The following examples of censorship instructions, issued to the media and/or Internet companies by various central (and sometimes local) government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. Chinese journalists and bloggers often refer to those instructions as “Directives from the Ministry of Truth.” CDT has collected the selections we translate here from a variety of sources and has checked them against official Chinese media reports to confirm their implementation
State Council Information Office: Article from China-Tibet Web
March 18, 2011
From the State Council Information Office: All websites are requested to repost, in its entirety and in a prominent location, the article from China-Tibet Web, “Can Seeds of Enmity Bear Fruits of Harmony?” It is not permitted to change the title, and the article must remain up until March 19, 10:00 am.
国新办：中国西藏网文章
国新办：请各地网站在首页最醒目区统一转发中国西藏网的《仇恨的种子能结出和谐的果实吗》一文，不可改标题，并且保留到19日10时。
State Council Information Office: Radiation Levels in Urban Areas
March 16, 2011
From the State Council Information Office: Starting on March 17, all websites are requested to prominently repost on their front pages information regarding radiation levels in main urban areas, provided by the Environmental Protection Department. This information must be placed in a fixed location, and note that it must be updated every day. All provincial-level Internet surveillance and propaganda Departments are requested to strictly examine websites under their jurisdiction, and strictly enforce the demands of this notice.
Every day, all websites that provide cell-phone reports must also issue, “Daily Radiation Levels in Main Urban Areas From the Environmental Protection Department (Office of National Nuclear Safety).” All mobile phone companies must understand that this is a political duty, and immediately implement it.
国新办：城市环境辐射水平
国新办：所有网站请从3月17日起在首页要闻区突出转发环保部发布的全国主要城市环境辐射水平信息，此信息必须置于固定位置，注意每日必须进行更新。各省网管，网宣部门请严格检查属地网站，对照本要求严格执行。
所有设有手机报的网站，也需要每天转发“环境保护部（国家核安全局）发布每日全国主要城市环境辐射水平”。所有手机运营商必须理解这是政治任务，立即执行。
Central Propaganda Department: Property Taxes
March 14, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: Regarding Shanghai’s and Chongqing’s experiments with initiating property taxes, opinions that property taxes steal money are not to be reported or hyped.
国新办：房产税
中宣部：对上海重庆启动房产税试点，说房产税是抢钱的言论不报道不炒作
State Council Information Office: Unilateralism, Hillary Clinton style
March 14, 2011
From the State Council Information Office: All websites are requested to repost, on the front page and in a prominent position, the story, “Internet Freedom: Unilateralism, Hillary Clinton style.” It is not permitted to change the title, and the article must stay on the front page until March 15, 6:00 am.
国新办：希拉里式的单边主义
国新办：请各网站在首页最醒目位置转载“互联网自由：希拉里式的单边主义”，不可以改标题，文章必须保持在首页至3月15日晚6时。
State Council Information Office: Concern and Love for Tibetan Students
State Council Information Office: Concern and Love for Tibetan Students
State Council Information Office: All websites must post on their front page news section the article, “For 33 years, 75-year-old Professor Yang Changlin has Shown Concern and Love for Tibetan College Students in Almost 10,000 Instances.” Leave this article up until the day after tomorrow (the 15th) at 6 pm.
国新办：请各网站在首页要闻区突出转发《75岁教授杨昌林33年如一日关爱高校藏族学生近万人次》，保留至后天（15日）下午六时。
March 13, 2011
From the State Council Information Office:
Central Propaganda Department: Large Earthquake in Japan
March 13, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: Media must solidly grasp reporting on disaster conditions after the large earthquake in Japan, and objectively and quickly report on trends as they develop. Place particular emphasis on grasping the relationship between anti-seismic and relief efforts for the Japan and Yunnan earthquakes and propaganda reporting for the national meetings of the “Two Congresses.” Do not weaken the theme of reporting on the Two Congresses.
We must fully propagandize the state of the rescue work that our teams have initiated in Japan. We must closely follow the circumstances of Chinese people and overseas Chinese in Japan.
Do not deliberately criticize or champion the actions of the Japanese government, and do not make any comparisons with anti-seismic and rescue efforts in our country. Give scientific explanations of the explosions and leaks at the nuclear facilities. Do not play up or casually speculate and analyze the influence of leaks on China.
