China: Internet boom changes the face of news
By Anthony Kuhn Posted Sat, Sep 1 2001
From the explosion at a firecracker-producing elementary school in rural Jiangxi province to the collision of U.S. and Chinese military aircraft over the South China Sea, China’s Internet media have taken the lead in reporting important recent news.
The result has been increased competition among state-owned media to break news and provide “netizens” with faster and fuller coverage of current events. Sometimes Internet media even challenge the Communist Party line.
While the government said that students at the Jiangxi school no longer made fireworks, Internet media interviewed students’ families who said otherwise. When Beijing tried to translate Washington’s expression of regret for the plane crash into an apology, some online reports noted that the English words “very sorry” were hardly an admission of guilt.
Nevertheless, the Chinese government is eager to appear supportive of the growth of online news.
“We plan to adopt policies towards Internet media that are preferential and more lenient than those for traditional media,” said Qian Xiaoqian, head of the State Council Information Office Internet Affairs Bureau in an interview earlier this year. “There is a great difference between traditional media and Internet media, so it’s not possible to apply the past methods of managing traditional media to the Internet.”
Traditionally, media have obeyed internal regulations from the 1980s requiring that the official Xinhua News Agency break sensitive political news and that other media use the Xinhua story instead of having their own reporters report on it. This led to a situation described by the Chinese as “a thousand newspapers with the same face.”
Many officials are still used to giving news to Xinhua first, but Internet media are increasingly ignoring the regulations, which Xinhua itself helped to draft.
“The State Council has made it clear that we can take the initiative in reporting sensitive news. We’re not going to wait for Xinhua to report it first,” says He Jiazheng, deputy director of the People’s Daily Online Edition. He adds, “Xinhua’s feeling the competition.” People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, is also Xinhua’s biggest competitor in dissemination of government-related news.
He proudly points to the fact that the People’s Daily Online Edition broke the news of the April 1 collision, the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during NATO’s 1999 war against Yugoslavia and other major stories.
The Web site is updated around the clock. It carries over 2,000 news items each day in Chinese, English, French, Spanish and Japanese, he says.
The upbeat official rhetoric and increased competition by no means suggest that the government is loosening its monopoly over the media. In fact, Beijing is maintaining its iron grip by keeping the right to report news in the hands of mainstream, state-owned media and spending heavily to beef up the Web sites of Xinhua, the People’s Daily and China Central Television.
The Interim Rules on Managing Internet News Websites, issued last November, require all Web sites to get their news from state media at or above the provincial level. They must not report or write their own news and must cite the source of any news published.
The rules contain provisions against subversive material, but experts say these mostly serve as incentives for self-censorship.
“It’s a deterrent measure. The symbolic significance is greater than the actual control,” says Yu Guoming, director of the People’s University Public Opinion Research Center.
Although barred from reporting, commercial Web sites have been allowed to distribute news from official sources, which analysts consider a definite step forward.
Leading Web portals such as Sina.com and Sohu.com get their news through contractual relations with hundreds of local newspapers. Many of these are under looser government control and have better access to local news than national papers.
The portals’ ability to edit and present news and offer searchable news archives creates a powerful tool for gathering information on current events in China.
Furthermore, China’s cyber-bureaucracy narrowly focuses its definition of news around politics. Specialized sites devoted to stocks, sports, entertainment and the like do not need to apply for licenses to publish news on their individual topics.
Other Internet news from unofficial sources is often user-generated, such as postings of foreign wire reports on Internet bulletin boards and chat rooms.
Anthony Kuhn is a Los Angeles Times correspondent based in Beijing, China.
China: Internet Boom Changes Face of News
Easier to access, harder to censor
By Anthony Kuhn
From the explosion at a firecracker-producing elementary school in rural Jiangxi province to the collision of U.S. and Chinese military aircraft over the South China Sea, China’s Internet media have taken the lead in reporting important recent news.
The result has been increased competition among state-owned media to break news and provide “netizens” with faster and fuller coverage of current events. Sometimes Internet media even challenge the Communist Party line.
While the government said that students at the Jiangxi school no longer made fireworks, Internet media interviewed students’ families who said otherwise. When Beijing tried to translate Washington’s expression of regret for the plane crash into an apology, some online reports noted that the English words “very sorry” were hardly an admission of guilt.
Nevertheless, the Chinese government is eager to appear supportive of the growth of online news.
“We plan to adopt policies towards Internet media that are preferential and more lenient than those for traditional media,” said Qian Xiaoqian, head of the State Council Information Office Internet Affairs Bureau in an interview earlier this year. “There is a great difference between traditional media and Internet media, so it’s not possible to apply the past methods of managing traditional media to the Internet.”
Traditionally, media have obeyed internal regulations from the 1980s requiring that the official Xinhua News Agency break sensitive political news and that other media use the Xinhua story instead of having their own reporters report on it. This led to a situation described by the Chinese as “a thousand newspapers with the same face.”
Many officials are still used to giving news to Xinhua first, but Internet media are increasingly ignoring the regulations, which Xinhua itself helped to draft.
“The State Council has made it clear that we can take the initiative in reporting sensitive news. We’re not going to wait for Xinhua to report it first,” says He Jiazheng, deputy director of the People’s Daily Online Edition. He adds, “Xinhua’s feeling the competition.” People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, is also Xinhua’s biggest competitor in dissemination of government-related news.
He proudly points to the fact that the People’s Daily Online Edition broke the news of the April 1 collision, the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during NATO’s 1999 war against Yugoslavia and other major stories.
The Web site is updated around the clock. It carries over 2,000 news items each day in Chinese, English, French, Spanish and Japanese, he says.
The upbeat official rhetoric and increased competition by no means suggest that the government is loosening its monopoly over the media. In fact, Beijing is maintaining its iron grip by keeping the right to report news in the hands of mainstream, state-owned media and spending heavily to beef up the Web sites of Xinhua, the People’s Daily and China Central Television.
The Interim Rules on Managing Internet News Websites, issued last November, require all Web sites to get their news from state media at or above the provincial level. They must not report or write their own news and must cite the source of any news published.
The rules contain provisions against subversive material, but experts say these mostly serve as incentives for self-censorship.
“It’s a deterrent measure. The symbolic significance is greater than the actual control,” says Yu Guoming, director of the People’s University Public Opinion Research Center.
Although barred from reporting, commercial Web sites have been allowed to distribute news from official sources, which analysts consider a definite step forward.
Leading Web portals such as Sina.com and Sohu.com get their news through contractual relations with hundreds of local newspapers. Many of these are under looser government control and have better access to local news than national papers.
The portals’ ability to edit and present news and offer searchable news archives creates a powerful tool for gathering information on current events in China.
Furthermore, China’s cyber-bureaucracy narrowly focuses its definition of news around politics. Specialized sites devoted to stocks, sports, entertainment and the like do not need to apply for licenses to publish news on their individual topics.
Other Internet news from unofficial sources is often user-generated, such as postings of foreign wire reports on Internet bulletin boards and chat rooms.