Politics powers China’s paradoxical press curbs
Officials often muzzle the media to suppress negative news and maintain the appearance of order
In March, local authorities in eastern China attempted to physically prevent Chinese journalists from reporting on a gas explosion in a restaurant in Sanhe near Beijing. Harassment is frequent for the media, but the aftermath of this incident was unusual.
Within hours, the normally tight-lipped All-China Journalists Association had issued a rare public statement that local governments “must not obstruct the normal duties of reporters in a simple and rough manner just to control public opinion.”
It may appear surprising that official participants in one of the world’s most tightly controlled media environments would dare to publicly demand more freedom from the government.
But once the basic contradiction built into the Chinese Communist Party’s media control system is understood, it quickly disappears.
The timing of the Association’s plea for media freedom comes amid Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ever-greater concentration of power at the expense of many state actors – including local governments.
Social stability
At the heart of China’s media landscape lies a system of control and censorship orchestrated by the party-state. It has existed for decades, but since coming to power in 2012, Xi has dramatically expanded his power and authority at the expense of other political actors.
The media control apparatus is intended to serve the dual purposes of upholding social stability and filtering information upward to a central Chinese leadership perpetually starved of accurate information.
Xi has concentrated on aligning media commentary with the Party line.
Maintaining stability or weiwen is often touted as the most important of the goals by the Chinese leadership. The CCP views public opinion as a river to be thoughtfully guided by the careful engineering of the small and secretive Central Publicity Department.

As long as public opinion runs in a predictable way, all is well in the eyes of Party officials. But when disaster strikes and public opinion strays into negativity and criticism, the CCP moves with increasing firmness to channel discourse back towards official narratives.
At the local level, incentives for suppressing inconveniently negative events are even more pronounced – these leaders’ promotion depends, in large part, on maintaining order, or at least appearing to do so.
Yet while insisting that the public’s access to information be tightly controlled, the state makes use of the same sources to help govern the country. One result is that China’s central government, though of undeniable power, is perpetually starved of accurate information.
Above the village level, elections are non-existent and local powerholders suppress negative news.
Political petition
The authorities tasked with monitoring others are themselves potentially untrustworthy, internet access is tightly controlled, and even citizens who use the officially-sanctioned political petition system or xinfang zhidu are routinely ignored or even punished.
The problems arising from this information flow are further exacerbated by the tiny size of China’s central bureaucracy. As of 2007, an exceptionally small core of only 50,000 bureaucrats managed more than 32 million public employees in a decentralized system.
So, the central government relies in large part on provincial media uncovering problems of policy implementation, corruption, and malfeasance.
Reports of unrest can be devastating to a promising career in the Chinese civil service, and when “stability maintenance” is prized above all else, accurate reporting about local problems tends to disappear.

From the perspective of an ambitious local official, only good news is permissible. While the central government remains starved of comprehensive information, local authorities wield significant power over news dissemination within their jurisdictions.
China’s decentralized system exacerbates the challenges inherent in attempting to control the media, as local governments prioritize stability over transparency, often suppressing negative news to maintain a facade of order.
This contradiction is at the heart of the perpetual conflicts between the Chinese press and government. As Xi’s drive to amass greater power lumbers relentlessly onward, this tension will only increase.
And because his style of governance tends towards mass campaigns, forced study sessions, and moral exhortations, there is likely to be an accompanying increase in public central government pressure against press-shy local authorities.
Inherent tensions
Whenever something goes wrong in a distant town, there will be cross-cutting pressures as local media attempt to report, local government attempts to suppress and central authorities attempt to discern the truth.
While the contradiction between press freedom and censorship persists, incidents such as that in Sanhe will likely recur, reflecting the inherent tensions within China’s authoritarian governance model.
Jonathan Hassid is an Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at Iowa State University.
This article is republished from East Asia Forum under a Creative Commons license. Read the original here.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of China Factor.