The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Chinese authorities have revoked the press credentials of three of its reporters: Josh Chin, Chao Deng, and Philip Wen. Although China has repeatedly wielded bureaucratic delays and denied renewals against foreign news media in recent years, this week’s were the first such direct expulsions of credentialed journalists since 1998, and the first simultaneous expulsion of several from the same organization since the Mao era. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained the extraordinary measure as a response to a February 3 op-ed by Walter Russell Mead titled "China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia." The "Sick Man" phrase is not uncommon in international news coverage, but is particularly charged in the Chinese context by its association with the "Century of Humiliation" prior to the founding of the People’s Republic. However, the expulsions also followed the U.S. State Department’s designation of five Chinese official media organizations as "foreign missions" on American soil, a move which MoFA has condemned, and which quickly sparked anticipation of a Chinese backlash.
Deputy Bureau Chief Josh Chin and reporter Chao Deng, both U.S. nationals, as well as reporter Philip Wen, an Australian national, have been ordered to leave the country within five days, said Jonathan Cheng, the Journal’s China bureau chief.
The expulsions by China’s Foreign Ministry followed widespread public anger at the headline on the Feb. 3 opinion piece, which referred to China as “the real sick man of Asia.” The ministry and state-media outlets had repeatedly called attention to the headline in statements and posts on social media and had threatened unspecified consequences.
[…] The three journalists work for the Journal’s news operation. The Journal operates with a strict separation between its news and opinion staffs.
[…] In August, the Chinese government didn’t renew press credentials for Chun Han Wong, a Beijing-based correspondent who co-wrote a news article [with Philip Wen] on a cousin of Chinese President Xi Jinping whose activities were being scrutinized by Australian law-enforcement and intelligence agencies.
It was unclear whether The Journal reporters named on Wednesday would be able to comply with Beijing’s order to leave the country this week. Ms. Deng is currently reporting in Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak and the site of a lockdown that makes it nearly impossible for most people to leave.
Other Chinese cities now have strict quarantines for those who have recently been to Wuhan. If Ms. Deng were to return to Beijing, for example, she would be subject to a 14-day quarantine there.
[…] Top editors held two meetings with newsroom staffers to discuss the headline and the potential impact on the The Journal’s China operations, according to three people with knowledge of the events that preceded the ouster of the journalists. The headline was widely considered offensive within the newsroom, these people said, and was even coming up when staffers went out in the field to interview sources.
In one meeting last week, said one of the people, reporters expressed their anger over the headline to Mr. Murray, the editor. Mr. Murray agreed that the headline was bad, this person said, and agreed to talk to Paul Gigot, who runs the The Journal’s editorial page. However, Mr. Murray cautioned that his hands were tied because of the traditional separation between the news and editorial sides of the The Journal. [Source]
Our statement on China’s expulsion of three foreign correspondents – “an unprecedented form of retaliation.” pic.twitter.com/yDAFJqc163
— Foreign Correspondents' Club of China (@fccchina) February 19, 2020
The designations require each affected outlet to register the locations of any properties they own or rent in the United States, get permission to lease or purchase additional properties, and disclose the names of their employees in the U.S., including American citizens, according to the officials.
The designations do not, however, require the outlets’ employees to notify U.S. authorities of their movements in the country and are not intended to impede them from conducting journalistic activities, the officials said.
The five outlets affected are China’s official Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, the China Daily Distribution Corporation, which distributes the newspaper of the same name, and Hai Tian Development USA, which distributes the People’s Daily newspaper, the officials said.
[…] Xinhua and China Global Television were directed two years ago by the Justice Department to register as foreign agents in the United States, although it is not clear if either ever did. Several Russian news outlets, including the Russia Today television network, face similar directions from Justice. [Source]
Chinese officials have not welcomed the U.S.’ belated acceptance of this principle. MoFA’s Geng Shuang, criticizing the designation in the same press conference in which he announced the expulsion of the WSJ’s reporters, said that "the media play an important role like a bridge or bond facilitating communication and understanding between people of different countries."
