Photojournalism in China 

Speaker:  AN Guanxi,   XIANG Mei

Date: Thursday, 29^th March 2012

Time: 11am-1pm

Venue: A 7.3

Chair: Guo Dawei

OPEN TO ALL

Mr. AN Guanxi is now a Visiting Scholar at the China Media Centre, University of Westminster. He also joined University Missouri in the US in 2010 as a visiting scholar. Mr. An was the director of Photo Department in Oriental Morning Post based in Shanghai for more than 5 years. He obtained his Master degree from the first Master Course organized for Chinese photojournalists to learn digital media in 2008.

In this seminar, Mr. An will introduce photojournalism in China; the requirements of photojournalists, agenda setting and the trend of photojournalism.

Mrs. XIANG Mei has rich experience working for the Olympic games as media operator. Before join Xinhua News Agency as photojournalist and editor in 2009, she worked for the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of 29^th Olympiad as a project manager in Photo Services of Media Operations. In 2011, Mrs. XIANG moved to London. She is now studying Media Management at University of Westminster, while working for Xinhua News agency’s London bureau as well as working for 2012 London Olympic as media operator.

She will talk through her experiences as a photojournalist, editor and media operator during big events.

More about China Media Centre and seminars see http://chinamediacentre.org/

If you have any inquiry about CMC events, please contact Miao Mi at m.mi@my.westminster.ac.uk

But today the situation is not the same. Vast numbers of people are much better off than before and the country as a whole is succeeding in improving life in every facet, which was definitely not the case before the 1980s.  Little by little officials are subject to scrutiny and procedures – from peer review to elections to the Freedom of Information Law – that oblige them to be more accountable. And New Media has frightened the baddies and encouraged good behaviour.

What Wen is probably worried about are two great gulfs; first that between the highly educated, public spirited and competent central government policy world and the local officials with their immense power and their inclination, as always in Chinese history, to enrich themselves; then there’s the gulf between the latter and ordinary people, who find their efforts to run their businesses stymied by corruption and political obstruction. The state is both catalyst of change but also able to stifle it. The Party interferes in everything too, from investment decisions to court cases, ostensibly on ideological grounds.

It’s not only the Chinese Prime Minister who is concerned. Our famous commentators, from Neil Ferguson to Peter Hitchens, Will Hutton to Jeremy Paxman all opine. Their underlying themes, it seems to me, are twofold: how will China use its power in the emerging world order in which the USA is not the ‘predominant hegemon’ to use a Chinese expression, and whether the Chinese political system is fit for purpose, or whether it will collapse under pressure from a dissatisfied citizenry and because of its inability to control corruption.

Martin Jacques in his thought provoking WHEN CHINA RULES THE WORLD has made a good start on thinking through the first issue, but on the second, raised onto the domestic agenda again yesterday by Wen Jiabao, our great commentators are not very satisfying not only because they hold to the ideological position that the only workable government model is that of Anglo-America, but also because it’s really hard to know what’s going on.

Among a few others, the American academic Shambaugh writes very well on Chinese government, McGregor has done a good book on The Party and Kerry Brown at Chatham House has published a stimulating book on elections in China,Ballot Box China. They all help scope the field and they all tell us about the brilliant people at the top.

But the book that offers a deep insight into Chinese government at the local level – for me, at any rate – is a novel. A Civil Service Diary by Mouse tells the story of a young graduate in his first years as the lowest of all civil servants in a poor rural parish. Badly treated by his superiors because he has no contacts, he struggles to serve the peasants in his charge by getting built the road which will link them to civilization, allow them to sell their produce, make enterprise worthwhile and raise their standard of living.

Every stage of his battle with bureaucracy, his search for funding, his efforts to persuade villagers to give up land and contribute labour, his persuasion of the planning department to hand over the specifications, his need to grease palms to get permissions – every one is there. The detail is riveting because it all rings true. Young Mr Hou is a very competent operator in a world in which interpersonal relations, the ability to build networks and the guile to avoid corruption and its attendant dangers are vital skills.

The novel hides nothing. There are officials who have the youngest and newest girls at the local brothel reserved for them; there are the fund managers who demand payoffs for releasing mortgages and grants; at one point a government investigation team beats up Mr Hou and tortures him with sleep and food deprivation.

But at the same time there are able and decent people fighting that China may succeed and people get opportunities and material conditions that their parents could not dream of. You realise that what we call corruption can exist side by side with public spiritedness and dedication, sometimes in the same persons.

