By coincidence, I’m reading two pieces that discuss domestic and foreign correspondence in China:

“The age of all-encompassing censorship: How do people working in Chinese media experience it?” (全面审查时代：中国媒体人正在经历什么？ ) by Jiang Yan’nan 江雁南 for The Initium, September 2018.

“Assignment China: An Oral History of American Journalists in the People’s Republic” by Mike Chinoy, published in March 2023 by Columbia University Press.

Here’s some notes and reflections.

“All-Encompassing Censorship”

Depressing and sad accounts from Chinese media people. The article quotes a list of rules and regulations that have been put into place over the years. They ever-so tightened the grip on what’s possible to publish, and essentially suffocated the burgeoning investigative journalism from the the 00s, together with all other new laws and policies not mentioned in the article, such as the ban on spreading rumors in 2015.

“三个十条”
- 2014年8月7日“微信十条”（《即时通信工具公众信息服务发展管理暂行规定》）
- 2015年2月4日“账号十条”（《互联网用户账号名称管理规定》）
- 2015年4月28日，“约谈十条”（《互联网新闻信息服务单位约谈工作规定》）
2015年7月，全国人大常委会通过了新《国家安全法》，第一次在立法中明确了“网络空间主权”的概念 (cyber sovereignty)
《网络安全法》2017年6月1日开始正式实施
2017年5月8日，新版《互联网新闻信息服务管理规定》出台，2017年6月1日开始实施 (big social media sweep afterwards)

If you want to read what (tranlsated) censorship directives look like, head over to the “Directives from the Ministry of Truth” by the excellent China Digital Times.

“Assignment China”

400 pages covering 80 years of US journalists reporting on China, mostly based on direct interviews . The central theme of the book, quoted from the introduction: “[…] the challenge of finding the truth in a vast, complicated country with a long history of distrust of outsiders, a secretive and authoritarian political system deeply suspicious of journalists, and no qualms about deliberately lying or twisting reality to suit the political needs of the Chinese Communist Party” (p. 2). Some notes:

A cycle of loosening and tightening restrictions, but mostly restrictions
A cycle of foreign journalists flocking to China, being expelled, coming again and repeat
Primarily a male affair, “cherchez la femme”
History seen from those on the ground, and their struggle to gain visibility for a wider audience
Wise decision to not include all the help from the ground, for example by fixers, translators, researchers. The story of Zhang Miao illustrates why: She was detained after having helped a correspondent from Die Zeit to report on Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution in 2014/2015. For many foreign correspondents it was a wake-up call, highlighting the dangers to their local aides which they did not face as foreigners.

As foreign correspondent you can leave. Sometimes, you must: Over the last couple of years, many foreign correspondents have been expelled from China, in 2020 nearly twenty journalists working for major US outlets, people who had covered China for years and done excellent work. On the other hand, as domestic media person you can’t just leave. Many locals have quit over the tightening rules or otherwise been silenced over the last ten years, as mirrored in The Initium article.

Image: “a female journalist interviewing Winnie the Pooh”, Nightcafe/Dall-E2

Last modified on 2023-06-10