, MyGoPen had 50,000 subscribers. Today, it has more than 400,000. In 2023, it received 1.3m fact check requests and has debunked disinformation on everything from carcinogens in bananas to the false claim that Taiwan’s new president, Lai Ching-te, had a child out of marriage. Continue reading Taiwan factcheckers →