中宣部：日本特大地震
中宣部：媒体要稳妥把握对日本特大地震灾情报道，客观，及时报道灾情动态信息。注意把握好日本地震和云南地震的抗震救灾和全国两会宣传报道的关系。不要冲淡了两会报道的主题。
要充分宣传好我救援队在日本开展救援的情况。要密切关注我在日华人，华侨的情况。
不要刻意批评或赞扬日政府的有关行为，不要和我国的抗震救灾对比。对日核设施泄露及爆炸要做科学解读。不过分渲染，不随意猜测和分析泄露对我国的影响。
Central Propaganda Department: An Illegal Gathering in Shandong
March 12, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: On March 13, there will possibly be illegal gatherings and activities in Jinan, Qingdao, Yantai, Weifang, and Rizhao. Do not give interviews or reports.
中宣部：山东非法集会
中宣部：3月13日济南、青岛、烟台、潍坊、日照可能有非法集会活动，不采访不报道
Central Propaganda Department: The Super Moon
March 12, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: Media are not to hype the super moon. It is not permitted to draw connections between the moon, earthquake, fires, and other natural disasters. It is allowed to use scientific explanations circulated by the Xinhua News Agency, and purely astronomical information issued by expert Departments can be published.
中宣部：超级月亮
中宣部：媒体不要炒作超级月亮。不可把超级月亮与地震，火灾等自然灾害相联系。可用新华社所发稿件做科学解读，权威部门发布的纯天文学内容可刊发。
Central Propaganda Department: Housing Rationing in Shenzhen
March 12, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: Media are not to hype questions about housing rationing in Qiaoxiang Village and Shenyun Village, Shenzhen. Related information should use information from Shenzhen authorities as the standard. Do not give independent interviews or commentary.
中宣部：深圳房屋配售
中宣部：媒体不炒作深圳侨乡村，深云村房屋配售问题，有关情况以深圳权威部门的信息为准，不自行采访和评论
Central Propaganda Department: The Yunnan Earthquake and the Two Congresses
March 12, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: For the Yunnan earthquake, we must mainly report on the active rescue activities of political leaders. We absolutely must not allow the earthquakes to dilute the message of the Two Congresses. We cannot report on representative members being absent from the meetings.
中宣部：云南地震和两会
中宣部：云南地震必须主要报道领导人积极救灾；必须不能让地震冲淡两会；必须不能报道代表委员开会缺席。
Central Propaganda Department: Cultural Industrialization
March 12, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: In related reports, media cannot use the term “cultural industrialization.”
中宣部：文化产业化
中宣部： 媒体在有关报道中不要使用文化产业化的提法
Central Propaganda Department: Family Planning
March 12, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: Media are not to hype family planning problems. Do not report on the issue of having two children. Policy changes on famiy planning will use information issued by authorities as the standard.
中宣部：计划生育
中宣部：媒体不得炒作计划生育问题，生二胎话题不做报道。计划生育在政策调整以权威部门发布信息为准。
The State Administration of Radio Film and Television: Direct Television Broadcasts From Outside our Borders
March 12, 2011
From The State Administration of Radio Film and Television: It is not allowed to directly broadcast television programs originating from outside our borders. If there are currently any such broadcasts reporting on the earthquake in Japan, immediately cut them off.
广电总局：境外电视直播
广电总局：不得直播境外电视节目。如有正在进行的日本大地震相关的境外直播，请立即下线。
Central Propaganda Department: The Earthquakes in Yunnan and Japan
March 12, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: When reporting on the current earthquakes, media are not to compare the earthquake in Yunnan with the earthquake in Japan.
中宣部：云南和日本地震
中宣部：各媒体在报道目前地震事件的时候不得把云南地震跟日本地震做比较。
Shanghai Propaganda Department: Han Han
March 12, 2011
Shanghai Party Committee Propaganda Department: Activities and comments related to Han Han, beyond his car racing, are not to be reported.
上海宣传部：韩寒
上海市委宣传部：有关韩寒的活动和言论，除了赛车以外的不报道。
Central Propaganda Department: He Hongsang, Macau Gambling King
March 11, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: Do not report on the partitioning of household assets of He Hongsang, the gambling king of Macau.
中宣部：澳门赌王何鸿桑
中宣部：不报道澳门赌王何鸿桑家庭财产分割案。
Central Propaganda Department: Taxi Strike in Lanzhou
March 11, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: Do not report on the taxi strike in Lanzhou.
