UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
Hong Kong Media and Freedom of Speech:
A Case Study of Phoenix Television's Current Affairs Debate
by
Wenjin Zhou
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS
PROGRAM OF COMMUNICATIONS STUDIES
CALGARY, ALBERTA
MARCH 2009
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As one of the Four Asian Tigers, Hong Kong is known for its highly successful capitalist economy. On July 1, 1997, Hong Kong was officially returned to Mainland
China by the British government. Since the transition to Chinese rule, Hong Kong has experienced a rapid redistribution of political power and a realignment of social forces.
Its mass media—as a cultural commodity and ideological apparatus of modern capitalism—has undergone a dramatic transformation. Although Beijing repeatedly expresses its support for the right of freedom of expression that Hong Kong enjoys under Article 27 of the constitution of Hong Kong, guidelines and rules that limit this right are still imposed from above. The main question for journalists and media managers in Hong Kong is how to find a balancing point among freedom of speech, political pressure, and market expectations in a region where an authoritarian political system, a public and journalistic commitment to press freedom, and a commercial system co-exist.
This study scrutinizes the content of a TV program, Current Affairs Debate, produced by Phoenix TV, one of the few non-government related television broadcasters available to mainland Chinese audiences. In order to discover whether Hong Kong media manages to achieve authentic freedom of expression under the Chinese central government's control, three shows that aired on Current Affairs Debate all dealing with a sensitive topic, corruption in China, are analyzed in the study. The study suggests that the program contributed to a certain degree of freedom of speech by meeting the two criteria first established by the Commission on Freedom of the Press:
iii It presented a diversity of participants and points of view and a degree of objectivity.
This study also found that Current Affairs Debate employed three discursive strategies in order to maintain a degree of free expression while not to be too critical of the Beijing government. First, the program balanced criticisms and support towards the government by providing debaters from both sides in order to be impartial. Second, the experts who debated on the show used credible facts in their arguments, which contributed to a degree of objectivity of the program. Third, by using specific adverbs, adjectives and metaphors while touching on sensitive points, the debaters reduced the sharpness of their criticisms. The study further suggested that Mainland Chinese media might use Phoenix TV as a model that allows for greater press freedom.
IV Acknowledgement
This thesis would not be possible without the support of many people and organizations that I owe a great deal of gratitude to for their help during this journey.
First of all, I would like to express my deep and sincere appreciation to my supervisor,
Dr. David Taras, for his precious suggestions and comments throughout my dissertation work.
I also wish to thank Dr. Wisdom Tettey, Dr. Shaobo Xie and Dr. Lloyd Sciban for inspiring me and providing useful suggestions on the thesis topic. Acknowledgements must also go to Dr. David Mitchell, Dr. Richard Hawkins and Dr. Maria Bakardjieva for their great help and encouragement during my graduate studies.
I would like to extend my appreciation to East China Regional Air Traffic
Management Bureau for their generous support on my thesis, especially for their help in providing many crucial materials and resources for conducting this research.
My deepest gratitude also goes to my faculty, the Faculty of Communication and
Culture, and to the University of Calgary for giving me this great opportunity to pursue my studies.
Finally, I would like to express my extreme gratefulness to my parents for their love, understanding and guidance. They have helped me overcome difficulties and provided much needed moral support. Dedication
To my beloved parents Table of Contents Approval Page ii Abstract iii Acknowledgements v Table of Contents vii List of Tables viii List of Abbreviations ix
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 The Debate over Freedom of Expression in Hong Kong 2 Research Question 6 Significance of Phoenix TV and Current Affairs Debate Program 8 On Corruption in China 12 Thesis Organization 14
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 15 Marxist Thesis on Unity and Its Root in Authoritarianism 15 The Marxist theory of Social Change 17 The Soviet Communist Theory of Mass Communication 19 The Operationalization of the Authoritarianism and Marxist-Soviet Theory in China 20 Contemporary China: Journalism and the New Economy 22 Theorizing Mass Communication in China 26 An Overview on Contemporary Hong Kong Media 28
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY—From Content Analysis to Discourse Analysis 30 Discourse Analysis: An Introduction 31 On Researching 'Texts' in Discourse Analysis 33 Guidelines for Conducting Discourse Analysis 34 Theorizing Freedom of Speech 35 Two Criteria of Evaluation 37
CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS 42 Degree of Diversity of Participants and Opinions 43 Degree of Objectivity 52 Balance and Bias 53 Credibility and Sensationalism 60
Strategies of Political Criticisms 63
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 69
REFERENCES 73
vii List of Tables
Table 1: A Typology of Chinese Media Organizations 24 Table 2: Debaters' Professional Backgrounds and Political Stances 44 Table 3: PI: Can the phenomenon of bribing officials to attain higher positions ever be eradicated? 53 Table 4: P2: Can IAACAbe helpful in fighting against corruption in China? 54 Table 5: P3: Can Mainland China copy Hong Kong's anti-corruption system? 56
viii List of Abbreviations
CBS Columbia Broadcasting System CCDI Central Commission for Discipline Inspection CCTV China Central Television CPC Communist Party of China HK Hong Kong HKJA Hong Kong Journalists Association HKSAR Hong Kong Special Administrative Region IAACA International Association of Anti-Corruption Authorities ICAC Independent Commission Against Corruption NPC National People's Congress PRC People's Republic of China PRD Pearl River Delta Region SAR Special Administrative Region SARS Severe Acute Respiratory Symptom RMB Renminbi, the currency of the People's Republic of China RTHK Radio Television Hong Kong UNCAC United Nations Convention against Corruption USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
"Where can one find a mixture of modern economy and archaic polity in which the media are free yet restrained, apolitical yet partisan, timid yet bold? Where can one find a people—and press—ambivalent about being emancipated by the motherland from the colonial grip and yet powerless to decide their own fate? Where can one find a press breathlessly fighting against impossible odds, powerfully swept by political winds, and reluctantly succumbing to a fait accompli?" (Chan & Lee, 1991)
The place is Hong Kong. As one of the Four Asian Tigers, Hong Kong is known for its highly successful capitalist economy. On July 1, 1997, Hong Kong was officially returned to Mainland China by the British government. According to the Basic Law,
Hong Kong's constitutional document, the local Hong Kong government retains sovereignty except in areas of national defence and foreign relations. Hong Kong's handover, under the "one country, two systems" policy, was unprecedented. Since the transition to Chinese rule, Hong Kong has experienced a rapid redistribution of political power and a realignment of social forces. Its mass media—as a cultural commodity and ideological apparatus of modern capitalism—has undergone a dramatic transformation
(Lee, 2000). Thus, local and foreign observers are closely monitoring the media-state- capital relationship in Hong Kong, which remains uncertain and fluid. Among these scholars and journalists, some argue that freedom of expression in Hong Kong has been curtailed since the handover, while others claim that basic freedoms remain intact. The following sections will describe the debate over whether press freedom in Hong Kong has been curtailed, introduce and discuss my research topic and its significance for the study of the evolution of Mainland Chinese media and freedoms in general.
-l- The Debate over Freedom of Expression in Hong Kong
According to the 1998 annual report of the Hong Kong Journalists Association
(HKJA), the legal basis for freedom of expression has diminished in Hong Kong. The association stated, "The legal framework for the protection and enjoyment of the rights to freedom of expression has moved several steps backward since July 1, 1997" (Amnesty
International Annual Report, June 1998). The 2002 annual report on freedom of expression complied by the HKJA and Article 19 l, an international human rights organization, described the five years since the change in political regime as "worrisome ones for freedom of expression—not worrisome in the sense that there has been a definitive and unambiguous erosion of important rights, but worrisome nonetheless. The coming five years may yet prove more challenging" (Hong Kong: Article 19 and HKJA,
2002). Survey data also reflect the disappointment of Hong Kong journalists and citizens about the changes that have taken place with regard to the media. According to the results of a Lingnan University public opinion survey commissioned by the HKJA (2002), almost sixty percent (58.4 percent) of journalists thought that press freedom in Hong
Kong had diminished since the 1997 handover. There was a growing awareness that the media was subject to political controls.
Concerns over Chinese policy towards the Hong Kong media began well before the handover. The tightening of freedom of expression was foreshadowed by a series of tirades by senior Chinese officials in the 1990s, especially after the Tiananmen Square incident. For example, Chinese Vice Premier, Qian Qichen, issued seven guidelines to be
ARTICLE 19 is an international human rights organisation which defends and promotes freedom of expression and freedom of information all over the world.
-2- observed by the Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwanese and foreign media when covering news about China (HKJA & Article 19, 1993), and laid down ground rules for post-1997 reporting. Although these guidelines are not elaborated in Hong Kong Basic Law, they are still followed by today's Hong Kong media. According to these guidelines, coverage of Taiwanese politics should be limited and promotion of 'subversive and separatist' views relating to what were seen as the Chinese dissident states, Taiwan, Xinjiang and
Tibet (HKJA & Article 19, 1997), or criticism of the Chinese leadership should be banned. The most recent annual report of HKJA (Hong Kong Journalist Association, July,
2007) points out that the government has banned certain publications, including the critical Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, from covering official meetings. Even one of
Hong Kong's pro-Beijing newspapers, Wen Wei Po, has encountered problems. Although its reporters were properly accredited, they were denied entry several times to meetings of Shenzhen's People's Congress in late March 2007. The authorities claimed that those meetings were open only to reporters from the mainland.
Surprisingly perhaps, another level of control comes from neighbouring Chinese provincial leaders and governments. In early 2003, the mayor of Guangzhou city (the capital of Guangdong province, the southern Chinese province neighbouring Hong Kong) openly criticised a Hong Kong reporter for bringing a Hong Kong journalistic way of doing things to Guangdong province (SCMP and Apple Daily, January, 2003).
Besides regulations and verbal threats from officials, according to HKJA and Article
19's annual report (HKJA & Article 19, 2007: 20), journalists in Hong Kong also confront the threat of imprisonment. In 2004, police forcibly took away two reporters while dispersing demonstrators protesting against the National People's Congress (NPC)
-3- Standing Committee's re-interpretation of the Basic Law. In 2005, Hong Kong journalist
Ching Cheong was arrested in mainland China. According to sources close to Ching
Cheong, his arrest was related to two incidents—his attempt to obtain a transcript of an interview with the late Communist Party Secretary-General Zhao Ziyang and a
September 2004 article in Ming Pao in which he criticised the former President Jiang
Zemin for signing an agreement with Russia that relinquished China's claim to about 1.6 million square kilometres of territory and demanding that Mr Jiang explain his position to the Chinese people (ibid, 2006: 21).
Some scholars argue, however, that it is unfair to suggest that freedom of speech in
Hong Kong was limited after the handover. According to Lee (2000), the Chinese government, for its part, has acknowledged that the "systems" in Mainland China cannot be imposed upon Hong Kong under the principle of "one country, two systems". At the same time, according to the instrumentalist view, China wanted to use Hong Kong as an example to lure Taiwan into re-unification. As a result, after the handover, China has largely refrained from openly intervening in Hong Kong. This explains Beijing's tolerance with respect to coverage of several sensitive issues by the Hong Kong media.
For instance, during the initial spread of the Severe Acute Respiratory Symptom (SARS) epidemic, the Hong Kong media gave it prominent and extensive coverage. A senior
Chinese official, Long Yong-tu, complained that the Hong Kong media had 'exaggerated and over-reacted' which might cause unnecessary public panic (Lai, 2007). In contrast to the freedom enjoyed by the Hong Kong press, two Xinhua News Agency editors were sacked when they released confidential documents relating to SARS (Ibid).
-4- Some scholars point out that freedom of expression before the handover—when the
British were in control—was also limited in order to protect the interests of the Crown.