We deplore and reject the wrong decision of the US.
[…] The US touts its press freedom. However, it is wantonly restricting and thwarting Chinese media outlets’ normal operation there. This is totally unjustified and unacceptable. We urge the US to discard its ideological prejudice and Cold War zero-sum game mentality, and stop ill-advised measures that undermine bilateral trust and cooperation.
We reserve the right to take further measures in response. [Source]
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: [… W]e’re making this designation based on the very indisputable fact that all five of these are subject to the control of the Chinese Government. Obviously, the Chinese Communist Party has always had a pretty tight rein on media in general and state-run media in particular, but that has only further tightened since Xi Jinping took over. Since he became general secretary, China’s Communist Party has reorganized China’s state news agencies and asserted even more direct control over them, both in terms of content, editorial, et cetera, et cetera.
Xi Jinping’s got a number of quotes on this score that are – there’s many of them. One of them is that, “Managing China’s media messaging is crucial for the future and fate of the Chinese Communist Party and the state.” There are many others of a similar ilk that demonstrate exactly how much of a function of the state Xi Jinping considers the media to be.
In addition to the very clear state control of these media organizations, the PRC Government has also expanded its overseas media operations in recent years, including here in the United States. I can talk a little bit briefly about each one of these organizations and how we came to make the determination that it was foreign mission.
[…] SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: [… W]e have designated them as foreign missions. That does not mean that they are embassies or consulates or have traditional diplomatic privileges or immunities. What we are doing is imposing two requirements on these entities.
The first is that they will – are required to notify the Office of Foreign Missions within the State Department of their current personnel in the United States, basic information about those individuals, and then as – if there’s any changes to those employment situations. So if anyone departs or new people come on, they would notify us, just like the standard requirement for an embassy or consulate.
The second is that they would need to notify us of their current real property holdings, whether they are owned or leased; and in connection with that, prior to acquiring, whether by purchase or lease any new real property, they would need to obtain prior approval from my office. Those are the only two requirements that are in place, and all of that was notified to each of these entities earlier today. [Source]
Reporters’ questions in a subsequent Q&A session involved why China had been singled out, the measure’s potential counterintelligence value, and risk of and responses to a Chinese backlash. The questioning led into discussion of potential obstruction of legitimate newsgathering by the Chinese organizations, of the kind alleged by Geng Shuang:
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: [… O]bviously, we’re painfully aware of the very tough operating environment that U.S. and other foreign journalists operate under in China. Again, we – this is not intended to put any sort of constraint on what the CGTN or the Xinhua people do here in the United States with regards to their journalistic operations. But obviously, it’s impossible for me to speculate on how Beijing is going to react. It’s already the case that freedom of the press is under severe siege in the People’s Republic of China, and that was long before this announcement came about in – earlier on this afternoon.
So I mean, we’re going to have to defer to our Chinese counterparts on what they’re going to do about freedom of the press in the PRC.
[…] QUESTION: So are you saying there will be no restrictions on what they do journalistically? So they can travel if they want to cover the campaign, they can come here to the State Department as some of them have before to ask a question of Secretary Pompeo […] there are no journalistic restrictions on them?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: That is correct.
[…] QUESTION: You said you wouldn’t speculate on what Beijing will do, but have you thought about what will happen if Beijing does retaliate against any U.S. media outlets or any other media outlets operating in China. If they try to revoke licenses for example, what will the State Department response be?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Look, we have a very long track record of speaking up for freedom of the press in China and will continue to do that. If you – again, I don’t want to predict what they may or may not do, but I think it would be faulty logic to attribute that to this action. But like I said, and as [Senior State Department Official Two] clarified, we’re not doing anything to restrict the activities of these folks here in the United States. They’re going to continue to enjoy our free and open system. And let’s not forget that before today, there were already plenty of restrictions on foreign journalists operating in China, so I just want make sure that that point is highlighted and you keep that in mind.