中宣部：兰州出租罢运
中宣部：不报道兰州出租车罢运事件。
Central Propaganda Department: Exchange Student in Norway Injured While Parachuting
March 11, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: Do not report on the incident of an exchange student in Norway injuring himself after parachuting from a tower at the Chinese Academy of Science.
中宣部：挪威留学生跳伞受伤
中宣部：不报道挪威籍留学生在中科院高塔跳伞受伤一事
Central Propaganda Department: Xu Commits Suicide
March 11, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: Do not report on the suicide and death of Xu, Assistant Director of the Testing Center at the National Administration College.
中宣部：徐某自杀
中宣部：不报道国家行政学院考试中心副主任徐某自杀身亡事件
Central Propaganda Department: Delegate Absences at the Two Congresses
March 11, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: Do not report on the absences of delegates from the Two Congresses.
中宣部：两会代表缺席
中宣部：不报道两会的代表委员开会缺席一事
Central Propaganda Department: Tax Evasion by Ma Zhongqi
March 11, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: Do not report on the case of tax evasion by Ma Zhongqi in Huaiyuan county, Ningxia.
中宣部：马衷琦逃税案
中宣部：不报道宁夏海源县马衷琦逃税案
Central Propaganda Department: Standardization of Proposals at the Two Congresses
March 11, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: Do not report on the need to standardize responses to proposals and motions at the Two Congresses.
中宣部：两会议案程序化
中宣部：不报道需将两会议案和提案回复程序化的话题
Central Propaganda Department: Coal Mining in Shanxi
March 11, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: Do not report on the sinkholes caused by coal mining in Shanxi.
中宣部：山西采煤
中宣部：不报道山西因采煤引发的地陷。
Central Propaganda Bureau: Mismanagement of the Automobile Industry
March 11, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: On March 9, China Management Report (Zhongguo jingying bao) and Southern Metropolis (Nanfang dushi bao) report on Huang Qifang’s criticism that some people have mismanaged the automobile industry. All newspapers are not to re-publish or report the story.
中宣部：胡搞汽车业
中宣部：三月九日中国经营报和南方都市报报道黄奇帆批评有人胡搞汽车业的稿件，各报不转不报
Central Propaganda Department: Chunxiao Gas Field
March 10, 2011
From the Central Propaganda Department: Do not report on extractions in the Chunxiao gas field by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (Zhonghaiyou).
中宣部：春晓油田
中宣部：对中海油在春晓油田开采一事不做报道
In China, several political bodies are in charge of Internet content control. At the highest level, there is the Central Propaganda Department, which ensures that media and cultural content follows the official line as mandated by the CCP. Then there is the State Council Information Office (SCIO), which has established an “Internet Affairs Bureau” to oversee all Websites that publish news, including the official sites of news organizations as well as independent sites that post news content.
This “Internet Affairs Bureau,” sends out very specific instructions to all large news websites daily, and often multiple times per day. Those instructions do not always mean that related contents are completely banned online, but they instruct websites to highlight or suppress certain type of opinions or information in a very detailed manner.
Chinese journalists and bloggers often refer to those instructions, as well as other type of censorship orders to media and websites, as “Directives from the Ministry of Truth.” The Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue, in Newspeak) is one of the four ministries that govern Oceania in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the Chinese blogosphere, it is the online nickname for the Central Propaganda Department and generally speaking, all other subordinate propaganda agencies including Internet supervision departments.
Today, it’s been said that news does not break, it tweets. For the officials in the the Ministry of Truth, the news is that their supposedly confidential instructions get tweeted as well.
3.20.2011
Latest Directives From the Ministry of Truth, March 10-18, 2011
China’s 12th Five-Year-Plan – Will It Help With the Global Trade Imbalance?
Amongst all the political upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa, with people rising against dictatorial regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere, this week China embarked on its annual legislative session. The legislative session of the National People’s Congress, which officially enacts legislation, will rubber-stamp the government’s 12th Five-Year-Plan (2011-2015), which was decided at the Communist Party meeting in October, 2010.
Details won’t be made public until the conclusion of the legislative session (which usually lasts 10-14 days), but some elements of China’s next five-year economic plan have been made public. The three elements worth highlighting are a lower growth rate and a more balanced/sustainable economic model, meaningful reductions of pollution through better energy conservation, and a more aggressive fight against inflation.
