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Future Is Elsewhere
Over the past week or so, the editors and journalists demanded Tuo Zhen’s resignation and an investigation of the “truth” behind the procedural breach regarding its New Year’s special edition and New Year’s message.
They issued open letters, they organized a signature campaign, and they even threatened a strike. Public support for them stormed on to Weibo, China’s popular microblog service.
By Tuesday and Wednesday (Jan. 8 and 9) though, there were signs that an internal split had occurred. Conservatives among them had gained the upper hand, and the idea of a strike had faded away quietly. By Thursday (Jan. 10), it was over, as the latest issue came out without giving any explanation about what deals had been made.
This means only one thing: The Propaganda Department has won, and Southern Weekly’s revolt has failed. Without any rights or independence to speak of, Southern Weekly will surely face a purge. Frankly, from the moment that agreement was reached (whatever it was), the fate of the liberal weekly was sealed.
As a matter of fact, the structural quandary of CMOs decides that journalists at these organizations are extremely unlikely to take unified, collective action against censorship. A CMO is a hybrid whose upper body is the rigid system and lower body the fluid market.
The Party’s newspapers often look ugly, and their content is unappealing.
The Party’s newspapers often look ugly, and their content is unappealing.
Within the same newspaper, on the one hand, you have the publisher, the editor-in-chief, and the editorial committee parachuted in by the Party, and on the other hand, you also have what are called “migrant workers” in journalism.
The former could hardly be expected to rise against the system because they are part of the system and their interests are rooted in it. If some of them do as in this week’s event, they easily concede.
As for the migrant journalists, while there are fewer strings holding them back, they would not want to make sacrifices for something for which they lack any sense of belonging.
There is a winner though in the Southern Weekly episode, and that’s the hundreds of ordinary citizens from all walks of life who took their demands to the street.
Furthermore, the street protesters made appeals different from that of the Southern Weekly journalists who, throughout the event, stated consistently in their string of open letters the desire to voice and solve their discontent within the confines of the system, even using expressions such as “fully respect the Party’s control over the media.”
For the first time in the last 24 years, we saw banners and slogans calling for “freedom of expression” and “constitutional democracy” and saying, “lift ban on freedom of the press,” “abolish censorship,” and more. For several days, it was like a joyful festival outside the Southern Media Group compound, and those young and beautiful faces have impressed me deeply and given me hope.
All too soon, the first major event in 2013 was over. My sense is that those action takers need to project their voices in more places and elsewhere in order to realize their goals. A free China will only be born from people outside the system.
Mo Zhixu, the pen name of Zhao Hui, is a Beijing-based Chinese dissident intellectual and a frequent contributor to Chinese-language publications. He is known for his incisive views on Chinese politics and opposition. He is the co-author (with Zhenhua Su and Jingkai He) of “China at the Tipping Point? Authoritarianism and Contestation” in the January issue of the Journal of Democracy.
This piece was originally published in Chinese in the Hong Kong magazine iSunAffair Weekend and then republished and edited in an English translation by Yaxue Cao on the blog Seeing Red in China. The Epoch Times publishes this article with permission, after lightly editing Cao’s translation.The Epoch Times publishes in 35 countries and in 21 languages. Subscribe to our e-newsletter.
