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REPORTING THE NEWS IN CHINA: FIRSTHAND 

ACCOUNTS AND CURRENT TRENDS 

ROUNDTABLE 

BEFORE THE

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE 

COMMISSION ON CHINA 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JULY 31, 2009 

Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.cecc.gov 

(II) 

CO N T E N T S 

Page 

Opening statement of Douglas Grob, Cochairman’s Senior Staff Member, Congressional-Executive Commission on China ...................................................... 1 

Liu, Lawrence, Senior Counsel, Congressional-Executive Commission on 

China ..................................................................................................................... 1 

Ford, Jocelyn, 2007–2009 Chair, Media Freedoms Committee, Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China; freelance radio and multimedia journalist ......... 3 

McLaughlin, Kathleen E., Chair, Media Freedoms Committee and Secretary, 

Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China; China Correspondent for BNA, 

Inc., and freelance journalist ............................................................................... 6 

Esarey, Ashley, Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics, Whitman College ........ 9 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS

McLaughlin, Kathleen E ......................................................................................... 26 

Esarey, Ashley ......................................................................................................... 28 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

Prepared Statement of James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic 

Magazine ............................................................................................................... 31 

From the Atlantic, ‘‘Their Own Worst Enemy,’’ by James Fallows, November 

2008 ....................................................................................................................... 33 

From the Atlantic, ‘‘The Connection Has Been Reset,’’ by James Fallows, 

March 2008 ........................................................................................................... 38 

From a Freedom House Special Report, Freedom At Issue, ‘‘Speak No Evil— 

Mass Media Control in Contemporary China,’’ by Ashley Esarey, February 

2006 ....................................................................................................................... 44 

From Asian Survey, Vol. XLVIII, No. 5, September/October 2008, ‘‘Political 

Expression in the Chinese Blogosphere—Below the Radar,’’ by Ashley 

Esarey and Xiao Qiang ........................................................................................ 56 

(1) 

REPORTING THE NEWS IN CHINA: 

FIRSTHAND ACCOUNTS AND CURRENT TRENDS 

FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2009 

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE

COMMISSION ON CHINA, 

Washington, DC. 

The roundtable was convened, pursuant to notice, at 2:03 p.m., 

in room 628, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Douglas Grob, Cochairman’s Senior Staff Member, presiding. 

Also present: Lawrence Liu, Senior Counsel. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF DOUGLAS GROB, COCHAIRMAN’S 

SENIOR STAFF MEMBER, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA 

Mr. GROB. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you very much 

for attending the Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s 

ninth public roundtable for the 111th Congress. I’d like to welcome 

you on behalf of Cochairman Sandy Levin, and for our Staff Director, Charlotte Oldham Moore, I’d like to welcome you on behalf of 

Chairman Byron Dorgan of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. 

We’re very pleased to see you here today. The House and Senate, 

as you know, have been pulling very late nights preparing to go out 

of session, so that you would take your time at this busy juncture 

to be with us today is something that we’re grateful for, and that 

speaks to the importance of the topic of our roundtable this morning: Reporting the News in China: Firsthand Accounts and Current 

Trends. 

I’d like to, at this point, turn the floor over to Lawrence Liu, to 

my right, Senior Counsel with the Commission, and our staff specialist on free expression, free flow of information, and the Internet 

in China. 

So, Lawrence, please. 

STATEMENT OF LAWRENCE LIU, SENIOR COUNSEL, 

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA 

Mr. LIU. We are convening this roundtable nearly a year after 

China hosted the Olympics. The timing is significant because it 

was the Olympics that prompted Chinese officials to grant foreign 

journalists allowed into China new freedom to report. 

This past year has been significant for domestic and foreign journalists in China for other reasons as well. Journalists have had to 

contend with covering news amid the global economic downturn 

2 

and concerns from Chinese officials over maintaining social stability. 

2009 also contains a number of sensitive anniversaries in China, 

including the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen protests, the 50th 

anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile, and the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, to 

name a few. 

The Internet continues to play a major role in shaping news coverage, and earlier this month protests and violence broke out in 

Xinjiang, testing the Chinese Government’s commitment to openness and transparency. We are lucky today to have a group of panelists who can offer both a first-person perspective and a broader 

analysis on the impact of these events on reporting the news in 

China and what the last year has meant for press freedom. 

Before introducing the panelists, I want to take this brief opportunity to let you know how the Commission has been covering 

these issues. In connection with this roundtable we have put out 

a quick brief that provides an overview of press freedom issues in 

China. We publish ongoing analysis on our Web site in a periodic 

newsletter. We recently wrote several pieces analyzing the Chinese 

Government’s attempts to require all computers sold in China to 

come pre-installed with the Green Dam filtering software. Finally, 

we will be issuing our 2009 Annual Report this October. 

Now I would like to introduce the panelists. Sitting to my left is 

Jocelyn Ford, a Beijing-based multimedia journalist. During her 

eight years in China she served as Bureau Chief for U.S. Public 

Radio’s Marketplace, and you may have heard her on other public 

radio shows such as Studio 360. 

From 2007 to 2009, she chaired the Media Freedoms Committee 

at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China. She also has the 

unique perspective of having worked for the state-run China Radio 

International. She is currently working on her first documentary 

about a widowed Tibetan migrant worker. 

Also sitting to my left is Kathleen McLaughlin, the Beijing-based 

China correspondent for BNA, where she writes about legislative 

and regulatory affairs in China. She is currently head of the Media 

Freedoms Committee for the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of 

China. She has spent most of the past decade covering news in 

China, and you may have seen her articles also in the Far Eastern 

Economic Review and Christian Science Monitor, including a recent 

piece on Uyghur workers from the toy factory that sparked recent 

protests in Xinjiang. 

And finally, sitting to my right is Ashley Esarey, a Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics at Whitman College in Washington 

State. In June, he completed the An Wang Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Harvard, and previously was a professor at Middlebury 

College. He has done extensive research on China’s media and 

Internet, including for, Freedom House, and we have made copies 

of two of his pieces available at the door. He is currently working 

on a book: ‘‘The Challenge of Truth: Media and Power in Contemporary China.’’ 

Mr. GROB. Thank you, Lawrence. 

3 

I’d just like to note that, unfortunately, James Fallows, whom we 

had hoped to have with us today, has taken ill, we learned this 

morning, and is unable to join us. 

Also, I’d like to just mention, before I turn the floor over to 

Jocelyn Ford for her remarks, that we’ll proceed as follows: our 

panelists will give brief statements, after which we will open the 

floor to questions from the audience. We are creating a transcript 

of this event to be published on our Web site, so when we come to 

the Q&A we will have further guidelines on how the Q&A will proceed. 

But without further ado, I’d like to ask Jocelyn for her remarks. 

STATEMENT OF JOCELYN FORD, 2007–2009 CHAIR OF MEDIA 

FREEDOMS COMMITTEE, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS’ 

CLUB OF CHINA; FREELANCE RADIO AND MULTIMEDIA 

JOURNALIST 

Ms. FORD. Thank you for the introduction and thank you for inviting us here. 

Thank you, the audience, for your interest in this subject. As 

China becomes more influential in the world it is increasingly important for the world to have access to accurate and timely information out of China. Unfortunately, China’s advances in openness 

have lagged behind its economic advances. So, I’m glad that you all 

have an interest in this topic. 

Today I will introduce the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of 

China, tell you what reporting was like before the Olympics as well 

as how the Olympics changed reporting conditions for foreign correspondents, and outline obstacles and issues we still have to deal 

with. 

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China [FCCC], as we know 

it today, was started around 1981. Today’s membership includes 

about 260 journalists from countries all over the world. We also 

have associate members from embassies and companies. Our activities are open to Chinese nationals, but we do not have Chinese 

members. Chinese authorities consider the Foreign Correspondents’ 

Club of China an illegal organization. 

As some of you may know, the Chinese Government requires 

nonprofit associations and organizations to register. However, the 

FCCC board has been told we are not welcome to register. To register, we would need a government organ to support our request 

and no government office is willing to do so. 

First, let me give you the big picture about the Olympics. If you 

talk to foreign correspondents who have been in China, say, since 

the 1990s—I arrived in 2001—they will tell you that reporting conditions are pretty good today. From a long-term perspective, China 

has moved in the right direction. 

Did the Olympics help improve working conditions for foreign 

media faster than would have happened had China not hosted the 

Games? Definitely yes. But the government is not making its best 

effort to make good on the Olympic promises it made to foreign 

media and on information openness. It would be unrealistic to expect conditions to improve dramatically overnight. Change does not 

happen that rapidly in any country, and certainly not in China. 

4 

But in China, too often regulations and laws are often not enforced. Sometimes it feels like we’ve gone two steps forward, one 

step backward, two steps forward, and maybe three steps backward. In general, China is moving in the right direction, but it is 

important to remain vigilant. One example I hope concerned parties will keep an eye on is the revised State Secrets Law, which 

was recently opened for comment. 

So what was it like reporting before the Olympics? Officially, according to the rules, foreign correspondents were required to get 

permission every time they wanted to leave their home base, which 

in my case, as I was registered in Beijing, would be Beijing. So if 

I wanted to go across the country to interview somebody, according 

to the rules, I needed to get permission. 

Now, of course, when reporters try to cover a topic the government wants to keep hushed up, say AIDS villages in Henan Province, they will not be granted permission. So, as a result, reporters 

played cat-and-mouse. The reporter might travel in the middle of 

the night to the village, wrap up reporting by 2 o’clock in the morning, and leave, hopefully while the officials were sleeping. 

Reporting sometimes felt like cloak-and-dagger work, without the 

daggers, of course. For example, in 2002 I went to cover unrest in 

a northern oil town. Every time there was a knock on my hotel 

door, my colleague feared it would be the authorities who had come 

to detain us for being in the city without permission. At the time, 

it was fairly safe to report openly on non-controversial issues, even 

without permission, but reporters covering stories the local or central government regarded as ‘‘sensitive’’ would need to take extra 

precautions to avoid being discovered and detained. 

In the run-up to the Olympics, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club 

sought to lobby the Chinese Government to change some of these 

restricting rules, and in 2006 three of us had an informal meeting 

with a Foreign Ministry official. Remember, we’re an illegal organization, so we met as ‘‘friends,’’ not as representatives of the Foreign 

Correspondents’ Club of China. 

In that meeting we said that we would like to see scrapped the 

rule that limits our ability to travel, and the official said, ‘‘Well, 

how about if, instead of getting permission to go, you just sent a 

fax in advance announcing you are coming? ’’ 

Presumably under such a system the sources the journalist 

wished to interview might be barred from meeting the reporter. So 

we said, if the fax notification was voluntary, that would be fine. 

But it shouldn’t be required. 

The official, at that meeting, told us that the government was serious about its Olympic promise to allow unrestricted media coverage and that it planned to have rules in place a year in advance. 