At the end of volume 1 Hou is elected to an important position in the teeth of the establishment, which does everything it can, bar breaking the law, to get his name expunged from the candidates’ list. Until Hou’s local colleagues submitted his name as a candidate with the requisite number of local signatures, no—one had ever stood against the official list. The local Party Secretary is incensed and his machinations as he tries to find ways of annulling or undermining the vote are comic; the shame of the official candidate who, in the elections, is knocked out by Hou, is awful, because we know that the ambitious competitor has built his hopes of future job security, achievement, marriage and reputation on winning.

There are 9 more volumes to go and I am going to read every one of them.

Today’s Chinese literary renaissance is like nothing so much as that of Victorian England. On this, I will keep you posted.

http://www.cps.org.uk/blog/q/date/2012/03/14/china-literature-and-political-reform/

Speaker: Dr. Bingchun Meng

Date: Thursday 8th March, 2012

Time: 2-3.30pm

Venue: A6.5, Maria Hewlett Building (A Block), Harrow Campus

Chair: Prof Hugo de Burgh

OPEN TO ALL

In this presentation, Dr Bingchun Meng will first lay out some of the theoretical debates as well as methodological challenges regarding the research of mediated citizenship. She will then draw upon my two recently completely projects, one on online spoofs and another on a peer production community on the Chinese Internet, to offer some empirical materials for reflecting on the issue of mediated citizenship. Dr Meng will conclude with a few thoughts on future research agenda.

Biography:

Bingchun Meng is a Lecturer in the department of Media and Communications at London School of Economics and Political Science. Her main research interests lie in communication governance and media production, both of which are examined in the context of globalization and technological shifts. There are three strands in this research: 1) What are the institutional responses to the challenges brought by new communication practices such as disturbance to political control and subversion of the conventional business model; what are some wider ramifications of such responses? 2) How have the institutional arrangements of media production changed in response to the local and global conditions and how the change affects the content being produced. 3) Media production at the grass-root level. How citizens exploit the opportunities afforded by digital technologies to expand their cultural and political participation, which, in different social contexts, may be constrained. These lines of research are connected by a general inquiry into the power dynamics operating at the macro- and micro-levels in communication networks.

Before joining LSE, Dr Bingchun Meng was a post-doc fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, where she worked at the Centre for Global Communication Studies and also taught courses on Chinese media. She obtained her PhD in Mass Communication from the Pennsylvania State University.

If you have any queries about CMC events, please contact Miao Mi at m.mi@my.westminster.ac.uk

CHINESE CHRISTIANITY AND THE PARTY

Speaker: Dr GerdaWielander
Date: Monday 5th March
Time: 2-4pm
Venue: A 6.8 Maria Hewlett Building (A Block) Harrow Campus
Chair: Prof Hugo de Burgh
OPEN TO ALL

This talk asks the question what influence Christian values have had on social and political values in post-socialist China. Christianity, understood as an ideological source of social and political values, informs both official ideology and ‘dissident’ ideology, albeit in different ways and to a different extent, and is an increasingly accepted source of social moral and ethics in contemporary China. I argue that while we tend to think of China as an atheist, secular state, it is in fact vital to understand the importance religion plays in the state’s response to emerging new values in society without giving ground in terms of a more democratic system.

Biography:

Gerda Wielander’s research interest lies in contemporary China’s social and political development. Most recently she has been interested in the way Christian belief is influencing and shaping political discourse in contemporary China. She has published several articles in this field and has been awarded an AHRC Fellowship in 2012 to complete her book on Christian values in Communist China (to be published with Routledge in 2013).

GerdaWielander was educated in Vienna and Beijing. She obtained an M.A. in Chinese Studies in 1990 with a dissertation on Liang Qichao’s historiography, including a first translation into German of Liang’s “XinShixue” (New Historiography). Her PhD (1995) investigated the Malaysian Chinese evaluation of China’s Democracy Movement (1976-1989) as expressed in the region’s vibrant Chinese press.

Gerda is Principal Lecturer in Chinese Studies and Director of the Undergraduate Languages Programme in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages. She has taught at a number of British universities including SOAS and Cambridge before coming to Westminster in a full-time capacity.

More about China Media Centre and seminars see http://chinamediacentre.org.