A New Growth Model:
- Set a GDP growth target of 7% (down from the current actual GDP growth rate of 10%). To do that, the government will have to divert money away from construction and corporate subsidies, and instead use public funds to increase household incomes.
- Cut import tariffs to reduce input-costs, while boosting consumer demand and reducing China’s reliance for growth on exports which generates trade surpluses and contributes to the global trade imbalance.
- Improve the income of farmers and migrant workers, who have benefited the least from China’s phenomenal economic growth, by increasing minimum wages. In particular, provinces across China have announced a string of double-digit wage increases this year as part of the government desire to increase incomes among the rural regions and migrant workers in the cities.
- Increase spending on health-care and full nationwide social welfare insurance to reduce the need for “precautionary savings” and encourage more Chinese consumer spending.
- Raise the minimum threshold for personal income tax. This could exempt hundreds of millions of people from having to pay taxes, and boost household spending.
New Energy Priorities:
- Introduce targets for energy efficiency and consumption that will push China’s energy consumption from non-fossil fuel sources to 12% by 2015. Key sectors expected to benefit include: hydro and nuclear power, power grid technology.
- In particular, there will be significant growth in nuclear power (from 10 GW to 40 GW), 63 GW of new hydroelectric power, 48 GW of wind capacity and 5 GW of solar power. Unfortunately, coal generation will continue to provide 260 GW, although its share of China’s energy mix is expected to fall from 72% to 63%.
- Double the share of natural gas in Chinese energy consumption to 8% by 2015, up from 4% that it was last year. This will make China a natural buyer of large quantities of Russian gas, and an inevitable competitor to Europe, which already relies heavily on gas from Russia.
- Introduce taxes of up to $820 (up from just $100) on vehicles with larger than 2 liters (energy inefficient) engines.
- Introduce a tax linked to carbon emissions, first via pilot programs in special regions and industries.
Fighting Inflation:
- The most important short-term priority for the government is to address increases in food price, which Beijing intends to do through price controls.
- In order to control inflation, the government intends to keep using the tools and methods that it has been employing thus far: manage liquidity, use price controls, curb real-estate speculation, and “adjust and improve” property tax policies. Furthermore, the budget for this year shows a 35% increase in spending on low-income housing.
- However, no specific lending targets for banks have been outlined by the government yet. New loans topped a 7.5 trillion RMB ($1.1 trillion) ceiling last year and excessive bank lending is considered by some to be a contributing factor to China’s inflation.
Analyst are already predicting that this Five-Year-Plan will be the most significant in China’s modern history, marking the moment that China finally decided to abandon its fast export-led growth strategy in favor for a more sustainable growth model. However, this new effort by China to rebalance its economy in not addressing the root cause of its monetary problem (inflation), and will not facilitate the rebalancing of global trade, which has been so critical to the overall world recovery.
The root cause of China’s inflation is its weak-currency policy, which is feeding an artificially large trade surplus. This policy hurts both China by producing an overheated, inflation-prone economy, and the rest of the world by increasing unemployment in many other countries.
Theoretically, inflation is the market’s way of undoing currency manipulation. According to Paul Krugman, China has been using a weak currency to keep its wages and prices low in dollar terms; market forces have responded by pushing those wages and prices up, eroding that artificial competitive advantage.
China’s leaders are trying to prevent this outcome, to protect exporters’ interest, and because inflation is even more unpopular in China than it is elsewhere. Don’t forget that it was inflation that fueled public discontent with the government, bore the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square.
China is already hurting its citizens through financial controls. For example, interest rates on bank deposits are limited to just 2.75 percent, which is below the official inflation rate of 4.9%. Rapidly rising prices, even if matched by wage increases, are making the situation much worse for Chinese consumers.
Unfortunately, Beijing is not willing to deal with the root cause and let the RMB rise. Instead, they are trying to control inflation by raising interest rates and restricting credit. This is destructive for China, because credit limits are proving hard to enforce and are being further undermined by inflows of hot money from abroad. With efforts to cool the economy falling short, China has been trying to limit inflation with price controls, which also rarely work.
Furthermore, this is destructive from a global point of view as well: with much of the world economy still depressed, the last thing the world needs is major players pursuing tight-money policies. The solution to China’s monetary problem (and to the global recovery) is to let the currency rise!
