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Post tags: Ania Mendrek
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The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source

Strictly control news on the Hengdong [Hunan] car and knife attack. Do not aggregate or report. (September 15) [Chinese]

On September 12, a man drove his car into a crowd in Hengdong, Hunan Province and then attacked the crowd with a shovel and dagger, killing 12 and injuring dozens more. Yang Zanyun, 54, was later arrested for the attack. RFA reported on September 13:

Video clips from the scene showed people lying on the floor of a square with emergency lights flashing around them, and people with bleeding and traumatic injuries.

A still photo sent to RFA showed a man in a blue shirt lying in pools of blood on the ground, as staff readied a stretcher nearby.

Another clip appeared to show crowds running away from the site of the attack, across a broad city square.

Media reports later identified the attacker as Hengdong county resident Yang Zanyun, 54, who had a long history of criminal convictions related to drugs and gambling, according to a 2017 Hengdong County People’s Court indictment against him, a copy of which was shown to RFA.

A local journalist who gave only his surname Chen said the authorities had quickly clamped down on any independent reporting of the incident, and media outlets had relied exclusively on syndicated copy issued by government propaganda departments. [Source]

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. Some instructions are issued by local authorities or to specific sectors, and may not apply universally across China. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. See CDT’s collection of Directives from the Ministry of Truth since 2011.

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Post tags: Directives from the Ministry of Truth, knife attacks, media censorship
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Last month, former SAPPRFT head Zhuang Rongwen took over from Xu Lin as head of the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s top internet regulator, as Xu moved to oversee foreign propaganda at the Information Office of the State Council. In a newly published essay, Zhuang laid out what South China Morning Post’s Nectar Gan labeled “an all-encompassing blueprint on how to govern the Chinese internet” bearing the definite imprint of top leader and “internet sage” Xi Jinping.

In the latest edition of Qiushi, or Seeking Truth, the ruling party’s flagship bi-monthly journal on political theory, Zhuang stressed the party’s leadership over the governance of the internet. He pledged to uphold the president’s “core” status and to double down and improve the promotion of Xi Jinping Thought online.

[…] In the article, Zhuang vowed to unite efforts in both promoting “positive energy” – party speak for uplifting propaganda – and suppressing “negative elements”, which Zhuang categorised as “wrong ideological trends” that range from distorting the party, the state or the military’s account of history, negating the party’s leadership or the socialist system, attacking the party’s guidelines and policies to undermining the ideology or image of party leaders, as well as rumours and terrorism-related video or audio.

Zhuang pledged to hold internet tech companies strictly responsible for content management and to speed up the establishment of an overarching nationwide platform for all key internet companies, as well as platforms for the emergency management of public opinion on the internet.

He also called for all internet users to join party members and propagandists to fight a “people’s war” to rehabilitate the “cyber ecology”.

[…] The article is peppered with Xi catchphrases, ranging from “creating a clean and righteous internet space” to the notion of “cyberspace sovereignty”, which sees the internet as a battlefield vital to political stability and national security. [Source]

A full translation of Zhuang’s essay is currently underway at New America’s DigiChina project.

At The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, Yoko Kubota reports that Alibaba founder Jack Ma, one of China’s leading tech executives, advocated a less interventionist government strategy this week:

Chinese e-commerce tycoon Jack Ma used a government-sponsored forum to suggest regulators take a lighter touch in dealing with technology companies, saying the market should be allowed to decide how new industries such as artificial intelligence develop.

“I personally think that the government has to do what the government should do, and the companies do what companies should do,” Mr. Ma said at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on Monday, recalling a conversation he said he had last year with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao about self-driving cars.

[…] In recent weeks, Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s shares plunged as the government announced its plan to tighten its grip on videogames. Ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing Technology Co. has come under government scrutiny after police said a driver killed a female passenger, the second since May.

In January, Alibaba’s mobile-payments affiliate Ant Financial Services Group became a target when Chinese internet regulators said the company violated new national standards on the protection of personal data.

Mr. Ma didn’t directly refer to any of those events in his speech, which also included his views on how artificial intelligence could transform businesses and society. Mr. Ma urged traditional industries to embrace new technologies and spoke about how sectors such as manufacturing could be transformed through the use of data. [Source]

The Economist argued this week that with the government’s increasingly hands-on approach, “China will struggle to produce another Jack Ma”:

Alibaba thrived partly thanks to Mr Ma’s skilful dealings with China’s ruling Communist Party, with which he cultivated both closeness and stand-offishness (“Love them, don’t marry them,” he once said of the government). Under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, however, China’s political system has grown hostile to private businesses that become too big or too disruptive. Officials have constrained bosses’ freedom to make splashy deals. Bytedance, a brash technology firm set up in 2012, has been reined in, and forced to withdraw one of its apps. Its founder issued a grovelling public apology after being chastised by the government. Ant, meanwhile, has seen its aspirations to compete with state-owned banks held back by regulators (see article).