Before 1997, press freedom was extended to coverage of the contending Chinese political parties, but not toward the colonial government itself. The Hong Kong press always had, however, considerable freedom to attack Chinese rulers—from the Manchurian Qing emperors of Imperial China to Nationalist and Communist leaders—but it had never been allowed to jeopardize the vital interests of British rule (Chan & Lee, 1991). Historically the British were very sensitive to any press attacks on imperialism and colonialism (Lin,
1997). Lau Siu-Kai characterized Hong Kong under the British as a "minimally- integrated social-political system" (Lau, 1981: 17-20). That is, an efficient, paternalistic,
British-bureaucratic polity superimposed on a Chinese society. Emergency regulations were summarily declared, empowering the colonial authorities with the right to suspend any offensive publications without explanation. For instance, under the Treasonable
Offenses Ordinance, any person who intended to "deprive or depose the Queen of the
United Kingdom" or to "levy war against her Majesty" could be sentenced to life imprisonment (Chan & Lee, 1991). Another regulation, the Public Order Ordinance, which was passed after the 1967 riot, stipulated that the press could not print any news about an unlawful assembly, defined as "a gathering of 10 or more persons in a public place without a police permit" (Shen, 1972; Lee, August, 1985). Under British rule, newspapers in Hong Kong were highly restricted. They had to register with the government and some were closely monitored. At one point, 485 publications were registered with the government, while 20 were influential enough to warrant government monitoring. According to data provided by Survey Research Hong Kong in 1984 the bulk
-5- of circulation and advertising revenues were garnered by market-oriented centrist and rightist papers. There was no leftist counterpart to the rightist press (Chan & Lee, 1991).
The issue of media freedom in Hong Kong is critical for a number of reasons. First, the issue is of intrinsic value to the future of Hong Kong itself. Journalistic freedom is the life blood of a free society and is in fact the essential measure of its freedom. Second, as pressures in China itself increase for greater freedoms, the freedoms or lack thereof enjoyed by the Hong Kong media can be of great influence within China as a whole. To some degree Hong Kong has become a laboratory for whether and how journalistic freedoms can or cannot exist within China itself. An examination of how media freedom is negotiated in Hong Kong can tell us a great deal about how the geological plates of politics in China and indeed in Asia may be shifting.
Research Question
First, it is necessary to summarize the main points of the controversy surrounding journalistic freedom in Hong Kong. That is, Hong Kong media is caught in a cross current of political pressures. Although Beijing repeatedly expresses its support for the freedom of expression that Hong Kong enjoys under Article 27 of the Basic Law, guidelines and rules that limit this right are still imposed from afar. As a senior journalist in Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) recently pointed out, "There is no clear dividing line between editorial judgement and censorship2. On the whole, no one has come up to me to tell me to do this, not to do that" (Lai, 2007). According to Lai's (2007) interviews with Hong Kong journalists, journalists working in RTHK said that on the one hand,
2 Written communication and interview with Carol P. Lai, the author of Media in Hong Kong.
-6- there was no interference with their work; but on the other hand, there were more occasions in which it was incumbent upon them to discuss and clarify certain politically sensitive perspectives before they went ahead with publication (Lai, 2007). The prime question for Hong Kong media is how to find a balance among freedom of speech, political pressure, and market expectations in a region where an authoritarian political system, a public and journalistic commitment to press freedom, and a commercial system co-exist. By examining how the media struggle to solve this dilemma, I hope to shed light on whether the media have been able to consolidate or even advance their role as a
'mirror' of public opinion or whether, under the impact of the Communist Party's control on information and public articulation, they have gradually been 'blinded' (Lee, 2000:
196). Thus, this study focuses on a general question: whether Hong Kong media, under the Chinese central government's control, are able to contribute to and enjoy authentic freedom of speech.
Previous studies have focused mostly on newspaper editorials describing the strategies that editorial writers have used to cope with the new political order and on the changing political economy and its effects on the media. Research on Hong Kong television programs is very limited. However, television in Hong Kong, just as in most other industrialised countries, is by far the most powerful of all media. Television is generally regarded as having a far-reaching influence on audiences. Recognizing the significance of television in Hong Kong society, this thesis will analyze the degree of freedom exercised by journalists by examining one of Hong Kong's landmark public affairs shows, Current Affairs Debate, on Phoenix Television. Specially the researcher wishes to uncover the discursive strategies employed by this program in addressing
-7- political issues. In order to examine these two questions, three shows that aired on
Current Affairs Debate all dealing with corruption in China, especially inside the
Communist Party will be analyzed.
The researcher will apply discourse analysis to analyze all the shows in order to identify recurrent features in them. Particular attention will be paid to debaters' lexical choices and the use of specific arguments. In order to measure the degree of press freedom of the three shows, two criteria of evaluation will be used. These criteria were suggested by the Commission on Freedom of the Press in their report in 1947. The
Commission was set up in 1942 by the publisher Henry Luce in the response to what was seen as the monopoly tendencies, sensationalism and political imbalance of the American press. It was conducted under the high-minded chairmanship of Robert Hutchins,
Chancellor of the University of Chicago (Blanchard, 1977). Its aim was "to discover where free expression is or is not limited, whether by government censorship pressure from readers or advertisers or the unwisdom of its proprietors or the timidity of its management" (McQuail, 2005: 171). The Commission was one of the first investigations into media performance and played on an important role in the history of media development. My research will apply two criteria recommended by the Commission in order to evaluate the degree of freedom enjoyed by the Hong Kong media: whether there is a diversity of views and participants, and the degree of objectivity that exists.
Significance of Phoenix TV and Current Affairs Debate Program
Phoenix Television plays a significant role among Hong Kong media because it is one of the few non-government controlled television broadcasters available to mainland
-8- Chinese audiences. The station which promotes a free flow of information and entertainment within the Greater China region was established on March 31, 1996. Most hotels and government offices receive its signals. Currently, Phoenix TV reaches the
Pearl River Delta . Ordinary citizens outside this area in China who have access to the
Internet can watch almost all of its programs online by paying 15 RMB (approximately
$2 CAD) per month.
Its two largest shareholders are Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and Today's
Asia Limited, a company that is largely owned by the CEO, Changle Liu. These two corporations own over 75 percent of Phoenix TV. Public investors own 16.4 percent.
Some observers believe that the views reported on Phoenix Television are pro-
China, while others think that Phoenix TV is more objective and neutral because it is not directly influenced by either mainland China or the Hong Kong government. Phoenix TV gained a following in mainland China largely because of its detailed reports on the 9/11 incident in 2001. Since it has a news bureau in Taiwan, the station is able to reach audiences in mainland China with detailed news stories on Taiwan politics and its coverage of social issues has greater depth than that of mainland Chinese media. It has also been able to broadcast information about events not covered by the government media, such as the Against Basic Law Article 23 Rally on 1 July 2003. However, it is also argued that the station has been cautious and conservative in dealing with news reports related to mainland China. For instance, during the SARS crisis in 2003, the station was among the first media organizations that had received information about the
3 The Pearl River Delta Region (PRD) in China occupies the low-lying areas alongside the Pearl River estuary where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea. The PRD covers nine prefectures of the Guangdong Province, namely Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Foshan, Huizhou, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing, and the SARs (Special Administrative Regions) of Hong Kong and Macau.
-9- fact that the Chinese government had concealed the truth about the epidemic. But it never disseminated this information. In addition, the station is also said to be strongly supportive of the Communist Party on the Falun Gong4 issue.
As one of Phoenix Television's marquee programs, Current Affairs Debate gained a large audience as soon as it debuted in March, 2003. It airs Monday to Friday at
12:30 pm and lasts 30 minutes. The program takes the form of a debate. Each show focuses on a hot topic. Three experts and a host are featured in each show. The host usually takes a neutral position, but he may also express a point of view depending on the topic. Experts from mainland China, Hong Kong, or foreign countries are invited to debate. They are usually university professors in social sciences, lawyers, journalists or public affairs commentators. By presenting arguments from various angles, they provide the audience with a variety of perspectives on current issues.
The motto of the program is to "discover the truth through debate". According to one of the show's founders, Lu Sining: "The program does not attempt to arrive at a correct answer on each topic. Its job is to present facts, reasons and evidence, so that people can decide the issues based on their own reasoning. Hopefully our suggestions will arouse attention in academia, business circles and political spheres like ripples spread through water5." For the audience, the uniqueness of the program, besides its format, is that it also offers them opportunities to participate 'online'. On each show, the
4 The Falun Gong cult was fabricated by Li Hongzhi in 1992. The Chinese government regards it as copying qi gong practices and adding a lot of superstitious beliefs. Falun Gong cult has organized several anti-government protests in which followers even burned themselves to death. These actions have been condemned by the government as putting people's lives at risk and wreaking havoc on the society. The government has outlawed this organization.
5 The source is translated from Lu Sining's article. Online available: http://blog.phoenixtv.com/index.php/uid_605037_action_viewspace_itemid_686
-10- host spends 2.5 minutes reading opinions that he has selected from the online forum, and the show also devotes 2.5 minutes to presenting views sent in via cell-phone. As one audience member, whose online opinions has been picked many times by the host, observed only those who reply early in the online forum, and who provide unique opinions will be selected.
The reason that examining Current Affairs Debate is important is that it has the potential to become a model for programming in mainland China. This can only be understood against the background of the economic changes that China has undergone since the late 1970s.
The economic reforms which were led by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 began the modernization of mainland China. In late the 1980s and early 1990s, reforms created market institutions and converted the economy from an administratively driven command economy to a price driven market economy. In most sectors of the economy the role of government was reduced, managers were given more decision-making power, enterprises were encouraged to produce for profit, the role of the private sector increased, and experimentation with new forms of ownership began in the state sector. In addition, constraints on foreign trade were relaxed, and joint ventures with foreign firms were officially encouraged as sources of modern technology and scarce foreign exchange.
Reforms have also created growing demand by foreign and domestic enterprises for effective advertising channels. Media commercialization, therefore, was part and parcel of the development of a market economy. Although the Party has continued to attach great political and ideological importance to the media, as the economic reforms were
-11- implemented, it became increasingly clear that the state could no longer bear the entire burden of media and communication even if it wanted to (Zhao, 1998: 52-53).
The biggest challenge facing China Central Television (CCTV), a main government organ, is similar to what Hong Kong media is facing, that is, to please both the leaders and the led at the same time. Take for example, the "Focus" programs on
CCTV, a program that also deals with "hot topics". For the program to be popular, topics must deal with "hot spots," "confusing issues," and "touchy problems" of wide concern
(Zhao, 1998:117). How a topic is framed is also significant, especially when it comes to confusing and controversial issues. During the process of previewing the program, the director keeps asking himself these questions: Will this produce negative effects? Will it damage political stability? Will it intensify tensions and be detrimental to solving the problem? According to Zhao (1998), instead of directly addressing critical questions, the program explains and rationalizes current policies by describing similar practices (e.g., the universities are charging increasingly high tuition fees) in foreign countries. Since
Current Affairs Debate faces the same dilemmas that many programs in mainland China confront, but handles these dilemmas differently, the program could be a model for freedom of expression around hot public issues in mainland China.
On Corruption in China
Out of a wide range of topics aired by Current Affairs Debate, I selected three programs that dealt with the issue of corruption in China. I have done so because of the sensitiveness of this topic in contemporary China. Corruption has been a salient issue both in press coverage and in terms of how the party is seen by the public. Corruption
-12- undermines the party and good governance by flouting or even subverting formal processes. It also undermines economic development by creating distortions and inefficiency. In the private sector, corruption increases the cost of business through the price of illicit payments, the management cost of negotiating with corrupt officials and the risk of detection. In the 80 years since the establishment of the Chinese Communist
Party, corruption inside the party has always been a major issue. In China today, there are several institutions that have the task of fighting corruption, they are the Central
Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the Ministry of Supervision of the PRC, the Ministry of Public Security of the PRC, and the Supreme People's Procuratorate of the PRC. Most recently, the Communist Party adopted new systems and methods in this anti-corruption battle. For example, in January,
2006, all the Procuratorates6 throughout the country implemented an intensive campaign to uncover cases of bribery. They were allowed to search all criminal records related to bribery since 1997 in four industries: construction, finance, medical services and government procurement. Before the National People's Congress in 2007, the deputy secretary of the CCDI of CPC announced that the government would establish a National
Bureau of Corruption Prevention. During the 17th National Congress of the CPC which was held in Beijing7 in October, 2007, President Hu Jintao highlighted again the significance of the anti-corruption task of the Communist Party. However, the
6 The People's Procuratorates in China are institutions that supervise the implementation of laws in order to guarantee the consolidation and the exactness of carrying out the legislations.