If you have any queries about CMC events, please contact Miao Mi at m.mi@my.westminster.ac.uk

This month I have attended two. At the Warwick Forum I was a speaker but at the LSE I had nothing to do but listen to the professors and editors from China and watch the audience. The level of the speakers at both events was high – economists from Tsinghua, LSE and Peking, sociologists and media people from Chicago, Peking and Hong Kong. None appeared to have any ideological baggage. They discussed China pragmatically:  it’s political system as one with both credits and debits; a people with the right and duty to work together with all other Chinese of good faith – and that includes most politicians – to iron out the problems that impede a commonly shared goal.

The audience listened intent, laughing at the incredible, taking issue with weak arguments, supplementing proposals. Hundreds wanted to ask questions, ideas poured out. The enthusiasm was everywhere. The conference went two hours overtime. It was supposed to be in English but about half way through everyone started talking Chinese and the interpreters found themselves servicing the English monoglots rather than the Chinese visitors.

The conference programme can be found on http://www.lsecds.org/forum/cdf2012/

His message seems to be that if there have to be professional politicians then it is essential to give them ways of advancing that do not require them to destroy those they want to supplant; it is essential to find ways of controlling them so that they do not sacrifice other people and everything they feel they need to destroy on their way to power.

In Tough like Water, Yan gives us the seizure of power in a village by a young, ambitious man during or before the 1970s. Because there is no mechanism for the transition to a new generation or interest group, he uses cruel methods and causes damage to many people in order to get his gang in and replace the existing power holders. The interests of the citizenry and society are completely ignored, although he always claims that he is motivated only by idealism and zeal to serve others.  It is a brilliant exposition of the mind of a politician, whose motivations and behaviour are similar the world over, though limited and channelled of course by the system in which he or she has to operate.

Gao, the protagonist, is an unprincipled, ambitious young thug of few abilities who therefore chooses the world of politics in which to succeed. Before the age of enterprise, politics or war were the main ways in which young men might make their mark. To himself, Gao justifies his urge to power by his desire to prove himself worthy of his mistress, the pretty wife of a neighbour, with whom he can reach the heights of sexual excitement when they are contemplating or celebrating his political victories.

Gao can only rise if he oust the power holders of his village and, since there are no elections, he can only do this by coup, which involves either killing them or destroying the bases of their power, and/or by impressing the policy makers at the higher level. Maoism gives him the tool in the right to attack, humiliate and ultimately destroy those who run the village; to keep up the pretence that this is an ideological struggle he tries to eradicate traditional customs, buildings and memorials. At one point he finds that someone has been burning incense and launches a witchhunt. The local chief is more concerned about Gao’s neglect of the farmland but Gao puts politics first.

There is a disaster looming in that the crops have been ignored in the enthusiasm to make revolution, ie change the powerholders. When warned that to expend energy pulling down the ancestral temple is not only a distraction at a time of crisis in the fields, but will also so alienate the peasants as to make it impossible to motivate them to work, Gao finds a compromise. He won’t actually pull down the temple but he will inflame a mob of his devotees – the yobs and misfits of the village – to break into the temple and burn the contents. As this in accordance with ideological instructions from on high, the old guard dare not stop it. What it achieves is that it demonstrates his, Gao’s, power. He is very happy to see burn the fruit of hundreds of years of scholarship and devotion, the records of past generations and the very soul of his village, for his temporary personal advantage.

Worse will come. The two cudgel their brains as to how they can topple the local chief, a be- medalled veteran of the Korean and Vietnamese wars,  and, carefully paying attention to his behaviour in meetings, suspect that he is having illicit relations with a woman official. In pursuit of evidence, they visit the chief’s home village (some two days’ distance, no telephones or email) where they are welcomed with generous hospitality as visiting officials by the villagers. Astonished by the relative affluence of the village – no-one is starving, there is even plenty of surplus food and there are unheard of luxuries in meat and eggs, they soon discover that, thanks to the chief, this village has never collectivised, but the villagers have been allowed to retain their own smallholdings rather than to work as the slave labour of an official, as elsewhere. No wonder it is so successful!

Feigning admiration, the visitors gather evidence on the grounds that this is a marvellous model which must be promoted widely; the success of it will certainly result in the chief being rewarded (after all, care of the peasants, ensuring their ability to feed themselves, must come first mustn’t it?). When they hear that the woman they wanted to pin illicit sexual relations on is in fact the chief’s sister in law, the wife of another army hero, they are even more excited; the naive villagers help their guests gather evidence of her involvement too.