[…] QUESTION: Okay. And then last, in terms of, like, compliance, I mean, with FARA, my understanding is that Xinhua never did register even though DOJ told them to, and even though it is, as you say, fairly basic disclosures. So I would like to know a little bit more about what type of enforcement you would look at if people don’t provide this information.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Well, they’re required to comply with this, and I think we’re not prepared to go beyond that. [Source]
The officials noted that the five organizations were specifically exempted from a requirement introduced in October for Chinese diplomatic personnel to give the State Department advance notice of "certain types of meetings or visits with certain types of institutions": "taking into account some of the press freedoms we didn’t – we’re not looking to interfere with that, so we didn’t want to have any challenge there." "It’s a little ironic," one journalist noted, "that this briefing is on background if we’re talking about press rights and protecting what a free press does that we don’t have an on-the-record quote from a government official defending and justifying this."
The New York Times’ report on the foreign mission designation, by Lara Jakes and Steven Lee Myers, examined the common practice of newspapers (including their own) carrying paid inserts from China Daily, one of the designated organizations, describing their typical content as "an informative, if anodyne, view of world affairs refracted through the lens of the Communist Party."
“The China Daily advertisement insert is clearly labeled and meets our advertising acceptability standards,” said Ari Isaacman Bevacqua, a Times spokeswoman. “The New York Times covers China thoroughly and aggressively, and at no time has advertising influenced our coverage.”
However, some experts on China say China Daily pushes insidious propaganda onto foreign readers, especially in its attempts to whitewash vast human rights abuses against Uighurs, Tibetans and other ethnic minorities.
Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch, has repeatedly denounced China Daily. The paper, she said on Twitter last year, was “nothing more than a mouthpiece for a government that conflates peaceful criticism with terrorism, crushes peaceful protests, and arbitrarily detains shocking numbers of #Uyghurs and other #Muslims.” [Source]
Hua went on to cite the mortality rate of the 2009 H1N1 outbreak in the U.S., and the number of infections and deaths from seasonal influenza in the U.S. this winter, concluding "compared with the current pneumonia outbreak in China, Mr. Mead, anything more you’d like to say?" Such comparisons have been widespread, but at Wired earlier this month, science journalist Roxanne Khamsi argued that "the gambit of positioning the influenza virus as the scarier of two foes is as dangerous as it is hackneyed." The difference with the COVID-19 outbreak, she added is that "we simply don’t know how it will behave in weeks and months to come," a point also made by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease director Anthony Fauci at a White House press briefing late last month:
Despite the morbidity and mortality with influenza, there’s a certainty, for example, of seasonal flu. I can tell you all, guaranteed, that as we get into March and April, the flu cases are going to go down. You could predict pretty accurately what the range of the mortality is and the hospitalizations, as we’ve done over the years.
The issue now with this is that there’s a lot of unknowns. […] [Source]
News of the expulsions prompted discussion of the "Sick Man" phrase and its relevance on Twitter.
The @WSJ ‘Sick Man of Asia’ headline WAS racist. Sadly, the misjudgements of the op-ed dept. coming at expense of the hapless reporters— all doing excellent reporting under VERY difficult conditions—now being expelled from China. https://t.co/3Gj2GZNHZv
It was retaliation of course..that headline just gave CCP an excuse. I also wonder if they were trying to signal something by expelling ethnic Chinese reporters..we were always accused of being ‘disloyal’ whenever we wrote stories critical of Beijing,in a way Caucasians weren’t.
Let’s not get stuck debating how offensive “Sick Man of Asia” actually is right now bc that would mean admitting it might actually be offensive enough to warrant the expulsion of journalists from China, to say nothing of how these journalists didn’t even write the damn thing.
A fascinating dinner between 3 Chinese (ethnic/national) reporters in Beijing has taught me we often seriously misunderstood each others' reactions to racism. We discussed two coronavirus headlines, (1) "Yellow Alert" (2) "China Is The Real Sick Man Of Asia".