We were very pleasantly surprised when those rules came into play 

on January 1, 2007, a year and a half ahead of the Games, and 

they went further than we had expected. They did not require fax 

pre-notification. Basically the new rules, which were called ‘‘temporary rules’’ for the Olympics, allowed foreign correspondents to 

interview anybody who agreed to be interviewed. Tibet was still offlimits, but otherwise we could, according to the regulations, roam 

the country freely. This was progress. Of course, as I said earlier, 

5 

in China implementation of laws and regulations is often a problem, and the ‘‘free reporting’’ regulation is no exception. 

After the regulation was brought into force in January 2007 

there were a number of high-profile news stories, including the 

Tibet unrest in March 2008 which Kathleen will be talking about. 

In 2008, the FCCC confirmed 180 violations of the regulation. We 

did not have the manpower to follow up on each incident we were 

informed of, and I am sure there were many more we didn’t even 

hear about. 

Foreign correspondents didn’t know what to expect after the 

Olympics were over. But the FCCC was pleased when the temporary regulation, after a few amendments, was made permanent 

in October 2008. 

As can be expected, there are a lot of outstanding problems, but 

overall correspondents feel empowered by the regulations. When 

traveling around the country and officials say reporters are not allowed on their turf, we can now say, ‘‘Yes, we are, and here’s the 

regulation.’’ Sometimes it works. Sometimes they say, ‘‘Oh, okay, 

we can’t disturb you.’’ Sometimes, if reporters threaten to call the 

Foreign Ministry to report local authorities are harassing them in 

violation of the rules, the locals will back down. Other times they 

say ‘‘We don’t care,’’ or cite a local regulation restricting reporting, 

which usually they can’t present on paper. 

We have surveyed our members over the years. A year ahead of 

the Olympics, so about half a year after the new rules had been 

implemented, about half of the respondents said that the reporting 

environment was improving. We sent out a survey this year, and 

the response was about the same. But obviously there is also a lot 

of dissatisfaction. We asked how many thought reporting conditions 

in China meet international standards, and something like 95 percent of respondents said they do not think China’s reporting conditions are up to international standards. 

The Olympics appear to have been a catalyst for the Chinese 

Government to overhaul its approach to information control. Instead of restraining foreign correspondents as they did under the 

old rules, they now try to control our sources. The intimidation has 

shifted from stopping correspondents from conducting interviews, 

to stopping Chinese citizens from speaking to us. The end result is 

we are still not able to report freely. 

Harassment of interviewees is our top concern. Treatment of Chinese national news assistants who work for foreign organizations 

is also a big concern. Kathleen will fill you in on the details. 

Before I close, I would like to mention some positive changes that 

are worth noting but haven’t received a lot of attention. Chinese 

authorities are becoming more proactive, for example, by holding 

more press conferences and media tours. Though too often these 

events are used to push soft stories, and reporters often do not feel 

they get adequate answers to their questions, still, this is a step 

in the right direction. It also suggests the Chinese Government believes it can achieve its goals more effectively by controlling or influencing the narrative, rather than by silence. Its practices are 

moving closer to those in other influential countries. 

The Olympics were also used to educate local officials nationwide 

on new principles of openness. I had access to an internal police 

6 

circular for the Olympics with instructions for handling foreign 

correspondents. The police were told not to interfere when foreign 

correspondents interview religious groups, activists, environmental 

organizations, or other groups the government traditionally sought 

to silence. 

The directive, which I presume has expired with the Olympics, 

however, said if the interviewee was a Falun Gong practitioner, a 

Tibetan activist, a Uyghur or talking about Taiwan independence, 

the correspondent should be allowed to conduct the interview, but 

afterward the police should blacklist the journalist and deal with 

the interviewee in accordance with the law. Some news sources 

have been arrested and put in jail, following trials that included 

‘‘speaking to a foreign correspondent’’ as evidence of wrongdoing. 

But I’ve also been pleasantly surprised to find awareness of the 

new policy of ‘‘openness’’ has reached some remote areas. Last 

month I was attending a wedding in a small town in the northeast 

corner of Inner Mongolia. I ran into a local court official at the celebration, who was happy to describe activities at his courthouse. I 

asked if I could do a video interview with him for a story I was 

working on about rural land disputes. He said, I could interview 

him since ‘‘China has media freedom [Xinwen Ziyou],’’ but I would 

need to ask his boss. His boss said I would need to apply to officials 

in the next town over. I didn’t have time. Still I was surprised to 

hear him talk about media freedom, and he did let me film the inside of the courthouse. When I first arrived in China in 2001, I 

don’t think I would have heard the term, especially not from a low 

court official in a remote corner of the country. So I do think the 

message is seeping down to some people at lower levels in China. 

I think that is a very positive Olympic result that doesn’t get highlighted a lot. 

With that, I’ll turn it over to Kathleen, who will give you the details of what happens in the field. 

Mr. GROB. Thank you very much, Jocelyn. Kathleen? Please. 

STATEMENT OF KATHLEEN E. McLAUGHLIN, CHAIR, MEDIA 

FREEDOMS COMMITTEE AND SECRETARY, FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS’ CLUB OF CHINA; CHINA CORRESPONDENT 

FOR BNA, INC.; AND FREELANCE JOURNALIST 

Ms. MCLAUGHLIN. Thank you. Thank you for inviting us here, 

and thank you for coming. We appreciate it. 

So, Jocelyn has kind of taken you through the history of where 

we’ve been as foreign correspondents in China, and now I’d like to 

give you some examples of what’s been happening lately and give 

you some ideas of what we’re concerned about into the future. In 

particular, I want to make clear that we believe Chinese assistants 

and Chinese sources are coming under increasing pressure, which 

is a real roadblock to free and open reporting. 

I also want to speak about the importance of free media for global economic issues and how China’s information controls make it 

difficult for foreign correspondents to cover everything, including 

the economy. 

So let me start with a little story about something that happened 

a couple of months ago, and this might give you an idea of the new 

kind of interference and pressure we’re facing as journalists. 

7 

On June 3 and 4, Beijing’s Tiananmen Square was filled with 

hundreds of people. Walking onto the square, it appeared that 80 

to 90 percent of the people were actually plainclothes police and 

army. Nearly all of them carried umbrellas, and at first glance it 

seemed the umbrellas were to block the hot sun overhead. As the 

hours wore on and foreign journalists appeared on the square to report about the 20th anniversary of the crushing of the Tiananmen 

movement, it became clear that the hundreds of umbrellas were 

there to serve a dual purpose: they were used to physically block 

journalists and cameras from filming on the square. 

So while from a distance it appeared the square was full of tourists with umbrellas, in fact, it was clear that something else was 

going on. We didn’t have any reports of journalists being detained 

or arrested on the square that day, but we had a lot of calls from 

people who had their pictures ruined by plainclothes police with 

kind of pretty little parasols. 

I think this is a good example of this sort of soft harassment 

we’ve begun to see more of in recent months. It’s less dangerous 

and less direct than what we saw in the past, but it’s no less effective in preventing us from doing our jobs. 

Now, as Jocelyn mentioned, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club is 

in the midst of a new members’ survey, and the results we’re getting are telling. Now, keep in mind we’re not a polling firm so 

these aren’t scientific results, but they give us an idea of the issues 

that are important to individual members. 

As Jocelyn said, about half of the members who’ve taken the survey so far do believe the reporting climate in China is improving 

and it’s heading in the right direction, and that’s consistent with 

what we’ve heard from the beginning. 

Still, many are concerned about current issues. About two-thirds 

of the correspondents have had some kind of interference in doing 

their daily work, and more than two-thirds who work with a Chinese research assistant say their employee has been hassled or 

summoned for questioning by authorities in the last year. We’ve 

also had several reports of sources facing repercussions after talking to foreign journalists. 

Now, with that, to give you an idea of how things might be 

changing, let’s go back to Tibet in March 2008. In the days following the Lhasa riots, foreign correspondents were shut out of 

Tibet. It’s always been difficult for us to report in that region given 

that entrance to Tibet requires a special permit. All foreigners are 

required to get that permit, but journalists are scrutinized pretty 

closely and often denied. Last spring after the riots, foreign correspondents were not only shut out of Tibet, but repeatedly detained, harassed, and sometimes forcibly prevented from doing 

their jobs across the Tibetan plateau. The FCCC took more than 

40 cases in which correspondents were prevented from working. 

Outside of Tibet proper, the area that technically doesn’t require 

the special permit, foreign news crews were blocked and Chinese 

staff intimidated, and in at least one case a driver was threatened 

with arrest. So you can see it’s not just foreign correspondents 

being harassed, but also the Chinese nationals involved in our 

work. And these are the people for whom this kind of interference 

could have life-altering consequences. So soft harassment, for exVerDate Nov 24 2008 10:11 May 28, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\54372.TXT DEIDRE
8 

ample, where a police officer inserts himself into an interview, 

making it clear there may be consequences for the interviewee, has 

become fairly routine. 

In July 2008, I was the first American journalist allowed to travel independently to Lhasa. I was allowed to move relatively freely 

throughout the city. If anyone was following or listening to me I 

didn’t see them, but the city was so full of police and military, the 

main obstacle I had is that most residents, both Tibetan and Chinese, were simply too afraid to talk to me. Access to Tibet and the 

region remains a problem to this day for foreign correspondents. 

Now, let’s jump ahead to more than a year later, when we faced 

something similar with the uprising in Xinjiang on July 5. As you 

know, nearly 200 people were killed when Uyghur protests in the 

capital, Urumqi, turned violent. 

What we saw in the days after marked a dramatic departure 

from the government’s closed-door policy toward foreign journalists 

in Tibet. Journalists were immediately allowed into Urumqi, and 

by most accounts they were given freedom to interview and move 

about. There were some logistical problems with the Internet and 

telephone access, but the general climate marked a significant 

change. 

We’d like to hope that the government recognized the value of allowing foreign correspondents to report on the ground and to see 

things with their own eyes. Covering Xinjiang, however, was not 

without problems. Urumqi was relatively open, but the far western 

city of Kashgar was, by all accounts, completely closed. Officials denied the closure, but we’ve heard from several journalists who traveled there that they were intercepted and ordered to leave. 

Also, 2,000 miles away in Shaoguan, the site of the toy factory 

murders that sparked the Xinjiang riots, one local driver of a foreign reporting crew was called in for police questioning after the 

reporters left town. So, you can see there was a spread on that 

issue, very different things happening in Kashgar and Shaoguan 

than happened in Urumqi, which was quite open. After covering 

and writing about Xinjiang, two correspondents received anonymous death threats. 

Now, given the shift and the fact that foreign journalists were allowed to report rather openly in Urumqi, we do see a real potential 

for change, but there are still these trouble spots and continued 

problems. As the Chinese rules have more aligned with international reporting standards, harassment and intimidation may be 

going underground. By that, I mean the pressure is falling more 

often on vulnerable Chinese sources and staff. 