7 The National Congress of the CPC is of great significance since it decides the leadership and the next five-year plan of the government. The 17th Party Congress is estimated to have attracted over 1350 foreign and domestic journalists.
-13- effectiveness of these policies is debatable—and hence the significance of both the topic and the character of the debate on Phoenix TV.
Thesis Organization
The next chapter, the literature review section, will examine theoretical frameworks with regard to press freedom and their relationship to state power and markets in China. Marxist and Soviet communist theories of mass communication, the roots of the ruling ideology of China, will be a central focus of the chapter. The ideological roots of the media system in China and its evolution will be examined in some detail. Chapter three will describe the research methods that will be used in the study. The researcher will describe the development of discourse analysis and explain how texts taken from media discourse can reflect power, ideology, dominance, and other social and cultural phenomenon. This chapter will also discuss the procedures used in conducting discourse analysis, including the standards used for evaluating freedom of speech. The data will be tabulated and discussed in the fourth chapter according to the standards discussed in chapter 3: the diversity of the participants and views, and the objectivity of the discussion. This second standard is divided into two more detailed parts: balance and bias, and the credibility and sensationalism of the experts' discourse. In addition, Chapter 4 will also discuss the strategies applied by this show in order to balance freedom of speech with a cautious attitude towards the Communist Party. In
Chapter 5, the theses' findings and avenues for further studies will be discussed.
-14- CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
The first task before conducting this research is to describe the nature of the ruling ideology, that is, the dominant paradigm with regard to how media organizations operate in Mainland China. The dominant ideology is derived from China's culture and history, including Marxist/Leninist ideology, on which the revolutionary state was founded in
1949. This section describes Marxist and authoritarian theories of mass communication, both of which are at the roots of the ruling political ideology in China. In order to portray a clearer picture of the media system in contemporary China, this chapter also explains the economic changes that have had an impact on the Chinese government's relationship with the media. This will help set the context for my research question by explaining why
Hong Kong media face ambiguous and conflicting political pressures when broadcasting news and public affairs programs. China's media policies will be described in some detail as well as the ambiguous circumstances that make it difficult for journalists to know where the limits to freedom of expression are. Besides, on the standpoint of the contemporary Hong Kong media, a macro level of discussion on what they are confronting in and outside of the local area will be illustrated.
Marxist Thesis on Unity and Its Root in Authoritarianism
Karl Marx has contributed a general outlook and at least three sets of concepts which became the foundation for everything that the inheritors of his political philosophy built.
According to Andrei Vyshinsky, Marxism tries to be "all-embracing"; it "contemplates totality"; it tries to reveal common roots for "all ideas and all different tendencies"
(Vyshinsky, 1948:82). As Siebert (1956:107) pointed out, Marxism is "characterized by
-15- authoritarianism, fixedness, a tendency to make hard and sharp distinctions between right and wrong, an amazing confidence in explaining great areas of human behaviour on the basis of a small set of economic facts... Marx and his followers placed an almost mystical value on 'unity'—unity of the working class, unity of the Party, unity of choice amongst alternatives...The idea of unity and generality derived from Marx is clearly related to the Soviet policy of control and the 'missionary-like zeal of many Communist agitators'."
The American scholar, George Kennan, a leading authority on Leninism and
Stalinism made the following observation:
Their particular brand of fanaticism, unmodified by any of the Anglo-Saxon traditions of
compromise, was too fierce and too jealous to envisage any permanent sharing of power.
Easily persuaded of their own doctrinaire 'rightness,' they insisted on the submission or
destruction of all competing power. There were to be no forms of collective human activity or
association which would not be dominated by the Party. They doubtless believed—and found
it easy to believe—that they alone knew what was good for society and that they could
accomplish that good once their power was secure and unchallengeable. (Kennan, 1952:105-
106)
Marxist political theories were derived from early authoritarians (such as Plato and
Machiavelli) and were modified to take into account the industrial revolution and the problems it created. The authoritarian theories demanded a unity of intellectual activity since only through unity could the state operate successfully for the good of all. The idealist in the authoritarian camp postulated that this unity would come from the realization of the contribution of each to the society as a whole, while the realists
-16- recognized that such unity of thought could in most circumstances be attained only through constant surveillance and control (Siebert et al., 1956: 11). Authoritarian theorists inevitably developed the proposition that the state which was the highest expression of group organization superseded the individual on a scale of values since without the state the individual was helpless in developing the attributes of civilization
(ibid). Plato was one of the exponents of the authoritarian theory of government.
Plato thought that the state was safe only in the hands of wise men, the magistrates, who are governed by moral authority and who use this authority to keep the baser elements of society in line. He conceived the ideal society as one in which the state established and enforced political and cultural goals. This meant that the state could impose rigorous control over opinion and discussion (ibid: 12). Another authoritarian,
Machiavelli held a basically pessimistic view of human nature. His theory subordinates all other considerations to the principal aim, the security of the state, which was to be achieved by a realistic, non-moralistic policy on behalf of the ruler or the Prince (ibid:
13). Under such a doctrine, public discussion must be confined whenever the ruler thought that it threatened the security of his principality. But, Machiavelli was convinced that, human nature being what it is, the role of the political leader is to utilize whatever means are necessary to promote the interests of his kingdom.
The Marxist theory of Social Change
In the shadows of the general outlook that we have discussed above, Marx developed his concept of social change which can be described in terms of its dynamics—the
-17- dialectic, its motivation—materialistic determination, and its goal—victory of the working class and ultimately a classless society.
Marx found the answer to the general rule of social change in Hegel's concept of the dialectic by which two opposing forces (thesis and antithesis) resolve their differences in a synthesis. This synthesis in turn becomes a thesis which is opposed by a new antithesis, from which grows a new synthesis—and so on throughout history (Siebert et al., 1956:
109). Marx used his dialectic to interpret history as a succession of class struggles. Social changes are inevitable according to the concept of materialistic determinism. As Marx wrote: "The idea is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought... Material conditions of life—chiefly man's way of making his living and the kind of living he makes—determine man's ideas" (ibid). For
Marx, the dominant ideas and institutions of any society are the ideas and institutions of the dominant economic class. After studying the economies of western-Europe, Marx believed that productive forces would always change faster than productive relations, thus throwing society out of balance. Economic depression and crises, which were inevitable, would broaden the gap between the rich and the poor. But the rich would become fewer and the poor more numerous. Finally, the working class would rise and take over the means of production and form a new classless society (ibid).
For Marx, the state was merely a device for one class to control others. And it is clear from what Marx wrote about materialistic determinism that he felt that control of the press would rest with those who owned the facilities—the presses, news papers and later had he lived to see it—broadcasting stations:
-18- The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same
time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of
those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it... In so far, therefore, as they
rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that
they...among other things... regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age:
thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. (Marx and Engels, 1938, p.39)
The press, like other institutions of the state, is simply a class organ. Real freedom of the press could never exist except in a classless society where the working class had seized the material properties of communication and had no fear of control by bourgeois owners (Siebert et al., 1956: 111). Arguably Marx did value freedom, and wanted the conditions of true freedom to be created.
The Soviet Communist Theory of Mass Communication
Soviet mass communication was developing as an integral part of the Soviet state.
Mass communications, from the beginning of the proletarian revolution, were conceived of instrumentally. It was Lenin who said that the newspaper should be a "collective propagandist, collective agitator...collective organizer" (Lenin, 1927:4). This theory requires the media to be used as instruments of "social change, social control" and of
"serious purpose" to "convey the 'word' as interpreted by the Kremlin in a tight frame of reference" (Siebert et al., 1956: 116). According to party doctrine: "Soviet radio must carry to the widest masses the teachings of Marx-Lenin-Stalin, must raise the cultural- political level of the workers, must daily inform the workers of the success of socialist construction, must spread the word about the class struggle taking place throughout the world" (Inkeles, 1950:264).
-19- Whereas press freedom is seen in the Anglo-American world as freedom from the state, press freedom, in the Soviet Communist sense, takes place within the allegedly beneficent state. According to Vyshinsky: "In our state, naturally, there is and can be no place for freedom of speech, press, and so on for the foes of socialism...Freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of meetings, of street parades, and of demonstrations are the property of all the citizens of the USSR, fully guaranteed by the state upon the single condition that they be utilized in accord with the interests of the toilers and to the end of strengthening the socialist social order" (Vyshinsky, 1948:617).
According to the famed anthropologist, Margaret Mead, the Bolshevik personality also demanded a complete subjection of the individual to the control of the Party. As
Mead put it, "The perception of the correct line of action is delegated to a small group of leaders, and the will of the individual is to be used first for the voluntary act of initial subjection and then to execute this truth perceived by the leadership" (Mead, 1951:29).
The Operationalization of the Authoritarianism and Marxist-Soviet Theory in
China
From the very beginning, the Chinese Communist Party exercised strict control over its publications. In an authoritarian system the media are not allowed to communicate anything that could undermine the established authority or give offence to its political values (Winfield & Peng, 2005: 12).
Early in 1921, the first resolution of the Party's founding congress stated that
"journals, daily publications, books and booklets must be managed by the Party's central
-20- executive committee" and that "no central or local publications should carry any article that opposes the Party's principles, policies and decisions" (Zhao, 1998: 19).
In an April 1, 1942, note to its readers, Liberation Daily, the Party newspaper, explained that to be the Party's propagandist, a newspaper must not only make all of its contents—each commentary, each feature, each news item—embody the Party's views but also make the newspaper an advocate for every single policy and campaign, and at the same time, it must educate the people, raise their consciousness, and guide and support them in their struggles (Zhao, 1998: 19). Mao Zedong, the Communist leader himself, issued many directives to high Party leaders on the importance of maintaining complete control of the press and overcoming tendencies toward independence among propaganda workers. For instance, in 1948, he criticized Party leaders for allowing
"erroneous" ideas to spread, he insisted that the press must unconditionally propagate the
Party's policies and he imposed strict control (ibid).
After coming to power, the Chinese Communist Party imitated the press system of the Soviet Union. Lenin's notion, for instance, that the Party newspaper should be the
Party's collective propagandist, agitator, and organizer was instrumental in shaping the
Chinese Party's journalism policy. Mao Zedong proclaimed that the media had four tasks: to propagate the policies of the Communist Party, to educate the masses, to organize the masses, and to mobilize the masses (Bishop, 1989). This domination over the media is called the "Party principle" which is described in a typical journalism textbook as comprising three basic components: that the news media must accept the Party's guiding ideology as its own; that they must propagate the Party's programs, policies, and
-21- directives; and that they must accept the Party's leadership and stick to the Party's organizational principles and press policies (Tong & Cheng, 1993:148).
The post-Mao leadership continues to stress this theory. Even Hu Yaobang, considered the most enlightened post-Mao leader, in a widely publicized speech in 1985 stated that "the Party's journalism is the Party's mouthpiece," including both Party and non-Party news outlets (Zhao, 1998: 19-20).
Contemporary China: Journalism and the New Economy
China's economic reforms began in 1978. The regime has settled on 'the socialist commodity economy', along with the one-size-fits-all epithet, 'socialism with Chinese
Q characteristics' . From 1990 to 2000, the market became the key factor in the reshaping of the media structure. Commercialization drastically changed China's media landscape with regard to media ownership and financing. Some party and government organs were allowed to become business entities, with advertising, subscriptions and investment capital into other businesses (Winfield and Peng, 2005).
By 2000, most Party organs had gained some degree of financial autonomy from the state and had become profit-making operations (Zhao, 2000a). This had an impact on media content and media functions as well as on the relationship between media organizations and government.
As displayed in Table 1, today's Chinese media can be roughly classified into three major types according to the degrees of control they receive from the government. The
8 "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" is an official term for the economy of the People's Republic of China. This is a form of a socialist market economy that while the state retained ownership of large enterprises, it does not use this ownership to intervene to change prices which are set by the market, and at the same time having all entities participate within a market economy.
