Chinese companies were quick to spot the changing investment environment. Since 2016, Chinese investment in Australia has fallen sharply every year from US$11.6bn to a low in 2021 of just US$585m. Despite KPMG & University of Sydney reporting that Chinese investment in Australia had risen a staggering 143 percent in 2022, that investment remains lower than it had been in 2007 — and continues to be viewed with suspicion with recent calls for a widening array of industries which should be off-limits for Chinese investors on national security grounds despite the high-profile attempts this year by Labor government ministers to re-animate the investment climate.

Chinalco — a Lively Debate

In 2008, in the early days of the new Labor government of Kevin Rudd, journalists had plenty to say when Chinalco, China’s biggest aluminium producer, made a dawn raid on 12 percent of Rio Tinto Plc’s dual-listed stock in London before the market opened. The US$14.1 billion investment was the largest investment to date by a Chinese company in Australia. Far from being alarmed, Australian journalists and commentators were fascinated with the boldness of the Chinese move and captivated by the dilemma that it presented to Treasurer Wayne Swan and the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB), the body which must ensure that foreign investment is in Australia’s national interest.

During Chinalco’s sixteen-month campaign for Rio, journalists at three of Australia’s leading newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), The Australian, and The Australian Financial Review (AFR) wrote 1,461 pieces on the subject. These pieces expressed every view under the sun, but the one thing they missed was what Morrison called for eight years later — a sense of journalism’s shared responsibility for national interest or national security.

From the start of the ‘Going Global’ strategy 走出去战略 announced by Chinese premier Jiang Zemin in March 2000, Chinese investment abroad had been variously welcomed and viewed with suspicion, depending on how the benefits were distributed. This was true in Australia as in the rest of the world. British journalist Ben Chu, reflecting back on this period in 2013, coined the ugly contraction ‘Changst’ (‘China Angst’) to describe how fellow journalists expressed rising concern about the rapid expansion of China’s economic influence, even as they expressed admiration for the speed of its development.[1] The years between the start of China’s ‘Going Global’ project, super-charged by its 2001 entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the glorious spectacle of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, saw the publication of thousands of news articles and hundreds of thousands of words extolling China’s meteoric economic rise. But the framing of that rise was also frequently cast within the context of global competition, one that commentators fretted China was destined to win.

When Chinalco made its move in 2008, there was another factor at play. BNP Paribas pulled the trigger on the official start of the Global Financial Crisis in August 2007 when it admitted it did not know how to value assets on its balance sheet. The admission marked the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ moment for complicated credit assets loosely based on US sub-prime mortgages unfortunately held by almost every major bank. At the start of the deal, banking problems in Europe and the United States looked comfortably far from Australia, but by the time the Rio/Chinalco deal had collapsed in June 2009, the effects of the subsequent global credit crunch and the China-driven commodities super cycle had changed everything. The United States and Europe descended into a long-running recession. China, meanwhile, powered by government spending, roared ahead, pulling Australia — with its vast supplies of iron ore, copper, and coal — along with it.

An analysis of the business reporting of the Rio/Chinalco deal in The Australian, the AFR and the SMH shows very little ‘Changst’. In total between 1 percent and 7 percent of the articles published about the Chinalco bid were classified as ‘China Threat’ stories — stories where the primary sources and main thrust of the article suggested that Chinalco’s bid would be harmful to Australia.[2] A more detailed breakdown of articles over the 16-month period of the bid shows that as the GFC worsened and the credit crunch started to bite, Chinese investment was looked upon much more favourably — ‘threat’ stories disappeared altogether. Conversely, as the commodities super-cycle ramped up and Rio, and Australia as a whole, started to benefit from sharply increasing prices (driven by Chinese demand), some ‘threat’ stories started to emerge as it became clearer that a stronger Rio did not need Chinese investment so badly.

The waxing and waning of enthusiasm for the deal was part of robust debate on the business pages of the country’s newspapers as politicians, economists, business leaders, commentators and journalists considered the merits of the Chinalco proposal. Media academic Aeron Davis refers to this sort of debate as an elite discourse network — where a tiny group of people in powerful positions talk to and about each other in the financial pages of national newspapers.[3] This was elite debate, but at least there was debate. After the Ausgrid decision Morrison effectively called for the end of debate — at issue was security and questions would not be answered.

Moral Panic over the Port

In 1972, Stanley Cohen popularised the term ‘moral panic’: a situation where ‘claims-makers’, often politicians with the help of media, galvanise public support against a ‘folk devil’ — an ‘unambiguously unfavourable’ actor. [4] The ‘folk devil’ in Chinese foreign direct investment in Australia in the 2010s was the AU$506m sale of a 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin in 2015 to a subsidiary of Shandong Landbridge.

The sale by the Country Liberal-led Northern Territory government was, at the time, exempt from FIRB investigation. In the rancorous aftermath — where hundreds of articles questions if this was a danger to national security — Scott Morrison suggested that the federal government barely knew the sale was taking place. If that was true, he was not the only one not paying close attention. The sale initially attracted thirty-three bidders. Yet The Australian covered it in passing in just nine round-up stories before the deal closed on 13 October, 2015. The AFR showed a little more interest, with twenty stories that mentioned the sale, including eleven explicitly focusing on the bidders. Landbridge was first mentioned as a bidder just one month before the deal was due to close. This stands in contrast with the forensic coverage of other previous foreign direct investment deals such as the Rio Tinto or later Ausgrid examples.

Even when the Port of Darwin lease deal was announced and in the first few days following, there were few stories. Journalists were slow to grasp the security implications, which later became an all-consuming focus of reporting. At first, The Australian focused on the windfall for the ‘cash-strapped NT state’ as well as lauding Landbridge’s plans to improve the port’s refrigeration storage facilities for beef exports. The AFR focused on Landbridge’s plan to expand the port to accommodate cruise ships and build luxury hotels, potentially transforming the tourist economy of the Top End. The SMH didn’t report the deal at all.

It took two days after the deal had first been announced before the first journalists raised security concerns. In a 15 October story entitled Senior Defence official raises security concerns over Darwin port lease to Chinese-owned company Landbridge, the ABC’s political editor Chris Uhlmann quoted an ‘unnamed senior defence official’. This marked the start of a years-long dissection of the anatomy of the deal, which worked to whip up a moral panic. Within a month, The Australian would publish an exclusive story based on unnamed defence sources claiming that Landbridge was ‘a commercial front for the PLA’. Thereafter, despite its denials, the company was regularly referred to in the press as being ‘PLA-linked’.

Ausgrid

In the beginning, the sale of a 99-year lease of 50.4 per cent of Ausgrid, the poles-and-wires infrastructure business in NSW, seemed uncontroversial. Chinese corporations had invested in Australia’s energy sector for several years, and owned generation, transmission and retail energy companies. The deal was just one in a number of privatisations planned as part of Premier Mike Baird’s ‘asset recycling’ scheme — whereby the NSW government planned to use the proceeds of infrastructure sales to invest in further state-wide infrastructure improvements. Indicative bids were due in February 2016, with completion due mid-year. Press coverage of the deal was extensive — almost 100 stories written in The Australian, 140 in the AFR, and 25 in the SMH from the start of the year. But how they covered the deal differs significantly before and after the July 2016 federal election.

The election was a close one. The Coalition held the House of Representatives by just one seat, and did not have a majority in the Senate. The Senate saw a return from the political wilderness for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party, which won four seats, and held similar anti-China sentiment to independent Senators Bob Katter and Nick Xenophon; they all demanded greater influence over policy. The number of seats held by representatives of smaller parties and independents led to journalists quoting them more frequently and at greater length. Populist and hardline protectionist statements appeared more often in the business pages of publications which had previously editorialised in favour of free market principles.

In press coverage of the Ausgrid deal, both politicians outside government and inside the Coalition, where nationalist factions were gaining power, raised national security concerns with increasing frequency.

Of the Ausgrid stories written in The Australian before the election, just 17 percent mentioned national security or national interest (two different terms often used interchangeably). After the election 68 percent of stories mentioned national security or national interest. The situation was similar in the AFR where stories mentioning national security or national interest increased from 8 percent before the election to 38 percent after and in the SMH where it went from zero to 66 percent. In many cases, the same politicians were making the same points that they did in 2008 during Chinalco’s bid for Rio, but this time there was dramatically less opposition. Similarly, ‘China threat’ stories, which during the Rio Tinto bid constituted 1 to 7 percent of coverage in the three newspapers, rose to between 8 and 25 percent.

In the days that followed Morrison’s rejection of the Ausgrid bid for unspecified national security reasons on 12 August 2016, there was a sharp increase in news stories about Chinese investment which quoted ‘security agencies’ or the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), as journalists started to follow the government’s lead.

Looking at the role of elite opinion at times of national tension, US researcher Daniel Hallin found that when elite opinion is divided, the press reflects robust debate, but when elite opinion is united, debate is limited to what he refers to as the ‘sphere of consensus’. [5] Opinions that fall outside of the sphere of consensus are seen as divergent, minority and easily dismissed. Researchers generally consider journalists, however neutral they may believe they are, to be elite opinion makers. In interviews about their coverage of the Ausgrid bid, journalists who reported daily on the deal were aware of the shift in sentiment, prioritising security. One political reporter said of the Coalition government: ‘maybe they had been a little bit captured by the national security establishment. But I think we have got to give the government some benefit of the doubt… we make a lot of money out of foreign investment so there’d have to be a very good reason why you’d be knocking it back.’