The ambitious couple leave so thrilled that they just cannot stop making love in celebration;  in between bouts of passionate copulation they vie to promote each other to higher and higher positions and eagerly looking forward to getting staff posts in the hierarchy ‘without the duty to labour’. To the reader this is absurd. How can these runts imagine that, just by shopping an able official who has, by being unideological, managed to look after his charges, they can be promoted to senior positions? Yet so it is. The chief, war hero notwithstanding, and several of his associates get 20 years in prison camp – life with death, in other words – and the label of rightist which will plunge their families into the abyss of the persecuted forever. And the young upstarts are on a roll. Power is theirs. Chauffeured cars, big offices, the right to pull down buildings and rearrange gardens and make or break others will be theirs.

The author’s message here seems to be this: without a transparent method of selecting and promoting power holders, China is condemned to this kind of abuse.

The second point is that professional politicians are maybe always meretricious and immoral. Look at Tony Blair – he helped kill or main a million Iraqis to advance himself as an international celebrity. The protagonist of this novel works on a smaller scale, but the deal is the same.  This kind of person exists in every society; fortunate is the society that can harness their energies to constructive rather than destructive purposes and also, perhaps, force them to wait for power until experience has matured them into some sense of social responsibility.

As to ideology, it is what politicians use to advance themselves; their ability to persuade others of its validity is their skill; ideology can always be made to trump reality. Look at these English examples: dogmatic monetarism, multi-culturalism, ‘real books’ reading and ‘access’, all ideological positions with dysfunctional results for those over whom the ideologists want to exercise power.

Yan Lianke is a powerful writer about something that matters. Unfortunately the only one of his books so far in English is Serve the People, a story of how sexual passion breaks taboos and undermines political shibboleths.

The songs the 20 Chinese officers sing include pop songs and folk songs and patriotic songs. They have a repertoire which, I have discovered, is shared by many Chinese, students or officials or housewives or pensioners, started on at primary school and then enriched at a hundred dinner parties and outings. Although few of the songs are nationalistic, in fact most are love songs, the singers’ whole demeanor exudes confidence and pride in their country. And why not? Not only do they come from the world’s most ancient surviving civilization, with innumerable contributions to humanity to its credit, but they have, after 200 years of struggle, fused the essence of Chineseness with the technologies of modernity and created the entity which looks as if it may dominate the world, and that quite soon. In the course of this endeavour, Chinese attitudes to and perceptions of the world have changed as fast as the skyscrapers have gone up. Have ours?

I don’t know, but what I do know is that singing matters and that we have just as much right to be confident and proud of our country as they. Former Secretary of State Michael Forsyth, when he led the Scottish Young Conservatives (yes, there were some once; I was President of one very active unit) published a song book. But today, hardly any Brits can sing for fun. I know. I host a great many parties at which Chinese sing and Brits droop. That surely must reduce their social lives, their joy and their sense of belonging. Mr Malone is brilliant to have galvanised those forces’ wives to sing – but why was it necessary? Why is singing part of everyone’s daily happiness in China but not here?

Prof Michel Hockx from SOAS, University of London, Dr. Mei Hong, Assistant Professor from Southwest Jiaotong University and Prof David Gauntlett from University of Westminster, will give a talk with the title ‘China: the New Media Explosion’, You can find more details about the speakers and an abstract of the talk below.

SOAS& CMC 2012 Spring Seminar

CHINA: THE NEW MEDIA EXPLOSION

Speaker: Prof Michel Hockx, Dr. Mei Hong

Interrogator: Prof David Gauntlett

Date: Wednesday 22nd February, 2012

Time: 4-6pm

Venue: C1.04 New Cavendish Campus, University of Westminster,

Chair: Prof Hugo de Burgh

OPEN TO ALL

ABSTRACT:
This lecture introduces the history, development, and widespread popularity of Internet Literature (wangluo wenxue 网络文学) in the People’s Republic of China. The speakers will deal in turn deal with two discrete aspects of the phenomenon, namely the rise of online popular fiction and its impact on other media, and the significance of online practices for the more marginal genre of poetry.

BIOGRAPHY:
Michel Hockx is Professor of Chinese at SOAS, University of London. Born and raised in The Netherlands, he obtained his PhD in 1994 from Leiden University for a thesis on modern Chinese poetry. His later work has dealt with various aspects of the sociology of modern Chinese literature, including the study of early modern literary societies and literary magazines and, more recently, the study of Internet literature. His monograph Internet Literature in China is forthcoming with Columbia University Press.