8/ Of course that's not to imply that you can swap out groups in possibly racist phrases to test the racism, because racism exists as a power relationship between groups. But it gives an idea of what connotations phrases have and why an editor might have approved of (2)
10/ It in no way justifies Beijing's expulsion of 3 excellent WSJ journalists who had nothing to do with the headline. They also happened to have done deep reporting on Beijing's clearly racist, & some might say genocidal, acts in Xinjiang against its Uighur Muslim minority (end)
I've had friends in China recently message to ask what foreign media is saying about the situation who've never asked me anything like that before. Not a bad time to remind people that "Western media" (which happen to be covering coronavirus) are hostile anti-China instigators.
Yang highlighted chinaSMACK’s translation of a 2012 QQ post on the difference in how the phrase is used in the West and interpreted in China, noting that the Chinese language’s ambiguity between singular and plural may have contributed to the blurred lines between figurative national assessment and racial slur.
Meanwhile, a group of 17 newspaper and website editors in Nepal issued a joint statement on Wednesday, condemning the Chinese embassy’s "disparagement and threats" over The Kathmandu Post’s republication of an article entitled "China’s secrecy has made coronavirus crisis much worse" by former US ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder.
On February 17, the Communist Youth League of China opened and promoted the official Weibo account @JiangShanjiaoYuongQiman (@江山娇与红旗漫Official), introducing netizens to two newly-created anime characters:
The post introduced the female Jiang Shanjiao (江山娇, meaning “lovable country”) and her younger brother Hong Qiman (红旗漫, meaning “fluttering red flag”), two “virtual idols” meant to encourage patriotism, both characters’ names inspired by monikers in poems by Mao Zedong. The apparent attempt to win young Chinese hearts, minds, and attention spans by fusing nationalism with China’s fandom trend, however, instead drew waves of sarcastic netizen comments, forcing the Youth League to turn off commenting and delete the original post.
The Chinese Communist Party’s Youth League removed a pair of anime-like characters this week after their introduction in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak unleashed a storm of criticism and mockery online.
[…] “Instead of spending time crafting the idols, I’d rather you make some real contribution to help with Wuhan,” one person wrote in a Weibo post that has since been deleted, referring to the city at the centre of the virus outbreak. [Source]
“I’m your citizen, not your fan,” one Weibo user wrote in a widely circulated comment.
China’s government has over the years tried to engage the country’s youth and reinforce its ideology with rap, anime and chat-app stickers. Unsurprisingly, the Youth League is at the center of such campaigns: It ranks among the top 10 creators of content on anime-focused video service Bilibili in terms of both followers and views, according to data tracker Biliob.com.
“The government’s legitimacy is at a very low point more than a month into the coronavirus outbreak. Previously people have already accumulated dissatisfaction with state media tapping into fandom culture in virus coverage,” said Fang Kecheng, assistant professor of communication and journalism at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “Co-opting anime and fandom culture is no panacea.”
Using virtual idols to fan Chinese nationalism isn’t a new concept — but up to this point it’s been a distinctly grass-roots one. During Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests in 2019, online patriots created a viral personification of their nation called “Brother Ah Zhong” or Brother China, a pop idol who debuted 5,000 years ago with a fan base of 1.4 billion. The Youth League and state media praised what they called a spirited defense of their homeland against foreign attack. […] [Source]
@江山娇与红旗漫Official’s official account lists its gender as female, and some Weibo users took the opportunity to vent their frustration over gender-based discrimination in China, asking Jiang Shanjiao questions commonly fielded by women in China or others alluding to the gender gap. The original post and comments have now been deleted, but many replies were saved by Weibo user @为什么它永无止境 and WeChat public account 歡迎取悅. Several have been translated below, and a more comments have been archived by CDT Chinese:
“Jiang Shanjiao, are you a virgin?”
“Jiang Shanjiao, did your family have a second baby because you are a girl?”
“Jiang Shanjiao, are you sure you can keep up with the boys academically in high school?”