-22- first type is the official mainstream media which are directly owned and operated by the government, such as Xinhua News Agency, the People's Daily, and CCTV (China
Central Television). Although these media are partially subsidized by the government, they are encouraged to explore other sources of income, such as advertising, paid information services9, and commercial sponsorship from corporations. As the largest media organ of the Party, CCTV is also the hottest advertising medium in the country.
The second media type exists in a circle around this inner core. Trade papers and various regional media are not considered as official state media, meaning that they are not directly controlled by the state. They are allowed to deviate from the official line and are subject to less political control than the official state media.
Lastly, there is an outer circle of media organs that has been allowed to develop into alternative voices. These media strive to meet the needs of the public for general information or entertainment and are financially and managerially independent from the government if not in name, in reality. For example, Cai Jing, a financial news monthly, was one of the first news magazines to disclose and criticize the government's response to the outbreak of SARS and other government scandals.
9 "Paid information services" are services that media provide their clients. Just as advertising, media organizations charge clients for displaying certain information. In the broadcast media, for example, paid information services usually appear in the same format as regular news or current affairs programs with regular announcers.
-23- Table 1 A Typology of Chinese Media Organizations
Official mainstream media Media organizations directly owned and operated by the government at central level; e.g. Xinhua News Agency, the People's Daily, CCTV.
Outer circles Media units traditionally affiliated with central or local government institutions but not considered as official state media, such as trade papers and various regional news organizations; e.g. China Industrial and Commercial News, Southern Weekend, Shanghai Media Group.
Fringe media Mass appeal newspapers and magazines, financially and managerially independent from the government; e.g. Cai Jing, 21s' Century Economic News, The Beijing News.
(Winfield and Peng, 2005)
The process of reform produced struggles over political and economic control.
Previously unheard voices became part of the public consciousness and lessened what had previously been the all-encompassing nature of Communist propaganda. Flourishing, profit-making tabloids and evening papers are filled with sensational content about scandals, crimes and other items of an entertaining nature, which the Party has found to be disturbing but impossible to curb, (Chu, 1994: 9). For instance, Southern Weekend covered sensitive topics in its editorial section such as discussions on the inequitable social status that Chinese farmers have due to various policies established by the government.
The decentralization and financial independence of the media challenged the effectiveness of government control. For decades, the government controlled all of the
-24- media's finances, distribution and personnel. But, within a freer market, the situation has changed dramatically. This has created an ongoing conflict between the independent decision-making of corporate management and 'interference from above'—the persistent competition between capitalism and communism (Winfield and Peng, 2005). Newspapers, broadcasting stations and the Internet are still subject to lingering ideological and cultural control by the state and the Party. Although the government has loosened its grasp, it has diversified its control in at least four ways. First, government censorship still exists, but is more difficult to enforce, except through self-censorship and blocking access to some sensitive websites and satellite channels. Second, Party committees limit each province to a single Party newspaper and control competition by constraining the proliferation of minor papers. Third, media regulation agencies (e.g. the State Council's Information
Office, the State Press and Publication Administration, etc.) oversee the licensing of all media businesses and can punish violations. Fourth, although media personnel are not directly assigned by the government, pre-job training and journalist certificates are still required for media employment, which are controlled by the government.
Interestingly, although Mao and his planned central economy may be long gone, the
Communist Party's views on the proper role of a socialist media have changed little over the past half century. Jiang Zemin, China's supreme leader after Deng, remarked in a
September 2000 interview with CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace, that 'Freedom of the press should be subordinate to the interests of the nation. How can you allow such freedom to damage the national interests?' Acknowledging that many foreign news sites have been banned in China because of their political content, such as www.actfortibet.com, Jiang said, 'We need to be selective. We hope to restrict as much
-25- as possible information not conducive to China's development' (Neumann, 2001).
Leaders after Jiang continue to follow this same policy.
As Dirlik (1989: 374) argues, the role that 'socialism' plays in these perlocutions is that of 'ideological guardian'. Certain guiding principles of socialism remain and while the road travelled is a capitalist one, the final destination is socialism.
Theorizing Mass Communication in China
Certainly, for greater descriptive and explanatory power at a systematic level, economic factors have to be integrated into any media framework. This is particularly the case with respect to China and its vast economic reforms. The Chinese media system is still defined by its unique political, social, economic and cultural environment. As Siebert et al. (1956: 2) have noted, "The press always takes on the form and coloration of the social and political structures within which it operates".
Scholars who have conducted research on the Chinese media system argue that conventional theories (McQuail, 1994; Merrill and Lowenstein, 1971; Nerone, 1995;
Severin and Tankard, 2001; Wiio, 1977) do not apply because they basically rely on western philosophical and ideological frameworks. Winfield & Peng (2005) pointed out that while media commercialization challenges the current Communist Party orthodoxy by initiating a redistribution of power and interests, the western model of a libertarian press is hardly a possibility. Rather, the situation in China contrasts with Hachten's (1999:
34) contention that Communism is waning, capitalism is waxing. China is seeking to marry the two.
-26- A large body of literature has empirically documented the trajectory of a media system that is gradually transforming itself from a pure mouthpiece or "transmission belt" of the Party to an amalgamation of various media models (Chang et al., 1994). Ordinary
Chinese have to improvise and negotiate their way through confusion and uncertainty because the media has many roles and faces (Pan, 2000). It is at once a Party publicity corporation that engages in promoting the legitimacy of the ruling party while making a profit (He and Chen, 1998, 2000), a "piper" who plays the tune for the Party but does not get paid (Chan, 1995), a "junk food" manufacturer that appeals to the lowest common denominator (Polumbaum, 1994), a fiddler juggling between the "Party line" and the bottom line (Zhao, 1998), and a "watchdog" that the Party unleashes from time to time
(Zhao, 2000b).
It can be argued that the current media model is a hybrid form that can best be described as 'authoritarian liberalism'—a combination of economic liberalism and political authoritarianism (Jayasuriya 2001; Birch 1998a, 1998b, 1999, 2000; Lee and
Birch 2001; Rodan 1998a, 1998b). As Jayasuriya describes it, this approach "combines the rational calculation demanded by the operation of the capitalist economy within the authoritarian shell of the state" (Jayasuriya, 2001). This model concisely synthesizes
China's reality. While the media are still ideological tools of the Party, new economic roles and cultural liberalism are also being promoted; the media are not just there to inform, but also to entertain and sell (Chu, 1994); the Chinese media system is a hybrid of political authoritarianism and capitalism. But one thing missing in this model is that the media in China are heavily regulated in theory but, due to the sheer size of the media
-27- sector, guidelines and policies are difficult to implement and enforce (Donald et al., 2002:
7).
As long as contrary views and opinions do not directly challenge the Party's ambiguous bottom line, they can be tolerated, albeit marginally. So long as the media do not directly challenge the government's power, they are free to entertain, sell and make money. There is always the possibility, however, that if the media go too far or become too free, the government can and probably will counter such trends.
An Overview on Contemporary Hong Kong Media
In previous sections I described the dominant ideology of Mainland China and how this created restrictions on media organizations. I will briefly focus on the challenges faced by the Hong Kong media in particular.
Hong Kong businessmen have close ties with the Chinese government because they know that their success depends on having access to the greater Chinese market. The same situation exists with respect to media organizations in Hong Kong that are owned by business interests. As Fung (2007) has argued in his observation of Hong Kong media after the handover, these businessmen believed that their media investment would receive
"Monetary and non-monetary dividend rewards from the authorities" (161). More specifically, these media owners could cash in through media or non-media related business with or in China. For example, they will be allowed to involve in joint investment with the Chinese media to set up mainland channels or newspapers. Thus
Hong Kong media organizations are constrained by the interests of the business owners who have to consider the new political and economic pressures. These interests and
-28- constraints drove them to conform at least to some degree with Beijing's policies or at least to take a "centrist" (Fung, 2007) position that wouldn't offend the Party.
This 'centrist' position is not necessarily a completely pro-China stance, according to Fung (2007), but a somewhat pro-China stance balanced against the operational autonomy enjoyed by journalists and editors who have political, economic and professional concerns at the same time. Journalists have to consider the interests of their pro-China employers, journalistic principles and a desire to prevent local criticism that they are giving in to self-censorship. These major considerations shape the media market. Fung (2007) argues that this newly normalized and naturalized political centre is less radical than the old one and while "neutral" is closer to the pro-China side.
This is the political mix in which Phoenix TV finds itself. Indeed Phoenix TV has not been immune from pressures by the central government. In 2004, for instance, one of its news commentators Licheng Ma was forced to leave his job because his strong criticism of China's foreign policy towards Japan and Korea dissatisfied Beijing. The station also has to be conscious of political sensitivities in Beijing because it is seeking ways to expand its market share in mainland China. In this sense, Phoenix TV is a journalistic window allowing us to observe relations between Beijing and Hong Kong media. But the station is neither fish nor fowl. According to Changle Liu, the CEO of the
Phoenix TV, the station tries to integrate western culture with the east, the mainland
Chinese culture with the ones of Hong Kong and Taiwan. How it manages to balance these conflicting pressures may tell us a great deal about the expression and limits of freedom in the new Global China.
-29- CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY
From Content Analysis to Discourse Analysis
From World War Two to the 1970s, mass communications research methodology was dominated by content analysis. Little attention was paid to the systematic analysis of much of what mass communication seems to be about, that is, the text (van Dijk, 1985).
According to Holsti (1969), content analysis is not just a theoretical approach, but an interdisciplinary method "for the objective, replicable and quantitative" description of texts. As Van Dijk (1985) has pointed out, content analysis is "interested in principles of description when it tries to account for the basis of unitization, and in this way also structural properties of media discourse can be attended to, at least from a quantitative point of view" (p.3).
During the second half of the 1970s, there was a new emphasis on media discourse, with some scholars rejecting the principles of 'classical' content analysis and the aims of media research with which it was identified (ibid). Hall (1980) expressed the break with the classical approaches in this way: "(our) approach defined the media as a major cultural and ideological force, standing in a dominant position with respect to the way in which social relations and political problems were defined and the production and transformation of popular ideologies in the audience addressed" (p. 118). These critical approaches owe a great deal to French thinkers such as Lacan, Foucault, Althusser and
Laclau. Other scholars, such as Halloran (1970), combined the classical methods of content analysis with a critical ideological analysis that sought to understand or discover the underlying meanings or processes of 'signification'.
-30- Beginning in the 1980s, some British linguists started to pay attention to the relations between language and ideology in the media (Fowler et al., 1979). They suggested that a complete discourse analysis could trace the properties of media messages beyond those found in the syntactic structure of single sentences.
Here we find a theory of media discourses that reflects a tight relationship between text and context, that is, it takes (media) discourse not only as "the basis for an inferential framework" (ibid), but rather, as "underlying phenomena in culture and society, such as ideologies, power, dominance, discrimination, racism and sexism, media access of elites, or the uses and effects of the media with the audience" (ibid). Ultimately, they regarded discourse as "a central and manifest cultural and social product in and through which meanings and ideologies are expressed or (re-)produced" (van Dijk, 1985:5).Discourse analysis has been applied to all aspects of media research, including news reports, TV drama, film, advertising, and so on.
Discourse Analysis: An Introduction
Driven by the thought that media might be capable of producing powerful unilateral effects and are a source for our "definitions of the world" (Connell & Mills, 1985: 26), scholars started to carry out empirical work on how media were socially constructed or
"manufactured" (Cohen and Young, 1976). Among those conducting media effects research, Graham Murdock and Peter Golding made it clear that for them the principal method is the "analysis of texts by a circumspect reading of the assumptions and nuances of routine journalism" which will help to "detect the frameworks of understanding within which news is constructed" (Connell & Mills, 1985: 30). Although they argued that
-31- sociology should pay more attention to the "analysis of social relations and social structure", the object of analyses, in their view, is a-social (ibid). For them, texts may be socially constructed and express socially shared meanings, but they are not themselves social. They further argued that meanings produced by media are determined by "ruling groups and this is then carried to subordinate groups...The signs ('message vehicles') of which the text are composed were conceived merely as instruments for conveying the meaning which had already been established" (ibid: 31). This sociological perspective contested what Jameson has called the 'structuralist projection' (Jameson, 1972: 101-
102), which led to a 'break' in the field of media analysis which provided, or prepared the ground for discourse analysis (Connell et al, 1985: 32).