Now, in recent months we have encountered a new couple of 

trouble areas. At the beginning of the year, registered Chinese staff 

of foreign news bureaus in Beijing were called in for formal meetings and training, and potentially were lectured by officials, who 

threatened them with revocation of their accreditation, possibly losing their jobs. The new rules that were issued at that time urged 

the news assistants to promote positive news stories about China 

within their organizations. Additionally, they were instructed that 

it was illegal for them to conduct independent reporting activities. 

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club believes that this new code of 

conduct discriminates against Chinese news assistants. Foreign 

9 

companies in other industries can freely hire PRC citizens as fullfledged employees. In addition, the code is a business restriction 

that places foreign media at a competitive disadvantage. Chinese 

journalists in most developed nations can hire local staff without 

these kinds of restrictions. In China, foreign media are obliged to 

hire staff through the government’s Personnel Services Corporation, which then directs their activities and holds regular meetings 

with the assistants, I believe, to talk about how they conduct their 

business. 

Now, another troubling development comes in the financial news 

sector. There is an area of tension that may stem from foreign financial news services competition with China’s home-grown financial news wires. While political news is generally considered more 

sensitive, financial news is coming under greater scrutiny. Most financial indicators are widely circulated before being officially released. 

In the past, the leaked figures would often find their way into 

Chinese and foreign media, but foreign media organizations have 

now come under pressure, including an implicit threat to be investigated under the state secrets law, for publishing data that hasn’t 

been officially released. 

The tightening of these restrictions dates from the fall of last 

year and the global financial crisis. At that point, Chinese economists were urged to conform to the mainstream view on the economy and speak less to the media. Controls over publishing-leaked 

information were also tightened. This is a situation we’re watching 

closely because we’re not quite sure what direction it’s headed in, 

but there is definitely an increased pressure on foreign financial 

news wires operating in China. 

I will conclude my remarks now. So as you can see, we have 

made a lot of gains in recent years and we still face some critical 

issues, namely, trying to maintain the safety of Chinese sources 

and staff while doing our job, and also pressure over information 

that might present competition to Chinese media, as well as the 

ongoing interference and harassment of the kind we’ve seen for a 

number of years. 

Thanks. I look forward to your discussion. 

Mr. GROB. Thank you very much, Kathleen. 

I’d like now to turn the floor over to Professor Esarey. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. McLaughlin appears in the appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF ASHLEY ESAREY, VISITING ASSISTANT 

PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, WHITMAN COLLEGE 

Mr. ESAREY. Thanks very much for inviting me. It’s a great 

pleasure to be here. Doug, thanks for moderating this panel; Lawrence, thanks for making everything happen. 

My remarks are going to be directed toward Chinese journalism, 

which is the subject of my research. The first thing I think you 

should know is that Chinese governments have been controlling political information of a wide variety of sorts for at least 1,000 years. 

So we’re not talking about a new phenomenon, we’re talking about 

new ways to control information in China. The primary way that 

you can control information in this modern age is by controlling the 

10 

mass media, by controlling the Internet, cell phone text messages, 

and so on. 

The Chinese Government now faces a dilemma. The Chinese 

Communist Party wants to modernize the country. It wants to develop. In order to do so it has to allow some freedom of information. 

However, by allowing freedom of information it risks empowering 

critics; it risks giving activists a chance to use blogs to launch social movements. In short, the Party risks its unchallenged hegemony on political power. That’s what is at stake. 

We also know, based on social science scholarship, that if you 

allow media openness, it is likely to empower social organizations, 

whether they are legal or illegal, and it’s often conducive to democratization. These are both things the Communist Party is fighting 

very hard to stop. 

A little bit of history: At the founding of the People’s Republic on 

October 1, 1949, the Chinese Communist Party made a marked departure from all other Chinese governments in the past in that it 

sought to control all political information in its society. It sought 

a totalitarian model in which the Party controlled the education 

system. Media organizations were controlled. The Communist 

Party nationalized all foreign and privately owned media; all socalled imperialist and antirevolutionary/counterrevolutionary literature was seized by the police and the postal service—what a 

scholar named Peter Kenez has called the propaganda state was 

largely established by about 1956. 

There have been some exceptions in terms of the ways in which 

information and the media have been controlled. The 100 Flowers 

Campaign and the Cultural Revolution are two exceptions, but by 

and large the Party’s ability to dominate the media and political information have allowed it to get the public to support its plan to 

radically change the Chinese into a Socialist society. 

Now, fast-forward to the death of Mao in 1976. Reformers, led by 

Deng Xiaoping, were able to emerge and they were very concerned 

about the media because, during the Cultural Revolution, a very 

tumultuous period, media had been shut down; the Party lost control of media, and media had become boring. Deng and others believed that media could be commercialized and propaganda could 

be repackaged to make it more attractive; ultimately, the media 

commercialized sufficiently so that they could be largely self-supporting. As the Party media commercialized, its incentives began to 

change. 

Commercialization of the Chinese press has led to a couple of 

noteworthy developments. Although when we consider liberalization in the Chinese media over the last 30 years, we’re not going 

to be talking about journalists challenging President Hu Jintao 

about his policies or the nation’s policies toward Xinjiang. That sort 

of thing does not occur in the Chinese press. Chinese leaders are 

never criticized by name. With commercialization, however, media 

now care about the public and they want to please consumers. That 

means that while they must serve the Party and state organizations that control them, they’re also interested in investigative 

journalism when they can make it happen. There have been interesting examples of that. I’ll just cite a couple. 

11 

One was reporting in 2003 about the murder of a graphic artist, 

Sun Zhigang, in a detention center in Guangzhou. This then led to 

a major change in national policy vis-a-vis migrant workers. In 

2007, there was a story done by Hunan Dianshi, Hunan television, 

that led to the release of people being held in slavery, as many as 

600 people who were held in slavery in brick kilns in Shanxi Province. 

The most interesting example of media freedom, if you will, in 

China, occurred after the Sichuan earthquake last May, when the 

Communist Party Propaganda Department that guides media content ordered media—local media, provincial media, municipal 

media all around the country—not to go to the disaster area and 

report on location. These orders were widely defied and media went 

and reported on this very important news. That, I think, many 

scholars saw as a breakthrough, because it was the first time that 

we had seen widespread noncompliance with bans for politically 

sensitive media coverage since, perhaps, the Tiananmen demonstrations in 1989. 

Windows of freedom have opened for Chinese media, but they do 

not last long. They’re often closed by the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department, when it’s able to do so, or when the government is able to portray its efforts as having effectively dealt with 

the problem. 

What about the Internet? How is that affecting things now? Well, 

the Internet, as many of you know—I see there are a lot of younger 

people here today—has lots of applications and China is following 

the United States and other advanced countries very rapidly in 

terms of its adoption of all sorts of applications for using the Internet. Blogs are extremely popular. There are 300 million Chinese 

Internet users. This is an old statistic. It’s a statistic from January 

of this year. I say ‘‘old’’ because the number of Internet users increases so rapidly that statistics are quickly out of date. 

China has 300 million Internet users and 160 million bloggers. 

That is a tremendous amount of bloggers. And these bloggers are 

writing in ways that are totally different from the mass media. 

They advocate democracy and political reform, freedom of speech, 

and all sorts of other concepts that you just can’t see in the mass 

media. We’ve got good quantitative data to demonstrate this. 

These new media have been used by members of the middle class 

in cities like Shanghai and Xiamen to organize protests. Often cell 

phones are used to circulate messages very rapidly. There are 650 

million cell phone users in China. That is, again, a statistic from 

December of last year. 

So, Chinese use cell phones to access the Internet, messages are 

circulated, and demonstrations can be organized. The Chinese Government has maintained that ethno-nationalists in Tibet, and certainly Xinjiang, have used this new media to a very deadly effect. 

That has been the sort of critique of new media power that we have 

seen by the central government mouthpiece, Xinhua News Service. 

My argument at the outset was that the Chinese Communist 

Party has a dilemma, and the dilemma is: it must allow information freedom if it wants to develop, yet if it allows information 

freedom it risks losing power. I think the sorts of measures that 

Kathleen was talking about—new ways to keep foreign journalists 

12 

from being very active, new ways of harassing assistants who work 

for foreign journalists—these measures indicate that the old measures for information control aren’t working; they show us that the 

state believes that new measures are necessary. 

For the Internet, one of these new measures has been the Green 

Dam software that the government tried to get installed on all personal computers sold inside China. There was push-back from the 

U.S. Government and, more quietly, from the business community, 

but the largest push-back, at least public push-back, came from 

Chinese Internet users themselves who felt that this software represented an invasion of privacy, and the government did suspend 

its attempt to impose this software on all machines sold in China. 

In China, we are seeing what David Shambaugh has argued is 

a daily battle waged between state and society over what is fit to 

know. Commercialization has changed the incentives of the media. 

They must now please consumers to survive. Media that were once 

the mouthpieces of Mao Zedong’s government now perform their 

propaganda role unwillingly. Commercial media would like to compete with blogs and social networking sites for the attention of the 

public, however, party restrictions bar the media from doing this 

and sometimes this leaves journalists as uncomfortable as a cat in 

a bag. 

Ultimately, tight control over media content, in the context of 

Internet freedom, contributes to disbelief, even cynicism, toward 

state propaganda. The Chinese Communist Party may control the 

messages in media reports, but this no longer means the public believes the message. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Esarey appears in the appendix.] 

Mr. GROB. Thank you, Ashley, for your remarks. I’d like to thank 

all of our panelists for some very illuminating and stimulating comments. 

I’d like now to open the floor to questions from the audience. If 

you have a question, please, if you would, raise your hand, wait to 

be recognized, and wait a moment for the microphone to come to 

you, or feel free to come to the microphone. 

I’ll repeat that we are creating a transcript of this event, which 

will be posted on our Web site, so, for that reason, I’d like to ask 

that, if you do have a question, to identify yourself. If you do not 

wish to identify yourself and wish to be identified in the transcript 

only as ‘‘audience participant,’’ that’s fine. Just indicate that you do 

not wish to identify yourself and we will respect that desire. 

With that, questions, please? Yes, sir. 

Mr. WIDES. Thank you. I’m Burt Wides. Until January, I was, for 

many years, a congressional staffer. Now I’m a private citizen. A 

question basically for Kathleen and Jocelyn. You’ve talked about a 

lot of modernizing. I’ve seen a lot of articles about protests about 

houses being seized, democracy protesters, lawyers. But the big lacuna is stories about Falun Gong in the U.S. media. 

Jocelyn mentioned that interviewers of the Falun Gong were 

blacklisted or the interviewees were arrested. Well, we know that 

many Falun Gong gravely risk both arrest and torture to protest, 

so the fault must be on the U.S. media side. When there are occasional stories, they seem compelled to give equal time or treat 

13 

equally the Chinese propaganda, which is contrary to what the 

United Nations, the United States, all the human rights groups 

have said. 

