By Liz Tung, May 25, 2016<\/p>\n
In videos shot earlier this month, Chinese human rights lawyer Xie Yang stands before the court, looking thinner than before his two-year detainment, but otherwise healthy. It\u2019s the last leg of his trial, and now, along with his guilty plea, Xie must make several statements, starting with a denial of foreign news reports\u2014decried as \u201cfake news\u201d by China\u2019s state media\u2014that he was tortured by government officials.<\/p>\n
Next comes the taped confession, in which he issues a warning addressed to his fellow lawyers, but that will soon be viewed by millions on the social media site Weibo. \u201cWe should give up using contact with foreign media and independent media to hype sensitive news events, attack judicial institutions, and smear the image of the nation\u2019s party organs while handling cases,\u201d he recites.<\/p>\n
Released by the Chinese government, the videos were just the latest strike in an ongoing battle swirling around media and free speech in China, which was recently ranked<\/a> the fifth-worst country in Reporters without Borders\u2019 annual press freedom index.<\/p>\n That\u2019s largely thanks to President Xi Jinping, whose clampdown on free speech has included increased restrictions on domestic media, stepped-up censorship across the board, and draconian punishments for anyone\u2014journalist or civilian\u2014who steps out of line. That campaign has taken on new urgency ahead of a twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle this fall, when Xi is expected to consolidate his power.<\/p>\n But for all Xi\u2019s efforts, there\u2019s one variable that could thwart his careful calculations: social media, which, in the vacuum left by China\u2019s decimated press, has created surprising openings for debate, foreign influence, and even citizen reporting. And as several recent incidents have shown, those openings are prompting some Chinese netizens to rethink the roles of both domestic and foreign media.<\/p>\n That could be bad news for the Chinese government, which has worked hard to delegitimize Western publications by painting them as enemies of the state, or worse, ideologues. The latter was the thrust of an editorial<\/a> Monday by the state-run newspaper Global Times<\/em>, which called a recent New York Times<\/em><\/a> report<\/a> that China had killed or imprisoned over a dozen CIA sources in China \u201ca purely fabricated story, most likely a piece of American-style imagination based on ideology.\u201d The piece went on to jeer that the journalists involved had likely watched too many Mission Impossible<\/em> movies, before criticizing America\u2019s \u201cmoral narcissism.\u201d<\/p>\n For the most part, efforts like these have worked, which is why it was so surprising when, earlier this spring, a viral video transformed an NPR reporter into China\u2019s latest social media darling.<\/p>\n It all started at the Two Sessions, which is what China calls the annual parallel meetings of its dual legislative bodies. It was there, in the midst of an unremarkable press conference, that NPR\u2019s Beijing correspondent, Anthony Kuhn, was filmed asking Chinese officials about one of Xi\u2019s signature projects, which aims to create a \u201cmega-city\u201d by combining Beijing and surrounding areas.<\/p>\n In the clip, Kuhn pointedly asks about compensation for merchants who\u2019ve been displaced by the project, and questions whether it will truly be able to help Beijing\u2019s rural poor. It\u2019s a tense moment\u2014and then comes the punchline. Having delivered his question in fluent Mandarin, Kuhn decides to reclaim the mic and do his own English translation, interrupting the interpreter and prompting a ripple of surprised laughter.<\/p>\n At highly scripted events like the Two Sessions, any break with protocol is reason to take notice, and in this case, Chinese netizens were more than happy to comply. Within several days, a video of the encounter had gone viral on Weibo, racking up more than five million views and 3,000 comments.<\/p>\n Even now, Kuhn\u2014who later quipped that he couldn\u2019t make his reporting go viral if he injected it with smallpox<\/a>\u2014remains bewildered.