China is putting its corporate champions at the service of its ambitions to compete globally in high-tech industries. Alibaba’s task is to use artificial intelligence to improve cities. Through state-backed venture-capital funds, the government is pouring money into industries that were once the preserve of the private sector. Rumours occasionally surface that it plans to take stakes and board seats in big tech firms. All this has fed growing international suspicion of China, especially in America. Mr Ma was one of the first out of the blocks to congratulate President Donald Trump on his election victory; this year America prevented Ant’s purchase of MoneyGram, a money-transfer firm, on national-security grounds. The reality was always more complicated, but Mr Ma embodies an idea of China as market-driven and open. That idea has faded.

[… I]t is harder to be as disruptive today as Mr Ma was 20 years ago. That is partly because his own creation is so dominant. Increasingly, however, the greatest obstacle to disruption is China’s rulers. The party is intent on having a say much earlier in the development of industries that it considers important. As a result, China is unlikely to see new business leaders with the boldness and brio to match Mr Ma. [Source]

On Wednesday, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicted that the global reach of Chinese firms such as Ma’s could expand considerably over the coming decade, transforming China’s already walled-off online domain into an international bloc in which Chinese norms and platforms displace the American-led status quo. From Lora Kolodny at CNBC:

At the event, economist Tyler Cowen asked, "What are the chances that the internet fragments over the years?" Schmidt said:

"I think the most likely scenario now is not a splintering, but rather a bifurcation into a Chinese-led internet and a non-Chinese internet led by America.

[…] If you think of China as like ‘Oh yeah, they’re good with the Internet,’ you’re missing the point. Globalization means that they get to play too. I think you’re going to see fantastic leadership in products and services from China. There’s a real danger that along with those products and services comes a different leadership regime from government, with censorship, controls, etc.

Look at the way BRI works – their Belt and Road Initiative, which involves 60-ish countries – it’s perfectly possible those countries will begin to take on the infrastructure that China has with some loss of freedom." [Source]

If Schmidt’s expectation is shared by Google’s current management, it may help explain the lengths to which the company seems prepared to go to ensure a presence in the online Sinosphere. Controversial plans recently emerged for a censorship-enabling Google search engine, “Project Dragonfly,” which suggest the apparent abandonment of the company’s earlier hard line on keeping potentially incriminating user data out of Chinese authorities’ hands. The Intercept’s Ryan Gallagher reported new details on this front on Friday, taken from a memo circulated among internal opponents of Project Dragonfly:

According to three sources familiar with the incident, Google leadership discovered the memo and were furious that secret details about the China censorship were being passed between employees who were not supposed to have any knowledge about it. Subsequently, Google human resources personnel emailed employees who were believed to have accessed or saved copies of the memo and ordered them to immediately delete it from their computers. Emails demanding deletion of the memo contained “pixel trackers” that notified human resource managers when their messages had been read, recipients determined.

The Dragonfly memo reveals that a prototype of the censored search engine was being developed as an app for both Android and iOS devices, and would force users to sign in so they could use the service. The memo confirms, as The Intercept first reported last week, that users’ searches would be associated with their personal phone number. The memo adds that Chinese users’ movements would also be stored, along with the IP address of their device and links they clicked on. It accuses developers working on the project of creating “spying tools” for the Chinese government to monitor its citizens.

People’s search histories, location information and other private data, would be sent out of China to a database in Taiwan, the memo states. But the data would also be provided to employees of a Chinese company who would be granted “unilateral access” to the system.

[…] “It’s alarming to hear that such information will be stored and potentially easily shared with the Chinese authorities,” said Patrick Poon, a Hong Kong-based researcher with human rights group Amnesty International. “It will completely put users’ privacy and safety at risk. Google needs to immediately explain if the app will involve such arrangements. It’s time to give the public full transparency of the project.” [Source]

Finally, the small but memorable musical repertoire celebrating China’s achievements in internet management expanded this week:

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Post tags: alibaba, censorship, Cyberspace Administration of China, Google, Internet surveillance, jack ma, surveillance, zhuang rongwen
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The Wall Street Journal reports that the United States Justice Department in recent weeks ordered two Chinese state-run media organizations to register as foreign agents under an 80-year-old law. The two outlets, Xinhua News Agency and China Global Television Network (CGTN, formerly CCTV-9 and CCTV News), are China’s biggest state-run media organizations. Kate O’Keeffe and Aruna Viswanatha report, providing political context on the DOJ’s order to the Chinese firms, and other recent orders to Russian-backed media:

The DOJ in recent weeks told Xinhua News Agency and China Global Television Network—known as CGTN now and earlier as CCTV—to register under a previously obscure foreign lobbying law that gained prominence when it was used in the past year against associates of President Donald Trump, including Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, the people said.