But, any rebalancing efforts will face serious opposition from special interests domestically, primarily the State Owned Enterprises and regional and local officials. The SOE’s benefit from lax environmental regulations, cheep energy and government subsidies, and an overall export led growth strategy. On the other hand, local officials are not always willing to change, have old ideas about growth and tend to favor pet projects that need massive investments. Couple that with China’s one-party state that refuses to do anything that looks like giving in to U.S. demands, and you have a recipe for certain continuation of the status-quo.
The focus of the new Five-Year-Plan is promising, but its success is questionable.
Very interesting...
3.11.2011
Don’t Look For Jasmine Revolution Or Tea In China || YaleGlobal
HONG KONG: If you’re looking for good jasmine tea on Baidu, China’s biggest search engine, you may be in for a surprise. As soon as you type in “good jasmine tea,” Baidu flashes a message: “In accordance with relevant laws, regulations and policies, part of the search results are not shown.”
It’s not that the government discourages the tea, but the word “jasmine” has become toxic – even a song about the beautiful jasmine flower sung by Kenyan students along with President Hu Jintao is censored.
All this stems from the “Jasmine Revolution,” which began in Tunisia last December, leaped to Egypt and now spreads across North Africa and the Middle East. Beijing finds the fall of authoritarian governments in distant Africa embarrassing, recalling scenes of student-led protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, crushed by the Chinese military.
There are attempts to launch “jasmine rallies” in China, although the anonymous online organizers have little to show for their efforts.
Even worse, there are attempts to launch “jasmine rallies” in China itself, although the organizers, who are anonymous and send messages online, have little to show for their efforts after three weeks. This may well be because China is more economically secure than the countries in the Arab world that are experiencing unrest. After all, it has gone through more than 30 years of rapid economic growth in which hundreds of millions of people have been lifted from poverty and people’s lives have improved dramatically.
In fact, a 22-nation Pew Global Attitudes Survey made public last June showed that while most people were unhappy with the direction of their country, China was an exception. “Only in China,” the survey reported, “does an overwhelming portion of the population (87%) express satisfaction with national conditions.”
So, on the face of it at least, China does not seem ripe for a Jasmine Revolution.
Those organizing “jasmine rallies” in China evidently think otherwise. In an open letter published on overseas website Boxun.com, the organizers called on people to gather every Sunday at 2 pm to demand an independent judiciary, a government supervised by the people and an end to corruption.
On February 20, it
was difficult to tell protesters from shoppers since the designated sites in Beijing and Shanghai are busy shopping areas.On February 20, the first Sunday, it was difficult to tell protesters from ordinary shoppers since the designated sites in Beijing and Shanghai are busy shopping areas, but the police were out in force, overwhelming foreign journalists out to cover the event, or non-event as it turned out to be. Before that day, the police had preempted any protest by rounding up more than 100 activists. Despite no signs of protest outside MacDonald’s on the busy Wangfujing shopping street, designated as the site for a rally in Beijing, police and security agents tried to stop the journalists from reporting.
Since the first protest was pretty much of a fizzle, one might have assumed that the Chinese authorities would relax. But the next Sunday there was an even bigger turnout of police and security agents who declared war on foreign journalists.
In one case, the Wall Street Journal reported, a Bloomberg television journalist was grabbed by five plainclothes officers, “dragged along the ground by his leg, punched in the head and beaten with a broomstick.” BBC footage showed plainclothes men roughing up the reporter and his colleague, throwing them into a van.
The police removed foreign news staff from the Associated Press, the BBC, Voice of American, German state broadcasters ARD and ZDF, and others from the scene.
Police ferocity was in sharp contrast to the behavior of protesters, told by rally organizers to participate by “strolling…or pretending to pass by.”
The New York Times reported that at least half a dozen journalists and photographers were visited in their homes, repeatedly warned not to cause trouble or, as one officer put it, try to “topple the party.”
Reporting rules were tightened. “No reporting” zones were established in Shanghai and Beijing. The Los Angeles Times reported that journalists were privately told that they could be expelled if caught reporting on protests without permission.
These moves constitute a big step backwards from the more moderate regulations for foreign correspondents introduced before the Beijing Olympics in 2008, which are theoretically still in force. The police ferocity was in sharp contrast to the behavior of protesters, told by rally organizers to participate by “strolling, watching or pretending to pass by” without shouting slogans or displaying placards.