The new reliance on security sources was noticed by other journalists although it was not universally welcomed. One journalist pointed out the impossibility of checking, let alone double-checking, information from off-the-record security sources: ‘You can’t challenge it. You can’t ring up another person and cross reference. It’s all classified.’ He said it was clear that the ‘received wisdom’ regarding stories about Chinese investment had changed. Seeing the strong tendency to approach stories from a security angle, he said, ‘you socialise yourself in a kind of ecosystem’ — the sphere of consensus. When ‘the senior guys are writing like that’, that becomes the ‘story’ and the ‘flavour’.

A New Era or Same Old?

The Labor government which took over in 2022 has made a deliberate effort to restore some cordiality to the trading environment with China, with Foreign Minister Penny Wong celebrating successes getting Chinese tariffs dropped on barley and wine. Some companies were quick to spot the commercial opportunity of the thaw — Rio Tinto once again leading the charge. Just months after the new government took office, Rio announced a AU$2bn joint venture in the Pilbara with China’s Baowu Steel Group, while offshore in Guinea, Rio has continued to push forward this year with its one-time partner Chinalco in the world’s biggest iron ore project. But what looks like an opportunity for some is seen as a risk by others. ASPI warned in September that Chinese companies held a dominant position in critical minerals and called for a ban on Chinese investment in ‘strategically essential commodities’, calling it a ‘national security issue’. Yet the report was not reported with the reverence that might have been accorded during the Morrison years. Instead, the AFR commissioned James Laurenceson from the Australia-China Relations Institute of UTS to examine the claims. He accused ASPI of mischaracterising some of the joint ventures in a way that was ‘disingenuous at best’ by ignoring the majority US partner in one of the Australia–China–US ventures and cast doubt on a notion of national interest that excluded economic interest.

The tussle for supremacy between economic and security interests — Tony Abbott’s fear and greed — is sure to continue in Canberra’s corridors of power in 2024. But it should also be welcomed back into the pages of Australia’s leading newspapers. Some debates are too important to be secret.

Notes

[1] Ben Chu, Chinese Whispers: Why Everything You’ve Heard About China Is Wrong, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013.

[2] This analysis is based on unpublished PhD research of more than 2,000 news stories, features and comment pieces in The Australian, the AFR, and the SMH published on Chinese foreign direct investment, between 2008–2020, carried out by the author.

[3] Aeron Davis, ‘Whither Mass Media and Power? Evidence for a Critical Elite Theory Alternative’, Media, Culture & Society, vol.25, no.5, (2003): 669–690.

[4] Stanley Cohen, Folk devils and moral panics: The creation of the Mods and Rockers, London: Routledge, 1972.

[5] Daniel Hallin, ‘The media, the war in Vietnam, and political support: A critique of the thesis of an oppositional media,’ The Journal of Politics, vol.46, no.1 (1984): 2–24.

The post Securing the Narrative: How the Ausgrid Deal was a Tipping Point for Australian Media appeared first on The China Story.

At the recent 6th Plenum, the Party Central Committee adopted a resolution on history. The Party made this document public last Tuesday (November 16). We told you that the 6th Plenum communiqué lionised Xi and whitewashed history. The text of the resolution confirms this assessment.

The resolution praises the Party’s achievements, downplays its failings, and hides its crimes. In constructing a linear and distorted version of history in the service of power, it tells you three things:

1. History has proved the Party to be “great, glorious, and correct”.

2. The Party’s laudable past foretells a bright future for China under its leadership.

3. Xi Jinping is uniquely qualified to lead the Party and the Chinese people towards that bright future.

At 37,000 Chinese characters, the resolution is long. Below is a series of illustrations to help you visualise what the document is really about.

First up, a wordcloud of the most frequently used terms:

The periodisation of Party history according to the resolution:

Xi is the star of the show. In the resolution, 67 per cent of words used for assessing the different periods were expended on Xi’s new era.

The resolution mentioned Xi’s name more times than any of his predecessors. The same goes for Xi’s ideology.

The resolution mentioned Marxism more times than Xi’s ideology. Marxism is considered the guiding light in CCP ideology, so this is not surprising.

Here is how the two centenary goals fit into the official periodisation of Party history:

The resolution reserves a special place for the five “chief representatives” of communists of their generations. These are the winners of political struggles. They were rewarded with the power to (re)write Party history.

Xi is rewriting the history of the past for political expediency. Future Party leaders will do the same: they will (re)write the history of Xi’s vaunted new era.

2. Rally round the flag

It’s not yet election season in Australia, but the major parties are already in campaign mode. On foreign policy, there is usually a “bipartisan consensus,” as political parties want to avoid the appearance that the country is divided in the face of “external” threats.

However, the need for “bipartisan consensus” gives the incumbent an advantage. The ruling party can use foreign policy as an “election wedge.” But the opposition must think twice before criticising the government’s foreign policies, lest they be perceived as helping foreigners to “sledge Australia”.

In a democracy, public policies are always contestable. It is the job of opposition parties to be critical of government policies where they see fit. Yet when it comes to foreign policy, the political party in power can portray itself as representative of the state and appeal to “national unity” in the face of criticisms. The incumbent can even accuse the opposition of “backing a foreign government”.

Can you imagine an appeal to “national unity” to deflect debate on income taxes? Or to accuse the opposition of “backing Norway” if they advocate for free university education? There would be no democracy if we must all take the same position on public policy. Further, “consensus” does not guarantee good policy outcomes.

Yet, in the current climate, even something as innocuous as stating that the bilateral relationship with China is important, which is common sense in the region, can be deemed “appeasement” or “capitulation”. While the US Government stresses that competition need not lead to conflict, the Australian Government is again talking up the prospect of war.

Elena Collinson lists three dangers with the current discourse:

First, the charge of ‘disloyalty’ which is virtually slapped on anyone questioning the government line subverts an important pillar of Australian democracy — implied freedom of political communication is a crucial part of the system of representative and responsible government. For cabinet ministers to suggest otherwise sets a dangerous precedent.

Second, muzzling discourse, the promulgation of one perspective at the expense of all others, weakens policymaking. This debate is one that needs more voices, more allowances for flexibility in thinking and in action if the strongest policy settling point is to be reached.

Third, the specific type of epithets being used help pave the way for racial prejudice, already on the rise, and further marginalisation of Chinese-Australians.

These dangers are tricky to tackle. They go hand-in-hand with the trend of politicians appealing to populist nationalism, both in Australia and beyond. People are much more engaged and willing to mobilise when there is an imminent external threat.

3. Wang Liqiang

Two years ago, right after we launched China Neican, the Wang Liqiang 王立强 case exploded in the public consciousness.

A reminder of what happened: On November 23, 2019, Australian media broke the story of the defection of an alleged PRC intelligence operative, Mr Wang Liqiang. Wang claimed that he was involved in the Causeway kidnappings in late 2015, the infiltration of Hong Kong student organisations, and information operations in both Hong Kong and Taiwan for the CCP.

Two days later, we wrote on this fledgling newsletter that:

Many of Mr Wang’s public claims are unsupported or uncorroborated based on the available evidence thus far. Some of his claims are not true, and some of his statements detract from his credibility. Circumstantial evidence has raised additional questions.

Our scepticism of Wang’s claims propelled us to national media attention. However, most of the attention was on the supposed intelligence goldmine offered by Wang. In general, sceptical voices were drowned out by a thrilling spy drama.

In the face of scepticism, some alleged that Wang was a “cutout”, not a “spy”, though it belies belief that a “cutout” would have access to so much intelligence — and the 60 Minutes expose clearly labelled him a “spy”.

The saga continued with authorities in Taiwan investigating the alleged spies outed by Wang. Some saw this investigation as a vindication that Wang was the real deal.

However, this week it emerged that these alleged outed spies would not be charged after all due to a lack of evidence. This outcome is odd, as you’d expect the information collected from Wang’s intelligence goldmine would have helped the Taiwanese authority’s case.

But does the drop of charges or the lack of intelligence from Wang matter? After all, in most people’s minds, the Wang saga has cemented and confirmed the oft-repeated narrative that China is an imminent threat to Australia’s national security.

Indeed it doesn’t matter if the story is later debunked — the sensations are produced, people’s minds are made up. Retractions generally have less impact than the original story. In this case, there is not even a follow-up to Wang’s claims by Nine/Fairfax. Should the media have reported the story with so many holes? Why were the holes in Wang’s account not adequately investigated by the investigative journalists? These holes should be evident to anyone who has rudimentary knowledge of national security. One thing appears certain: no one involved with this saga will face serious repercussions.

4. Beauty standards

There is another controversy on the Chinese internet regarding the standard of beauty. Chen Man 陈漫, a top Chinese fashion photographer, was heavily criticised for her work for Dior. Chen apologised after the outrage.

For background, there have been regular debates online about how Westerners portray beauty in Chinese people. Here, the criticism is that even though Chen is Chinese, she produces work for the Western gaze.

In China, being slim, pale and having big eyes with “double eyelids” are traits commonly associated with beauty in women.

Yet, people in China found that the popular portrayal in Western media of Chinese women is quite different. This portrayal has led to accusations that the Western media is deliberately “orientalising” or “caricaturing” Chinese women, including by emphasising “slanty eyes”. Many short videos were also made about how Western men prefer “ugly” Asian women.

