UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Writing for the Masses after Mao: News-Production in Contemporary China Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4jh31777 Author Chua, Emily Huiching Publication Date 2013 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Writing for the Masses after Mao: News-Production in Contemporary China By Emily Huiching Chua A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Aihwa Ong, Chair Professor Liu Xin Professor Alexei Yurchak Professor Martin Jay Spring 2013 Abstract Writing for the Masses after Mao: News-Production in Contemporary China by Emily Huiching Chua Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, Berkeley Professor Aihwa Ong, Chair Newspapers in China were once considered an essential ideological weapon in the revolutionary struggle to liberate the masses. Under Mao’s leadership, all newspapers were run by the Communist Party-state for the purpose of promoting its perspectives and mobilizing the people to its projects. Since the end of the Mao era in 1978 and over some three decades of market reform since, this same Socialist-propaganda apparatus has transformed into a teeming, multi-billion dollar commercial media industry. Through an ethnographic study of everyday news-production practices at a Chinese newspaper, this dissertation explores the practical, intellectual and ethical dimensions of writing about society, for society, amidst the great material changes and ideational reorientations at play in China today. 1 Table of Contents Introduction 1-20 Chapter One: Being a Journalist 21-42 What Now Counts as News Manual Intellectual Labor Chapter Two: The Newspaper Enterprise 43-66 The Necessity of Competition Getting the Business Side Running Censorship, Professionalism and the Figure of the Journalist Chapter Three: A Genealogy of Chinese News-Writing 67-95 The Context of Chinese 1. Modernist News-Writing 2. Maoist News-Writing 3. Contemporary News-Writing i. Evening and City Newspapers ii. Southern Weekend iii. Economic News Post-Mao News Ethics Chapter Four: The Jianghu Story of Society 96-116 The Reality of Different Realities Social Life and Death in Commercialization Chapter Five: Language and Life 117-142 The Liberal Solution To Succeed or Secede Conclusion 143-144 Bibliography 145-152 i Acknowledgements I would like to thank my advisor, Professor Aihwa Ong, and committee members, Professor Liu Xin, Professor Alexei Yurchak and Professor Martin Jay, for their invaluable insight and encouragement throughout the process of this project’s becoming, as well as for their care and guidance in the process of my becoming along with it. To those with whom I worked in China, I am deeply indebted not only for teaching me about Chinese journalism, but also for lasting lessons in writing and life. To family and friends, I am grateful for enduring conversation and warmth. Assistance for the research and writing of this dissertation came from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and a Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Completion Fellowship. ii Introduction It was with some sense of historical awe that I walked into the People’s Great Hall on a bright Beijing morning in 2009. Across from the old Imperial Palace and west of Tiananmen Square, it had been built in 1959 as part of a massive, ten-building construction project undertaken to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. Since then, it was here that Communist Party of China held its five-yearly National Congress and that the state’s highest governing body, the National People’s Congress, met annually. Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Zhao Ziyang, Jiang Zemin and all the other big names in the turbulent history of modern Chinese politics, had once walked and talked and steered the course of this sprawling empire- turned-country from inside these very corridors. And now I was there, a junior newspaper journalist sent to cover the Eighth National Congress of Returned Overseas Chinese. Media staff were being directed to the balcony seats, which overlooked the Main Auditorium’s famous red carpet and red cushion rows. Some eighty other journalists and photographers had arrived and were settling in, while the conference delegates mingled and milled about below us. At nine o’clock, the auditorium was called to order, and the Party’s ultra-elite Politburo Standing Committee filed into the auditorium. Everyone, including President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, took their places behind the desks that had been set up on stage. All rose for the national anthem and as the music played, a feeling of grandeur swelled under the auditorium’s bejeweled ceiling with a bright red star at its center. As the proceedings began and one speech followed another, however, I began to notice that the journalists were not being very attentive. The speakers were no lightweights – Deng Nan was the daughter of Deng Xiaoping, and the Vice-Chairman and First-Secretary of the China Association for Science and Technology; Sifang Zhaoguo was a Politburo member and the Chairman of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions; Lin Jun was the Chairman of the Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese. But the journalists did not seem impressed. Some fiddled listlessly with their mobile phones, while others folded their arms, closed their eyes and tried quite earnestly to sleep. Those who had less trouble were already unceremoniously sprawled out in their seats. The journalist next to me occupied himself with trying to take a photograph of Hu Jintao. He zoomed in and out on his camera, but try as he might the image remained small and blurry. After an hour of speeches, a fifteen-minute intermission was announced. Almost immediately, the balcony sprang back to life. Everyone had their cameras out. Those who had come with colleagues took turns photographing one another against the backdrop of the stage and seats below. Those who had come alone made do by holding their cameras at arms length and photographing themselves. After fifteen minutes had passed, an usher came through the aisles. “The meeting is about to recommence! Please be seated! The meeting is about to recommence! Those who want to take photos can do so later!” he called. The journalists vaguely acknowledged his request. “Let’s get outta here,” “About time to go,” “Shall we pack up?” I heard those around me say, and noticed that several were already heading for the door. By the time the speeches began again, only half the journalists remained to resume their idle pastimes. Should they not have been more on edge? These were the highest-level political leaders of a powerful and famously authoritarian state. One would have expected everyone to at least be attentive, if not 1 obsequious in their presence. Yet there the journalists were, slumped and gently snoring, while the President and Premier sat stiffly at attention. How could one explain this unexpected inversion? “Sounds normal,” Kong, my colleague at the newspaper shrugged when I related the experience to her, making no change in her facial expression at all.1 “Events like that you don’t really go there to do anything,” she said plainly. “There’s nothing really to do. The speeches were all written beforehand, and no one’s going to say anything they didn’t plan to, so it’s not like there’s anything to witness or investigate.” I asked her why it was still considered worth reporting such events, if everyone knew there was not really any story in them. “Because ‘News is the mouthpiece of the Party,’” she cited the official slogan ironically. “That kind of event you can report just because it’s official. It’ll only be a short piece, telling the specifics of the event, describing the scene a little and maybe quoting some officials. An article the size of a beancurd, maybe. But it’s certain to get published. Of course you could easily write it without going there in person too. The journalists who went just wanted a chance to get inside the People’s Great Hall, that’s all, take some photographs to keep as souvenirs.” I found this depiction of the state of journalism in China rather worrisome. Are journalists not concerned with bigger issues than that, like the public’s reading needs or society’s common interests? “Sure, they’re concerned, but what can they do? Things in China are very complicated,” she tried to explain. “News is just one small part of things, and a not very important part either. It doesn’t have that big of a role to play. In the past journalists were considered very important because there were so few of them, and newspapers were supposed to be the ideological compass of the whole country. But that’s just the delusion they had in the Mao era. People don’t need to be told how to think. What journalists can do now is report on things that happen, that’s all.” I wondered how one could keep writing news, without a sense of what one was writing for. “Well, that’s how journalism in China is,” she responded matter-of-factly. “It’s not about abstract notions of ‘the media’s social role,’ that’s just something academics say. It’s about information. You don’t have to think so much. You just have to know what kind of information is usable and what isn’t. It’s like a game, where you’re endlessly collecting things and moving them around. Is that good or bad? Who knows? It is doesn’t make a difference, whichever you say.