So my question is: why isn’t U.S. headquarters, the bureau, the 

individual journalist, concerned? Does blacklisting mean they 

would be kicked out of the country? What is the reason for that, 

in your view, and what can be done about it? 

Mr. GROB. Thank you. 

Ms. MCLAUGHLIN. I can’t speak from personal experience on that 

because I haven’t covered Falun Gong myself. I also don’t know of 

any reporters who have been thrown out of China for writing about 

it. There certainly is pressure on it. I have heard of cases of journalists being called in by the Foreign Ministry after writing about 

Falun Gong, but I can’t really answer why these reporters would 

approach the story the way they do. I think it’s an individual basis 

and it’s probably their own news judgment. Jocelyn may have more 

personal experience with it, so I’ll turn it over to you. 

Ms. FORD. I have not covered any stories directly. I have discussed this with some journalist colleagues, and all I can say is 

that I think there are a lot of editorial-room decisions or individual 

decisions by journalists. In the past there have been journalists 

who were evicted from China. I believe the most recent case, 

though, was around 1999. Since I arrived in China in 2001, I am 

not aware of any journalists who have been kicked out. 

However, the government does put pressure on media groups by 

withholding or delaying visas. Of course, this can be difficult to pin 

down. But I am aware of journalists who were told by the Foreign 

Ministry their visa was being delayed because the Chinese Government was unhappy someone in their organization had interviewed 

the Dalai Lama or then-president of Taiwan Chen Shui-Bian. I 

don’t think this is a new form of pressure. 

Mr. WIDES. Do you think print or TV organizations have reached 

agreements with Beijing—— 

Ms. FORD. I don’t think so, personally. I have seen no evidence 

of that. 

Mr. GROB. Okay. 

Ms. FORD. As some of you may know, petitioning is quite common. In China, if somebody has a grievance, and the Chinese court 

does not solve it for them, often they will call journalists and petition or harass the journalist, expecting the journalist to help 

deliver justice. People who behave in this way often do not get coverage. This is based on conversations with other journalists. I have 

not received this kind of harassment myself. 

Mr. GUERRA. Good afternoon. Thank you for convening this 

event. My name is Robert Guerra. I’m the project director at Freedom House’s Internet Freedom Project, and for the last, about, year 

and a half we’ve been covering the issues of Internet freedom, and 

to do a report on China, have been following very closely both the 

issues related to the Internet in China, but also trying to find ways 

to get first-hand reports of what Internet policy is like in China 

and trying to have people there participate more effectively. It’s 

good to hear that bloggers and the use of the Internet are increasing. Recent conversations and dialogues with people in China really 

14 

show that that’s really a medium that’s really being used to bypass 

a lot of the blockages, both technological, to get news across. 

I have, kind of, probably two parts of questions. There seem to 

be organizations that cover traditional media, but I’m curious if 

there’s anything that includes kind of the new media and if there 

is anything that bloggers’ organizations or news organizations are 

trying to maybe help their Chinese blogging colleagues somehow, 

because just as it said that bloggers might present a new window, 

there are reports over the last week or so that a lot of the bloggers 

and other Internet activists who were involved in the Green Dam 

push-back are now being visited, are maybe having computers 

seized, and whether that’s a result of that or other repression that’s 

been taking place over the last two weeks with other lawyers being 

arrested, kind of gets me to the question, well, what can be done 

and how can the traditional media maybe work with this newer 

media, given that in Chinese it’s the space that there is a window 

of possible openness, but also, as some other colleagues say, that 

if there are things that develop in China to control it, that might 

then move itself to other parts of the world. So, China might set 

a standard or might set—so I’m just curious what your thoughts 

are. I would have thought to hear a little bit more about the Internet, but then again, I follow it closely, so that’s maybe more of a 

passion. So I’m curious. And again, thank you for convening this 

event. 

Mr. GROB. Thank you. 

Any takers? 

Mr. ESAREY. Sure. I’m a scholar, so when you ask, are there 

organizations, the first thing that comes to mind are scholarly organizations. This may be of little help to you, but there’s an organization called the Conference for Internet Research in China and 

they have annual conferences and they follow Internet developments very quickly, pretty well, and they have some things. But 

you’re looking for organizations of bloggers in China. They have 

begun working together both inside and outside China. The blog is 

a distinctive personal medium and it’s one that allows a lot of 

inter-linkages to other blogs and other Web sites that a blogger 

wants to affiliate him or herself with. 

So you do sort of see these organic communities emerging. For 

example, there’s a blogger named Ai Weiwei, who has been trying 

to document the number of children who died in Sichuan as a result of faulty construction of schools. He has encountered all sorts 

of difficulties from the government. His blog postings have been 

erased, his blogs have been shut down, he’s been harassed, he’s 

monitored, his volunteers are harassed. So, you do have that sort 

of a thing, but other bloggers follow his activities and say, wow, 

that’s interesting, and sometimes link to his blog and give his 

blogging significance through the larger inter-linkages on the Internet. 

But the main difference between a blogger and, say, a journalist 

in China is that journalists are dependent upon their activities to 

pay the rent, pay their mortgages, send their children to school. 

They can be fired if they don’t do what their bosses or the Communist Party Propaganda Department wants them to do. Bloggers 

15 

aren’t like that. They don’t depend on their blogs for any source of 

personal income, so they have a lot more freedom. 

They don’t get instructions from the Propaganda Department 

about what they can say and what they can’t say. They may look 

online to see what other bloggers are writing by doing some 

searches, but they are much more free. They’re just qualitatively 

vastly freer in the way that they express themselves. And they privately own their medium. So there may be a way to work with 

bloggers or to help them, but it’s unclear how international organizations could maybe work with bloggers in ways that don’t lead 

them to receive more scrutiny and more harassment and result in 

the more rapid shut down of their sites. 

Mr. GROB. Jocelyn? 

Ms. FORD. I’ll just add to that. Are you familiar with [deleted]? 

Okay. So he has an annual blogging conference that you’re probably familiar with. 

Mr. GUERRA. That’s the one to which I was referring. 

Ms. FORD. Okay. 

Mr. GUERRA. Unless you mean the one in China that he’s held 

at Hangzhou and other places in the past. 

Ms. FORD. Yes. Yes. That’s the same. 

Mr. GUERRA. I think he’s one of many sponsors. 

Ms. FORD. Right. He’s one of the organizers of that. 

Ms. MCLAUGHLIN. From the foreign media perspective, I can tell 

you that the Chinese Government Ministry of Foreign Affairs has 

not yet approved any journalist accreditations for online media, 

and I know there have been some applications. So it’s a new world 

for them from that aspect as well. No one has told me the reason 

on the record for that, but I’ll just tell you that they’re not accrediting any online-only media at this point. 

Mr. GROB. Yes, sir? 

Mr. GIBSON. Jeff Gibson, Georgetown University. I have two 

questions for our distinguished practitioners and scholars, one political, one demographic. The demographic. You all mentioned that 

China has more than 300 million-plus Internet users and close to 

700 million cellular phone users, our panelists told us. Looking 10, 

20 years down the line, what do you think the implications of that 

connectivity, that’s more than three times the U.S. population, is? 

There was an interesting article in, I think it was Global Times 

a couple of months ago called ‘‘The Alternative Cyber-Universe,’’ 

and it talked about how Tudou and other Chinese Internet sites 

may not even be known by the majority of Americans, but have 

more users than like a Facebook or a Twitter. So that’s my demographic question. 

The political one is: have you all seen an increasing sophistication in state media messaging? I’m curious, looking back at the 

Sichuan earthquake, last winter’s cold snap, the Tibetan riots, and 

most recently the Xinjiang riots. Thank you. 

Mr. GROB. Thank you. 

Ms. FORD. Sophistication? Absolutely. Ogilvy and Xinhua have 

opened an education program to help teach the government how to 

spin in a more sophisticated way. When I worked for China state 

radio in 2001, the policy was to promote ‘‘happy’’ news, or positive 

feel-good stories. These would account for at least 80 percent of the 

16 

stories. I think we’ve seen a shift in that. I believe the government 

propaganda strategists think if they allow enough negative news 

through, the positive news will enjoy greater credibility. That’s my 

own interpretation. I have not confirmed this with policymakers. 

I think China’s news business is becoming increasingly sophisticated in this way. I don’t know if any of you are familiar with the 

new English-language publication, the Global Times, which is published under the People’s Daily umbrella. They are moving much 

closer toward Western-style journalism than the China Daily, the 

English-language daily based in Beijing. The editors say their goal 

is to be a watchdog, to the extent possible. I’ve been impressed that 

they seek to provide balance and to fill in the holes in news stories. 

They will report when officials decline to reply. They are reporting 

more diverse views, and views that oppose some government policies. Some stories, however, do not meet the same standards, and 

may serve propaganda purposes. 

Mr. ESAREY. Yes. I’d just like to say something in regard to Mr. 

Gibson’s first question about demographics, which I think is really 

a political question: how are the demographics that we’re seeing 

now in terms of Internet use and cell phone use going to play out 

down the line when the trajectory of usership continues to climb? 

In maybe 5 or 10 years, almost every Chinese will have a cell 

phone. Instead of 20 percent of the population being online, we’ll 

see 40 percent, or 50 percent, or 60 percent. How is that going to 

change things? Nobody has good answers to this question. 

I think I would make two observations, because no one can predict the future, right? At least not very reliably most of the time. 

My observations are that if you’ve got a lot of freedom on the Internet, despite blockages on sites and harassment of bloggers and so 

forth, bloggers are still very free, compared to a tightly controlled 

traditional media—newspapers, magazines, television stations, and 

so forth. People are going to tune out official media sources. 

They’re going to tune them out and they’re going to go to the Internet for what they consider to be the unvarnished truth, or at the 

very least, for information that’s unmediated by the state. 

If the traditional media does not respond by liberalizing its content, it’s going to lose market share. Believe me, they don’t want 

that. So I think you’ll see more push-back from journalists who 

want to report the kind of news Chinese consumers would like to 

see. 

Mr. GROB. Let me jump in and ask a point of clarification, drawing on Jocelyn’s point about liberalization on the one hand, and sophisticated creation of the illusion of liberalization, on the other. 

Do you have any thoughts on what might trigger one versus the 

other? 

Mr. ESAREY. Oh, I think the regime has been trying to create sophisticated illusions of freedom for a long time, really since the 

founding of the country. Making media interesting has been a priority since the early 1950s. It has just been very difficult to achieve 

with party committees controlling all the media. But some Chinese 

journalists have said the investigative journalism that we’re seeing 

is really like opium. One Chinese journalist used this expression, 

‘‘it’s opium,’’ because investigative journalism makes people believe 

17 

that there is freedom, when in fact there isn’t very much in the 

media today. 

Mr. GROB. Yes, sir? Just as a reminder, since time is running 

short, if I could ask you to keep your questions to one question, and 

to make sure it is a question and not a comment. Thank you. 