David Gauntlett is Professor of Media and Communications, and Co-Director of the Communications and Media Research Institute, at the University of Westminster. His teaching and research concerns people’s use of media in their everyday lives, with a particular focus on creative uses of digital media. He is the author of several books, including Creative Explorations (2007) and Making is Connecting: The social meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0 (2011). He has made several popular YouTube videos, and produces the website about media and identities, Theory.org.uk. He has conducted collaborative research with a number of the world’s leading creative organisations, including the BBC, Lego, and Tate.

Mei Hong is a vice professor of Communication Department of Art and Communication College, Southwest Jiaotong University, China. She obtained her PHD in 2006 from Sichuan University for a thesis on Culture and Communication. She is interested in media and society and has published a book on Internet Literature.

More about China Media Centre and seminars wee: http://chinamediacentre.org/

If you have any queries about CMC events, please contact Miao MI at m.mi@my.westminster.ac.uk

Jeremy Paxman (principal news and current affairs presenter, BBC), Wang Hui (Head of Communications, City of Beijing) in the chair, Bai Yansong (principal news and current affairs presenter, CCTV)

Jeremy Paxman and China’s leading current affairs presenter and writer Bai Yansong joined Paul Jackson and David Morgenstern, from the UK television industry, at the the Future of Public Media workshop organised by the China Media Centre of the University of Westminster and the Communications University of China. The event took place in Beijing, China, on 12 January 2012.

The full-day workshop explored common experiences and challenges facing public media organisations in China and the UK. Contributors came from academic, journalistic, policy and business backgrounds and investigated where common interests and potential partnerships can exist despite real differences in media systems, giving participants the chance to identify areas of common interest and build the foundations for future partnerships.

The four visiting British speakers at the conference, with the Conference Director, Professor Hu Zhengrong. (From left to right: David Morgenstern, Paul Jackson, Professor Hu, Jeremy Paxman and Professor Hugo de Burgh)

Key speakers attending the workshop included:

From the United Kingdom

• Jeremy Paxman, the UK’s leading current affairs presenter.
• Paul Jackson, an outstanding UK TV producer, former executive producer of BBC and ITV’s entertainment departments.
• David Morgenstern, former director of BBC’s entertainment programme development department, currently Director of 10 Star company’s Programme R & D Department.
• Prof Hugo de Burgh, Director of China Media Centre, University of Westminster.

From China:

• Prof Hu Zhengrong, Deputy President of Communications University of China, Chairman of Chinese Media Research Association and the Honorary Doctor of the University of Westminster
• Bai Yansong, China’s leading current affairs presenter and writer.
• Yang Hua, Deputy Director of the CCTV News Centre
• Zhang Haichao, Deputy General Manager of China International Television Corporation (CITVC)
• Ren Xue’an, Deputy Director of CCTV Channel 1

Last month the 4 day annual meeting of the Central Committee took place with the theme of enlivening the ‘cultural system’.

Chinese culture, in the sense of publishing, artworks and the appreciation of historical artefacts is developing very richly without any need of the Central Committee. New schools and universities are being launched while existing ones expand and clone and introduce new ideas and new pedagogy. So what is there for the Central Committee to discuss?

Two things. What significance the ‘culture industries’ have for China’s economic development and what role the very important institution, the Culture Establishment or culture xitong, will play.

The concept of the‘culture industries’ was invented in Britain but has been seized upon by Chinese intellectuals and policy makers (usually with acknowledgments to its parent) to emphasise the importance of the softer industries. Most officials in China will by now know that they are to be judged not just on how many miles of road are built or factories put up under their watch but on the concert halls, artist villages, animation companies, museums and so forth they can initiate.

Whereas money put into universities to work on the creative industries in the UK would doubtless result in the recruitment of more people to write turgid papers which nobody would read except the colleagues judging the writers’ ranking in the next Research Assessment Exercise, Chinese universities seem to be getting stuck in to their own projects with the local communities and individuals, spawning enterprises and workshops. There is a good deal of interest too in how you initiate and incubate creativity. One university plans to bring out some British psychologists and teachers to run a workshop on just that and my own organisation has been briefing broadcast executives on how small British companies are so productive of ideas that the UK is the world’s largest exporter of programme formats.

Some scoff at the Chinese as potential innovators, damning their ‘authoritarian’ political culture and ‘memorising’ schooling as impassable barriers. Like Bill Gates, reported to have said that ‘no-one was ever creative who didn’t have his basic maths and grammar right’, I’m not so sure. Any society whose food is as varied, evolving and imaginative as China’s is innovative in the deepest sense that they can apply their creativity to everyday life. Our summer school students，usually 2nd year undergraduates, astonish British lecturers when they are sent out to direct, shoot and post produce short videos and again when they have to think up ideas for television entertainments and get them judged by British Commissioning Editors. They are nothing if not imaginative and, what’s more, they realise their imaginings with enterprise, energy and the ability to apply themselves and master new skills, both dispositions learnt in a very demanding education system.