The organizers, who remain anonymous, originally stipulated 13 cities for the rallies, which they quickly raised to 27 cities and, on March 6, claimed that their movement had spread to more than 100 cities. Since the only cities with a substantial presence of foreign journalists are Beijing and Shanghai, it’s impossible to verify such claims.
Reacting in such a disproportionate manner to mild forms of civil protest exposes a government that does not enjoy the trust of
its people.Moreover, because posts are typically immediately deleted on online message boards and forums within China, it’s likely that few people in the country actually know about the call for defiance of the Communist authorities.
On March 6, the third Sunday, Beijing was quiet. But uniformed and plainclothes policemen were out in force in Wangfujing, Xidan and other crowded commercial areas.
Mobile phone service was shut down in parts of the city during the three Sundays.
The Chinese leadership evidently feels confronted with a dilemma: If they allow “strolling” to take place unhindered, then such gatherings will likely expand over time. If they clamp down hard, they may be seen as an illegitimate government able to stay in power only through force.
Clearly, China decided to crack down hard early so that a feeble movement does not gain strength.
In fact, budget figures disclosed on Saturday during the annual session of the National People’s Congress showed a sharp increase in funding for domestic security. For the first time, such expenditures exceed the amount spent on national defense.
Total budgeted spending for police, state security, armed civil militia, courts and jails amounted to 624 billion yuan, or US$95 billion, compared to 601.1 billion yuan, or $91.5 billion, for defense. Apparently, the government sees the domestic threat as being graver than any external threat despite the findings of the Pew Survey.
In fact, the government admits that people are unhappy. The China Daily, the official English-language daily, reported last week that a survey conducted by Gallup World Poll ranked China 125th among 155 countries when measuring people’s overall satisfaction with their lives. The newspaper pointed out that “only 6 percent of Chinese people see themselves as happy” even though 36 percent of respondents said their lives had improved during the past five years.
Moreover, according to the government’s own statistics, unrest is widespread with the number of “mass incidents” rising in recent years and may now exceed 100,000 a year.
By all accounts, most people still have confidence in the central government, with which they rarely come into contact. But many have little confidence in officials at the local level, the people who seize their land, evict them from their homes to make deals with land developers and lock them up if they lodge petitions.
The way to respond to public dissatisfaction is to deal with legitimate grievances. Reacting in such a disproportionate manner to what’s at most a mild form of civil protest exposes a government that does not enjoy the trust of its people. And browbeating – actually beating – foreign reporters will result in that message being magnified rather than muffled.
Political stability maintained through coercive means may well result in political instability. China’s leaders should recall the saying of their founding father, Mao Zedong, “Where there is oppression there is resistance.”
2.23.2011
Quick Notes from Beijing - James Fallows | The Atlantic
By James FallowsThanks very much to the latest guest team for their ongoing dispatches. Herewith, on a sanity break from other duties, some quick notes on what I first notice compared with my latest stint here last summer:
1) Pollution in Beijing itself has been as bad as the very worst I remember from the olden era. The view below (11am China time, Feb 23) has been more or less unvarying for the past four days. PM2.5 readings[1] through that period have been steadily[2] in the "hazardous" or "beyond index" category. I don't recall a stretch this bad, this long, before. Offered less as complaint than as reality check.
2) Prices are higher for everything, especially food. By Western standards they are of course very low. But by Western standards people's incomes are also very low. I see why there is so much talk about the disruptive effects of inflation. (Letting the RMB go up faster would help, but that's a topic for some other time.)