Discourse analysis, founded in the structural linguistics of Saussure, was expanded and developed during the 1950s by Levi-Strauss. It considers its research object as a
" 'whole', or more correctly a totality of mutually dependent elements which, while comprising the whole, are subordinate to and, in the final analysis, dependent on and determined by the whole of which they were a part" (ibid: 33). This approach is based on language as a paradigm, which was conceived as a system of "mutually interdependent terms" (ibid) linked together by some basic rules concerned with meaning and the production of meaning. So language is social and objective.
This structuralist theory of media analysis was developed by the Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University and became identified as the
Birmingham School. The "Cultural Studies" school examined the political and cultural significance of media institutions in relation to social formations as a whole. According to Connell et al. (1985), their studies focused on the "centrality, authority and dominance
-32- of the media within culture and the specific role played by the media as... active agencies producing, circulating and securing the reproduction of dominant political and cultural definitions of social life" (p.36). In this respect, media were regarded as mediators, transmitters and reproducers for political institutions and their ideologies. Their major contribution was that instead of focusing merely on signification they integrated the theorization of ideology in a systematic way.
On Researching 'Texts' in Discourse Analysis
The convergence of media analysis and theories of signification and representation resulted in the theorization of the relation of the text to the practices which produced it.
The emphasis on messages, or 'texts' is crucial in analyzing the institutional practices of the media. As Connell et al. put it, "the text was seen, not as the expression or reflection of a given segment of reality, but as a 'moment' in a more general circuit of meaning production" (ibid: 38). Stuart Hall also argued that texts are "the products in some sense of a signifying practice, a practice which constructs and produces meaning" (Hall,
1978:26). These insights constitute the basis for the development of discourse theory and discourse analysis.
Recent studies have returned to the text. They regard text as a site in which different or even contradictory ideological discourses are articulated so that its coherence is
"produced by and is a condition of its ideological effectivity" (Connell & Mills, 1985:
39). Thus, recent research work on media analysis not only informs us about how media as a whole has been understood, but also makes assumptions about how culture has been re-thought. Stuart Hall, for instance, has related text to practices and social formations.
-33- He regarded these relationships as the outcome of a class struggle in the field of culture
"through which, and by which, the social relations structuring the field reinforce and maintain the hegemony of the ruling alliance of class fractions" (ibid: 40). Therefore, text is a particular "moment" (ibid) essentializing and articulating social relations as an active element in the "currency of hegemony" (ibid: 41).
Guidelines for Conducting Discourse Analysis
In discourse analysis, the power of language and the varieties and contexts of language use are more important than its mechanism and syntax.
Howard H. Davis (Davis, 1985) believes that three general questions are essential in conducting discourse analysis: 1. Who is speaking? 2. What are they saying? 3. What do they mean? These are the questions that will drive my analysis of Phoenix TV's Current
Affairs Debate.
The first question requires an evaluation of the speakers or participants that appear on the show. Participants in talk shows are subject to an institutional selection process. Media institutions select experts in different fields according to basic rules. Criteria usually involve the prestige and stature of prospective guests, that is, the roles that they play in society, as well as of course whether they can perform on TV. In attempting to answer the second question, "what are they saying", critical discourse analysis comes closest to the traditional mechanisms and practices of content analysis. Here, all related elements at the micro-level analysis (e.g., vocabularies, descriptions) and their meaning in a broader context need to be scrutinized. Unlike traditional content analysis, discourse puts great emphasis on the relations between texts and the context within which they are situated.
-34- The third question, "what do they mean", is the most important and difficult question to answer in discourse analysis. It requires an interpretation of the texts, content categories, lexical choices and all of the observations made after answering the questions stated above. According to Davis (1985) we can "postulate a range of intermediate categories and variations on these themes (in the texts)...Although we need to know about the conditions and receptiveness of audiences, texts themselves contain internal clues which point to some rather than other possibilities" (p. 54). We also need to relate external social relations to lexical choices in order to answer these questions: What are the significant absences in the arguments of the participants? Why would experts argue in one way rather than in another? What are the discursive strategies employed by the program in addressing political issues? Are these arguments biased in favor of one position or another?
Theorizing Freedom of Speech
The questions asked above deal with how the program will be analyzed, which is based on several criteria that I have mentioned in the introduction. In the following sections, I will discuss these criteria and why they were chosen. First, I will need to discuss some major conceptions of freedom of speech in order to explain my understanding to this term.
This thesis uses social responsibility theory which emerged in the twentieth century to define freedom of speech as the standard against which Current Affairs Debate will be evaluated. The theory was developed by the Commission on Freedom of the Press after
World War Two. It emerged in response to an increasing concern that the press was
-35- falling into the hands of a few powerful people; the owners and managers of media organizations. Media moguls, it was argued, controlled message dissemination, the selection of journalists and news editors and hence, the diversity of opinions available to the public. In contrast with libertarian theory which views freedom of speech, as
"freedom from external restraints", social responsibility theory maintains that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from constraints. It stressed the need for accountability to the larger society. As Siebert (1956) has written with regard to social responsibility theory: "Freedom carries concomitant obligations; and the press, which enjoys a privileged position under our government, is obliged to be responsible to society for carrying out certain essential functions of mass communication in contemporary society"
(p.74).
The notion that freedom of speech combines both negative and positive freedoms shaped social responsibility theory. Theorists argued that purely negative liberty, "is an empty liberty; it is like telling a man that he is free to walk without first making sure that he is not crippled...Freedom must be effective" (ibid: 94). The Commission on Freedom of the Press (1947), one of the most influential pioneers in evaluating the role of the press in modern democracies, pointed out that effective freedom has its positive as well as negative aspects. "As with all freedom," it argued, "press freedom means freedom from and freedom for", which means that "a free press is free from all compulsions, although not from all pressures", at the same time, it is "free to achieve the goals defined by its ethical sense and by society's needs" (p. 128). These concepts point out the necessity for all media to follow certain rules in order to enjoy genuine freedom of expression. The standards for evaluating free speech used in this study were guided by this perspective.
-36- These concepts apply to all forms of societies, no matter whether they are capitalist or socialist, and that is, media in all societies should have the freedom to search for truth, although requirements guiding media may vary in different societies due to distinctions in defining what the "interests" of these societies are. On the macro level, social responsibility theory ascribed six tasks to the press:
(1) servicing the political system by providing information, discussion, and debate on public
affairs; (2) enlightening the public so as to make it capable of self-government; (3)
safeguarding the rights of the individual by serving as a watchdog against government; (4)
servicing the economic system, primarily by bringing together the buyers and sellers of goods
and services through the medium of advertising; (5) providing entertainment; (6) maintaining
its own financial self-sufficiency so as to be free from the pressures of special interests.
(Siebert et al., 1956:74)
The six tasks above deal with what all media in general should do in order to be a responsible information and entertainment provider.
Two Criteria of Evaluation
This thesis applied two criteria to assess freedom of speech based on the reports of the Commission on Freedom of the Press. Denis McQuail (2005) summarized several reasons why the Commission constituted a milestone event. First, unlike other inquiries that focused on specific problems arising from the activities of the media, it was the first of such inquiries and reports initiated by the government to look into the failure of the media to meet the needs of the society and the possibilities to reform. Second, the commission has great influence to other countries in terms of media reform and
-37- reconstruction. Third, the findings of the report contributed to the substantial practice in the press accountability.
This study took two criteria listed by the Commission as measures of media performance.
According to the Commission, the first requirement of the press is to "provide a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day's events in a context which gives them meaning.. .and that the press must identify fact as fact and opinion as opinion"
(Siebert et al., 1956: 87). This requirement is accepted in virtually all western democracies. The best evidence for this is the development of objective reporting. From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the 1950s, the practices of news reporting had changed tremendously from a distorted and biased political instrument to objective news arrived at without the personal bias of owners or reporters. But to report news truthfully and comprehensively is not enough, the press also agreed to report "the truth about the fact" (ibid: 88). Although absolute knowledge of what is truth is sometimes impossible to attain, most journalists would agree that "the knowledge of truth is possible at least in principle" (Poerksen, 2008). According to these concerns, various studies on objectivity suggest that an objective report should be based on facts, be unbiased (lack of party affiliation and sensationalism) and balanced (Myrick, 2002; Reese, 1990; Daley & James,
1988; Stensaas, 1986; Mindich, 1998; Condit & Selzer, 1985; Taylor & Condit, 1988;
Mirando, 2001; Ryan, 2001). Denis McQuail's (1987) elaboration on the definition of objectivity also mentioned the components explored in the studies above. For him, objectivity consists of two parts: factualness and impartiality. Factualness refers to the need for a reporting that can be verified against its sources. Impartiality refers to the
-38- neutral attitude which is adopted by the reporter so that his/her personal preferences will not be imposed on the audience.
Consequently, my study on Current Affairs Debate will investigate two aspects of objectivity: balance versus bias, factuality versus sensationalism, meaning, first, whether the arguments made on the show demonstrate a variety of perspectives or a clinging to the party's position; secondly, whether they reflect credible facts or emotional appeals.
Second, it is generally understood that the press must serve as "a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism. This means that the owners of the press should carry views contrary to their own without abdicating their own right of advocacy" (ibid: 89-90).
Specifically, the press should try to represent a diversity of viewpoints beyond those merely preferred by publishers or owners, and provide access to a wide range of opinions.
Or as Norman Isaacs once put it: "Freedom of the press cannot mean the license to keep people from knowing" (Isaacs, 1953). A goal in this study is to determine whether there has been a fair representation of opposing sides in the debates that took place on the show.
This requirement suggests that the media serve as a democratic sphere where truth can be arrived at through discussion and communication. The test is whether media agencies allow a diversity of participants to be included so that interests and positions represented by different groups can be heard. This will be a second key factor in evaluating the journalistic standards of Current Affairs Debate.
Today's media, no matter what forms it has developed, should also act as a forum that allows exchanges of ideas according to the basic standards of free speech suggested by the Commission on Freedom of the Press. My research will apply the classic
-39- evaluation criteria suggested by the Commission on Freedom of the Press. The standards of analysis are: whether information is credible, whether it is objective and impartial, and whether there are a diversity of participants and views. Examining all of these will certainly allow us to evaluate media performance.
As was discussed previously, the research focus is on three out of nine programs dealing with the issue of corruption aired by Current Affairs Debate. These shows were downloaded from the website of Phoenix TV (itv.ifeng.com) after I set up a personal account and paid 15RMB (approximately $2 Canadian dollars). I watched all nine shows and selected three10 that in my view had the most heated debates about the effectiveness of the anti-corruption system in Mainland China. The other six shows focused on specific new policies or methods that were adopted by the government to control corruption, such as "Is it necessary to establish the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention?" and "Is creating a 'File of Bribery' effective in fighting against corruption". These topics narrowed the discussions to particular cases where the experts were more likely to focus their arguments on specific policies or genre of crimes instead of criticizing the whole political system or the government. The three shows selected, on the contrary, focused on the political system as a whole and touched on sensitive issues.
Again, discourse analysis will be used to analyze the language used in the program.
However, one limitation of the research is that it could only reveal how well the program did in delivering diverse and impartial information, but it could not reveal the intentions
Can the phenomenon of bribing for officials positions ever be eradicated (January 24, 2006, Current Affairs Debate)? Program 2 (P2): Can IAACA be helpful in fighting against corruption in China (October 26, 2006, Current Affairs Debate)? Program 3 (P3): Can Mainland China copy Hong Kong's anti- corruption system (June 27, 2007, Current Affairs Debate)?
-40- of the show's producers. Future research is required to understand the intentions of editors, producers and the experts that appeared on the show. This would of course involve interviews. A second limitation is that the research had to rely on text. It could not analyze audience reactions. Given the size and the scope of the audience and government controls, the study of audience effects in China is difficult at best.