Amidst the accusations that Chen’s portrayal is pandering to the Western taste and is racist, racist comments have also emerged about people who look different from the standard notion of Han Chinese — that they don’t “look Chinese” enough.

Fashion photography is on another level. Fashion photography often aims to stand out and emphasise differences rather than striving for a common notion of beauty.

We’re not well-versed in the history of art and fashion to understand the complexities here. But to us, individuals have different standards of beauty, shaped by their environment. We should embrace differences rather than strive for uniformity in beauty.

The post Neican: History resolution, domestic politics, Wang Liqiang, beauty standards appeared first on The China Story.

Story and reactions

One of the highlights of the Tokyo Olympic Games during the lockdown was the 14-year-old girl Chinese diver Quan Hongchan’s flawless platform dive. At the time, news.com.au published a story about this teenage Chinese diver who ‘has not cracked a smile despite her impeccable performance’. According to the story, Quan was ‘poker faced’ and ‘looked devastated after being given a perfect score’. Citing a few tweets, the story concludes that ‘viewers were shocked at Quan’s reaction.’

Response from people on my WeChat circle was visceral. ‘Why on earth is this a news story?’, ‘what the hell is this story about?’ ‘I’m disgusted’. ‘It makes me want to puke’. People fumed while they incredulously reposted to fellow WeChat users.

The reactions among people who are not Chinese Australians were also unfavourable. I asked a dozen of my in-laws to tell me their gut responses to the story. Their responses converged on a sense of bemusement as to why the lack of smile on the diver’s face was newsworthy.

Interestingly, the men I talked to seem to understand why Quan didn’t initially smile. One of them, a former athlete and Olympic hopeful, said, ‘I get why there were no smiles during the event because the job was not done’. Another said, ‘she was not smiling because she was focusing on what’s ahead of her’.

The women I talked to reacted to the story in a gender-specific way. ‘Why are young women always expected to smile?’ ‘I don’t see anyone writing about men not smiling’. One posed this question, ‘would they write a story if an American athlete was not smiling?”

A ‘media incident’

By now, you may say that ‘come on; it’s just a story, and there is no need to read too much into it’. Well, Chinese state media read a lot into it. China’s nationalist paper the Global Times went so far as to publish an editorial in response. ‘The article sparked anger among some Chinese netizens…who criticised this Australian media outlet for slandering Chinese athletes with misinformation and bias’.

The Global Times also connects this story to a report a week earlier in the New York Times, which calls Chinese athletes ‘sports machine[s]’, and ‘China’s sports assembly line’ produces athletes whose single goal was to win gold at any cost.

Being singled out by the Global Times as baddies may be taken as evidence that the story is on to something worth reporting. After all, as Eric Jensen, the founding editor of Saturday Paper said, journalism is the ‘the only industry in the world where being told you were wrong is taken as proof that you’re right’.

What’s remarkable is that this story has turned into a minor ‘media incident’. A couple of days later, South China Morning Post published a piece reporting on Global Times’ response, saying the latter called ‘Australian website’s coverage ‘weird and offensive’ that ‘defamed the teenage diver’.

I don’t think that the Global Times editorial’s charge of ‘defamation’ has legs, but there does seem to be something ‘weird’ about the news.com.au story, so in what way is it weird?

Calling Edward Said

Trivial as this story is, I believe it inadvertently raises a key journalistic question: how to report the achievement of a country that is frequently portrayed in the media as the enemy in the era of a looming Cold War, even if it’s just a sporting achievement? Or should we report them at all, if we can’t find a ‘suitable’ way to frame it?

What interests me as a media academic is what motivated the decision to write and print this story in the first place: what kind of latent memory, image and sentiment about China or the Chinese did the story need to activate in order for the story to have meaning?

Note that this is a Murdoch-owned website, and assuming that the outlet caters to a particular segment of the readership, what is the website’s projected view about what its readers want to read about China and Chinese people? It seems that an entire range of orientalist ideas and images of Chinese people were being called into service here.

In orientalist thinking, the West does the civilising and the Orient needs to be civilised. The West decides what it wants and needs, and the Orient is available, submissive, deferential, accommodating, and yes, smiling. The union between the Oriental female and the Western masculine is acceptable but always tinged with fear and desire. Think Madame Butterfly and Miss Saigon.

In the past, it’s opera, literature, Hollywood and visual arts that did the heavy lifting in constructing orientalism. Now media and social media have taken up the baton.

The news.com.au piece observes that despite Quan’s perfect dive, her face “told a different story”, but it stops short of telling us what that story is. Instead, it leaves it to the imagination of its intended readers: what could be so sinister or unimaginably bad behind that absence of smile? Child abuse in sports training? Inscrutable Orientals? Despotic coaches and a cruel training regime? Sports machine devoid of human feelings? Athletes produced out of assembly line? Take your pick.

None of these was explicitly said, but the news.com.au story would not make much sense unless it was decoded within this orientalist framework.

The post How to report on your enemy’s success: Why is smiling a big deal for China’s Olympic diver? appeared first on The China Story.

The Chinese Government is getting very serious about climate change. A few days ago (just before the Glasgow Climate Change Conference), the Central Committee and the State Council jointly released Working Guidance For Carbon Dioxide Peaking And Carbon Neutrality In Full And Faithful Implementation Of The New Development Philosophy 关于完整准确全面贯彻新发展理念做好碳达峰碳中和工作的意见 [English | Chinese].

As Xi is not attending the climate conference, this can be read as China’s action and response to the global challenge of climate change.

Commitments

From the start, to underscore the importance of the issue, the document emphasised that achieving peak carbon emissions 碳达峰 and carbon neutrality 碳中和 is a “major strategic decision” 重大战略决策. The domestic justification is that it is necessary to achieve “sustained development of the Chinese nation”, 实现中华民族永续发展, thus linking carbon policy to national rejuvenation. So it would be inconceivable for people in China, including local officials, to go against the major strategic decision that affects the sustainability of the Chinese nation.

The document sets out concrete qualitative and quantitative targets, including (but not limited to):

By 2025:

• Energy consumption per GDP will be 13.5% lower than 2020 level
• Carbon emissions per GDP will be 18% lower than 2020 level
• Non-fossil energy consumption will reach around 20%

By 2030:

• Energy efficiency in key energy-consuming industries will reach advanced international levels
• Carbon emissions per GDP will drop by more than 65% compared with 2005 level
• Non-fossil energy consumption will reach around 25%

By 2060:

• Energy efficiency will be at the advanced international level
• Non-fossil energy consumption will be over 80%
• Successfully achieve carbon neutral

The document is far-reaching — it affects numerous policy areas including investment, financing, and tax; and it covers industrial restructuring, energy industry, transportation industry, rural development, and research and technology industries.

To demonstrate commitment, the document also highlights oversight and performance assessments 监督考核. For example, it is explicit that all local authorities must build targets for carbon peaking and neutrality, and that performance assessment is to be strengthened, including that “outstanding regions, organizations, and individuals to be duly rewarded and commended and regions and departments that fail to accomplish their goals and tasks to be criticised”. This should be a strong incentive for local authorities to ensure their carbon targets are achieved. It may even lead to over-achievement at the expense of other priorities.

In contrast to what people may have expected from recent power shortage, the Government is strengthening dual-controls over energy intensity and gross energy consumption 能源消费强度和总量双控, and this includes stepping up supervision and law enforcement 监察和执法. Regions in danger of missing targets will face delay or restrictions of project approvals 缓批限批.

Specific industries

The document outlines restrictions to be placed on energy-intensive and high-emission industries 高耗能高排放 as well as inducements to developing green and low-carbon industries 绿色低碳产业. The Government has committed to strictly controlling investment in high-carbon products while increasing support for energy conservation projects. The sector-by-sector intervention is one of the heavier state directions.

For example, authorities will continue to conduct “look back” inspection of steel and coal overcapacity 钢铁煤炭去产能“回头看”, in order to prevent overcapacity from phenoxing. For industries such as steel and cement, capacity substitutions will be implemented at equal or reduced levels. And oil refinery operations, unless listed in national industrial plans, are prohibited from new construction or expansion.

For the power generation sector, the document has indicated that China will look to more market-based solutions 市场化改革 to improve the national unified energy market 能源统一市场. The fragmentation of regional markets was one of the reasons for the recent power shortages. The document has also banned the practice of giving preferential electricity pricing to energy-intensive and emission-intensive industries.

On the other hand, China will focus on developing “strategic emerging industries” 战略性新兴产业, which includes next-generation information technology, biotechnology, new energy, new materials, high-end equipment, new energy vehicles, environmental protection, aerospace, and marine equipment. However, China is facing increasing international concerns and resistance regarding its progress in these emerging technology industries.

International dimension

China is still eager to remind other countries of its developing country status, hence its adherence to the principles of common but differentiated responsibilities 共同但有区别的责任. This means other countries should not expect China to share the global burden as a developed economy.

On trade, China has committed to regulating exports of energy-intensive and high-emission products and expanding imports of green and low-carbon products. Historically, as the world’s factory, much of the exports was in highly-polluting industries that developed countries did not produce themselves. Restrict exporting energy-intensive industries requires a restructuring of the economy, which China is looking to do.