Mr. AUSBUCK. My name is Dave Ausbuck. I don’t know if this is 

related, but I thought it was, so I’d ask it. Next year, the Chinese 

are hosting a major World’s Fair exhibition in Shanghai. The 

theme is ‘‘Better Cities, Better Life.’’ So I guess the question I have 

for you is, have you detected any sense of they’re going to allow— 

if you know what a World’s Fair is, it’s all the countries, and even 

the nongovernmental organizations, even religions, come by and 

have pavilions and are free to put out their own content. This 

seems to me the first time I’ve ever heard about a World’s Fair 

being hosted in a non-democratic, authoritarian country. 

The question I have: do you know of any plans to censor? Most 

exhibits there are in the form of videos about these countries. 

They’re celebrating cities which are traditionally known for more 

freedom of expression and diversity and tolerance. 

So do you know of any plans to censor the exhibits there and the 

expression there at the expo that you know of, or have you detected 

any sense that they will be more tolerant of freedom of expression 

there at the World’s Fair next year? 

Mr. GROB. Thank you. That’s an excellent question. Maybe, 

Kathleen? Thank you. 

Ms. MCLAUGHLIN. I don’t have a great answer for you because 

I haven’t heard about any—it’s a great question. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were some censorship because there was during 

the Olympics last year, as you know. Messages about Tibet, Tibetan flags, things of that nature were barred from the Olympics, 

so it wouldn’t surprise me if the same sort of thing happened. But 

I haven’t heard of it as yet. So, something to watch out for. 

Mr. LIU. Let me just ask as a followup to that question, because 

you raised this very interesting notion of the significance or the 

distinction in media coverage in cities versus in less urban areas 

and the notion that a city is—in some sense it’s of necessity, in 

some sense by design—more diverse, more tolerant. 

To what extent have our practitioners seen any noticeable or detectable difference along the urban-rural divide in the coverage of 

stories in China or how the media operate, or the rules that apply, 

or the Party and the government’s approach toward journalists 

along spatial lines, specifically urban and rural? 

Ms. MCLAUGHLIN. I can just speak from my own experience on 

that. It is oftentimes easier to report in rural areas because people 

tend to be economically less well off and therefore have less to lose, 

so they will be more honest with you. However, the flip-side is, 

local officials and local governments tend to be more restrictive, 

maybe not as aware of the new regulations, so there’s a little bit 

of a dichotomy there. People would be more open, but at the same 

time local officials might be more closed. That’s just my own personal experience. 

Ms. FORD. My experience in talking with Chinese colleagues is 

that, yes, it’s much easier to push the envelope in urban areas than 

in rural areas. Maybe some of you have lived in China. I often feel 

18 

like I’m time traveling when I leave Beijing and get off the beaten 

track. I feel like I am going back 5 or 10 years. The government 

mentality often, as Kathleen said, is from a different era. But recently I’ve become more optimistic. I mentioned the example from 

Inner Mongolia. I was very surprised that, in a tiny town, a local 

court official was parroting something about media freedom. 

‘‘Wow! ’’ I thought, ‘‘This is progress.’’ At least he knows the terminology. Thanks. 

Mr. GROB. Yes, ma’am? 

Ms. EARP. Madeleine Earp, Committee to Protect Journalists. My 

question for the panel is: What advice would you give, or do you 

give, to foreign journalists who are navigating this new environment of soft harassment that you mentioned? Should they continue 

to approach sources and news assistants if there’s the potential for 

there to be retribution from officials afterward? Thank you. 

Ms. FORD. The question was for pressure on assistants specifically, or in general? 

Ms. EARP. Assistants and sources. 

Ms. FORD. Assistants and sources. Okay. It’s very important that 

journalists understand the risks and are able to read the tea leaves 

because regulations and laws are spottily enforced. I feel strongly 

that reporters should not assume the source is aware of the various 

risks. Correspondents should evaluate the risk and make sure their 

sources are willing to shoulder them. Of course, journalists also 

may not be aware of the risks. 

I was fortunate to be able to hire an assistant who not only was 

extremely savvy about risks, but also had a relative who was in a 

position to help her out should we run into trouble. I felt more comfortable when I was going into risky territory because I didn’t need 

to worry about her so much. But you can’t always have that. 

I think it’s very important that correspondents discuss the risks 

with assistants and evaluate what the assistants are willing to do. 

I want to be clear there are many stories that aren’t sensitive. 

It is also important to discuss communications. I assume that all 

phone calls could be intercepted and listened to. It doesn’t mean 

the authorities are listening to every phone call, but if I am calling 

a sensitive source I assume that the source’s phone is being listened to and therefore I will be followed and watched after I have 

contact with that person. The FCCC actually has some guides online and we’ve printed wallet cards about what to do, how to protect yourself and how to protect your sources. 

A lot of people forget that managing communications carefully is 

extremely important. Sources have been arrested, detained, or 

questioned because of what was said on a telephone. 

Mr. GROB. Let me just ask a followup to some of the things you 

just said that also go back to the prior question. That is, displaying 

my own ignorance here, just to put China in perspective internationally, what do we know about other authoritarian states—do 

some have a less heavy-handed approach toward the media? Can 

we get some broader, either historical or global context here, and 

how do we place China along a spectrum in that regard? 

Ms. FORD. I’m sure the Committee to Protect Journalists is in a 

better position to address that, but let me take a stab. I often open 

talks by saying that though correspondents in China face many obVerDate Nov 24 2008 10:11 May 28, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\54372.TXT DEIDRE
19 

stacles, it is a lot safer to report in China, for example, than, say, 

in the Philippines. Most foreign correspondents, I believe, assume 

the worst that will happen is they could get kicked out of the country. The greater danger, of course, is for our sources. But the reporters in China—again, other people have the statistics—may be 

more likely to be jailed than in many countries. I think it’s important to keep this in perspective. 

Having said that, though our lives are not as much at risk as 

journalists in other countries like the Philippines and Iraq, we all 

want you to pay attention to the issues we’re concerned about. 

Mr. GROB. Yes? 

Ms. VANDENBRINK. Rachel Vandenbrink, Radio Free Asia. Could 

you please perhaps explain why reporters haven’t been able to get 

access to interview Uyghurs in order to get an accurate casualty 

count in the recent protests? Also, how did the blocking of Internet 

and phone access to Xinjiang affect the reporting environment for 

foreign reporters? 

Ms. MCLAUGHLIN. I can try and take that. You’re talking about 

a casualty count in Urumqi, correct? I wasn’t in Urumqi. I can’t tell 

you who was or wasn’t interviewed. I assume that, you know, just 

a random sort of Uyghur that you could interview on the street 

wouldn’t be able to give you a verifiable, confirmed casualty number. So I think you’re relying on official statistics there. That’s my 

best guess. 

And what was your second question? I’m sorry. 

Ms. VANDENBRINK. About the blocking of Internet access and 

telephone access. 

Ms. MCLAUGHLIN. Right. So Internet access was cut completely, 

is my understanding. Telephone access was very spotty. What the 

local government did for foreign journalists was set up a media 

center and gave them Internet access, so that’s how they were able 

to access it there. A lot of people were filing via satellite phones, 

which I believe are not technically legal. Is that right? 

Ms. FORD. That’s my understanding. 

Ms. MCLAUGHLIN. Right. But they were allowing the foreign 

journalists to use satellite phones, so there was a lot of that going 

on. I can tell you my own experience reporting in Shaoguan, the 

toy factory murder site. It wasn’t possible to interview Uyghurs because they were completely restricted from access. We couldn’t talk 

to them. The interview requests were denied. They were not out 

walking on the streets. We couldn’t ask them how many people 

were killed in the toy factory because they just weren’t there. I 

think the situation is a lot different in Urumqi proper because it 

would be difficult to get one single person who could give you a 

verified casualty count. 

Mr. GROB. Jocelyn? 

Ms. FORD. Perhaps a clarification. I think international phone 

calls were blocked, but local—— 

Ms. MCLAUGHLIN. Local phone calls were spotty. 

Ms. FORD. Okay. Spotty. But international—some people were 

sending the message off to somebody else who did have Internet 

connection and would post something online. So, there was sort of 

a relay. 

20 

Mr. LIU. I just want to follow up with another question about the 

role that the U.S. Government may, or may not be able to play in 

terms of supporting the ability of foreign journalists in China to report freely. When there have been restrictions in the past, the U.S. 

Government has at times made statements in support of allowing 

journalists unfettered access to certain areas that had been closed 

off. Have you found those statements to be at all helpful? If you 

have any suggestions as far as what role the U.S. Government can 

play, that would be helpful, bearing in mind that we also, I imagine, do not want to be seen as interfering as well in terms of the 

sort of separation between the state and the press. Yes? 

Ms. FORD. Thank you for that question. I’m sorry. I have been 

on vacation so I haven’t been paying so much attention to the 

news. But I regard the open comment period on the state secret 

regulation as a very positive move. I don’t know if the U.S. Government made a comment. But I think encouraging open comments on 

regulations regarding media and then actually participating in the 

process and encouraging an opening up of the process is very positive. 

China ratified the U.N. Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 

but did not pass it. I just want to say, if there’s one thing you walk 

out of here with, it’s this: as long as Chinese citizens are not free 

to talk to foreign correspondents, we are not free to report. 

So I think the issue really is, how can we encourage a situation 

where Chinese citizens are free to speak to us without retribution. 

Ratification—again, not everything is implemented perfectly, but 

ratification—encouraging ratification of international agreements, I 

think, is a positive step. At least it gives us more to fight with. 

When I created the wallet card outlining legal rights of foreign 

correspondents in China, I sought advice from a number of lawyers. We’re not always aware of changing laws, and we don’t try 

to use them. To the best of my knowledge no foreign correspondent 

has ever sought to sue government authorities for rights violations, 

or for compensation for injuries suffered at the hands of authorities 

who tried to stop legal reporting activities. Regardless of whether 

the journalist is likely to win such a case, a lawsuit would generate 

a headline, and draw attention to illegal actions on the part of authorities. 

I do think the U.S. Government could engage in more dialogue 

with China on how to balance national security interests and freedom of information. The FCCC is seeking to promote a gold standard for international reporting conditions. All we can do is express 

our views and hope that the Chinese Government takes them into 

consideration and looks for the best international practices. 

So, I think any sort of exchange on these issues, especially protection of sources, would be worthwhile. About 130 countries 

around the world have some sort of protection, legal or otherwise, 

for news sources. You cannot have a free media without protection 

of sources. So, I think encouraging this kind of dialogue with China 

would be useful. Any activities that promote the view that the free 

flow of information can help solve social problems, such as unrest, 

would be worthwhile. It’s important to reiterate the view that nations that respect and protect the free flow of information are more 

likely to enjoy wide international respect. 

21 

Mr. GROB. On that note, if you had the ability to recommend a 

single coordinated message that Members of the Congress and administration officials could deliver regarding press freedom to Chinese officials, say, during visits to China, whether it be to officials 

at the central level or at the local level, what would be the onesentence message that they could deliver that you think would be 

most important, most effective? And I’m talking about both in public and private conversations, that would be most important or 

most effective in terms of advancing press freedom and media freedom in China. Anybody? 