-41- CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS
The present study analyzes Current Affairs Debate's discourse and discursive strategies in order to discover whether Hong Kong media are able to maintain autonomy and contribute to authentic freedom of speech. Two major factors will be analyzed in this chapter. They are: first, the diversity of participants and views and second, the degree of objectivity in the discussion. After these analyses, the chapter will discuss the discursive strategies used in the shows in order to reduce their criticism of Beijing. I selected three shows that dealt with corruption, a highly sensitive issue that goes to the heart of the political system in China. These programs can best be understood within the following context.
On January 23 2006, the CCDI of CPC announced six corruption cases involving charges of bribery against officials. This was the first time that the Commission held a press conference to report on cases of corruption inside the Party. Since then, the Party has moved aggressively in fighting corruption. In October 2006, for instance, the
Supreme People's Procuratorate hosted the first annual meeting of the International
Association of Anti-Corruption Authorities (IAACA)11, and endorsed the goals of the association. Some experts argue that this new campaign has been effective in preventing corruption and suggest that the anti-corruption system in Mainland China could be further
International Association of Anti-Corruption Authorities (IAACA) is a Non-governmental Organization. The establishment of IAACA was initiated at the High-Level Political Conference for the Purpose of Signing the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) in Merida, Mexico in December 2003. Its missions are to help the implementation of United Nations Convention against Corruption adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 31 October 2003, and to enhance the cooperation among anti-corruption authorities in different countries in fight against corruption. The First Annual Conference and General Meeting of IAACA was held in Beijing from 22nd to 26th, October, 2006. About 1000 delegates from 137 countries and 12 international organizations participated in the event. Among them, more than 250 are officials of deputy minister level or above.
-42- tightened by copying the model established by Hong Kong's Independent Commission
Against Corruption (ICAC)12. By contrast, other scholars do not think these new methods are effective. This is precisely the debate on which the three programs chosen for this study were based. The three programs featured debates based on these hot topics:
Program 1 (PI): Can the phenomenon of bribing for officials positions ever be eradicated
(January 24, 2006, Current Affairs Debate)? Program 2 (P2): Can IAACA be helpful in fighting against corruption in China (October 26, 2006, Current Affairs Debate)?
Program 3 (P3): Can Mainland China copy Hong Kong's anti-corruption system (June 27,
2007, Current Affairs Debate)? Although each show had a different entry point, they all dealt with the effectiveness of the anti-corruption system in Mainland China.
Degree of Diversity of Participants and Opinions
Each show featured three experts and was moderated by a host. Table 1 illustrates the characteristics of the participants and their points of view.
12 The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) of Hong Kong was established in 1974. The Commission is know for its effectiveness in cleaning up endemic corruption in the Hong Kong government through law enforcement, education and prevention. The ICAC is independent of the civil service. The Basic Law of Hong Kong stipulates that the ICAC shall function independently and be accountable to the Chief Executive.
-43- Table 2. Debaters' Professional Backgrounds and Political Stances
Major Aspects of Name (Show) Professional Background Political Stance Criticism Deficiencies in the political system Media and Communication determine that political reform has a Zhou He (PI) Studies Professor long way to go. A pessimistic attitude towards eradicating corruption. Political system as a whole University Professor in the Complimented the political system by Qingping Xiao field of political science emphasizing that Party has resolve (PI) and history of Communist and confidence to deal with Party corruption.
Legal aspects and Guobin Zhu Law Professor at City Deficiencies in the legal system as political system as a (P2) University of Hong Kong well as political system whole
Rong Chen Positive attitude toward newly Legal aspects and logical Lawyer (P2) established institutions. reasoning
Feng Lin (P3) Law Professor The Party should govern in Legal aspects: law, legal Lawyer and currently Qing Dong accordance with the Constitution system working for Phoenix TV as (P3) guest commentator
Specific aspects in The Party can find a unique way to political system: main Shuoming Ji Senior Reporter for Yazhou solve corruption according to the points in anti-corruption (P3) Zhoukan (Asia Weekly) country's history and culture. environment and institution effectiveness
On the one hand, he argued that the Party should be under the supervision of the mass media and the people, and Concerned with the Wei Li (PI, News Commentator for it should make electoral procedures interests of the ordinary P2) Phoenix TV transparent. On the other hand, he citizens emphasized the authority of Party institutions.
-44- In the three shows under examination, there were eight guests in total (two shows invited the same guest who was news commentator Wei Li). I divided them into three categories of expertise. The first category is legal experts. These experts included law
Professor Guobin Zhu, lawyer Rong Chen, law Professor Feng Lin and lawyer Qing
Dong. The second are experts in the social sciences. They are Media and Communication
Studies Professor Zhou He, and Professor Qingping Xiao, a political scientist who has written on the history of the Communist Party. The last category is made up of journalists and news commentators. They are senior reporter Shuoming Ji and news commentator
Wei Li who currently works for Phoenix TV.
As suggested by Lerman (1983) who conceived the Institutional Voice Discourse
Model, someone who speaks in a dual role, as an individual, also represents or personifies an institution. In this study, each expert spoke as an individual but in some sense personified an institution. As is shown in Table 1, the experts in the area of social sciences stressed the need to reform the political system in China. The following examples are extracts from PI and P2:
Extract 1 [PI]
Professor Zhou He: "To eradicate the phenomenon of bribing for official positions
under China's current situation is very difficult . . . This is because of the
deficiencies in the current political system. Political reform is a significant task and
has a long way to go . . . Hence the eradication of corruption also has a long way to
go."
-45- Extract 2 [P2]
Professor Qingping Xiao: "I think there is hope to eradicate (the phenomenon of
bribing for official positions in the process of election). Why? Because the
announcement of six corruption cases made by the Central Commission for
Discipline shows that our Party has resolution and confidence and it has Chinese
characteristics ."
The two social scientists both commented on the anti-corruption system in Mainland
China. Professor He emphasized the deficiency of the system, which in his opinion, was still the main obstacle in eliminating corruption despite current efforts. However,
Professor Xiao argued the opposite position. For him, the system established by the Party was a sign that the Party was making genuine efforts to deal with corruption. Obviously, he is on the side of the government and would trust the decisions made by Party organizations.
On the other hand, and not surprisingly, the legal experts tended to discuss the legal aspects of the situation. The following extracts come from P3 in which the focus of debate was on whether Mainland China should adopt the anti-corruption model that had been successful in Hong Kong.
The term "with Chinese characteristics" comes from the official term "socialism with Chinese characteristics" which is introduced by Deng Xiaoping after the economic reform in China in the 1970s. Since then it has been widely used in many fields in positively describing anything that reflects Chinese culture and social background.
-46- Extract 3
Law Professor Feng Lin: "Constitutionalism is a core issue . . . The organizations
of the Communist Party should not have administrative authority. (Lawyer Ms.
Dong: "Right!") Therefore, what we should do is to establish an anti-corruption
institution guided by the Constitution ..."
Extract 4
Law Professor Feng Lin: "The constitution did not endow the Central Commission
for Discipline Inspection power [with power in this jurisdiction]. " (Lawyer Qing
Dong: "Dr. Lin is right!")
Extract 5
Lawyer Qing Dong: "Lf there are minor corruption cases, they are under the
jurisdiction of the Ministry of Supervision; general criminal cases are under the
juristiction of the Ministry of Public Security; economic crimes [related to
corruption] are under the jurisdiction of the Supreme People's Procurator ate. This
is what L call poly-anti-corruption which has significant deficiencies. This is a very
important reason why anti-corruption practices [in China] are not effective. "
The arguments above are about the importance of the Party adhering to the constitution which does not give any Party organizations (e.g. the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection) direct power of administration, independent power of
14 "Constitutionalism" is a complex of ideas, attitudes, and patterns of behaviour elaborating the principle that the authority of government derives from and is limited by a body of fundamental law. Constitutionalism should first limit the power of the government, and at the same time protect citizens' rights.
-47- investigation and the right to make arrests. In contrast, Hong Kong's ICAC is authorized by the Hong Kong Basic Law15 and is independent from any Party or government institution. These two legal experts seemed to agree that the government should copy
Hong Kong and set up an independent institution authorized by the constitution. In
Extract 4 & 5, Professor Lin suggested that Party organs such as the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection should not be authorized to function as a judiciary as well as an administrative department. He argued that "most of what the Central Commission is doing is illegal." In Extract 5, lawyer Qing Dong discussed the disadvantages of the anti- corruption system currently used in China, which they argued is the main reason why the state should adopt the Hong Kong model.
The other two legal experts in P2, lawyer Rong Chen and law Professor Guobin Zhu, also focused on the political system as a whole and logical reasoning. The following extracts are examples of their arguments.
Extract 6
Law Professor Guobin Zhu: We have already had judicial cooperation with
Australia. But how many corrupt officials [who fled to Australia] were successfully
extradited from there? Very few! . . . This is because we have not yet built a well-
established legal system . . . The establishment oflAACA is not absolutely of no help.
But in order to fight against corruption, the task is to focus on the political system
inside the country.
15 Hong Kong Basic Law serves as the constitutional document of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of the People's Republic of China (PRC). It went into effect on July 1, 1997 replacing the Letters Patent and the Royal Instructions, when this former colony of United Kingdom was handed over to the PRC. The Basic Law authorizes the power of the Hong Kong ICAC to directly investigate corruption crimes.
-48- Extract 7
Lawyer Rong Chen: IAACA was organized by the Supreme People's Procuratorate,
its Chair [of this year's conference] was Chuangwang Jia, the Chief of Supreme
People's Procuratorate. The participants were officials from the inspection bodies of
many countries. Thus, it is supported by the governments of all these countries... The
establishment of the IAACA is a symbol of the government's resolution. It created
another way to deal with corruption.
These two extracts from P2 while both deal with legal issues illustrate two opposing points of view. Law Professor Zhu started by arguing that judicial cooperation with
Australia was not effective, which means that the newly founded network IAACA will not be very helpful in dealing with corruption. In his later arguments, he emphasized the establishment of a sound internal political system in order to uproot corruption. Lawyer
Chen, on the other hand, maintained that since IAACA was organized by senior officials from China's judicial system and was initiated by the government, the organization was a step in the right direction. Chen also argued that IAACA is helpful in terms of providing opportunities to learn from the experiences of other countries.
The journalists who participated in the debate had a much broader focus than did the social scientists and legal experts. In P3 where the major concern was about the political and legal system in China, news commentator Shuoming Ji focused his arguments on the political system. He argued that the differences between the anti-corruption environments in Mainland China and Hong Kong made the adoption of a Hong Kong model unlikely.
For him, the essence of Hong Kong's anti-corruption system is that it has seven elements:
-49- "political resolution, sufficient resources, a more effective legal system, public support, well-paid staff (in order to foster clean government), specialized personnel, sense of mission". The fact that the Hong Kong government stuck to these principles led to their success in the battle against corruption. Since it takes years to establish a better environment for fighting corruption, Mainland China falls short of these standards.
On another topic, commentator Wei Li emphasized the people's interests.
Extract 8
News commentator Wei Li: We should make it [refers to the process of cadre
election] transparent! If we publicize the votes of the people, the one who received
the smallest number of votes will be ashamed to take the position.
Extract 9
News commentator Wei Li: The mouthpiece of the Party [refers to the party media]
should represent people's voices! If it cannot represent people's voices, then we
don't need this mouthpiece! We should use the mouthpiece of the people!
Wei Li argued in PI that the phenomenon of bribing for official positions can be eradicated by making the process of cadre election transparent and imposing public scrutiny. For him, public opinion and public scrutiny are crucial elements in curing the disease of corruption.
Third, the arguments of the debaters reflected their different political stances, which can be divided into two groups. As shown in Table 1, Professor He, Professor Zhu,
Professor Lin and lawyer Dong are in the first group. They focused on the deficiencies of
-50- Party governance and the need for political and legal reforms. The second group which included Professor Xiao, lawyer Chen, senior reporter Ji and commentator Li in P2, supported the new methods of fighting corruption implemented by the Party.
Commentator Li who took a neutral position in PI was in neither group. He argued, in that particular program, from the perspectives of the people and suggested that the Party needed to improve governance by making party activities more transparent. But at the same time, he supported the authority of Party institutions. He both supported the government on some points and was critical on others. This diversity of political stances showed the variety of opinions provided by the show. On the other hand, it also show the balance of views delivered through the show, which will be further discussed in the next section.