However, internationally, this means that China will increasingly compete with developed economies rather than complement their economies. Over time, trade may become less of ballast to tension in political relationships.

On foreign investment, China will strive to make green the defining colour of BRI 让绿色成为共建“一带一路”的底色. As a major financier of infrastructure internationally, this has the potential to significantly reduce global emissions if implemented strictly.

2. History in the making

Last week, the Politburo examined the issue of comprehensively summarising the major achievements and historical experience of the Party’s century of struggle. (Adam’s translation of the meeting outcome here). The draft resolution will be submitted to the Central Committee in November.

As we have emphasised repeatedly, history is important for the CCP. A verdict on history does not only impact how history is narrated and taught but also the future trajectory of the country. Xi has been active in cracking down on so-called “historical nihilism”. So the resolution on history is a big deal, and it has only been done twice before — once in 1945 before the establishment of PRC and once under Deng in 1981, which passed a verdict on the Cultural Revolution.

Just as an illustrative example, the official China Internet Rumour Refuting Platform was launched in July targetting rumours that “smear party history”, including “revolutionary leaders, heroic figures and historical events”.

Among the “top 10 rumours” to be combatted include:

• Mao is not the real author of a poem
• Mao’s son was exposed and subsequently killed in the Korean War because he was making egg fried rice
• Lei Feng’s diary is fake
• The CCP did not fight against Japan
• Land reform was wrong and the landlords were actually nice people
• The USA did not plan to attack China during the Korean War

We are against this kind of state enforcement of historical narrative, so we are proudly “historical nihilists”.

Yet, some jurisdictions in liberal democracies are also going down this road well-trodden by the CCP. This mostly manifests in how history is taught in schools. For example, Texas, a place I lived for a year, has banned the teaching of “critical race theory” — they may as well branded it “historical nihilism” — and has legislated to promote “patriotic education” (no need for a name change here).

In Australia, the federal Minister for Education has criticised the history curriculum. He said the curriculum “has a negative view of our history” and “downplayed our Western heritage”. Instead, he seems to want to instil patriotic education with positive energy: “Ultimately, students should leave school with a love of country and a sense of optimism and hope that we live in the greatest country on earth”.

What the Australian Minister of Education proposes is basically what the CCP has done… instilling/indoctrinating a love for the country so that future generations will “defend it as previous generations did”.

There are more similarities between some right-wing parties in liberal democracies and the left-wing CCP than meets the eye.

3. Digicel

Speaking of Australia imitating China… Back in July, I wrote:

Australian taxpayers may end up funding the purchase of Digicel Pacific, a telecommunications company servicing the Pacific and owned by an Irish billionaire. The reason behind the taxpayer funding is all about China — concerns that China might buy it.

Now the Australian Government has announced that the taxpayers will be helping Telstra, a private Australian company, to acquire Digicel from the Irish billionaire.

The Australian Government said this “enables Telstra to take this commercial opportunity”. Of course, this deal is not purely commercial — if it was, then Telstra would not need help from the government. Instead, the deal is more importantly part of “Australia’s longstanding commitment to growing quality investment in regional infrastructure”.

From an aid effectiveness’s point of view, the question is whether this is the most effective and efficient way to help the Pacific countries? On this, Stephen Howes is sceptical:

Many will welcome the investment as a sign of Australian commitment to the Pacific. However, if we want to invest in the telecom sector in the Pacific, we should be backing alternatives to Digicel, to push prices down and improve services, not buying out the dominant player. […]

The Australian government also needs to decide if its only goal is to counter China or if it still seeks to promote Pacific development.

This sort of government-private partnership to fund overseas acquisition is quite normal for China. The Chinese Government often directs Chinese companies (mostly state-owned enterprises) to invest in particular projects, sometimes for geopolitical reasons.

But as Shahar Hameiri noted,

The Telstra decision is the clearest indication yet that Australia’s hand-off approach to its firms’ activities abroad is being supplanted by more active direction of outbound investment and development financing.

For me, this appears to be another case where Australia is concerned about China’s actions (government supporting foreign acquisitions), and counter this by doing exactly what China has done.

4. Approved news

The Cyberspace Administration of China updated its list of approved “internet news source” 互联网新闻信息稿源单位名单. Only news sources on the list can be republished by internet platforms. The current list contains 1358 news sources.

The focus of the update notice is on “positive energy”. That is, the regulator wants internet news sources to promote positive news about the country and the party. The update added news sources that were politically correct 政治方向 and removed news sources that had “poor day-to-day performance” 日常表现不佳.

Most notably, Caixin 财新, China’s best known non-government news source, was removed from the list. Among other “non-positive” news it published was its investigation on COVID death numbers in Wuhan in March 2020.

Removing Caixin from the list means internet platforms cannot re-publish content from Caixin. Normally this can significantly reduce the influence of the news outlet, as many readers get news through aggregators rather than go to the source directly. However, in Caixin’s case, it has been behind a paywall since 2017, which means readers would have to go to the source directly anyway.

Overall, this development is another sign that the party-state is tightening control on information in the country. It is strengthening its “guidance” to ensure only positive news about the party is reported.

So for readers of news from China, we may have to be even more sceptical and critical about the framing of most news stories.

5. Li Yundi

Social media in China exploded this week with the news that the famous pianist Li Yundi 李云迪 has been detained for soliciting a prostitute. Li is a “celebrity” on the level of a pop star, despite being a concert pianist.

As regular readers of Neican know, the Chinese Government and the Communist Party is cracking down on celebrities recently. And one target of the crackdown is “immoral” (not just illegal) behaviours of celebrities. In this case, prostitution and soliciting prostitution are both illegal (along with pornography) in China. However, prostitution is still rampant in China, and most do not get into serious trouble for it.

On social media, the platforms have allowed some comments questioning his detention, with many criticising the lack of privacy afforded to him and disputing whether punishment should be imposed for prostitution in the first place. Speculations are also rife as to why he was targeted, as one would expect many celebrities to engage in similar acts.

Despite prostitution being a relatively minor crime (around two weeks in detention), Li’s career has been destroyed by this revelation.

The post Neican: Climate, history, Digicel, news sources, Li Yundi appeared first on The China Story.

Two recently published papers shed some insights on Chinese-language media in Australia: Waning Sun’s journal article “Chinese-language digital news media in Australia” published in June in Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies and Fan Yang’s analysis “Translating tension” published last week by the Lowy Institute.

Sun focused her research on Sydney Today, while Yang looked at Daily Chinese Herald, Australian Chinese Daily and Media Today (parent company of Sydney Today) on two case studies: trade disputes, and Zhao Lijian’s “Afghan child” tweet.

Chinese-language media has come under the spotlight in recent years predominantly as a “national security concern”, particularly a “foreign interference concern”. The worry is that the Chinese Communist Party could use Chinese-language media to promote their foreign policy agenda. However, like on all issues, we must take a broader lens than just “national security” to really understand the scope and scale of the problem.

First, according to Sun’s research, “hard news” — that is, politics, economics, trade and foreign policy — represents a very small percentage of news covered by Sydney Today, in contrast to what most people may think what “news” should look like.

Instead, a typical popular news story is about cultural differences and often contains narratives such as “Chinese people behaving badly”, with quotes from English-language media serving as evidence of contempt from “mainstream society” of “Chinese people”. This then generates outrage and a sense of superiority from readers who are more “established” Chinese Australians, often siding with “mainstream society” and eager to delineate themselves from “new arrivals” or “Chinese people in China”.

Here we see it’s not a simple story of “us” vs “them” or China vs Australia. But it often devolves to “us” (established Chinese Australian migrants) trying to navigate between “mainstream society” and “Chinese people in China or new arrivals”.

Second, most of the stories are translations and compilations of stories from other sources rather than original stories. Sun found that compilations comprise 57 per cent of Sydney Today news stories whereas original items only comprise 5 per cent. And of the compilation items about Australia, 91 per cent came from English-language Australian media and government organisations. Yang found similar results, with only 2.2 per cent of the sample being original content.

This means the media organisations do not support journalists and reporters, but rely on curators 小编 who focus on selecting the topic and making the content appeal to the target audience — first-generation Chinese migrants. So the role played by these media organisations is very different. The line between “news” and “editorials” is also more blurred.

Readers of Neican probably are more interested in implications for politics and foreign policy. According to Yang:

Chinese-language media outlets in Australia are more likely to implicitly support Australian government policy than Chinese government policy when reporting on Australia–China tensions, despite published content often being moderated to remove direct criticism of China and the Chinese government.

And in a survey of 600 first-generation migrants from China, Sun found that “there is a high level of ambivalence about both Australia and China”.

So it appears that the scope and scale of CCP interference in Chinese-language media are rather limited. First, most news stories are not concerned about ‘hard news’ such as bilateral relationship, but rather cover topics that are pertinent to the first generation Chinese Australian community, such as crime. Of course, bilateral relationship is also a more sensitive topic, so their lack of coverage could be due both to market force and censorship pressure.

And for news articles on bilateral relationship, Chinese-language media in Australia overall did not “pick a side”. Yang found that “there is no single or consistent perspective being presented by these media outlets”. Sun also found that first-generation migrants from China do not unquestioningly accept the Chinese government narrative. This contrasts with the prevailing narrative that CCP has “infiltrated” Chinese-language media in Australia.