[…] Prosecutors have recently scrutinized the U.S. activity of a number of foreign media groups, after U.S. intelligence described two Russian government-backed outlets as participants in the Kremlin’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Chinese state media hasn’t so far been accused of such activity; generally, the outlets exalt China while criticizing the U.S. and others.

[…] In the past year, U.S. affiliates of two Russian outlets, RT, a television network, and Sputnik, which produces radio shows and online articles, registered in the U.S. under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Both denied acting as agents of a foreign government and said they only registered because of a Justice Department directive.

Such forced registrations are more than symbolic. After its registration, RT lost congressional press credentials, which limited its access to lawmakers and other U.S. officials as members of the media. Xinhua and CGTN also have such credentials, according to a recent congressional list.

The scrutiny of foreign media firms highlights tension between First Amendment free-speech activists, who say the Justice Department moves are based on an inappropriate distinction between propaganda and journalism, and national security officials, who are concerned about foreign state-funded media being used to influence U.S. public opinion. […] [Source]

In Wednesday’s regular press briefing, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang fielded questions on the move. His answers ironically included repeated comments that government should refrain from obstructing the work of media organizations. Beijing is known to strictly control the domestic media narrative, and also to attempt to limit overseas coverage by blocking foreign reporters from sensitive regions, and by routinely “effectively ejecting” foreign journalists who have delivered hard-hitting reports on sensitive topics by refusing to renew their credentials.

Q: Some media report that the US government asked relevant Chinese media agencies in the US to register as “foreign agents“. What‘s your comment?

A: Media serve as an import bridge and bond to enhance communications and understandings between people of different countries. Countries should perceive media’s role in promoting international exchange and cooperation in an open and inclusive spirit. They need to facilitate rather than obstruct media’s normal work, still less politicalizing the relevant issue.

[…] Q: As to the US demand that relevant Chinese media outlets in the US be registered as “foreign agents“, will China consider some reciprocal response on the US media agencies? Has the Chinese government made any official representation to the US government regarding this?

A: The Chinese side welcomes objective and unbiased coverage of China by foreign media and stands ready to support and facilitate their normal reporting in China. This position is clear.

Follow-up: So has there been any official representation to the US government on this matter?

A: As far as I know, China and the US have had communications on this issue, and the US side is aware of China’s stance.

Like I just said, we hope relevant side will facilitate and create enabling conditions for normal work of media rather than obstructing them. China has been supporting and facilitating foreign media’s normal reporting in China. We also hope foreign media in China will abide by Chinese laws and regulations and cover China in a objective and unbiased manner. [Source]

Geng’s comments were received with incredulity on Twitter:

Coverage from The Guardian’s Lily Kuo provides further context on American worries over Beijing’s international public opinion influence campaigns:

Chinese media operating in the US have not been accused of interference [as have their Russian counterparts RT and Sputnik], but critics cite expanding efforts to influence public opinion through Chinese and English-language news from Chinese state outlets.

“The voice of Chinese media organisations is getting louder internationally,” said Ardi Bouwers, a lecturer based in the Netherlands who focuses on Chinese media and communications.

Paid inserts of the government-run China Daily have appeared in major newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. CGTN in the US claims its broadcast is shown in30m US households. In 2016, Xinhua paid for a mega-screen in New York’s Times Square that played a video promoting “China’s historical role and standing in the South China Sea” on loop.

Under Chinese president Xi Jinping, the government is exercising even more control over state media to influence opinions at home and abroad, according to [Netherlands-based lecturer on Chinese media Ardi] Bouwers. […] [Source]

At Inkstone, Viola Zhou provides historical background on both the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and on the two Chinese state media organizations that have been asked to register under it:

The act was passed in 1938 to counter Nazi propaganda in America, and has been invoked more frequently since persistent reports surfaced about Russian influence peddling in US elections. So far, despite a recent tweet from President Trump, little hard evidence has emerged about China trying to do the same thing.

[…] Xinhua is China’s official news agency. Although it is called a wire service, it functions more like a mouthpiece or press release arm of the Chinese government.

The agency is actually older than the People’s Republic itself. The Communist Party, at that time still a guerilla force led by Mao Zedong, founded it in 1931 under the name “Red China News Agency.” It was renamed Xinhua, or “New China,” in 1937.

CGTN is a much younger organization. The network was officially launched in December 2016 by China’s state broadcaster CCTV as part of a push to reach global audiences. [Source]

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Post tags: CCTV America, CGTN, external propaganda, foreign media, government agents, state media, United States, Xinhua
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