Organizer and Chair: Anne-Marie Brady, University of Canterbury
Propaganda (xuanchuan) has negative connotations in
English, and, increasingly, in Chinese. In the 1980s, China’s senior leaders were divided on the issue
of whether or not propaganda had a role in China’s modern economy and
polity. That debate was brought to an effective end after the June 4, 1989 crackdown.
The post-June 4 leadership set the bottom line that has been followed to the
present day: that the Party would focus its energy (and base its legitimacy)
on both economic growth and a renewed emphasis on propaganda. In the last ten
years changes in China’s mass communications, media, and cultural economy
have become hot topics in Western academic circles and attracted considerable
media interest. A common assumption has been that to a greater or lesser extent
market reforms will undermine Party controls. Such assumptions are based on
dated preconceptions about the nature of freedom and democracy in our own societies
as well as preconceptions about the nature of Party-State-Market-Consumer relations
in China today. In the last 18 years, China has deliberately borrowed from Western
methods of mass persuasion to modernize its propaganda work at the same time
as updating its traditional methods of control and content. This panel will
discuss some of these changes in China’s modernized propaganda activities
ranging from the political economy of China’s cultural industries; propaganda
in the privatized, commercialized Chinese news media; the Party-State’s
promotion of Confucianism as a tool of foreign propaganda; and China’s
utilization of the Internet as a new locus for propaganda work.
Nicolai Volland, National University of Singapore
In the late 1990s, the Chinese government has introduced a broad set of “reforms
of the cultural structure” (wenhua tizhi gaige). As the name suggests,
these reforms are perceived in analogy to the much better researched and
understood reform packages for the economy and politics that have transformed
China in the past three decades.
The “cultural reforms” target work units such as theatre companies,
art troupes, and museums, but also publishing houses, journals, and media
enterprises. The primary goal of the reforms is to transform these units from
state-run, subsidized bureaucracies into professionally managed and market-oriented
companies, while at the same time ensuring the perpetuation of Party control
over the cultural sector.
In this paper, I trace the origins of the “cultural reform” policy,
from experiments in selected counties and municipalities, to their implementation
on a national scale since 2002. I argue that the “reforms of the cultural
structure” are a crucial element of the
Chinese Communist Party’s effort to overhaul its approach to propaganda
and thought work. The aim of the reforms is not to liberalize or open up this
sector, but rather to strengthen Party controls and to further isolate the cultural
sector from external influences. Using new technologies and the latest insights
from theories of cultural management, the CCP has thus tried to update its approach
to the “construction of a spiritual civilization” and the control
the cultural industries, relying increasingly on financial and economic pressures
rather than on traditional means of control.
Ashley W. Esarey, Middlebury College
Since the founding of the People’s Republic, state-owned media have served
as an arm of the state charged with performing an important propaganda role.
However, in the reform era, China’s media have proliferated rapidly and
largely commercialized. Utilizing data generated through content analysis
of 11,000 articles in daily newspapers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou from
1980 to 2003, this paper examines how regime propaganda has become more sophisticated
and finds a rise in the total amount of propaganda over time, especially
in provincial and municipal level papers. While commercialization of Chinese
media has increased the diversity of non-political news, it has not reduced
the total amount of propaganda or resulted in the freedom to challenge powerful
political interests.
Valerie Niquet, Institut Francais des Relations Internationales
China’s current propaganda, both internal and external, emphasizes the
Confucian concept of harmony. The paper will analyze this new trend in China’s
foreign policy. China is using the tool of Confucianism or “Confu-speech” to
project a Chinese model of development without Western style democracy and build
a united front on the world scene and in international organizations. At the
same time Beijing’s stress on “harmony” is presented as an
antidote to “China threat” theories by returning to the traditional
construction of Confucianism as a peaceful characteristic of the Chinese
Empire and Chinese civilization.
In this framework, this paper will also discuss the value of the concept
of soft power in the PRC ideological context. It will utilize official publications
as well as academic works on the concept of harmony and Confucian «values»,
particularly linked to the opening of Confucius Institutes around the world.
It will demonstrate that the use of Confucian concepts constitutes a coherent
effort by the Chinese Communist Party, both at the internal and external level,
to consolidate its legitimacy. The paper will also demonstrate that this discourse
is essentially aimed at “outsiders”, whereas for insiders the discourse
tends to follow the ideological framework of Socialism with Chinese characteristics.
In that sense Confucianism and harmony discourse emerges as a pragmatic and
contemporary answer to external constraints coming both from inside and outside
the Chinese society, a new survival tool for the CCP in a rapidly changing
world.
Anne-Marie Brady, University of Canterbury
In 2004, hackers uncovered a list of banned words in the Chinese cybersphere
which were installed as part of a commonly used instant messenger software package
in China. A third of the words are sex-related, reflecting the strong ban on
pornography in the PRC. A further third of the words relate to Falungong, not
surprising given the organization's strong online presence with vehemently anti-CCP
content. The remaining words are a window to some of the most sensitive topics
in Chinese politics. This paper looks at the CCP's attempt to manage Information
Communication Technology (ICT), keeping out what it considers are harmful elements
while encouraging aspects more beneficial to the Party-State's needs.
The paper utilizes CCP policy papers and guidelines on ICT, interviews with
the web managers of some of China's most high-profile sites, primary source
materials such as the list of banned words, and a wide range of secondary sources
from fields as diverse as social psychology, management studies, and Soviet
studies to assist in interpreting the CCP's response to ICT, its crucial new
role in China's propaganda system, and the Party's ongoing attempt to bolster
and maintain legitimacy.
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