Censorship in media

Both Sun and Yang’s research points out that self-censorship is one of the pressures facing Chinese-language media in Australia, especially for media that publishes content on WeChat. These media organisations regularly soften or remove criticism of China and the Chinese government.

Although self-censorship pressures have not led to a uniform pro-Beijing editorial stance, national security analysts are right in pointing out that such self-censorship still poses a problem for freedom of speech in Australia.

Yet when faced with evidence of even more blatant incidents of censorship by a foreign government last week, Australia’s national security community is eerily silent about the foreign interference risks.

In Dateline Jerusalem: Journalism’s Toughest Assignment, John Lyons write:

This book is the story of why many editors and journalists in Australia are in fear of upsetting these people and therefore, in my view, self-censoring. It’s the story of how the Israeli-Palestinian issue is the single issue which the media will not cover with the rigour with which it covers every other issue. And, most importantly, it’s the story of how the Australian public is being short-changed — denied reliable, factual information about one of the most important conflicts of our time.

According to Jennine Khalik, a Palestinian Australian journalist, she was the subject of meetings between Israeli diplomats and editors at The Australian, and subsequently, she was moved to the Arts section so that she would not report on anything Palestine.

Now Chinese-language media affects around 4 per cent of Australians who speak a Chinese language at home. The scope of foreign interference detailed in Lyon’s book is far more significant, as it affects “mainstream media”, so that’s nearly every Australian.

Foreign interference and impediments to freedom of speech, including self-censorship, should be a problem no matter where the source of pressure is. Yet in the current public debate in Australia, “foreign interference” and “threat to freedom of speech” is usually only used when China is in the discussion.

This appears to be another instance where the government and national security community only pays attention to a problem when it has connections to China, rather than dealing with the issue more comprehensively.

2. US-China trade

It looks like trade policy under Biden is a continuation of Trump’s policy — it’s still very much “America first”. US Trade Representative Katherine Tai has pledged to keep pressuring Beijing to commit to the “Phase 1” trade deal, including the purchase agreement.

Tai said, “above all else, we must defend – to the hilt – our economic interests”.

As I’ve noted before, if China commits to the purchase agreement under the “Phase 1” trade deal, it will reduce China’s purchase of goods and services from other countries. This in effect means China must discriminate against other countries in favour of the US when importing. On this issue, the economic interest of the US is against the interest of many of its allies, despite Tai’s rhetoric of “collaboration with other economies and countries”.

As illustrated previously, China’s import of American agricultural products has already increased due to its sanction of Australian agricultural products, especially beef and lobsters. However, such an increase is still not enough to reach the “Phase 1” commitments.

On the other hand, the focus on China’s “non-market trade practices” would be more popular with other countries. Yet, as the US is criticising China’s industrial policies, the administration is also implementing its own industrial policies.

Overall, Tai’s speech indicates that the US is not pursuing general economic decoupling, as it is still trying to push for market access into China, which leads to more, not less, trade and economic linkages.

3. BRI debt

AidData, an international development research lab at William & Mary (a university in the US), has found a major increase in “hidden debt” in BRI projects, after analysing 13,427 Chinese development projects:

nearly 70% of China’s overseas lending is now directed to state-owned companies, state-owned banks, special purpose vehicles, joint ventures, and private sector institutions in recipient countries. These debts, for the most part, do not appear on their government balance sheets. However, most of them benefit from explicit or implicit forms of host government liability protection, which has blurred the distinction between private and public debt

This means previous official data on debt has undercounted debt obligations to China. And the “hidden debt” problem is getting worse.

The “hidden debt” problem is detrimental to global debt transparency. Opacity in debt creates unclear financial risks. Furthermore, it may affect global efforts on debt service suspension. China, a major world creditor, has not joined the Paris Club, a group of creditor countries that coordinates debt relief. It would not be fair for Paris Club members to provide debt relief only so that the debtor country can meet its obligation to China.

The report also reveals the extent that poorer countries have to rely on China for financing. China is outspending the US on a more than 2-to-1 basis. This means for countries that seek financing, there is little alternative available. It would be difficult for other countries to match China in the level of financing (for example under the Build Back Better World initiative).

Countries may be better off competing with China on quality rather than quantity, that is, with a focus on governance and standards. However, for countries desperate for financing, this is unlikely a priority.

4. Taiwan

In recent weeks, China has been flying warplanes into Taiwan’s southwest “air defence identification zone”:

These flights are intended to provoke. But what is China trying to achieve through this provocative action? These flights move public sentiments within Taiwan even further away from China. Internationally, countries around the world are more sympathetic to Taiwan’s plight and see this as bullying by a great power. Within China, these flights are not being publicly promoted, so there is no benefit from the rise in nationalism.

According to Wen-Ti Sung, many Taiwanese do not see the flights as a preparation for invasion. He argues that these flights are part of a tactic to deter Taiwan from declaring independence:

One explanation is Beijing places a higher priority on deterring Taiwan’s further movement towards independence than promoting unification, so it is willing to trade the latter for the former. In other words, Beijing may simply not be as zealous about pursuing unification in the near-term.

Instead, keeping an eye on the long game, Beijing is willing to risk short- to medium-term costs in losing hearts and minds in Taiwan. The hope is, in time, it can eventually regain the initiative. For this reason, being able to deter further movement towards independence may be sufficient to buy China much-needed time.

This explanation postulates that China is continuing its past strategy of kicking the can down the road. As long as Taiwan doesn’t “declare independence”, China is prepared to wait. For this to work, both China and Taiwan need to believe that time is on their side. It is probably in the interest of the world that they both continue to wait for now.

The post Neican: Chinese language media in Australia, censorship in media, US-China trade, BRI debt, Taiwan flights appeared first on The China Story.

In a step significant in symbolism, China launched an emissions trading scheme to combat the climate crisis.

China, with the world’s largest population, is also the world’s biggest carbon emitter — 28 per cent of global carbon emissions. There are many ways to count carbon emissions, including taking into account the population (per capita), traded goods (whether the producer or consumer is responsible), or historical emissions (which may be fairer for developing countries).

Until recently, China has used these as reasons for not taking actions while pressuring the developed countries to do more. But that tactic appears to have changed with Xi’s announcement of a net zero target at the UN General Assembly late last year.

The emissions trading scheme remains limited in scope. Despite its limited scope, the scheme is the world’s largest when measured in emissions covered.

Rather than having it fully operating from the start, the government has instead chosen to cautiously experiment and incrementally expand the scheme. Initially, it only covers coal and gas power plants. Other sectors are expected to follow if the scheme works well.

The Chinese Government’s main concern now is to observe how the scheme operates and its effects. The scheme is unlikely to do much in reducing emissions in the short run. But if the government deems it to work well, then it will use this as one of the tools to achieve its announced target.

Countries around the world, both developed and developing, are moving towards stronger actions on climate change. This seems an unstoppable trend.

There are some skepticisms about China’s commitment to climate actions, given China is still building new coal power plants. However, I think China is serious about achieving its targets. One, it has given itself another ten years (until 2030) to reach peak emissions. Two, it has switched its development focus from quantity to quality. Three, there is domestic demand for more actions on environment and ecology.

But regional differences may become more prominent, as poorer provinces may be tempted to ignore climate policies in favour of faster growth. Focusing on rural development and regional inequalities will be important.

2. Seeds mystery…solved?

Last year, there were reports of people around the US receiving seeds that they did not order. The seeds were sent from China. This prompted government officials to issue warnings about these seeds, with some fear that they were part of a bioweapon campaign by China.

In an environment of heightened strategic competition between China and the US, and the panic and suspicion of what China is capable of, many people readily believed in the “bioweapon” theory.

Unlike many stories about conspiracies and spies, this time someone actually bothered to follow up on this story.

Chris Heath contacted some recipients of the mystery seeds, and found many of these people had simply forgotten about their earlier seed orders. That’s right, they ordered the seeds themselves, but due to shipping delays, forgot about it when the seeds arrived. Further, no nefarious “bioweapon seeds” were ever found. All the seeds tested by the government agencies in the US were your standard flowers and vegetables.

In fact, in every single case that we were able to research fully, we found a convincing connection between a mystery package and an earlier order. Despite the evidence, some seed recipients remained skeptical about the scenario we were describing

As an avid online shopper myself, I confess that I too often forget about the orders I’ve made. That’s why I love online shopping — I get two dopamine hits, one when I make the purchase and one when it arrives.

There are a few takeaways from this story of mystery seeds.

One, following up is important. When a story first breaks, there is bound to be a lot of attention and sensations, especially when the story touches on things like espionage or anything secretive and nefarious. At this stage, we should reserve some healthy skepticism, and “let the bullets fly for a while” 让子弹飞一会儿 rather than rush to a verdict, as often we are not seeing the complete picture. Sometimes, a more complete picture later emerges. However, more often than not, no one even bothers to follow up on the story, as discrediting initial explosive claims are less sensational and less profitable.

Two, in an environment where people are prone to panic or suspicions about anything to do with China, we should be even more careful about facts that confirm our existing suspicions. We are all prone to confirmation bias. Of course, sometimes the nefarious explanation is the correct one, but we should be extra careful.

If you want more on China and seeds, I highly recommend Mara Hvistendahl’s book The Scientist and the Spy.

3. Tutoring crackdown

China is cracking down on the tutoring industry. However, such crackdown is treating the symptom and not the cause of the problem.