The above analysis illustrates that the three participants that appeared in each debate represented a variety of professional backgrounds. They took different positions and together offered viewers a variety of perspectives.
In addition, each show also selected and aired views from the online audience. There was also an off-site audience that sent messages via cell-phone while they were watching the show. Detailed analyses of these opinions including the selection process and how those citizens represented the online/cell-phone audience as a whole are beyond the scope of this study. But some points need to be emphasized because opinions drawn from the off-site audience constitutes a crucial part of the show (approximately 10% of the duration of each show). First, some of these online comments or messages provided additional background information or offered support for one position or another. For example, in each show, there were off-site opinions that emphasized specific local
-51- officials who committed serious corruption crimes, which were not mentioned by the experts on the show. Some members of the audience, however, would show their support for one of the guest speakers in the show. Second, arguments from the off-site audience read by the host attracted the attention of the debaters and became fuel for their discussion. For example, in P3, one off-site viewer made the point that if Mainland China copied the independent system in Hong Kong, there would be a problem concerning how the government could reorient the current anti-corruption institutions that do not have independent powers (such as the Central Commission for Discipline). This question led to a deeper discussion about the practical aspects of changing the system. Third, the 16 opinions displayed during the three programs via cell-phone messages represented a wide range of locations in Mainland China. They were from 7 different provinces and from cities around the country: Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Sichuan, Beijing, Tianjin and
Henan. This indicates that the show reached a wide audience across almost all of China.
Degree of Objectivity
My analysis of objectivity, as discussed in Chapter 3, is based on whether the points made during the show demonstrated a genuine exchange of views rather than a one-sided pro-party position. To do this, I analyzed two elements: 1) whether there was a balance of points of view and information; 2) the credibility of the sources being cited and the degree of sensationalism that the experts used to make their points. My analysis is guided by the questions: "what are they saying?" and "what do they mean?
-52- Balance and Bias
One important characteristic of a debate is that it provides at least two opposing
opinions with each debater supporting different sides of the argument. Although each
debater does not provide a comprehensive picture of an issue, the whole debate does.
Generally speaking, all three shows provided a balance of sources and arguments. In
addition, as is shown in Tables 2, 3 and 4, each show had conservatives and reformers
delivering opposing opinions.
Table 3.P1: Can the phenomenon of bribing officials to attain higher positions ever be eradicated?
For Against
What the government should Expert Political Position Expert What the reality is Political Position do
The government should make the electoral process more transparent by publishing the Commentator results of the election. But the Neutral Li Party also has many advanced The reality is that the practices such as "criticism and deficiencies in the self-criticism"16 that should still Media and political system be carried forward. Communication caused corruption in Reformer Studies the electoral process, The government has shown its Professor He and are difficult to resolution and confidence in reform. solving the problem. And since Professor the battle against corruption is a Conservative Xiao part of an ongoing reform process, it should be allowed to take its course.
"Criticism and self-criticism" is regarded as one of the most advanced philosophies of the CPC. This party principle requires all party members not only to criticize and supervise the practices of other party members, but also to emphasize on self-reflection and self-criticism in order to improve the development of the Party.
-53- Table 2 shows that PI presented a combination of two distinct views: "what the
government should do" and "what the reality is". The "for" side emphasized the former,
that is, the importance of "making the electoral system transparent by publishing election
results for candidates" competing for high official positions in order to create greater
accountability. But the "for" side did not describe the forces that created so much
corruption in the election process in the first place. These points were taken up by the
"against" side. Professor He pointed out that corruption was "caused by deficiencies
inside the political system of China" including "one characteristic of the bureaucratic
system developed by Chinese culture and tradition, that is, the leaders make the final
decision, and appoint government officials". He further argued that "it is the number one
person in the Party committee17 that bribers usually buy off. Based on this reality, he
argues that "the eradication of this phenomenon has a long way to go".
Table 4.P2: Can IAACA be helpful in fighting against corruption in China?
For Against
Political Political Expert Major arguments Expert Major arguments Position Position
The IAACA can help Commentator in fighting briberies Conservative Li Since corruption is across the border. caused by the Law deficiencies in our The IAACA provides Reformer opportunities for our Professor political system, it government to learn Zhu cannot be prevented Lawyer Chen Conservative from other countries' by an international experiences in organization. fighting corruption.
"number one in the Party committee" refers to Secretary of the Party committee.
-54- In P2, as is illustrated in Table 3, the "for" side argued that the establishment of an international anti-corruption network can "help all member countries cooperate with each other in fighting against corruption across the board". The "for" side also provided evidence to show how the network would make international judicial collaboration more effective. The "against" side, on the other hand, pointed out that "the establishment of a sound anti-corruption system within China is the most important thing", and that "this international network only has symbolic meaning" and "cannot solve corruption problems inside the country". Hence, the debate presented important perspectives on how the international network might help in fighting corruption but also how the internal system needs more attention.
-55- Table 5.P3: Can Mainland China copy Hong Kong's anti-corruption system?
For Against
Expert Major arguments Political Position Expert Major arguments Political Position
The fact that our system is not successful requires us to copy Hong Kong's anti-corruption system. Law The government Hong Kong's Professor Reformer should assign an ICAC is successful Lin institution which due to several functions like the factors developed ICAC and is in an environment Senior that Mainland authorized by the Conservative Constitution. Reporter Ji China does not have. Thus, Since our anti- Mainland China corruption system is cannot copy the not effective in Hong Kong ICAC fighting against system. Lawyer corruption, we have to Reformer Dong copy Hong Kong's system which has more concentrated power.
The two sides in P3 (see Table 4) provided a thorough comparison of the anti-
corruption system in Mainland China and Hong Kong. Arguing that Mainland China
cannot copy HK's system, the "against" side focused on illustrating the successes of
HK's anti-corruption system. For instance, senior reporter Ji in describing seven factors
that contributed to the success of HK ICAC, argued that the Mainland did not have the
soil for this system to "take root, sprout, blossom and bear fruit". But he did not explain
why this was the case. It was the opposing side that described the ineffectiveness of the
Mainland's anti-corruption system (See Extract 3, 4&5) in order to argue for the
-56- necessity of copying HK's system. Hence, the audience received information on the situation in both HK and China and could form their own opinions about whether HK could serve as a model for the Mainland.
It should be emphasized here that the hosts of these programs helped by balancing the perspectives of both sides. Four or five hosts take turns presiding over Current Affairs
Debate. In general, these hosts function as mediators. They moderated the whole debate and frequently commented on points made by both sides in the debate. For instance, commentator Li in P2 said that the public was disappointed with the election system because it was not transparent and they were reluctant to express their opinions. So he suggested the party publish the opinions of the public. Host Mr. Liu then asked how the party could publish these opinions when no one provided any. But when the opposite side of Li focused on saying it is difficult to conduct political reforms, Mr. Liu asked in response: "Do we have ways to solve these difficulties then? What's the point of debating on this problem if there's no way to solve it?" This question stirred further discussion among the experts.
In addition, when the hosts read the comments already selected by the editor from the offsite audience, they commented on the arguments made by the offsite audience, or corrected some of the information used in these arguments. For example, while reading an online opinion from the audience, the host in PI argued that the contributor had used an irrelevant metaphor. In P2, the host corrected commentator Li about the number of corrupt officials who had been arrested.
-57- Having said this, I should also point out that the program was not without biased arguments and that not all hosts maintained a neutral position. Host Mr. Cheng in P3 clearly supported one side and also took part in the debate. The following extracts are some of the examples of his arguments.
Extract 10 & 11
Mr. Cheng: The argument that we cannot copy Hong Kong's anti-corruption system
is very reasonable . . . what we can do is to integrate the functions of the Central
Commission for Discipline and that of the Political and Legislative Committee.
Mr. Cheng: We should ask the National People's Congress (a) . . . we should make
a request (b) to establish legislation to give judicial authority to the two party
organizations (the Central Commission for Discipline and the Political and
Legislative Committee).
In the second half of the program, Mr. Cheng began to argue on the side of
Shuoming Ji. Both of them suggested that the Party did not need to copy Hong Kong's anti-corruption system. Extracts 10 and 11 represents Mr. Cheng's main arguments in which he suggested that the Party organizations could achieve the same success as Hong
Kong ICAC only by reorienting some of its institutions. Interestingly, his change of verb usage from "ask" in phrase (a) to "make a request" in (b) shows his respect towards the
Party.
However, it should be noted that it is rare for a host to take a position in the debate.
In this case, his participation created a more heated debate.
-58- Secondly, since the political system in Mainland China is always a sensitive topic, some debaters avoided making detailed comments or even touching on this topic at all.
And although some other debaters provided ample criticism, there were noticeable gaps and absences in their arguments. For instance, Professor Zhu in P2 argued that "our political system, our institutions (establishment), our law (system), our (anti-corruption) environment are not sound". He did not shy away from explaining the defects in institutions and in the anti-corruption environment (especially the public and media supervision that was absent). However, when he asked the other side about these sensitive questions: "Can Hong Kong's anti-corruption system be used in Mainland
China?" and "Can the head of Anti-corruption Bureau inspect the Secretary of the
Party?" the other side avoided answering directly and simply replied that "the establishment of an effective internal system is important, but we cannot '"make a cart behind closed doors'". Presumably the other side could also have provided information about how the international network he supported could help in creating internal reforms.
Another example came from P3. As an important link in the anti-corruption system,
"Shuang Gui", or 'Liang Gui', are regarded as an unusual procedure in discipline inspection within the Party and is usually not reported in the media. It is a measure in the discipline inspection of the Chinese Communist Party, a short term for 'to be inspected in the prescribed time and prescribed venue'. It usually means that party members in high positions are investigated inside the party, their activities are curtailed and they can be handed over to the Procuratorate for prosecution. This is a closed investigation. A party leader who is under investigation and whose corruption has been exposed, will be dismissed from the position and face legal trial.
-59- The legality of Shuang Gui is also controversial. The following extract dealt with the issue:
Extract 12 [P3]
Professor Feng Lin: So where is the legality of "Liang Gui"? Where is the legality
of confining people's freedom?
Senior reporter Shuoming Ji: It has legality! It is thought that "Shuang Gui" gives
him (the one who is under inspection) freedom.
Lin: Where is the legality of it?! (Lawyer Dong: Where is the legality?!)
Ji: He has freedom! It's just that you have people (refers to inspectors) accompany
you when you are going outside (of the place that is used to conduct inspection),
right? (Lin: He cannot go outside.) You can [go outside], in certain situations.
In this extract, the two sides are debating whether "Shuang Gui" has legal authority.
But they do not provide detailed background information about this inspection method.
The only thing we were told is that "Shuang Gui" does not allow those who are under investigation to go out alone. And even this point was disputed during the discussion.
Credibility and Sensationalism
I verified the factual information that was used in all three shows by referring to articles on authoritative websites such as "www.sina.com" and HKICAC's official website. The first issue that emerged in the debate was the legal authority of HKICAC and its characteristics. As was argued in P2 and P3 by Professor Zhu and Journalist Ji,
HKICAC functions independently and is accountable to the Chief Executive of Hong
-60- Kong. As Ji pointed out it has seven characteristics: "political resolution, sufficient resources, improved legal system, public support, well-paid staff (in order to foster clean government), specialized personnel, and a sense of mission". The second factual issue revolved around the general characteristics of anti-corruption institutions in Mainland
China. As was mentioned in all three shows, China has established two major anti- corrupt institutions. The first is the Anti-Corruption Bureau which operates under the direction of The People's Procuratorate. This body deals with corruption and bribery among government officials. The second is the CCDI of CPC which mainly investigates offenses among the Party cadres. If the offenses constitute a crime, the Commission will hand the case over to the Procuratorate. Although the two instruments were not discussed in detail during the shows, the essence of how they function was accurately portrayed.
Moreover, each side corrected the information mentioned by the other side if that information was presented incorrectly. This is illustrated in the following extract.