<\/p>\n \u201cIt never would have occurred to me in a million years that people would have found something out of the ordinary,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n According to Jonathan Kaiman, the Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times<\/em>, part of what made the clip noteworthy was the unnervingly direct nature of Kuhn\u2019s question, which struck an embarrassing contrast with the softball questions being lobbed by the Chinese reporters around him. \u201cThere\u2019s a certain irony in that a Western journalist is asking what seems like a very obvious question about a very obvious social issue to a group of officials that many of his Chinese counterparts probably don\u2019t have either the strength of conviction or the professional standing to address,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n That irony didn\u2019t go unnoticed by commenters on Weibo. \u201cThis is a question our own reporters should be asking,\u201d one person wrote, in a sentiment echoed again and again.<\/p>\n Another commenter had greater sympathy for Chinese journalists. \u201cI\u2019m guessing that it isn\u2019t that our reporters aren\u2019t thinking about these questions, it\u2019s that they don\u2019t dare ask them,\u201d it read. \u201cThis foreign journalist is a spokesman for China\u2019s lowliest people. A foreigner who\u2019s come so far to China, who even more so than China\u2019s own official media, is connected with Chinese people\u2019s real lives.\u201d<\/p>\n It was exactly the kind of conversation the government was likely hoping to avoid around this time\u2014at least based on a series of slick Web videos<\/a> released in the run-up to the Two Sessions featuring prominent Chinese reporters praising the Communist Party and rejecting the notion that they\u2019ve been \u201cbrainwashed.\u201d<\/p>\n Normally, the government needn\u2019t have worried. The Chinese public is by and large loyal to state outlets and suspicious of the foreign press, says Rory Truex, an assistant professor at the Woodrow Wilson School, who recently surveyed public attitudes toward different kinds of news media.<\/p>\n \u201cI was surprised at how often they would say things like, foreign media is just trying to hurt China and criticize China and make it chaotic,\u201d Truex says. \u201cSo foreign media is viewed as one of these hostile foreign forces that we see so often cited in Chinese official media.\u201d<\/p>\n Loyalty to state media has helped keep public criticism of censorship at bay, though recent events have tested that tolerance. In November, the National People\u2019s Congress approved a new cybersecurity law that prohibits online activity aimed at \u201coverthrowing the socialist system,\u201d and requires companies to enforce censorship and provide aid to government investigations. Earlier this month, China passed another law requiring companies to obtain government licenses in order to publish, share, or edit news.<\/p>\n In the meantime, censorship of Western media has continued to expand, with decisions to block Pinterest and limit access to foreign children\u2019s books drawing widespread complaints on Weibo.<\/p>\n It\u2019s become enough of an issue that, in closed-door debates, some delegates at the Two Sessions reportedly argued for relaxing internet censorship, according to the South China Morning Post. <\/em>The central government, however, has maintained the same response: that media control is essential for maintaining social and political stability amid the country\u2019s breakneck growth.<\/p>\n That rationale has found plenty of defenders, both in and outside the political sphere. But in the wake of China\u2019s ever-shrinking press freedom, some netizens are losing patience. That\u2019s in part because they\u2019ve had to watch gains made over the past two decades steadily disappear under Xi\u2019s reign.<\/p>\n While the government has always maintained a tight grip over the media, a period of openness beginning in the 1990s launched a generation of promising reporters, while the advent of social media introduced the novel concept of citizen journalism. Over the past year, however, multiple writers have lamented what appears to be the slow death of China\u2019s once-flourishing tradition of investigative journalism.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has become increasingly clear that much of the experience the journalism profession in China has gained since the 1990s is being hollowed out,\u201d writes China media expert David Bandurski in a recent piece<\/a>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s prompted some netizens to take matters into their own hands, as happened last month, when news spread on social media about a 14-year-old boy in the city of Luzhou who was found dead outside of his school dormitory. Photos of the boy\u2019s body, featuring heavy bruising and broken bones, along with alleged sightings of him being attacked, led many to speculate he\u2019d been beaten to death. But both school and city officials quickly ruled the boy\u2019s death a suicide, amid speculation that his alleged attackers had connections with local higher-ups.<\/p>\n