Parents of “chicken baby” 鸡娃 infuse their children with a sense of zero-sum competition, with a good performance in Gaokao and getting into a good university the only way to earn a good living and peers’ respect and to keep up with the Joneses.

Cracking down on tutoring by themselves is unlikely to change this mindset. Rather, parents will try to find other avenues to increase the competitiveness of their children. Instead, what will help is reducing the competitive pressure. This can result from reduced inequality and changing social perceptions. Right now, getting into a good university is still seen as the determinant of one’s future life trajectory and the chance to live a good life.

When the majority of Chinese people can live a good and fulfilling life, no matter whether they go to a university, that’s when the competitive pressure for Gaokao will finally ease a little.

The post Neican: ETS, mystery seeds, and tutoring appeared first on The China Story.

We wrote recently about family planning and gender roles, and the latest census. Now the Chinese Government has changed its “Two Child Policy” to “Three Child Policy”.

Let’s recap. The “One Child Policy” lasted around 25 years from 1980. The “Two Child Policy” was then instituted in 2016 as China faced a possible demographic crisis of having too few children. However, that didn’t do much to lift the fertility rate. As in many other countries, encouraging a high birth rate is very difficult.

So merely five years later, the policy has been changed yet again, to “Three Child Policy”.

Alongside this change, the Government is likely to announce more policies to encourage birth in the near future. Policymakers would have known by now that relaxing the limit by itself would not increase the fertility rate. The short-lived Two Child Policy illustrates a key point: if the underlying (dis)incentives are not addressed, then people will not want to have more children even if the state allows them to.

Instead of removing birth restrictions altogether, the Government has decided to merely relax the limit to three children, so having more than three is still illegal. This doesn’t seem to make any sense as removing the limit is unlikely to affect the birth rate. One possible reason is that the Chinse Government may be concerned that removing restrictions entirely may lead to the poorer rural population and ethnic minorities having more children. This is the opposite of what the Government wants. The Government wants only well educated, urban (and Han) people to have a higher birth rate, which also happens to be the group that is less likely to want more children.

Policy changes like this conjure up memories of the 1980s and 90s when the One Child Policy was most strictly enforced. Local family planning officials would coerce pregnant women to have abortions, and hospitals would sterilise women without their consent once they have given birth. Some of the common family planning slogans are shown below. One read “induce or abort, just cannot give birth”. Many families also had to pay huge fines or hide their children.

The One Child Policy has resulted in many family tragedies along with social problems such as a skewed sex ratio. It must seem deeply ironic for those that tried to evade the One Child Policy that China is now encouraging birth.

2. External propaganda and discursive power

Xi, at the Politburo collective study session on May 31, called for the improvement of China’s external propaganda and discursive power to match its power and stature, and create a favourable external environment for its continued development. This signals continuity of the current policy.

To achieve this improvement, Xi gave the following directives:

1. build a “Chinese discursive system”;
2. publicise “Chinese ideas, wisdom and solutions”;
3. leverage “friends” (and by implication, delineate them from “enemies”);
4. incorporate external propaganda ideological work for all party organisations;

The CCP leadership blames its relative lack of discursive power (that is, its ability to persuade through rhetoric) for the difficulties that it has encountered in the arena of international opinion. It does not view its policies as reproachable in and of themselves. For the CCP, both domestic and international political discourse are dimensions in the ceaseless struggle for survival.

But despite the importance it has assigned to discourse, Beijing has been astonishingly ineffective in recent years in promoting China’s image. This is especially striking against the background of China’s increasing international influence and role, and material power (as well as the billions sunk into amplifying its voice internationally).

The combative, condescending, and tone-deaf way that Chinese diplomats and state media have communicated with foreign audiences has been counterproductive diplomatically. Perhaps what it illustrates for us is the competing pressures acting on those doing the official telling of the “China story”. On the one hand, they want to appear tough to a domestic audience, and on the other hand, they want to build a positive image for China internationally.

Beijing sees discourse as a struggle where there are only victors and losers; there are only those who do the convincing, and those who are convinced. Such a philosophy is not the basis for dialogue, it is the basis for conflict and domination.

For those wanting to read Xi’s directive on external propaganda and discursive power, we’ve translated the Xinhua readout of the Politburo study session. It’s well worth a read for an articulation of the “why” and “how” of Beijing’s internationally targeted discursive effort.

3. June 4th and China’s story

Today, June 4, marks 32 years since the Beijing massacre that ended the Tiananmen protest movement in the summer of 1989. In the past, vigils have been held in the Chinese speaking world (Hong Kong and Taiwan). But a crackdown in Hong Kong and COVID has led to a situation where no large public gathering will be held in commemoration.

In this context, it’s even more important for us to remember.

The CCP is working hard to enforce collective amnesia over the killings of civilians on June 4, 1989. But perhaps what is scarier for those in power is the idea that mass protest and civil resistance could occur again. If it happened in 1989, then why not 2029?

The CCP leadership knows that it can’t totally erase the traces of this historical episode. It’s still too close in time to the present, and too fresh on the minds of many Chinese people. But it can censor public discussions, crack down on interpretations that stand at odds with the official line, and keep telling the Chinese people that what happened was a “riot”, nothing more.

In the age of increasing geopolitical rivalry, Tandee Wang reminds us that the story of 1989 is an intensely personal one for those involved. Writing about the Tiananmen diaspora:

We too often represent Tiananmen, and the contemporary Chinese diaspora more broadly, as an issue of states and statesmen—a story about nations and their contestations…forgetting the rich dimensions of Chinese migrant lives except as passive recipients of…state beneficence or…state violence.

But the story of the Chinese diaspora caught up in the Tiananmen Square massacre is as much a national one as it is global and transnational, familial and personal. In this respect, we would do well to move beyond Hawke’s Tiananmen tears.

Let’s not forget about the 1989 Tiananmen protests, especially since most of us have already forgotten about the one before, in 1976.

4. Lie down

A new buzzword among Chinese young people is 躺平 (tang ping, meaning to lie down). We think it’s a term that we can really embrace! Standing and sitting are so overrated!

It describes those young people who give up the rat race (such as 996 work culture) and instead just lie down. In an almost zen-like fashion, it refers to those who have low expectations from life, since they know that they cannot “win” at life (as defined by general social expectations).

Young urbanites today are under enormous pressure. Drilled from the beginning (by “Haidian mums”) into believing that they’re in a hyper-competitive world, competition continues after high school, from buying houses to finding spouses. Not surprisingly, under such stress, some are tapping out.

Obviously, the Chinese Government does not like this kind of attitude. People who subscribe to tang ping are less likely to contribute to society.

Of course, this kind of nihilistic attitude is not exactly embraced by governments elsewhere, including governments of more individualistic societies. But rather than blaming the youths, governments and societies need to take a hard look at themselves and examine why they created an environment with pressures that make youths feel so hopeless.

5. Yang Hengjun

Australian citizen Yang Hengjun, in detention in China since early 2019 on allegations of espionage, has finally faced trial. China refused an Australian Government’s request for Australian diplomats to be present at the trial. The Australian Government said that was in breach of China’s treaty obligations. The Foreign Minister called the case “arbitrary detention”.

China is possibly in violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations under which it is obligated to allow free communication between Australian consular officers and an Australian citizen held in China.

As China claims it is a national security case, the trial is closed-door with little details released publicly or to the Australian Government.

Yang is reportedly a former employee of the powerful Ministry of State Security (the intelligence agency of the PRC). After emigrating from China, he became a commentator on China affairs and a spy novelist.

A day after the trial, Yang told his supporters the authorities did not even tell him who he was allegedly spying for. He has also claimed that he was tortured and forced to confess during the time that he was held.

Ultimately there is very little that the Australian Government can do to ensure a fair trial of Australians in China’s legal system. Whenever national security is invoked, procedural fairness and transparency almost always take a backseat. And with a near 100 per cent conviction rate, Yang will almost certainly be found guilty by the system.

Unfortunately, arbitrary detention is a fact of life for Chinese people that run foul of the system. And now China has become more powerful and less afraid to offend other countries, it is subjecting the same treatment to foreigners living or working in China.

The post Neican: Three Child, Discursive Power, June 4, Lie Down, Yang appeared first on The China Story.

Population and birth rate were the main focus of last week’s census release. The census showed that the number of births continued to fall, marking last year the lowest official number of births since 1961 (in the middle of the Great Famine).

China’s total fertility rate in 2020 was only 1.3 births per woman. However, China’s figure is affected by the pandemic, and may not represent a long-term trend. The average fertility rate for upper middle income countries in 2019 was 1.9 and for high income countries in 2019 was 1.6.

The Chinese Government expected the population growth to decline. After all, it’s their objective in implementing the “One-Child Policy” in the 1980s (later relaxed to Two Child). Deng Xiaoping and the newly empowered reformists saw China’s big population at the time as a problem holding back China’s economic growth. This is in contrast to Mao’s earlier belief that a larger population would make the country powerful.

China is now moving to relax fertility restrictions due to concerns about declining population growth. This “relaxation” is coupled with eugenics, where the Government prioritises an educated urban population for birth encouragement. The educated population is seen as essential for China’s economic power, so it is unsurprising that under Xi, the pursuit of a more powerful China has led to a more active pro-birth policy for certain “desirable” segments of the population.