3) Internet blockages and social media interference seem worse than I remember experiencing between 2006 and 2009, except in the tensest Tibet-riot periods. Even VPNs[3] sometimes don't work or are slow -- especially this past weekend when no one knew how serious the "Jasmine" demonstrations would become. To illustrate the difference this can make even if you're willing to shell out (as most Chinese citizens wouldn't be[4]) $60 a year for a VPN to get around Great Firewall restrictions, here is a download screen showing progress on a file I was trying to save, from a server in the US:
If you can't read the small print, it's estimating 1 hour and 31 minutes to finish downloading a 34MB file. As it happened, shortly thereafter the connection improved and the file eventually loaded in "only" about eight minutes. But extrapolate that as an efficiency tax on the system as a whole. As I have mentioned many times, the whole setup here is quite an amazing combination of laissez-faire/chaos and cumbersome over-control. As many other people have mentioned, this is accompanied at the moment by a big media campaign[5] pointing to the Middle East as an example of the kind of disorder China must avoid. The situation makes all the more startling the UN Security Council statement about Libya that China (along with other Permanent Members) approved yesterday:
>>The members of the Security Council underlined the need for the Government of Libya to respect the freedom of peaceful assembly and of expression, including freedom of the press. They called for the immediate lifting of restrictions on all forms of the media.<<Emphasis mine, to indicate freedoms specifically not respected in China when inconvenient for the government and notably limited right at the moment. Lack of self-awareness on the government's part? Deciding that looking hypocritical was the lesser evil, versus standing alongside Qaddafi? Can't be sure.
4) Smiley curve. As mentioned in the magazine here[6] and on this site here[7], many "made in China" exports are actually mere repackaging of high-value components from Japan, Germany, Korea, the United States, or someplace else. China is a huge export power, but not as huge as it seems. Latest evidence in this McKinsey report[8] (free registration required). It said that if you separate the "real" Chinese content from what is counted as total Chinese exports, exports accounted for only about 1/5th of the recent increase in China's GDP -- rather than 1/3, as most reports would suggest, or nearly 2/3rds, as reported a few years ago. China still has a big trade surplus; it still relies too much on exports for growth; its economy is still out of balance with the rest of the world's. But the picture is a little different from the way it's usually portrayed. Here's the main McKinsey chart showing export-growth as a share of Chinese GDP increase:
Back to typing, and back to this week's guests.
2.12.2011
China's reaction: Build a wall | The Economist
Build a wallThe Year of the Rabbit starts badly
China's reaction
Feb 3rd 2011 | BEIJING | from PRINT EDITION
THE Chinese Communist Party’s Publicity Department (or Propaganda Department, a closer rendering of the Chinese) is adept at controlling news from abroad that might inflame sentiment at home. As communism collapsed in Eastern Europe 20 years ago, it kept all but the barest news out of the domestic media, jammed foreign broadcasts and ordered vigilance over fax machines.
In response to the unrest in Egypt, the department has apparently instructed the Chinese media to use only dispatches sent by the official news agency, Xinhua, and either to bury news of events there or play up aspects that show the costs of turmoil. Reporting the travails of stranded Chinese tourists, or the government’s noble attempts to rescue them, is fine, but sympathy with the protesters is taboo. The department’s instructions to the media are, as usual, a secret, but their effect is clear.
The party has also been busy trying to control the internet. Twitter has been blocked in China since 2009, but home-grown versions are hugely popular. Anyone trying to follow postings by users with an interest in Egypt, however, might struggle. Merely searching for the word “Egypt” in Sina Weibo, one of China’s leading Twitter-like services, produces a warning that “according to the relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results have not been displayed”. On Baidu, a big news portal, a prominent list of “hot search terms” includes “the return of compatriots stranded in Egypt”, but nothing else.
Chinese news reports have briefly mentioned the disruption of internet and mobile-phone services in Egypt. They have not, however, discussed China’s pioneering use of such techniques to impede the mobilisation of crowds. Use of the internet and mobile phones for international calls and text-messaging was cut off for months in the far-western region of Xinjiang after ethnic clashes there in 2009.
On February 1st the party’s main mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, relegated Egyptian politics to five terse paragraphs on page three but published a full page of articles under the headline, “The Internet is Warming the Whole of Society”. The internet, one scholar was quoted as saying, is a “great promoter of social change”. The party knows that all too well.
from PRINT EDITION | Briefing
Its always interesting to watch the Chinese media react to events with significant geopolitical implications because of the overt control over the media exerted by Beijing. Revolutions rarely carry the historical significance of these past weeks events in Eygpt, and the moment has clearly not been lost on the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party.
I cannot say that I totally understand why the Chinese political leaders fear such news making it into the hands and minds of the Chinese people. Its not as if the people aren't well aware that they are in control of the status quo in China, of course they understand that if they wanted a new government it would almost certainly be theirs to take. If anything, IMHO, the party is the chosen vehicle of the people as the fast means of achieving prestige and respect as a culture/civilization on the global stage.