Ms. FORD. You’re challenging. If I could do a one-sentence message I’d probably be working for a PR firm and be making a lot of 

money. I usually get 40 seconds on the radio, so can I do 40 seconds? In all seriousness, I think encouraging the idea that diversity 

of views, tolerance of different views, and discussion of different 

views is a way to solve problems. It is not what creates the problems. 

In China we often hear the argument that open discussion leads 

to social unrest, hence the controls. I think it would be useful to 

promote case studies from other countries where dialogue with an 

ethnic group that felt it was being unfairly treated helped reduce 

tensions. Does that help answer your question? 

Mr. GROB. Yes. Thank you. 

Ms. FORD. So I can get that PR job? This is on the record. I 

should be careful, huh? 

Mr. ESAREY. I have a one-sentence comment. That is improve 

journalistic professionalism. I mean, by supporting the training of 

Chinese journalists and inviting them to come to the United States 

to work in the U.S. media organizations and learn about our values 

concerning the news and strategies for reporting the news; improving journalistic professionalism could also occur through better 

training for the U.S. journalists who go to China. This goes back 

to Madeleine Earp’s question, which is, how do you avoid this reliance on assistants? 

Well, one way is to really bone up on your Chinese language ability to read and speak fluently enough to do a lot of your own 

reporting. I think probably half, if not more, of the foreign journalists working in China are not truly fluent in Chinese. That’s something that could be improved with more training, more journalistic 

professionalism of a different sort, I suppose. 

Ms. FORD. May I comment? There is often a division of labor 

between assistants and foreign correspondents. I don’t have an assistant now. When I worked with an assistant, we analyzed every 

situation and discussed whether an individual or organization was 

more likely to open up to a foreigner or more likely to open up to 

a Chinese national. The language issue is not the only consideration here. Sometimes, it is safer for the source to speak to a Chinese. Being seen with a foreigner would be more risky. Some 

Chinese feel more comfortable speaking to foreigners about sensitive issues. I agree training is important, but training should 

include how to deal with delicate situations, and how to make prudent decisions when there are no clear rules, because, of course, 

rule of law is not implemented to the degree that one would like. 

22 

Ms. MCLAUGHLIN. While we are concerned about harassment of 

assistants, really the other core issue is harassment of sources. 

That is happening where the correspondent is completely fluent in 

Chinese. Maybe he’s even ethnically Chinese. You have sources 

being harassed and suffering repercussions for talking to foreign 

journalists, and that just shouldn’t happen. 

Ms. FORD. Sorry. May I add one more thing. In fact, foreign journalists of Chinese descent often face very different pressures from 

foreign journalists who look like me—and since the audio is being 

recorded: I don’t look Asian. So I think that one needs to have a 

very broad understanding of how to get information safely and all 

the tactics go into the toolbox. Reporters need to be prudent in 

choosing a strategy. Of course, the ideal situation would be to have 

laws fully enforced and the new regulations for foreign journalists 

and the constitutional right to freedom of speech upheld. If this 

were to happen, I think a lot would be solved. 

Mr. GROB. Questions? Yes, sir. 

Mr. MARTIN. I’ll try to speak up. Michael Martin from the Congressional Research Service. Ashley, earlier you mentioned about 

the cynicism of the public in China toward the state-run media. 

There is a growing non-state run media in China. Caijing magazine 

recently featured in the New Yorker, for example, is one source. 

Then, also, you have the Western media that is also operating inside China. There are some indications that cynicism is bleeding 

over to the private and to the Western media—for example, the 

anti-CNN Web page which is out there—and critiquing Western 

coverage of events in China. I was wondering if the panelists would 

like to comment on cynicism and the view inside China toward 

media in general, and how much they discriminate against staterun, the domestic private, and then the Western media sources. 

Thank you. 

Mr. GROB. Wow. We have six minutes left and that could be another panel. But Ashley? 

Mr. ESAREY. Sure. Michael, thanks very much for your question. 

Caijing is an excellent magazine. It’s technically registered with a 

state organization, although it has shareholders and it operates 

like a private corporation. Its reporting is definitely fueled by the 

motivation to make a profit. But I think the keys to its success 

have been excellent political savvy, tremendous management, and 

paying journalists good salaries, as opposed to the more common 

practice of rewarding only the reporting that is politically acceptable. 

The anti-CNN situation is pretty complex. There is a lot of information available about the people who are involved in this movement, if you can call it that. Some of them have now rejected the 

movement and left it. There is definitely some dissension among 

the people who are involved. 

Does that reflect a sort of cynicism? I think anti-CNN is more related to the manifestation of nationalism on the Chinese Internet 

today. The anti-CNN thing was about Jack Cafferty, a commentator for CNN, who made a deprecating remark about the quality 

of Chinese leaders. The Chinese state actually kicked into gear its 

Party operators. They’re called the 50-Cent Party, wumao dang. 

These people posted nationalistic comments attacking CNN on lots 

23 

of Web portals, according to research by David Bandursky in Hong 

Kong. So I think the anti-CNN situation is complex. 

As far as the mainstream media goes, Party media will lose circulation unless it commercializes and caters to nationalist tastes. 

Often within media groups you have Party media that are broadcasting more propaganda and commercialized media that are trying 

to raise revenue through reports that please consumers in various 

ways. 

Ms. FORD. A quick question and a comment. I do believe the antiWestern media campaign has had a tremendous and long-lasting 

effect. I often hear from Chinese now that foreign reports are not 

so credible. Before, Western media was the golden city on the hill 

and some Chinese thought they could believe everything that appeared in overseas media, which is probably not quite accurate either. It wasn’t just one mistake that led to this distrust of Western 

media on certain issues. 

I think the message many Chinese took home was that the foreign media is against China. I don’t think that was the reason 

most of the mistakes were made, but foreign media did little to explain or provide context. 

There should’ve been more reports analyzing why the mistakes 

were made. Having worked as a foreign correspondent and having 

fought against stereotypes held by my U.S.-based editors regarding 

countries I’ve reported from, I can say China is not the only country that suffers from inaccurate reporting. Yes, the media also 

needs a watchdog, or an ombudsman. Nobody is perfect in the 

world. Inaccurate reporting is not exclusively a China problem. 

There was also little mention at the time that reporting is likely 

to be more accurate if reporters have access to news sites, and 

sources are free to talk without intimidation or fear of reprisal. The 

accuracy of reporting would also be helped if China stopped manipulating its media for propaganda purposes. 

Mr. GROB. Thank you. 

Any more questions? [No response]. 

Mr. GROB. Well, let me just put this question to our panelists. 

Members of Congress and administration officials travel to China. 

They interact with the Chinese media, they interact with the foreign media while they are in China. I know that some Members 

and administration officials—for instance, Speaker Pelosi, Secretary Clinton—have even engaged in Web chats and other sorts 

of online activities during trips to China. What advice would you 

give to a Member of Congress or an administration official who is 

about to head to China for even just a short trip? What’s the most 

important thing that they would need to keep in mind, that they 

might not ordinarily know about, regarding how to interact with 

the media in China, and how to prepare for their encounters with 

the media in China? 

Ms. FORD. May I? I actually have an interesting anecdote about 

Speaker of the House Pelosi’s visit. I received a call from a journalist 

in southern China who wanted to interview her. The journalist told 

me she thought she needed a connection to get the interview, and 

she thought I had connections at the embassy. I said, she could go 

talk to the embassy directly, that’s the way America worked. Well, 

I don’t know how true this is. But in America, at least the front 

24 

door should be open so they should try a front-on approach. I think 

outreach by American Senators and Members of Congress to local 

journalists would be very well received. 

Again, recently the same person said she felt that there were 

fewer controls on what they could do as a local newspaper with 

international reporting. She really wanted to beef up her team and 

she was asking me how to do that. So, I think there are tremendous opportunities. I suggested she write an e-mail. By the time 

she sent the e-mail Pelosi’s visit was almost over. She never got a 

response. So, I think if American delegations are open to all media, 

and not just the most famous outlets, they may find a lot of interest. 

Mr. GROB. Thank you very much. 

Kathleen, did you have something to add? 

Ms. MCLAUGHLIN. I guess my advice would just be to be open 

and honest and don’t censor yourself when you’re in China. I’m not 

accusing anyone of having done that, but I think it’s helpful if people speak out about what they believe in when they’re there. 

Mr. GROB. And for the last word, since it is 3:29 p.m. 

Mr. ESAREY. I would just urge our elected representatives to recognize that their public remarks can very easily be misconstrued 

in a media that is subject to close scrutiny and tight political control. So try to be sure—I would urge them to try to be sure that 

the message they want to get across gets across and to actually 

read the Chinese press coverage that results from their visits, and 

complain if they feel like their remarks were not properly translated. Of course, the ideal scenario would be for our representatives 

to bring their own translators. That leaves a lot less room for 

things to kind of go sideways in terms of communication. But if 

they’re trying to get information, I think the best way is informal 

interaction—dinners, the fun stuff. 

Mr. GROB. Well, the fun stuff. On that note, we’ll end this fun 

stuff. It’s 3:30. 

I thank you all very much for attending our roundtable today. I 

thank our panelists for some outstanding insights, and some wonderful, illustrative anecdotes, and some real concrete recommendations and thought-provoking ideas to take with us going forward. 

I’d like to thank our Senior Counsel, Lawrence Liu, for putting 

this together, and our staff, for your logistical support. 

With that, the ninth CECC roundtable of the 111th Congress is 

adjourned. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 3:30 p.m. the roundtable was concluded.] 

(25) 

A P P E N D I X 

26 

PREPARED STATEMENTS

PREPARED STATEMENT OF KATHLEEN E. MCLAUGHLIN

JULY 31, 2009

Good afternoon. Thanks for inviting us to talk about this important issue. Jocelyn 

has taken you through where we’ve been as foreign correspondents in China, and 

I’d like to take you forward with the issues we continue to face. In particular, I want 

to make clear that we believe Chinese assistants and sources are coming under increasing pressure, a real roadblock to free and open reporting. 

I also want to speak about the importance of free media for global economic issues 

and how China’s information controls make it difficult for foreign correspondents to 

cover everything, including the economy. 

TIANANMEN 20TH ANNIVERSARY: THE UMBRELLA MEN

On June 3 and 4 this year, Beijing’s Tiananmen Square was filled with hundreds 

of people. Walking on to the square, it appeared that 80-90 percent of them were 

plainclothes army and police. Nearly all carried umbrellas, at first glance, to block 

them from the hot sun overhead. 

As the hours wore on and foreign journalists appeared on the square to report 

about the 20th anniversary of the crushing of the Tiananmen democracy movement, 

it became clear that the hundreds of umbrellas served a dual purpose. They were 

used to physically block journalists and cameras from filming on the square. So, 

while from a distance, it appeared the square was full of tourists, up-close, it was 

clear that something else was going on. 