2. Human rights in Xinjiang

While the Chinese Government is encouraging more births, especially among the Han majority, a report authored by Nathan Ruser and James Leibold for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute concluded that:

While the Chinese government argues it has adopted a uniform family-planning policy in Xinjiang, the county-level natality data suggests these policies are disproportionately affecting areas with a large indigenous population, meaning their application is discriminatory and applied with the intent of reducing the birth-rate of Uyghurs and other religious and ethnic minorities.

This adds to the existing evidence that the Chinese Government is committing human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Past international efforts aimed at pressuring countries to change their policies to improve human rights have yielded mixed results. In cases where the abuser is a great power or has the support of great power, they have been largely ineffective.

This is starkly demonstrated by the example of Israel. Despite decades of efforts by human rights activists, Israel has continued to commit human rights abuses as well as changing facts on the ground by evicting Palestinian residents, making a two-state solution increasingly untenable.

But Israel has the support of its great and powerful friend, the US. The US has even passed laws to combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, with some claiming that the BDS movement is a form of antisemitism. Magnitsky sanctions by Five Eye countries against Israel are highly improbable.

China, a rising great power, believes it should be able to act in a similar way as befitting its great power status. It cites its actions in Xinjiang as “anti-terrorism”; it is changing facts on the ground by encouraging Han migration to Xinjiang, and it declares any forms of boycott or sanctions for human rights reasons as Sinophobia. As a bonus, unlike Israel, it is operating in a territory internationally recognised as within its borders.

Since China is a competitor and not ally of the US, the West can choose to not turn a blind eye to its human rights abuses, including through issuing strong condemnations and enacting Magnisky sanctions. However, the West’s inconsistency on human rights is seen by many in China as evidence that the criticisms are just part of great power competition. And unlike smaller powers, China is assured that no country would start a war with it using human rights as a justification.

3. COVID conspiracy

The Australian, one of Australia’s largest newspapers, published an exclusive last week pushing the Wuhan lab bio-warfare theory.

This article insinuates that COVID is a weapon developed by the Chinese military. It cites as evidence a 2015 book, The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons (非典非自然起源和人制人新种病毒基因武器), by Chinese military university and civilian researchers. This book pushes the discredited theory that the SARS virus was weaponised by foreign powers and introduced into China.

It is one thing to believe that the theory of accidental release from a lab cannot be ruled out based on existing evidence; it is something entirely different to believe that the virus is a Chinese military bioweapon.

The latest theory pushed by The Australian article is just the latest misinformation about China, Chinese scientists, and COVID. It reflects poorly on the author of the article, The Australian’s editorial oversight, and those analysts and politicians that have eagerly suspended their critical judgement and jumped on this bandwagon.

Peddling such misinformation is grossly irresponsible. Misinformation about China can complicate diplomatic relations. Last May, Trump administration officials Peter Navaro and Mike Pompeo both condemned China, citing Australian media reports as evidence for the Wuhan lab leak theory. These media reports, originally thought to be based on secret US intelligence, turned out to be speculations based on open-source information.

Second, misinformation about China can fuel xenophobia. The latest misinformation taps into a history of racist othering by portraying the Chinese people as criminal threats to the West. Chinese Australians have been particularly concerned about how COVID is contributing to racism. In a recent Lowy Institute survey, two-thirds of Chinese Australians who have recently experienced discrimination said that COVID was a contributor.

4. COVID propaganda

The International Federation of Journalists published a report by Louisa Lim, Julia Bergin and Johan Lidberg titled The COVID-19 Story: Unmasking China’s Global Strategy. You can also hear two of the authors discussing China’s global propaganda push on the Little Red Podcast.

The report found that “China is coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic with more positive global coverage of its actions and policies than pre-pandemic.” The report detailed some of China’s efforts to push its narrative in other countries, ranging from benign means such as “increased provision of Chinese entertainment” and medical aid to problematic ones, including disinformation and the expulsion of journalists.

Here are our thoughts on this issue:

One, the increased positive coverage is unlikely due entirely to China’s propaganda push. There is no doubt China’s propaganda efforts played a significant role. But other countries’ COVID responses have also made China’s response seem relatively favourable. And the global scramble for, and hoarding of, vaccines has made China appear more reasonable. This can increase positive coverage even in the absence of China’s propaganda efforts.

Two, Associate Professor Erin Baggott Carter found that American news organisations that accepted official trips to China subsequently “made a pivot from covering military competition to covering economic cooperation”. We don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing if it means journalists’ coverage of China became more comprehensive. After all, economic cooperation is an important aspect of a bilateral relationship. What would be a concern is if the reporting becomes less comprehensive as a result, that is, focusing only on the positive side of the relationship and ignoring the negative side.

Three, in the report, China’s efforts in pushing its narrative is compared to “China’s island-building efforts in the South China Sea”, with the narrative landscape being drawn “story by story”. We think this framing is alarmist and unhelpful.

Overall, the report provided useful case studies on China’s tactics in “telling the China story well”. Journalists as well as their audience should be more aware of the power of government in influencing media and public discourse.

5. May 16

On Sunday (May 16) we had the 55th anniversary of the May Sixteenth Circular (五一六通知). This was the document that kicked off the Cultural Revolution in 1966.

The Cultural Revolution years are fundamental in shaping China of today. For millions of Chinese, the 1950s (Great Leap Forward and Great Famine) and the Cultural Revolution decade were cataclysmic. Yet Chinese society has not been allowed to reflect on this history free from Party interference.

The misrule of the CCP since 1949 has created and exacerbated tensions between different groups within Chinese society. These tensions would explode in 1966 and lead to a decade of political, economic and social upheaval.

Mao catalysed the Cultural Revolution, but the upheaval would have not spun out of his control if not for the deep tensions accumulated since the CCP seized political power in China.

Today, under Xi, the Party is streamlining the official telling of China’s modern history. As part of this effort, the Cultural Revolution is increasingly being reinterpreted, shifting the focus away from its terrible consequences to highlighting its achievements.

The terrible tragedies of the Mao era have become, in today’s official narrative, the inevitable cost and worthy sacrifice of socialist China’s “exploration”.

Cultural Revolution, thus has become another sanitised leg of China’s unceasing march from its “century of humiliation” to “national rejuvenation”.

As readers of Neican would know, the CCP is currently conducting a party history campaign while cracking down on “historical nihilism”. Its propaganda machinery is also working full time in the lead up to its 100th anniversary in July.

But, as Lu Xun wrote:

Lies written in ink can never disguise facts written in blood.

墨写的谎言决掩盖不了血写的事实。

The post Neican: census, human rights, conspiracy, propaganda appeared first on The China Story.

In February 2021, a New York Times (NYT) published a controversial article titled “On WHO Trip, China Refused to Hand Over Important Data”. The story, citing expert investigators who went to Wuhan, claims that ‘Chinese scientists refused to share raw data that might bring the world closer to understanding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic’. In response, Peter Daszak and Thea Kølsen Fischer, two members of the WHO expert team, lamented that the article intentionally misquoted or twisted their words.

The two experts’ repudiation of the article gave timely ammunition to the Global Times, China’s nationalistic state media outlet, which published an op-ed entitled: ‘WHO experts slam NYT for twisting, misquoting their words on virus origins probe’. In the article, Global Times quotes a Chinese professor, who says, ‘Throughout the WHO expert team’s trip in Wuhan, Western media’s goal had been to push their theories that China is guilty of causing the COVID-19 pandemic and hiding information’.

Media coverage of COVID-19 in China

The COVID-19 outbreak first started in January 2020 in China, a country ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. China exists in the imagination of the global West as diametrically different from ‘us’ in terms of ideology, political system, social and cultural practices, and cultural sensibility. The NYT controversy begs the question of whether there is indeed a pre-existing narrative framework in Western media’s coverage of COVID-19 related issues in China, and how prevalent this framework is.

To address these questions, I conducted a critical discourse analysis of major news stories, documentaries, opinions, and analyses published in Australia’s most influential media outlets between 1 January and 31 March 2020. I used three criteria to determine the suitability of material to be chosen for analysis: they must be (1) key media programs that are widely considered to be authoritative and trustworthy; (2) media stories written by journalists who enjoy the highest level of professional recognition in the field of journalism; or (3) media narratives that elicit the strongest responses from China, the Chinese-Australian community, and the English-speaking public in Australia.

In other words, rather than conducting a quantitative content analysis to gauge the accuracy of reporting, I wanted to identify the key themes, perspectives, and angles in these reports to understand the likely role that opinion leaders, high-impact media programs, news stories, and journalistic practices play in shaping public opinion of China and its handling of COVID-19. What I found is that the Australian media’s reporting on China’s COVID-19 experience says more about Australia’s own fears and anxieties and their political, ideological, and cultural positions than about the reality of how the Chinese government managed, and the Chinese people experienced, COVID-19.

Political climate and media landscape

Australia has had to reckon with the fact that its economic prosperity relies on China, a country that is not a liberal democracy. Australia does business with China but partners with the US on national security. In the past few years, there has been growing fear in Australia about China’s political and economic influence, paralleled by a noticeable shift in the media towards what I called ‘adversarial journalism’ in the coverage of China. An anti-Chinese public discourse in the ‘China influence’ narrative, which predated COVID-19, configures China as an external threat and a strategic enemy.

