Protest Grows Over Censoring of China Paper
James Pomfret/Reuters
Protesters gathered on Monday
outside the headquarters of the relatively liberal newspaper Southern
Weekend in Guangzhou, China.
Published: January 7, 2013
BEIJING — Hundreds of people gathered outside the headquarters of a newspaper company in southern
China
on Monday, intensifying a battle over media censorship that poses a
test of the willingness of China’s new leadership to tolerate calls for
change.
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A banner backing freedom of speech in Guangzhou, China.
The demonstration was an outpouring of support for journalists at the
relatively liberal newspaper Southern Weekend, who erupted in fury late
last week over what they called overbearing interference by local
propaganda officials.
At the same time, the embattled newsroom received backing on the
Internet from celebrities and other prominent commentators that turned
what began as a local censorship dispute into a national display of
solidarity.
“Hoping for a spring in this harsh winter,” Li Bingbing, an actress,
said to her 19 million followers on a microblog account. Yao Chen, an
actress with more than 31 million followers, quoted Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn, the Russian dissident: “One word of truth outweighs the
whole world.”
Disputes between media organizations and local party leaders over the
limits of reporting and expressions of opinion are common in China, but
rarely emerge into public view. This time, calls to support the
frustrated journalists spread quickly in Chinese online forums over the
weekend, and
those who showed up
on Monday outside the media offices in Guangzhou, the capital of
Guangdong Province, ran the gamut from high school and university
students to retirees.
Many carried banners scrawled with slogans and white and yellow
chrysanthemums, a flower that symbolizes mourning. One banner read: “Get
rid of censorship. The Chinese people want freedom.” Police officers
watched, but did not interfere.
The journalists at Southern Weekend have been calling for the ouster of
Tuo Zhen, the top propaganda official in Guangdong Province, who took up
his post last May.
They blame him for overseeing a change in a New Year’s editorial that
originally called for greater respect for constitutional rights under
the headline “China’s Dream, the Dream of Constitutionalism.”
The editorial went through layers of changes and ultimately became one
praising the direction of the current political system, in which the
Communist Party continues to exercise authority over all aspects of
governance.
A well-known entrepreneur, Hung Huang, said online that the actions of
Mr. Tuo had “destroyed, overnight, all the credibility the country’s top
leadership had labored to re-establish since the 18th Party Congress,”
the November gathering in Beijing that was the climax of the leadership
transition installing
Xi Jinping
as Communist Party chief. Mr. Xi, who is also scheduled to assume the
nation’s presidency in March, has raised expectations that he might
pursue a more open-minded approach to molding China’s economic and
political models during his planned decade-long tenure.
But more recently, he has said China must respect its socialist roots,
which appeared to be a move to placate conservatives in the party.
One journalist for Southern Weekend said Monday night that talks between
the various parties had taken place that afternoon, but there were no
results to announce. “The negotiations did not go well at all,” the
journalist said in a telephone interview.
Signs had emerged earlier that central propaganda officials were moving
to dismantle support for the protest. A fiery editorial by Global Times,
a populist newspaper, attacked the rebels at Southern Weekend and
essentially accused them of conspiring against the government. Xinhua,
the state news agency, and other prominent news sites published the
editorial online, apparently at the orders of propaganda officials.
“Propaganda is still on the old road,” said an editor at a party media organization.
But by Tuesday morning, the news portals run by large Internet companies
like Sina and Sohu rather than by the state had posted disclaimers with
the Global Times editorial, saying the opinions did not reflect those
of the companies.
It was on the Internet where the campaign to support the beleaguered
journalists was reaching full bloom. Bloggers with large readerships,
Han Han and Li Chengpeng, urged defiance of press censorship, and calls
spread on microblogs for more rallies outside the newspaper offices on
Tuesday.
It was unclear how many employees in the Southern Weekend newsroom had heeded calls by reporters for a
strike
to display their determination to resist censorship. A local journalist
who went by the newspaper’s Beijing office on Monday said the building
appeared to be open, but quiet. One employee at the site, where about 30
people work, told the journalist that the office was not on strike.
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Around 2 a.m. on Tuesday, three women and two men in their 20s walked up
to the newspaper headquarters in Guangzhou and took cellphone photos of
one another holding a handwritten cardboard sign that said, “Tuo Zhen,
go home.”
“Everyone in Guangdong Province knows Tuo Zhen is a bad guy,” said one
of the men, who declined to give his name for security reasons.
Outspoken intellectuals have circulated an online petition demanding Mr.
Tuo’s removal. Mr. Tuo could not be reached for comment on Monday.
Besides being a weather vane that could reveal the direction of Mr. Xi
and the new party leadership, the tensions at Southern Weekend could
pose a serious test for Hu Chunhua, Guangdong’s new party chief and a
potential candidate to succeed Mr. Xi as China’s leader in a decade.
Mr. Hu’s predecessor, Wang Yang, was labeled a “reformer” by many
Western political analysts, but he presided over a tightening of media
freedoms in the province, and specifically over the Nanfang Media Group,
the parent company of Southern Weekend and other publications. Mr. Hu,
43, is a rising star in the party who got a Politburo seat in November
and is a protégé of Hu Jintao, Mr. Xi’s colorless and conservative
predecessor.
There appears to be some tension in the party propaganda apparatus over how to handle the situation.
On Monday, People’s Daily, a party-controlled newspaper, ran a signed
commentary that said propaganda officials should “follow the rhythm of
the times” and help the authorities establish a “pragmatic and
open-minded image.” Some people have interpreted this as encouragement
for a more enlightened approach in dealing with the news media.
But the scathing editorial by Global Times reflected a conflicting and
perhaps more official line on the uprising at Southern Weekend, since by
Monday night it had been reprinted on several major news Web sites.
The editorial said Southern Weekend is merely a newspaper and should not
challenge the system, as it appeared to be doing. It criticized the
newspaper’s supporters, including Chen Guangcheng, the rights advocate
persecuted by Chinese officials, who fled to the United States last
year.
“Even in the West,” it said, “mainstream media would not choose to openly pick a fight with the government.”
In Washington, the State Department said Monday that media censorship is
incompatible with China’s aspirations to build a modern
information-based economy and society. A department spokeswoman,
Victoria Nuland, said the Chinese were now strongly taking up their
right to freedom of speech. “We hope the government is taking notice,”
she said at a news briefing, according to The Associated Press.
The conflict at Southern Weekend was
exacerbated Sunday night
by top officials at the newspaper who said on the publication’s
official microblog that the New Year’s editorial had been written with
the consent of editors.
According to an online account on Monday, that statement was made after
pressure was exerted by Yang Jian, the deputy provincial propaganda
official who last year was appointed head of the party committee at
Nanfang Media Group.
Southern Weekend’s acting editor in chief, Huang Can, then pressed an
employee to give up the microblog password so the statement could be
posted.
Neither Mr. Yang nor Mr. Huang could be reached for comment on Monday.
Clarification: Earlier
versions of two photo captions with this article referred to the
newspaper as Southern Weekly. Southern Weekend is the literal
translation of the Chinese name, while Southern Weekly is the adopted
English-language name.
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