“When you need her, Jiang Shanjiao is an innocent goddess, a Loli, a virtual character with no sex characteristics. When you don’t need her, Jiang Shanjiao has inconvenient menstrual cycles and pregnancies, she is laid off and harassed, or she is a common whore. So which Jiang Shanjiao do you want to be your idol?”
“Jiang Shanjiao, did your family have a second baby because you are a girl?”
An ongoing mass detention campaign in Xinjiang, itself part of a longer-running crackdown aimed squarely at mitigating elements of local Uyghur culture and religiosity, has detained as many as two million Muslim ethnic minority members in Xinjiang since 2017. While authorities claim that these camps are simply “vocational training” facilities, there has been evidence of forced labor, political indoctrination, abuse, and deaths inside the camps relayed from former detainees and staff. A newly publicized leaked database known as the “Karakax list” (named after the southwestern Xinjiang county where it was compiled) provides insight into the administrative and ideological underpinnings of the system of camps, the extent of the surveillance used to gather information on Xinjiang residents, and also provides examples of the “problematic behavior” that have led to detention. The 137-page list, which has been leaked to journalists after circulating among activists and overseas Uyghurs, includes religious and political data on over 300 detainees from Karakax, information on their family members and acquaintances, and the ostensible reason for their detention. Common examples include behaviors relevant to Muslim practice–suggesting that religiosity is a major determining factor for detention, and countering authorities’ insistence that the camps’ purpose is primarily educational. At The New York Times, Austin Ramzy provides an overview of the leak:
[…] Even children as young as 16 were closely monitored for signs of what Beijing considered to be wayward thinking.
[…] “This document is by far the most detailed that we have,” said Mr. [Adrian] Zenz, a senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington. “It allows us to dissect the anatomy of both the internment drive and what the government now is now doing with these people.”
Mr. Zenz said he was confident that the document was legitimate for a number of reasons. He said he had matched the identities of 337 listed detainees, relatives and neighbors with other government documents, spreadsheets and a leaked database from SenseNets, a Chinese surveillance company, that included GPS coordinates along with names, identification numbers, addresses and photos.
[…] Officials claim that the camps are to curb extremism by providing skills and language instruction, b]ut the Karakax spreadsheet shows how officials have monitored minute details of daily life to find targets for detention as Chen Quanguo, the Communist Party boss in Xinjiang, ordered officials to “round up everyone who should be rounded up.”
The authorities scrutinized three generations of each detainee’s family, as well as their neighbors and friends. Officials in charge of monitoring mosques reported on how actively the residents participated in ceremonies, including the naming of children, circumcision, weddings and funerals. […] [Source]
Specifically, the Karakax List outlines the reasons why 311 persons were interned and reveals the cognition behind the decision-making processes as to whether individuals can be released or not. Based on the principles of presumed guilt (rather than innocence) and assigning guilt through association, the state has developed a highly fine-tuned yet also very labor-intensive governance system whereby entire family circles are held hostage to their behavioral performance – jointly and as individuals. Ongoing mechanisms of appraisal and evaluation ensure high levels of acquiescence even when most detainees have been released from the camps.
The detailed new information provided by this document also allows us to develop a more fine-grained understanding of the ideological and administrative processes that preceded the internment campaign. In particular, this research paper carefully reviews the sequence and timing of events during Chen Quanguo’s first seven months in the region. It is argued that Chen must have been installed by the central government, possibly during a meeting at the Two Sessions in Beijing in March 2016 where Xi Jinping, Chen, and Chen’s predecessor in Xinjiang, Zhang Chunxian, were all in the same place. It is argued that Chen’s role in Xinjiang has not so much been that of an innovator as it has been that of a highly driven and disciplined administrator, with a focus on drastically upscaling existing mechanisms of investigation, categorization and internment.