I think this is a good example of the kind of ‘‘soft harassment’’ we’ve begun to 

see more of in recent months. It’s less dangerous and less direct than what we saw 

in the past, but no less effective in preventing foreign correspondents from doing 

our jobs. 

CONTINUING AND NEW HURDLES

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China is in the midst of a new member survey right now and the results we’re getting are interesting. The results are not scientific, but give us an idea of what individual members face: 

About half of members who’ve taken the survey so far think the reporting climate 

in China is improving, which is consistent with when we first started asking this 

question. Still, many are concerned about pressing issues. About two-thirds of them 

have had some kind of official interference in their work over the past year. More 

than two-thirds of those who work with a research assistant say their employee has 

been hassled or summoned for questioning by authorities. We’ve had several reports 

of sources facing repercussions. 

PROBLEMS IN COVERING TIBET IN 2008

To give you an idea of how things might be changing, let’s go back to Tibet in 

March of 2008. In the days following the Lhasa riots, foreign correspondents were 

shut out of Tibet. It’s always been difficult for us to report in that region, given that 

entrance to Tibet requires a special permit. All foreigners are required to get a permit. Journalists are scrutinized more closely and often denied. 

Last spring, foreign correspondents were repeatedly detained, harassed and sometimes forcibly prevented from doing their jobs across the Tibetan plateau. The FCCC 

logged more than 40 cases in which foreign correspondents were prevented from 

working. Outside of Tibet proper—the area that technically doesn’t require special 

travel permits—foreign news crews were blocked and Chinese staff intimidated, and 

in at least one case, threatened with arrest. 

So you can see, it’s not just foreign correspondents being harassed, but also the 

Chinese nationals involved in our work—people for whom police action can have 

life-altering consequences. We seem to be witnessing a trend toward harassing and 

intimidating these people more—blocking them from talking to us, warning them 

against helping us. Soft harassment, for example, where a police officer inserts himself into an interview, making it clear there may be consequences for the 

interviewee, has become fairly routine. 

In July of 2008, I was the first American journalist to travel independently to 

Lhasa, I was allowed to move freely throughout the city. If anyone was following 

or listening to me, I didn’t see them. But the city was so full of police and military, 

27 

the main obstacle I had is that most residents—both Tibetan and Chinese—were too 

afraid to talk to me. 

Access to Tibet and the region remains a problem to this day. 

XINJIANG RIOTS AND COVERAGE

More than a year later, we faced something similar with the uprising in Xinjiang 

on July 5. As you know, nearly 200 people were killed when Uighur protests in the 

capital Urumqi turned violent. What we saw in the days after marked a dramatic 

departure from the government’s closed-door policy toward foreign journalists in 

Tibet. 

Journalists were immediately allowed into Urumqi, and by most accounts, given 

freedom to interview and move about. There were logistical problems, but the general climate marked a significant change. 

We’d like to hope the government recognized the value in allowing foreign correspondents to report on the ground. 

Covering Xinjiang was not without problems. While Urumqi was relatively open, 

the far western city of Kashgar was closed. Officials denied the closure, but we’ve 

heard from several journalists attempting to travel to there, who were intercepted 

and ordered to leave. 

Also, 2,000 miles away in Shaoguan, site of the toy factory murders that sparked 

the Xinjiang riots, the local driver of one foreign reporting crew was called in for 

police questioning after the reporters left town. 

Additionally, two correspondents received anonymous death threats after writing 

about the Xinjiang unrest. 

Given the shift and the fact that foreign journalists were allowed to report rather 

openly in Urumqi, we do see real potential for change. But there are trouble spots 

and continued problems. 

As the rules have more aligned with international reporting standards, harassment and intimidation may be ‘‘going underground. ‘‘ The pressure seems more 

often directed at vulnerable Chinese sources and staff. 

EMERGING ISSUES, PRESSURE ON CHINESE STAFF

And in recent months, we’ve encountered a few new trouble areas: 

At the beginning of the year, registered Chinese staff of foreign news bureaus in 

Beijing were called in for official meetings and training. New rules were issued to 

the assistants about proper behavior, including urging them to ‘‘promote positive 

stories about China’’ within their organizations. They were instructed that it was 

illegal for them to conduct independent reporting. 

We believe this new code of conduct discriminates against Chinese news assistants. Foreign companies in other industries can freely hire PRC citizens as fullfledged employees. In addition, the code is a business restriction that places foreign 

media at a competitive disadvantage. Chinese journalists in most developed nations 

can hire local staff without such restrictions. In China, foreign media are obliged 

to hire staff through the government’s Personnel Services Corporation. 

FINANCIAL NEWS SERVICES

Another troubling development is ongoing pressure on foreign financial news services—an area of tension that may stem from competition with China’s homegrown 

financial news wires. 

While political news is generally considered more sensitive, financial news is coming under greater scrutiny. Most financial indicators are widely circulated before 

being officially released. In the past, leaked figures would often find their way into 

Chinese and foreign media. But foreign media organizations have come under pressure—including an implicit threat to investigate under the state secrets laws—for 

publishing data not yet officially released. 

The tightening of restrictions dates from the fall of 2008, and the global financial 

crisis. At that point, Chinese economists were urged to conform to the mainstream 

view on the economy and speak less to the media; controls over publishing leaked 

information were tightened. 

CONCLUSION

So as you can see, while we’ve made significant gains, we still face critical issues: 

Namely Trying to maintain the safety of sources and Chinese staff, pressure over 

information that might present competition to Chinese media, and ongoing interference and harassment of the type we’ve seen for years. 

Thanks and I look forward to your questions. 

28 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ASHLEY ESAREY

JULY 31, 2009

I am delighted that the Congressional Executive Commission on China has organized a panel to discuss how the news is reported in China by Chinese and American journalists. 

China has a tradition of state censorship that goes back more than 1000 years. 

The current political regime, led by the Chinese Communist Party, has controlled 

political information far more effectively than any government in the country’s history. Yet Beijing’s rulers face a dilemma. On the one hand, freedom of information 

is invaluable for making business decisions in the global economy, technological 

transfers, and scholarly exchange. On the other hand, media freedom has facilitated 

democracy movements in countries such as Mexico, Hungary, Taiwan, Indonesia, 

and Czechoslovakia. Media freedom is good for China’s economy and public welfare 

but likely to weaken the CCP’s political hegemony, as journalists expose policy failures and political activists use the Internet to organize demonstrations. The CCP 

controls Chinese media because its primary objective is to remain in power. In the 

last three decades, however, media commercialization, the growth of journalistic 

professionalism, cell phone use, and the Internet have made information control 

more difficult than ever. 

MAO-ERA MEDIA

Since the founding of the People’s Republic on October 1, 1949, the CCP has 

sought to dominate all forms of political communication. The Central Propaganda 

Department of the Communist Party guided policies that placed media under party 

leadership, nationalized privately owned media, and divested foreign newspapers of 

the right to publish in China. Police, customs agents, and postal workers confiscated 

‘‘imperialist’’ and ‘‘counter-revolutionary’’ literature. 

In the early 1950s, the People’s Daily newspaper emerged as the mouthpiece of 

the Communist Party Central Committee and bellwether for the views of Mao 

Zedong and other national leaders. Xinhua News Service assumed a central role in 

disseminating carefully vetted reports around the country. Media at central, provincial, and municipal levels became ‘‘mouthpieces’’ of the CCP. Working though the 

State Press and Publications Administration, the Central Propaganda Department 

orchestrated the closure of media that did not comply with party directives. By 

1956, China had established what Peter Kenez has called a ‘‘propaganda state,’’ 

with the country’s entire media industry and education system firmly under party 

control. Mao’s media proved to be effective tools for mobilizing the public in support 

of China’s socialist transformation. While the stability of China’s propaganda system 

was punctuated by events, such as the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956–57), and 

the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), leaders with the upper hand in Chinese politics have tightly controlled media content and operations. 

MEDIA COMMERCIALIZATION IN THE REFORM ERA

The death of Mao made possible the ascent of reformers, led by Deng Xiaoping. 

Far from an advocate of media freedom, Deng supported measures to commercialize 

the media industry so as to make it profitable and more attractive to consumers. 

The goal of commercialization was to revitalize media’s propaganda role by repackaging the news. Party and state institutions retained power over commercial media 

by controlling ownership, personnel appointments, and cracking down on media that 

failed comply with content directives issued by central and local branches of the 

Propaganda Department. The result was a media system that combined the characteristics of Soviet-style media with Western media management strategies. My analysis of the newspaper content from 1980 to 2003 has shown that commercial media, 

in some cases, grew freer to criticize minor political problems, without jettisoning 

their propaganda role or challenging party leaders with substantial power to repress 

offending journalists. 

Media commercialization during the Reform Era (1978–present) changed the incentives for media, which recognized that freer, less doctrinaire reporting appeals 

to the public. When opportunities appeared, greater media freedom has emerged, although local, rather than central, officials are the targets of critical news reports. 

In colloquial parlance, Chinese media ‘‘swat flies’’ but do not ‘‘hit tigers.’’ Powerful 

political and economic interests can coerce or bribe media to abandon potentially 

embarrassing stories. 

Nevertheless, studies by Chinese communications scholars have documented a 

new ethos of professionalism among Chinese journalists. Strict adherence to the 

party line does not always trump the public’s right to know about a natural disaster 

29 

1 Ashley Esarey, ‘‘Speak No Evil: Mass Media Control in Contemporary China’’, Freedom at 

Issue: A Special Freedom House Report, February 2006, http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/ 

special—report/33.pdf. 

or the spread of a disease. Journalists who believe in their professional obligation 

to inform the public have found work in media, such as the Southern Metropolitan 

News, Southern Weekend, or Caijing Magazine. These media have encouraged reporters to push the limits of central government restrictions. Notable examples of 

investigative stories with a national impact have been reporting on the 2003 murder 

of graphic artist Sun Zhigang in a detention center for migrant workers, the 2007 

exposure of slavery in brick kilns in Shanxi Province, and reports about the shoddy 

construction of school buildings that led to the deaths of thousands of children during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In the latter case, journalists from around China 

refused to comply with bans against going to Sichuan to report on location. Windows 

of freedom, so to speak, have been flung open and media have challenged the actions of local government before the Propaganda Department could regain control. 

The government at all levels is concerned with public opinion and seeks to conceal 

interventions in news reporting. Those who reveal acts of censorship take great 

risks in doing so. With few exceptions, media respect government bans on reporting 

certain stories; journalists eschew politically sensitive reporting. Rife corruption 

among journalists and a salary scale that rewards reporters for politically correct 

reports contribute to self-censorship.1 Nonetheless, a few journalists have succeeded 

in shedding light on isolated problems and acts of injustice; this has been done by 

reporting the news before the government issues a ban. 