Australia has a bifurcated media landscape, featuring both a strong public broadcasting sector such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and a competitive commercial sector. The ABC’s flagship programs include influential programs such as the weekly Four Corners, described by the ABC as ‘Australia’s premier investigative journalism program’ and Q+A, a high-profile panel discussion program that features politicians and opinion leaders. The commercial sector is much more complex, with some media outlets seeking to offer quality journalism on one end, and tabloid press offering less edifying content on the other.

Using the criteria outlined above, I sampled the entire array of Australian media, including both television and radio programs from the ABC, commercial media outlets such as Murdoch’s The Australian newspaper and Nine Entertainment’s The Sydney Morning Herald, and several tabloid papers (also backed by Murdoch).

Key Findings

One of my key findings is that there was a high level of unfavourable reporting about China in relation to COVID-19, regardless of whether it was the public or commercial media, liberal or conservative media. China’s success in controlling the virus was often simply left out. Despite the effectiveness of China’s strategy in reducing numbers of infections and deaths, the Australian media looked elsewhere — such as South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan — for lessons.

Notwithstanding the overall unfavourable tone of reporting on China, there were some differences between the media outlets. For instance, the ABC, informed by a liberal framework, focused on criticizing China’s lack of transparency and government control, and selected stories from the perspective of censorship, propaganda, and draconian public health measures.

The respectable end of the commercial press, such as Sydney Morning Herald, focused its reporting on the Chinese Australians’ two-way efforts in sourcing masks and medical supplies. In doing so, it continued its China influence narrative by framing Chinese Australians as objects of suspicion with questionable loyalty to Australia.

Meanwhile, the tabloid press and shock-jock radio consistently fanned anti-Chinese hatred, further fuelling the fear of the ‘yellow peril’, anxiety about ‘reds under the bed’, and the racist idea of the Chinese as an alien and repugnant people who eat bats.

The most significant finding was a conflation of political authoritarianism with normal public health measures — a key feature of the ABC’s reporting of China and COVID-19.

Of course, it could be argued that aspects of China’s authoritarian politics in some ways contributed to or exacerbated the pandemic. This view seems to be implicit in criticisms of the Hubei government’s failure to inform Beijing promptly, and its attempts to suppress individuals wanting to blow the whistle. The mistakes made by Hubei’s government were mostly framed as manifestations of China’s authoritarianism. This may indeed be the case. Yet in contrast, when similar mistakes were made in Australia at both federal and state government levels, they have typically been reported as bureaucratic bungles or administrative mishandlings.

When an entire range of coercive measures were put in place by the Australian governments — such as compulsory social distancing, mandatory quarantine, and hefty fines for refusal to wear masks — they were justified as extraordinary but necessary public health measures. But similar measures used in China were taken as evidence of China’s infringement of human rights, disrespect for civil liberty, and abuse of power typical of an authoritarian regime.

Despite the goal of producing ‘objective’ or ‘balanced’ media content, the frames, perspectives, and discursive positions that are adopted in such reporting are often pre-determined. The virus may know no boundaries, but media reporting on virus-related issues is profoundly bound up with ideology, politics, and the cultural identity of a nation.

The post Infected with Fear and Anxiety: The Australian Media’s Reporting on China and COVID-19 appeared first on The China Story.

China is home to over 1800 newspapers — most of them state-owned and all subject to censorship. However, some local newspapers have retained a higher degree of independence than others. This is because local governments and the central state have different goals and priorities that sometimes do not align. The central propaganda authority, for example, is more concerned about information that could undermine the image of the central government and the Communist Party. But it appears more tolerant (however reluctantly) of news that exposes provincial officials’ wrongdoings, since the central government must keep local cadres in check in order to improve governance.

Moreover, China’s decentralized authoritarianism assigns extensive political power to provincial governments, allowing reform-minded local officials to tolerate news reporting that may depart from the Party line. Resistance from front-line journalists and editors could also strengthen local newspapers’ editorial independence.

This delicate dynamic between the local and central governments has enabled some newspapers to continue operating on the margin (though their numbers are steadily decreasing). In fact, a look at historical archives shows that local newspapers have been producing critical, in-depth reports since the 1980s, when Deng Xiaoping’s “Reform and Opening” prompted them to step beyond their traditional propaganda roles. In the words of Karoline Kan, local newspapers “took on more of a watchdog role, although in a compromised way”.

Liberation Daily, 1980

One of the earliest “watchdogs” is Liberation Daily, the official newspaper of the Shanghai Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. On October 3, 1980, the Daily startled Beijing by publishing on its front page a report from Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, which bluntly pointed out that Shanghai’s development came at a high social cost. The article also attributed Shanghai’s deteriorating living standards to China’s fiscal policy. The command economy, it said, disproportionately relied on Shanghai’s local fiscal revenue, which accounted for a third of the central government’s expenditure.

The October 3 issue quickly sold out. It was praised by the locals, receiving over 300 letters to the editors within days. In response to the public’s enthusiasm, Liberation Daily dedicated ten columns to Shanghai’s reform schemes, some even boldly criticizing Beijing for not granting Shanghai enough autonomy.

Soon, however, the news reached the ears of Beijing officials, who were angered by the paper’s position. In a 2008 interview, Xu Xueming, Liberation Daily’s then-editor of economics news, recalled that a member of the State Council called the editors and lambasted them for “pressing the central government”.

The editors’ other sin was not having sent this piece of “negative” news through neican (“internal reference”) for Party internal review and approval. Of course, the editors had done it on purpose, knowing that their piece would likely get cut. Consequently, all the editors involved were summoned for censure and self-criticism.

The tussle didn’t end here though. Things took a dramatic turn when the reform-minded Zhu Rongji took office as Shanghai’s mayor in 1987. That year General Secretary Zhao Ziyang asserted in front of the 13th Party Congress that the media should identify societal problems and hold the state to account via yulun jiandu (“supervision by public opinion”) — essentially an affirmation of the media’s watchdog role. Zhu affirmed the editorial stance of Liberation Daily and exonerated the editors involved. The researcher who penned this report was also given an award.

Delicate balancing act

While local newspapers like Liberation Daily were emboldened to criticize authorities by the limited political freedom that came with economic liberalization, that would change in the 1990s with the presidency of Jiang Zemin, who viewed newspapers not as watchdogs but as instruments of political control. China’s news media have a duty “to educate and propagate the spirit of the Party’s Central Committee,” he said in 2001. This policy was advanced through the weiwen system (“stability maintenance”) under Hu Jintao’s administration and would squeeze China’s local journalism for years to come.

A few provincial news outlets resisted the suppression and continued to be outspoken. Southern Weekend, a newspaper known for its investigative journalism, was the first to expose the AIDS epidemic in rural Henan province in November 2000. Here one can see the dynamic between the provincial and central censorship in practice: on the local level, Henan authorities threatened journalists who attempted to report on the epidemic. Zhang Jicheng, a reporter for Henan Science and Technology Daily, was fired after publishing an article entitled “Strange Disease in a Henan Village Shocks Top Officials.” Gao Yaojie and Wang Shuping, two whistleblower doctors, were harassed and later went into exile in the US.

The central government, however, gave a green light to reports that local officials tried to suppress. Notably, Huadong News, a subsidiary of People’s Daily, weighed in after the Southern Weekend exposé. It acknowledged the “explosive growth” of AIDS virus and, perhaps more importantly, condemned local officials for downplaying the danger.

But the priority of the central state censorship — i.e., to maintain the central government’s image and legitimacy — ensures that provincial newspapers would be reined in once they went too far. Take the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In the four days after the disaster, state and local newspapers alike covered the mass destruction of school buildings and dormitories and questioned their poor construction quality.

But the tides turned after local newspapers like Southern Metropolis Daily and Caijing jumped in and dug deeper. Notably, allegations of corruption in Southern Weekend’s reports unsettled higher officials who feared that public anger would translate into discontent at China’s political system. In response, Xinhua News Agency, a state-run outlet, criticized the Weekend for biased reporting (“tinted lenses to view China”), and critical reports were subsequently taken down.

Looking back and looking forward

The brief period of China’s flourishing local journalism from the 1980s through to the 2000s has begun to fade from public memory in recent years. Part of the reason is political: the propaganda department, besides appointing newspapers’ editor-in-chief, also began to monitor which stories the reporters planned to work on. In Southern Weekend’s case, 1,034 articles were censored prior to publication in 2012, according to its former editor-in-chief. Even less fortunate was Legal Evening News, a prominent Beijing-based newspaper, whose in-depth section was dismantled in 2018.

Part of the reason is also economic: newspaper advertising revenue has been steadily decreasing, down by 30 percent year-on-year in 2017. Disillusioned editors quit for jobs at internet startups like Tencent, Toutiao, and Didi Labs. As top positions were vacated and filled with appointed officials, more and more local voices were silenced and forgotten.

Nonetheless, looking back is important for understanding the rich history of China’s adventurous local newspapers. Their courageous work allows us to envision a healthier media environment characterized by pluralism. Even in the dark year of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was hope for independent journalism: local outlets like Jiemian News and Beijing Youth Daily challenged the official narrative by interviewing frontline health workers, including whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang. Reports from Caijing revealed Wuhan government’s mismanagement, proving that “rumors” are better dispelled with transparency than censorship.

The tradition of defiant local newspapers has roots deeper in China than many might think.  Acknowledging this helps us aspire to a future in which more Chinese newspapers serve as a fourth estate that holds power accountable, rather than ceremonial bodies that parrot the official line.

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