More than any other government document pertaining to Beijing’s extralegal campaign of mass internment, the Karakax List lays bare the ideological and administrative micromechanics of a system of targeted cultural genocide that arguably rivals any similar attempt in the history of humanity. Driven by a deeply religio-phobic worldview, Beijing has embarked on a project that, ideologically, isn’t far from a medieval witch-hunt, yet is being executed with administrative perfectionism and iron discipline. Being distrustful of the true intentions of its minority citizens, the state has established a system of governance that fully substitutes trust with control. That, however, is also set to become its greatest long-term liability. Xinjiang’s mechanisms of governance are both labor-intensive and predicated upon highly unequal power structures that often run along and increase ethnic fault lines. The long-term ramifications of this arrangement for social stability and ethnic relations are impossible to predict. […] [Source]
On the database, detainees and their families are tracked and classified by rigid, well-defined categories. Households are designated as “trustworthy” or “not trustworthy,” and their attitudes are graded as “ordinary” or “good”. Families have “light” or “heavy” religious “atmospheres”, and the document keeps count of how many relatives of each detainee are in prison or have been sent to a “training centre”.
Officials used these categories to determine how suspicious a person was, even if they had not committed any crimes.
Other reasons listed for internment include “minor religious infection”, “disturbs other persons by visiting them without reasons”, “relatives abroad”, “thinking is hard to grasp” and “untrustworthy person born in a certain decade”. The last seems to refer to younger men, according to an analysis of the data by Adrian Zenz, an expert on the detention centres who compiled a report on the Karakax list.
[…] The most recent date in the document is March 2019. The detainees listed come from Karakax County, a traditional settlement of about 650,000 people where more than 97% of the population are Uighur. The list was corroborated through interviews with former Karakax residents, Chinese identity verification tools, and other lists and documents seen by the Associated Press.
[…] It showed that Karakax officials also explicitly targeted people for activities that included going abroad, getting a passport, installing foreign software or clicking on a link to a foreign website. [Source]
In May 2017, a Uighur man was taken away to a “re-education camp” in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. As an observant Muslim, the man prayed at home after meals, and sometimes attended Friday prayers at his local mosque. The reasons for his forced internment: His wife had covered her face with a veil and the couple had “too many” children. There was never a trial.
According to a newly leaked document from Xinjiang, the man underwent a “great ideological transformation” in the camp and “realized his mistakes and showed good repentance.” The family’s four boys and two girls back at home all demonstrated “good behavior.”
In June 2017, however, their mother was sent to prison for six years. She was charged with participating in an “illegal religious activity.”
This family’s story is similar to hundreds of cases, which are listed in unprecedented detail. [Source]
Rozinsa Mamattohti couldn’t sleep or eat for days after she read the detailed records the Chinese government had been keeping on her entire family.
[…] For Mamattohti’s sister, 34-year-old Patem, the crime for which she was detained, according to the document, was a “violation of family planning policy,” or put simply, having too many children. Under the countrywide policy, which rarely if ever is cause for imprisonment, rural families in Xinjiang are limited to three children. Patem had four.
It was the first time since 2016 that Mamattohti had received any concrete news of what had happened to her family.
“I never imagined that my younger sister would be in prison,” Mamattohti told CNN, through tears, in her house in Istanbul. She said she first saw the leaked records when they were informally circulated on social media among Uyghurs overseas. “As I was reading their names I couldn’t hold myself together, I was devastated.”
[…] [Netherlands-based Uyghur hip-hop artist Tahirjan] Anwar won’t reveal the source of this new document, only saying that they were taken out of China and passed to exiled Uyghur activists. He said if his source’s identity is made public “that person will die.”
Anwar passed on the leaked material to another Uyghur exile in the Netherlands, writer Asiye Abdulahad, in the hope she’d know how to spread the word. Between them, Anwar and Abdulahad have been responsible for disseminating two of the Chinese government’s most embarrassing internal leaks in decades. They say neither of them was involved in an earlier leak of internal Chinese government documents to the New York Times.
Quietly-spoken writer Abdulahad isn’t a member of any formal Uyghur organization, but when the document appeared in her inbox, she knew she had to act. […] [Source]
BBC News puts the new details from the list into the context of their continued coverage of the situation in Xinjiang: