Media Influence and News Production Centralization: The Role of China News Service in Overseas Chinese Affairs by Yuen Li B.A. in Business Administration, May 2009, Babson College A Thesis submitted to The Faculty of The Elliot School of International Affairs of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Asian Studies May 21, 2017 Thesis directed by Bruce Dickson Professor of Political Science and International Affairs © Copyright 2017 by Yuen Li All rights reserved ii Acknowledgments I am immensely grateful to my thesis advisor Bruce Dickson who offered me invaluable advice that cleared the most challenging obstacles in the process of writing this thesis. I am also thankful to the editors and journalists who agreed to my interviews and enlightened my understanding of the overseas Chinese-language media. iii Abstract of Thesis Media Influence and News Production Centralization: The Role of China News Service in Overseas Chinese Affairs After the bloody Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, the legitimacy of the Communist Party of China (CCP) suffered a devastating blow among the overseas Chinese (OC). The CCP responded to the challenge by implementing transnational outreach policy in the OC community, which includes substantial efforts to increase the Party’s influence in the overseas Chinese-language media (OCLM). By conducting a qualitative analysis of the evolution of the CCP's OC policy, this thesis finds that the Party has made tremendous progress in achieving the policy’s strategic goals: modernization and transnational legitimacy. The CCP’s increased influence in the OCLM has made crucial contributions to the Party's success in restoring transnational legitimacy in the OC community. This thesis finds that the China News Service (CNS), China's second-largest news agency operating under the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council, plays a major role in the CCP's attempt to influence the OCLM and centralize the production of Chinese-language news. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements iii Abstract of Thesis iv List of Tables vii Glossary of Terms viii Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Literature Review 5 Chapter 3: Research Methods 13 Chapter 4: The Evolution of the CCP’s OC Policy 14 4.1 The Founding Era (1949 – 1966) 14 4.2 The Cultural Revolution Era (1966 – 1976) 23 4.3 The Reform Era (1976 – Present) 29 Chapter 5: The China News Service 41 5.1 The Forum on the Global Chinese Language Media 43 5.1.1 The Features of the Forum 45 5.1.2 The Essays Commissioned by the CNS 48 5.1.2.1 The Propaganda Essays 49 5.1.2.2 The Practical Essays 52 5.1.3 The Declaration of Consensus 56 5.1.4 The Contradictions between the Essays and the Declarations 60 5.2 The Advanced Seminar for the Overseas Chinese Language Media 64 5.2.1 The Lectures Given at the Seminar 67 5.2.2 The Responsiveness of the Seminar 70 v 5.3 The Centralization of News Production 75 5.3.1 The Bundled Service of the Overseas Center 76 5.3.2 The Reform of the CNS 78 Chapter 6: Conclusion 82 References 85 Appendix A 106 vi List of Tables Table 1 45 Table 2 47 Table 3 57 Table 4 64 vii Chapter 1: Introduction Two hundred years after Chinese Malaysians published the “Chinese Monthly Magazine” (Cha Shisu Meiyue Tongji Zhuan 察世俗每月统记传), the overseas Chinese- language media (haiwai huawen meiti 海外华文媒体, hereafter OCLM), serving 45 million Chinese diaspora, has grown to more than 5,000 organizations around the world.1 The Chinese diaspora – commonly known as the overseas Chinese (huaqiao 华侨, hereafter OC) – has a long history with the Communist Party of China (CCP). From the perspective of the CCP, the OC community offers tremendous resources for the modernization of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but it also harbors potential threats to the legitimacy of the regime. After all, the persisting efforts of the OC community, including those from the 120 OCLM established by the revolutionaries, has made crucial contributions to the downfall of the Qing dynasty.2 Excluding the Cultural Revolution era, the CCP has remained consistent with the strategic goals of its OC policy. In the early decades of the PRC, the CCP needed remittance and investment from the OC community to reconstruct China, but the Party struggled with building positive relations with the OC due to the emergence of radical ideological movements. During the Cultural Revolution, the ideological frenzy in the PRC resulted in the demonization and persecution of the OC and their families living in China. In the reform era, the CCP restored its OC policy and fully embraced the OC 1 Zhang, Xinxin. "Zhang Xinxin Shuli Huawen Meiti 200 Nian: Jingli Sici Dafazhan (章新新梳理华文媒 体 200 年：经历四次大发展) [Zhang Xinxin Analyzes 200 Years of Chinese-language Media: Four Major Periods of Development]." China News Service, published Aug 22, 2015, accessed Aug 29, 2016, http://www.chinanews.com/hr/2015/08-22/7483095.shtml; Zhuang, Guotu. 