Extract 13 [PI]
News commentator Li: "For instance, in order to select a cadre, if we stick to our
system, firstly, the department concerned should nominate ...finally, the nominee
should be approved by the People's Congress. (Professor He: "Party Congress. ")
the Party Congress and the People's Congress . . . All cadres should be approved by
the Party Congress and after that, be approved by the People's Congress. "
In this extract, Professor He who takes a different position interrupted Li to make a critical point about the Party Congress in cadre elections. Li accepted and completed his explanation of the electoral system taking He's comment into account.
-61- Although most of the argumentation was based on solid evidence, the debate was not without sensational statements. There were two kinds of emotionally charged statements.
The first was used to shower the party with high praise:
Extract 14 [PI]
Commentator Li: Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist
Party of China is Judge Bao in the modern time!
Commentator Li used "Judge Bao" as a metaphor to praise the Commission. Judge
Bao refers to Bao Zheng who served as a judge during the Song dynasty. He is famous for his uncompromising stance against corruption among government officials at the time.
Today he is a universal symbol of justice in China. His stories have been adapted to a TV series and his image has been exaggerated, which has turned this historical figure into a more mysterious and legendary one. Thus, to compare one of the Party institutions with such a towering figure without facts or substantiation is an exaggeration. The second instance of sensationalism was when arguments were based on no evidence. These arguments were often posed as rhetorical questions:
Extract 15&16
[P2J Commentator Li: So we don't need to establish an Anti-Corruption Bureau,
and don't need to establish international anti-corruption organization?!
[PI] Li: Fine! So we should replace the Central Commission for Discipline
Inspection?!
-62- Here commentator Li used rhetorical questions to express a strong affirmative tone when the other side criticized anti-corruption institutions. These arguments took place when the debate became intense. Under such circumstance, Li used a rhetorical device and argued it in an extreme way to enhance the opinion that we need these anti- corruption organizations.
In sum, by inviting experts with different areas of expertise the show managed to provide highly credible information and a diversity of perspectives. Second, the show provided platforms for off-site audiences to express their opinions. Ordinary Chinese citizens had the opportunity to have their voices heard by having their opinions aired on
Current Affairs Debate BBS or via cell-phone. They come from at least seven different provinces in China and tended to be critical of government corruption. Some statements supported one of the debaters and generated further discussion among the experts on the show. Third, the design of the show ensured that at least two opposing points of views were presented and that there were vigorous exchanges. One side commented on the statements of the other and pointed out points that were missed or with which they disagreed. This contributed to a relatively balanced and information packed exchange.
Fourth, the majority of the arguments were based on credible sources.
Strategies of Political Criticisms
The previous analysis examined the degree of freedom of speech on Current Affairs
Debate. It showed that Current Affairs Debate has a certain degree of freedom. But one also sees the need for the program to apply strategies to offset political pressure from the government. First, by balancing the views of various experts, the show offsets criticisms
-63- towards the government with confidence in the Party. The second measure is to provide highly credible information to support the arguments, such as references to laws, the existing state of the anti-corruption system and statistics. These two strategies are what
Lee et al. (2004) called "intensified objectivity." By showing balance, the show absolves itself from the responsibility of providing critical views. Third, the debaters use specific wordings and rhetorical measures in order to reduce the critical aspects of their arguments.
The following extracts demonstrate three different ways in which criticism of the
Mainland Chinese government was muted or hedged. The first method was to use adjectives, adverbs or conjunctions such as "so", "perhaps" and "if to be more moderate and neutral. The second was the use of an analogy to replace the original target. By using non-political objects as the metaphor, the argument was much easier to comprehend and criticism was made in an indirect manner. The third method was to use an ambiguous pronoun to disguise the real target of criticism.
The following extracts provide examples of how critical comments are presented in a careful and nuanced way.
Extract 17
[PS] Law Professor Lin: In Hong Kong, the division of rights in the political system
is very clear, whereas in Mainland China, perhaps it is not so clear.
-64- Extract 18 & 19
[P3] Senior reporter Ji: Now this problem [refers to establishing an institution
exactly like ICACJ cannot be solfvedj (a) . . . now if this problem cannot be solved
(b).
[PI] Professor He: The corruption problem in China has not been [solved] (a), I
mean it has not fundamentally been resolved (b).
In these two extracts, words and phrases chosen by the speakers are neutral and moderate. In Extract 15, instead of saying that the division of power in the political system is not clear, the speaker puts "perhaps" before the sentence to express a supposition and thus demonstrate an indefinite criticism. The use of "so" before the adjective "clear" shows that the government has, to some extent, managed to divide power among different governmental departments although the lines of authority are not as clear as in the Hong Kong government. So on the one hand, the debater criticized the division of power within the political system; on the other hand, he still gave the government some credit. Extracts 18 and 19 show how the debaters rephrased their statements from a critical pitch to a less critical one. The sentences that have been marked
(a) and (b) respectively represent the arguments before and after they are rephrased. In
Extract 18, by adding an "if before the argument, the statement becomes an assumption instead of an affirmative criticism. The same strategy is used, as demonstrated in Extract
19, where the debater added an adverb "fundamentally" in order to be more moderate.
The sentence asserts that certain parts of the corruption problem in China have been
-65- resolved. If his statement was finished without the adverb, the sentence would have been an absolute denunciation of the government's record in fighting corruption.
The following examples demonstrate a fourth strategy, metaphors are used to reduce criticism.
Extract 20 & 21
[P3JSenior reporter Ji: First reason is we can't copy [Hong Kong's anti-corruption
system] . . . The environment of Hong Kong ICAC is not a single institution which
could be easily established. It is a whole project of Hong Kong's honest and clean
governance, a project that leads to the effectiveness of ICAC. . . It is as if you want
to take ICAC this coffee bean to Zhongnanhai and plant on its soil. It will never as
you have imagined, take root, sprout, blossom, and yield fruit.
[PI]Professor He: The corruption problem has been controlled to some extent, but in
many cases, it continues to intertwine with twisted roots and gnarled branches,
continues to spread.
Here Ji compared Hong Kong's ICAC to a coffee bean, and the Mainland Chinese government to a soil that is not suitable to nourish coffee beans. This description is easy to comprehend because it is common knowledge that planting coffee beans requires specific soil and climate. By this, the speaker avoids explaining why and how the political environment is different between Hong Kong and Mainland China, which also reduces the risk of discussing sensitive issues. In order to argue that the corruption
18 Zhongnanhai is a place where the central headquarters for the CPC and the government of the People's Republic of China are located.
-66- problem in China is deteriorating, Professor He in PI used "twisted roots and gnarled branches" as an analogy. The expression vividly expresses the ways that the current situation of corruption is very difficult to solve without using harsh words directly or articulating what the "twisted roots and gnarled branches" refer to in reality.
Ambiguity is the fifth device that is used. The following extract provides an example.
Extract 22
[PljNews commentator Li: Now we have all the systems, the problem is that
everybody just doesn 't implement them, and haven't implemented them well.
This example shows how the speaker uses ambiguous words to replace the original subject. In Extract 22, according to the context, the word "everybody" refers to government officials who supervise electoral procedures. By substituting "everybody" for the exact object of criticism, the speaker avoided directly criticizing leading party officials.
Despite the fact that experts used strategies to reduce criticism, they sometimes criticized the Party directly. The following extracts provide some examples.
Extract 23, 24 & 25
[PI] University Professor He: One major characteristic of our bureaucratic system is
that only the senior officer makes the final decision in the election. That means, all
the subordinates are in the charge of the senior officer. If he agrees, you can get a
high position in the government. This characteristic causes the election to be
corrupt.
-67- [P2] University Professor Zhu: Our political system, our institutions, our legal system,
and our (anti-corruption) environment are not sound. Therefore, our fight against
corruption will not succeed.
[P3J Law Professor Lin: Now it is proved that our political system is not successful.
In these extracts, the debaters pointed out the deficiency in the political system in
Mainland China. Professor He criticized the bureaucratic system by describing some of its major characteristics. The other two experts used "not sound" and "not successful" to state direct criticism. These examples show that Current Affairs Debate is still critical of the Chinese government although the experts clearly tried to temper their arguments.
-68- CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION
Ten years after the handover, Hong Kong media is often viewed as having experienced a diminishing of its freedom. However, the media should not be judged simply by how liberal they are. Instead, the performance of modern media has to be based on how well they managed to become a free yet responsible media. Inspired by one of the classic press theories, Social Responsibility Theory, this research adopted two standards from the Commission on Freedom of the Press to analyze freedom of expression in the three TV programs of Current Affairs Debate. The two standards are diversity of participants and views and the degree of objectivity as measured by balanced views and credible sources. By analyzing one particular debate show aired in both Hong
Kong and Mainland China, the study aimed to reflect on whether Hong Kong media, under the political control of the Chinese central government, are able to balance political pressure with freedom of speech. Since the three programs all dealt with corruption, one of the most politically sensitive issues in China, they are an important test of press freedom.
In general, the results of this study show that Current Affairs Debate has, to some degree, contributed to freedom of expression. First, by inviting three debaters with different areas of expertise and by seeking opinions from the audience, each show represented a wide range of opinions. Experts in law mainly argued the legal aspects of the situation; experts in social sciences tended to speak about the political system as a whole; journalists stressed the social aspects of the issue and emphasized the interests of the people. The debaters included reformers, conservatives and one person who took a neutral stance. In addition, an off-site audience that represented the views of ordinary
-69- citizens from across Mainland China also participated in the show. Their opinions were delivered by internet or via cell-phone and were aired in each show and supplemented the arguments of the on-site experts and sometimes became bones of contention during the show.
Second, the program provided a relatively high level of objectivity by providing balanced views and information and credible sources. Each side presented sufficient information to support its own arguments, and at the same time, any mistake or absence made in their arguments was corrected or pointed out by their opponents. This contributed to a wide-ranging discussion of the corruption issue.
Although most of the discussion demonstrates a degree of freedom of speech, we also found that the debaters avoided elaborating on the more sensitive issues and one of the guests, Commentator Li, used sensational comments in the debate. For instance, while touching on a controversial measure, "Shuang Gui", in the inspection of Party members, the debaters did not provide detailed sources to support their arguments. Being an important method of investigation, the program should have presented more detailed background information instead of assuming that the public was knowledgeable on the issue.
Three discursive strategies meant to protect the show from political pressure from the central government were observed in this research. First, the show was able to offset criticisms of the government by having debaters who clearly supported government actions. Second, experts supported their arguments with credible facts in order to appear impartial. These two strategies have been referred to as "intensified objectivity". Third,
-70- discursive strategies were applied by the experts in order to reduce the critical nature of their arguments. The experts used specific adjectives and adverbs to tone down the sharpness of their arguments. Metaphors were used in order to point to problems indirectly. For instance, pronouns such as "everybody" were used in the argument so that the criticism was delivered without specifying the exact target. The first two strategies helped the show become more diverse and objective, whereas the last strategy diminished the degree of free speech.
While other studies (Cheung, 2003; Fung, 2007; Lee, 1998) suggest that Hong Kong newspapers have been losing the battle in terms of free expression, this study examined a popular Hong Kong TV program in order to show how far TV shows can go in providing information and criticism without placing themselves at risk.
With the development of media commercialization in contemporary China, new media content, formats and practices have emerged. Media organizations in Mainland
China and Hong Kong media organizations permitted to air in Mainland China share the same political and economic environment. Both media have to balance party control and market-oriented journalism. The former, having emerged as a traditional mouthpiece for the government, are forced by economic reforms to become more liberal and open. The latter, having the freedom to attack the Chinese government before the handover, are now limited in many ways. The research found that although Phoenix TV employed strategies to avoid criticizing the Chinese government directly, it was still able to criticize the authorities. More interestingly, when Hong Kong was under the governance of Britain, the journalists and editors were also confined when reporting sensitive issues that would harm the rule of the Crown. That is to say, during the colonial period, Hong Kong media
-71- also had to consider contradictory forces which are political restriction, market demands and professional ethics. Therefore, the local media has the legacy of rope walking through the colonial history. In this regard, Phoenix TV could serve as a model for
Mainland Chinese media. In some critical ways, Phoenix TV may represent the future of
Chinese journalism and be a gateway to greater freedom for China's citizens.
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