In the luxury design side of the culture industries Chinese consumers are buying Hermes and Burberry and Vuitton now because they are the best, but regular visitors to China daily witness new products and new brands which are applying internationally proven methods to their own workmanship. Its just a matter of time and trouble…….. What does this matter to us?

We have to face it that the comforting idea, that where brain and sparkle are needed we Westerners can always stay one step ahead even if all our basic necessities are produced more cheaply and efficiently in China, needs rethinking. Of course most of China’s exports are still made up of things designed by Westerners but this won’t last forever. Little by little Chinese are going to be doing their own conceptualising, research and designing. The government is also determined to reduce the exposure of China’s economy to the influence of the West, by powering the domestic market. If Chinese consumers can be spending enough to marginalise foreign buyers and if the things that Chinese consumers want are mainly to be conceived as well as produced in China then where does that leave the West? Ok, this is a reasonably long-term scenario, but it is one that our political leaders need to be thinking about.

And what about the Chinese government’s ability to realise its policy aspirations? Far from having a dysfunctional political system, as almost every foreign correspondent seems to think, China may have the edge on us institutionally too.

The Culture Xitong – the Administrative Framework for Culture – is led by the Central Propaganda (Information) Department.

There is a presupposition widely adhered to in Chinese society that culture must be supportive of authority and that it is one of the duties of government to use such media as are at its disposal to educate and inform the public as it see fit.

This approach has a number of facets which can seem to outsiders, at least to those from the Anglosphere, remarkable. For example, every city government will have a section responsible for spiritual development and civilised comportment, which will promote cleanliness, courtesy and good behaviour among citizens, through campaigns, competitions and public events. Communist media theory aside, officials who are as attentive to detail as this understandably also regard it as their duty to ensure that opinions are guided and that information that is subversive of interpersonal morality or good administration is excluded from publication. Regulating public communication is tasked, because of the legacy of Communist organization, to the Central Propaganda Department (CPD) of the CCP (MacGregor 2010: ch8).

As an illustration of the power of the CPD it is notable that, in early 2011, when it was widely reported that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao had visited petitioners at the State Bureau of Letters and Calls [国家信访局] to show his concern that petitioners against injustice were not being treated appropriately by many local authorities, Chinese observers reported that the Central Propaganda Department had criticised the Prime Minister for so doing, a surprising but not unprecedented revelation. The year before it had been reported that parts of Wen’s speeches had been censored on ‘at least four occasions in recent months’ (Moore 2010). These incidents give an idea of the authority attributed to the Propaganda Department.

Quoting a Party publication, Shambaugh comments that its definition of the CPD

‘means that virtually every conceivable medium that transmits and conveys information to the people of China falls under the bureaucratic purview of the CCP Propaganda Department. This includes all media organs, all schools and educational institutions, all literary and art organs and all publishing outlets.’ (Shambaugh 2009: 107)

The CPD is responsible for (1) issuing instructions on content, (2) the professional development of content managers (editors, publishers) and for (3) monitoring the content of communications to ensure that they do not transgress the official line on topics that the Party considers important. It has units at every level of administration of which local newspapers and broadcasting channels must take account. The CPD answers for the xitong of information and cultural institutions to the most powerful decision-making body in China, the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CCP.

It guides and supervises the xitong members (Perry 2001: 27-8), which include: the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, the State Administration of Press and Publication, the State Council Information Office, the Ministry of Culture, Xinhua News Agency. It shares with the Ministry of Public Security the task of filtering and monitoring the Internet. Each of the organisations will have provincial and local branches. There is in other words a comprehensive structure through which to influence ‘culture’.

While my description above may imply that the powers of the CPD are all negative, all about exercising control, that is not necessarily the case today. New ideas about how culture can be developed both to enrich everyday life and to create new industries are shooting through the xitong; enterprising officials are encouraged and professional development courses and workshops are held to vitalise local committees and stimulate entrepreneurship. While it may be the case that ideology and hierarchy will have a stultifying affect, as China’s critics assume, this is not necessarily so.

The Central Committee believes that officials in Beijing can kick into fast gear a renaissance in culture that creates modern industries and diverts people from admiration for European culture into applying modern technologies and commercial skills to their own. The Central Committee may not be so wrong.