THE INTERNET AND MEDIA FREEDOM

The growing wealth of Chinese citizens has given hundreds of millions of people 

the means to acquire new information and communications technologies for personal 

use. At least 650 million Chinese use cellular telephones—and more than 100 million use cell phones to access the Internet. Three hundred million Chinese have 

gone online, a number equivalent to the population of the United States. There are 

now over 160 million bloggers in China, according to Chinese official statistics released early this year. Content analysis research has shown that political expression 

in Chinese blogs is much freer than mass media; debates among ‘‘netizens’’ 

(wangmin) pertain to a variety of politically sensitive issues. The number of blog 

sites that mention keywords, such as ‘‘democracy’’ and political reform’’ or ‘‘freedom 

of speech’’ and ‘‘the Internet’’ has increased exponentially over the last five years. 

The organizers of social movements by members of the middle class in Shanghai 

and Xiamen or the ethno-nationalists in Tibet and Xinjiang have utilized blogs, 

emails, instant messaging, and cell phone text messages to rally support for causes 

domestically and internationally. These actions have made the CCP fear the power 

of new media. 

The Chinese Propaganda Department, the Ministry of Information Industry, the 

Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of State Security have been at the 

front line of governmental efforts to control the Internet through the promulgation 

of restrictive laws, the use of computerized filters to eliminate content, and monitoring by the police. While the government has supported e-commerce and e-government, it has also trained party operatives to post content in online spaces, with the 

goal of ‘‘guiding public opinion.’’ 

In June 2009, the central government announced a regulation requiring personal 

computer manufacturers to install software that restricts Web access on all computers sold in the People’s Republic. Called ‘‘Green Dam Youth Escort,’’ the software 

aimed to plug leaks that have spouted in the Great Firewall of China, the moniker 

for country’s elaborate system of Internet controls. ‘‘Green Dam’’ was designed to 

censor pornography and politically sensitive content, but could also be used to collect data on individual Internet users. 

Chinese media reported the software had been installed on more than 50 million 

machines. Complaints by Chinese users of the software, bloggers and Chinese 

media, however, were strident: The software, some argued, was a rushed job that 

had not been adequately tested and might make computers vulnerable to hackers; 

others expressed dismay about the invasion of privacy or worried they might have 

to pay user fees in the future. Pushback by the United States Commerce Department and the international business community may also have influenced the Ministry of Information Industry’s June 30 decision to suspend mandatory installation 

of the software. At a July 1 celebration by activists who had opposed the software, 

30 

2Kathrin Hille, ‘‘Chinese Bloggers Hail Green Dam Victory,’’ Financial Times, July 1, 2009. 

3David Shambaugh, ‘‘China’s Propaganda System: Institutions, Processes and Efficiency,’’ The 

China Journal, No. 57, January 2007, p. 25. 

artist and blogger Ai Weiwei called the government’s change of heart a ‘‘victory for 

public opinion.’’ 2

SUMMARY

In the words of David Shambaugh, ‘‘a daily battle is waged between the state and 

society over ‘what is fit to know.’ This contest reflects and constitutes a central contradiction in Chinese politics—between the needs of a rapidly modernizing economy 

and pluralizing society on the one hand and the desire by the party-state to maintain absolute political power on the other.’’ 3 The outcome of this contest remains 

to be seen. In the near term, pressures are mounting for more information freedom. 

Chinese citizens, as resistance to Green Dam shows, have become more assertive 

in protecting the power they have gained from new communications technologies. 

Commercialization in China’s media industry has created the imperative for 

media to please consumers in order to survive. Media that were once the mouthpieces of Mao Zedong’s government now perform their propaganda role unwillingly. 

Commercial mass media would like to compete with blogs and social networking 

sites for the attention of the public. Party restrictions bar media from doing so, leaving journalists feeling as uncomfortable as a cat in a bag. Tight control over media 

content, in the context of Internet freedom, contributes to disbelief, even cynicism 

toward state propaganda. The CCP controls the message in media reports, but this 

no longer means the public believes the message. 

31 

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JAMES FALLOWS, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, THE

ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

JULY 31, 2009

My name is James Fallows; I am a national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, returned two weeks ago to Washington, DC after a three-year assignment in 

China. During that time I wrote many articles about China as well as a book, and 

had experiences dealing with both public and private organizations in China as a 

reporter. I am sorry that a sudden case of flu and laryngitis prevents me from making my comments in person today. Instead I will send a brief statement covering 

the points I intended to make. I would welcome an opportunity to answer any further questions or to join you another time. 

In my introductory statement I intended to make three points about the current 

state of reportage and public discussion in China. In addition, I have supplied to 

the Commission staff reprints of two relevant articles I wrote for The Atlantic while 

in China. The first, called ‘‘The Connection Has Been Reset’’ (March 2008), was 

about the technological and political underpinnings of the system of Internet control 

known informally as ‘‘the Great Firewall.’’ The second, ‘‘Their Own Worst Enemy’’ 

(November 2008) examined the reasons for the Chinese central government’s often 

self-defeating attempts to control the way it is portrayed in international media. 

The three points I offer for discussion are these: 

(1) The Chinese system of media control, as it affects foreign and domestic reporters working inside the country and the information available to the Chinese public 

about their country and the outside world, should not be thought of as consistent, 

airtight, centrally coordinated, or reflecting a carefully thought-out long-term strategy. Instead it should be understood as episodic, hit-or-miss, rigid in some places 

and lax in others, and highly variable by region, time, and personality of those in 

charge. 

Anyone who has worked in China has illustrations of apparently illogical or inexplicable variations in media control policy. One day, a set of web sites with information about ‘‘sensitive’’ subjects will be blanked out by the Great Firewall; the next 

day, they will be available. During the violence in Tibet in 2008, CNN coverage was 

generally cut off as soon as anyone mentioned the word ‘‘Tibet’’; meanwhile, similar 

BBC reports were through unhindered. During that same period of violence, Tibet 

was generally closed to foreign correspondents; this year, during the violence in 

Xinjiang, the government organized press tours for international reporters. 

The Beijing Olympics was replete with such contradictory episodes, the most famous of which involved the ‘‘authorized’’ protest zones. (As was widely reported 

around the world, the central government set aside zones for authorized demonstrations and protests during the Games, as a sign of its openness and international 

spirit; then, local security authorities turned down all requests for authorization and 

arrested some people who applied.) In my own case, I dealt frequently with government officials who were fully aware that (for no apparent reason) I had been denied 

a regular journalist visa and was working as a journalist in China on a variety of 

‘‘business’’ and educational visas. The inconsistency was fine, as long as I wasn’t 

otherwise in trouble. 

Of course central guidance does come down about media and Internet censorship; 

of course there is some coordination. My point is that outsiders sometimes miss the 

irregularity and oddities of the ‘‘control’’ system, which make press coverage both 

easier and harder. It is easier in that there is often a side door when the front door 

is closed. It is harder in that uncertainty about what might cause trouble leads people to be more careful than they might otherwise be. If you never know where the 

line is, you take care not to cross it. 

(2) The government is most successful in justifying its media controls when it positions them as defenses against foreign criticism of China as a whole. This approach is of course not unique to China or its government. But in my experience 

it is particularly important to bear in mind there, because the theme comes up so 

often in the foreign reporters’ work within China and is always a potential factor. 

For reasons familiar to all of us, daily life in modern China doesn’t naturally support strong feelings of nationalistic unity among the highly diverse and often fractious billion-plus people of the country. People are focused on their families, their 

businesses, they regional or local rivalries or ambitions. It is easiest to make people 

feel and at as ‘‘we Chinese’’ in response to the idea of being disrespected, unfairly 

32 

treated, or victimized by the outside world. Again, unity in response to foreign challenge is hardly unique to China. But the role of the Western press is unusually 

important here, since in my experience it is one of the most reliable levers the government can pull to induce nationalistic solidarity. (The other reliable lever is antiJapanese sentiment, but that’s a problem of its own.) 

I believe that every foreign reporter working in China has had the experience of 

crossing a certain line in reaction from the Chinese public—especially from the 

‘‘netizen’’ part of the public with recourse to blogs and email. If discussion of certain 

problems in China is seen as ‘‘pro-Chinese,’’ in the sense of helping Chinese people 

deal with local pollution issues (or unfair labor practices, or water shortages, etc.), 

that is fine. But at a certain point, discussion of problems can shift to being seen 

as ‘‘anti-Chinese’’ or, in the famous epithet, ‘‘hurting the feelings of the Chinese people.’’ This is obvious in starkest form in the organized effort against CNN because 

of its coverage of the Tibetan violence and the disruption of the Olympic torch relay. 

I believe awareness of potentially hostile and voluminous reaction from web-based 

fenqing, the much discussed ‘‘angry youth,’’ is somewhere in the consciousness of 

most foreign reporters working in China—along with the numerous friendships and 

supportive relationships most foreign reporters make with individual Chinese people. 

I mention this phenomenon because of the unusual public-private interaction it 

seems to represent. When web-based campaigns against foreign reporters or news 

organizations flare up in China, they seem genuinely to involve private individuals 

or informal bands of netizens. But clearly the government plays a crucial role in setting the conditions for this reaction: in its control of information and media, for instance in the educational program which gives nearly all citizens of the PRC the 

same understanding of the history of Tibet; in the version of the news that comes 

through the officials newspapers and broadcast channels; and in the ‘‘hurting the 

feelings of the Chinese people’’ denunciations it issues of the foreign media. 

The most recent illustration of this pattern is domestic discussion of the H1N1 

‘‘swine flu’’ issue. China’s quarantine policy is far stricter than that of any other 

country, and out of line with what the WHO and other organizations have recommended. But I found that when I pointed this out in dispatches for the Atlantic, 

I was deluged with complaints from Chinese netizens about ‘‘disrespect’’ for a government that was being far more scrupulous with its public health preparations 

than was the lax Western world. 

In short, the Chinese public is highly intelligent, argumentative, eager to gain 

and exchange information. But it operates in circumstances that favor the government’s ability to shunt the discussion away from criticism of its policies. 

(3) The spread of the Internet through China has made it both harder and easier 

for the government to keep discussion within limits it desires. I know that other 

witnesses intend to address this issue, and I discuss it at length in my ‘‘Connection 

Has Been Reset’’ article that I have submitted. I believe that the outside world is 

well past the period in which people automatically assumed that the spread of information technology would undermine authoritarian regimes. The additional point I’d 

made about press coverage is that the same dual aspect affects foreign reporters’ 

work in the country. It is vastly easier to make connections and find information 

now, because of the Internet and related technology, than it was in the mid-1980s 

when I first worked in East Asia. But now reporters have the complication of knowing that their work is being read not simply by government minders but by large 

number of Chinese readers, some of whom know just enough English to misunderstand what a report is saying. This is a complex phenomenon that I’ll be happy to 

discuss in other circumstances. 

There are many more aspects of this complex topic to examine. I am sorry not 

to be able to join you in person today, but I look forward to another opportunity. 

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