2010. "Huaqiao Huaren Fenbu Zhuangkuang He Fazhan Qushi (华侨华人分布状况和发展趋势) [Population Distribution and Development Trends of Overseas Chinese]." Overseas Chinese Affairs Study 4 (155), http://qwgzyj.gqb.gov.cn/yjytt/155/1830.shtml. 2 Zhang. "Zhang Xinxin Shuli Huawen Meiti 200 Nian." 1 community by utilizing their financial and human capital for the modernization of China. By conducting a qualitative analysis of the evolution of the CCP's OC policy, this thesis finds that since the founding of the PRC, except for the decade of Cultural Revolution, the CCP's OC policy has made substantial progress towards two strategic goals: modernization and transnational legitimacy. This thesis defines modernization as the process by which a country develops its economy while accumulating technological advancements that fulfill the country's strategic demands. In the case of China, the CCP's strategic goal of modernization is not limited to the economic benefits of development, but also includes the accumulation of crucial technologies that generate positive impacts for China's overall power. This thesis defines legitimacy by applying Bruce Gilley's definition in which the legitimacy of a state is the degree to which citizens treat the state as rightfully holding and exercising political power, while the institutions of the state are the infrastructure for generating the performance on which legitimacy is based.3 Since China has a large population of OC, the CCP not only has to preserve legitimacy within China's border but also needs to sustain transnational legitimacy in the OC community. Even though many of the 45 million OC are foreign citizens, they still share interests with China – some have investments in China, some maintain business connections with China, while others have close emotional links with China.4 Having shared interest means that the CCP needs to 3 Gilley, Bruce. 2008. "Legitimacy and Institutional Change: The Case of China." Comparative Political Studies 41 (3): 259-284; Gilley, Bruce. 2006. "The Meaning and Measure of State Legitimacy: Results for 72 Countries." European Journal of Political Research 45 (3): 499-525. 4 Thunø, Mette. 2007. Beyond Chinatown : New Chinese Migration and the Global Expansion of China. Copenhagen: NIAS Press. 2 care about the Party’s legitimacy in the OC community. This thesis, therefore, defines transnational legitimacy by extending the definition of legitimacy to the OC community. From the perspective of the CCP, the greatest difference between its internal legitimacy and transnational legitimacy is that the Party has a limited set of tools to influence how the OC community perceived the Party. The CCP needed new instruments to maintain transnational legitimacy. During the early years of the reform era, the PRC was gradually integrating with the rest of the world. Having replaced the ROC in the United Nations, the CCP was having a much easier time with the maintenance transnational legitimacy in the OC community during the 1980s. After the Tiananmen pro-democracy movement, however, the Party realized that the OC community could harbor potential threats to the legitimacy of the regime. With its tight grip on domestic media and the security apparatus, the CCP's task to re-establish internal legitimacy is less challenging comparing to the situation abroad. The bloody Tiananmen crackdown sent a shockwave among the OC communities around the world, but at the time, the Party had little power to influence the perception of the OC. The CCP responded to the challenge by initiating a new phase of OC policy that focuses on reconstructing the Party's transnational legitimacy. Barabantseva, Liu, Nyíri, and To demonstrate how the CCP utilized its economic and political resources to exploit the business, social, cultural, and ancestral links with the OC, and ultimately, to disseminate transnational patriotism and "Chineseness" in the OC community.5 5 Barabantseva, Elena. 2005. "Trans-Nationalising Chineseness: Overseas Chinese Policies of the PRC's Central Government." Asien 96 (96): 7-28; Liu, Hong. 2005. "New Migrants and the Revival of Overseas Chinese Nationalism." Journal of Contemporary China 14 (43): 291-316; Nyíri, Pál. 2005. "The New Migrant: State and Market Constructions of Modernity and Patriotism." In China Inside Out : Contemporary Chinese Nationalism and Transnationalism, edited by Joana Breidenbach and Pál Nyíri. Budapest: Central European University Press, 141-176; To, James. 2014. Qiaowu: Extra-Territorial Policies for the Overseas Chinese. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. 3 The CCP's external propaganda