Old China Hands

We've Been Here Before

More and more "China watchers" are calling our attention to the "Back to the Future" approach of Chinese President, Xi Jinping.  Under his reign, China has returned to the oppressions of the past.  The state is becoming more authoritarian, more centralised, more controlling.  

We have observed in the past that the great fear of the Communist government is not invasion from the East, West, North, or South but internal civil war.  The Chinese government is, in a word, frightened.  The reflexive response is to exert more totalitarian control.

The latest move is to re-assert control over Chinese media.  The state is now demanding "absolute loyalty" from journalists.

It was an astonishing admission from one of the Communist party’s key mouthpieces: with China’s economic star fading, its leaders now urgently needed to strengthen their hold on the media in order to maintain control.

“It is necessary for the media to restore people’s trust in the Party,” an editorial in the China Daily argued this week in the wake of a high-profile presidential tour of the country’s top news outlets in which Xi Jinping demanded “absolute loyalty” from their journalists.  “The nation’s media outlets are essential to political stability.” [The Guardian]

Now, one might have entertained the notion that the Chinese media told President Xi to take a running jump.   Not so.  The media know which side of the bread is buttered.  They rushed to exclaim their support for the regressive policy.

But as Xi Jinping enters his third year as president experts say he is seeking to cement that grip even further, doubling down on the Party’s control of organisations such as state broadcaster CCTV, official news agency Xinhua, and Beijing’s flagship newspaper, the People’s Daily.

“They must love the party, protect the party, and closely align themselves with the party leadership in thought, politics and action,” Xi told newsroom staff during a highly choreographed tour of the three outlets last Friday after which he set out his blueprint for the media.

In case Xi’s message had been missed, an editorial in the People’s Daily informed news reporters their key role was not as speakers of truth to power but “disseminators of the Party’s policies and propositions”.

“Guiding public opinion for the Party is crucial to governance of the country,” the newspaper said.

It's reasonable to conclude that the media in China have gone back to "Pravda days".  The Guardian documents the outpouring of obeisance to President Xi's exhortations:

Propaganda photographs, with strong echoes of Kim Jong-un’s North Korea, showed the Chinese president surrounded by fawning journalists and aides. A banner welcoming Xi to CCTV’s Beijing headquarters read: “CCTV’s family name is the party.”

Xi even extended his message to the United States, where CCTV’s international division has been on a hiring spree, urging its reporters to sign up to the Communist party’s global soft power push.  “Tell true stories of China,” Xi told staff at CCTV’s Washington headquarters during a video link conversation, adding: “I believe your work will [get] better and better.”

A video posted by CCTV on Youtube, which is blocked in mainland China, showed the channel’s apparently jubilant staff clapping furiously as they were addressed by their paymaster.  “Thank you for your encouragement and good wishes,” Ma Jing, the director general of CCTV America, told the president, flanked by a number of grinning American staff.

Within hours of Xi’s landmark tour the party’s total control of China’s state media was on full show in a series of gushing reviews.  In one piece, Xinhua claimed “reporters, experts and students majoring in journalism” had all lauded the president’s comments on journalism.  Zhang Tie, a party-employed journalist, told the party-run news agency: “The Party’s will and its propositions should be the strongest voice of the times.”  Chinese journalists were “inspired and encouraged by Xi’s visit to the media outlets and his acknowledgement of their diligence,” Xinhua went on.

Sadly, President Xi's reversal to the past, while providing temporary comfort to him and his coterie,  will only serve to do damage to China in the years ahead.  Like all centralised authoritarian systems, his Great Leap Forward will result in China fumbling and stumbling.  Let all offshore investors in China be warned.