A relatively new commenter, Dylan, wrote such an interesting comment on Zhao Ziyang and press freedoms in China pre-June 4 that I wanted to highlight it in a separate post. Very interesting stuff. He begins by addressing another commenter:
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You seem blinded by the assertions of CPC organs and boosters of the CPC leadership that freedom, openness and democracy is better than it was in ZZY’s time. Zhao was the one who implemented village elections on a widespread scale, he promoted the idea of multi-candidate elections for posts right up to party central but this idea was stopped after his ouster and to this day elections are only held at village level in rural areas. Zhao had said that within a decade there should be multi-candidate elections at provincial level. This has not taken place. Transparency of government was a big theme of Zhao’s, linked to greater supervision by the masses, during his time politburo meetings were reported by Xinhua without fail. This practice was abolished by JZM and there was no reporting of any such meetings by state mouthpieces thereafter (although interestingly Hu Jintao appears to be trying to revive the practice). At the 13th party congress, ZZY decided to implement a policy of ‘inner party democracy’ whereby higher party organs would submit to supervision by party congresses and deliver regular work reports to these bodies so their work could be subject to supervision by the broad CPC membership thus eliminating the practice of one-man rule. CPC mouthpieces published lengthy excerpts from these work reports so the general public could see what was going on during ZZY’s time. Since ZZY’s time this practice has been stopped. Regarding cultural freedom, as Bao Tong recalls “After the movie Hibiscus Town was filmed [dealing with the still sensitive topic of the Cultural Revolution], some in the Party approved of it, while others didn’t, causing great conflict of opinion. One secretary asked Zhao for an opinion, to which Zhao replied: “I don’t investigate movies; I watch them. If I have to issue a directive for every movie I watch, I think I’ll stop watching movies. After that, it became the accepted practise that the Standing Committee, Politburo and secretariat no longer concerned themselves with culture or the arts, thus establishing a limit to the Party’s control.” And yet, after 1989 it again became standard practice for the party central to involve itself in the arts, a practice which, despite your assertions, continues to this day. A decision was reached at a party plenum in 1989 that party committees would be removed from organisations and enterprises (this was the apex of ZZY’s achievements in separating party from state and society), but it was soon ‘forgotten’ and we now witness party heavyweights like Zeng Qinghong visiting Guangzhou to stress the importance of strengthening the role of party committees in the new private businesses! Following on from an article by Wan Li, ZZY introduced “scientific and democratic decisionmaking” by encouraging wide consultation outside normal party channels before decisions were made with interested constituencies, experts, etc. This approach was abandoned after 1989, only to be resurrected by HJT recently. As for press freedom, you conveniently forget that in 1989 there were independent journals like the student newspaper The New May Fourth in which Wang Dan published his famous article on the 13th anniversary of the 1976 Tianamen incident. The World Economic Herald in Shanghai published what would today be considered highly inflammatory articles against one party rule. Editor in chief Qin Benli had close ties to ZZY, ties that kept him in print despite the efforts of conservatives while ZZY was around. JZM shut it down after 1989. China hasn’t seen its like since despite the efforts of (now gagged) Southern Weekend and (now closed) Strategy and Management.

The coverage of the student movement in spring 1989 was itself evidence of the press freedom granted by ZZY. CCTV main news broadcast the statements of students such as a student telling Li Peng “the Communist Party has no hope” or students denouncing Chen Xitong to his face on April 30. For approximately two weeks in May 1989, Chinese media was free in a way that it has never been since. Uncensored coverage reached its peak in the days prior to May 20th, when martial law was declared in parts of Beijing. In the words of one Westerner living in Beijing 1987-89: “When I moved to China in 1987, I very soon realized that no amount of background reading and research about the People’s Republic would have properly prepared me for the extraordinary degree of openness and diversity which I encountered wherever I turned in urban Chinese society. During the first months I was amazed when reading the China Daily, when listening to the radio, watching the television and speaking to people. Newspapers published reports of party officials indicted for embezzlement and profiteering. Letters to the editor described the unfair treatment by party members of ordinary people. In general, many commentaries and editorials, both in the newspapers and on television, touched upon the failings of society, and were frank and to the point. I also was taken aback at how well-informed urban residents were about what was happening elsewhere in the world. This was, to a large extent, due to the ever-widening range of subjects which the Chinese press itself was covering and to the increasingly lively contact with foreigners. But the immense flow of information was also a result of the popularity of Voice of America and BBC broadcasts in both Chinese and English – especially among young people – and partly because many Chinese were regularly seeing the so-called “for internal use only” Reference News publications. ” Yang Yulin, a Chinese political scientist who used to work for one of the country’s most liberal research institutes, described the Chinese press of the 1980’s in the following way: “When the reformers in the Party had the upper hand, the press portrayed their more broad-minded views and especially the younger generation pushed the limits of what is acceptable. When the conservatives were in control of the Party’s policies, the press was forced to accept a stricter approach, which was less tolerant of diverse opinions.”

Strange, that at a time when the right wing has gone into over-drive damning Newsweek for printing a story with an erroneous quote (which they ran by the Pentagon first), that one of the few voices of reason is that of my least favorite NYT columnist, David Brooks.

Maybe it won’t be so bad being cut off from the blogosphere. I look around the Web these days and find that Newsweek’s retracted atrocity story has sent everybody into cloud-cuckoo-land. Every faction up and down the political spectrum has used the magazine’s blunder as a chance to open fire on its favorite targets, turning this into a fevered hunting season for the straw men.

Many of my friends on the right have decided that the Newsweek episode exposes the rotten core of the liberal media. Dennis Prager, who is intelligent 99 percent of the time, writes, “Newsweek is directly responsible for the deaths of innocents and for damaging America.” Countless conservatives say the folks at Newsweek were quick to believe the atrocity tales because they share the left-wing, post-Vietnam mentality. On his influential blog, Austin Bay writes that the coastal media “presume the worst about the U.S. military – always make that presumption.”

Excuse me, guys, but this is craziness. I used to write for Newsweek. I know Mike Isikoff and the editors. And I know about liberals in the media. The people who run Newsweek are not a bunch of Noam Chomskys with laptops. Not even close. Whatever might have been the cause of their mistakes, liberalism had nothing to do with it.

Of course, Brooks then throws in the obligatory swipe at the left (“fair and balanced,” ya know?) and decries their obsession with proving the quote was accurate, but reading his column there is no doubt whatever that it’s the Michelle Malkin-Charles Johnson-Glenn Reynolds crows that’s gone off the very deep end.

This is one of the oddest stories in recent journalism, when the far right targets Michael Isikoff and accuses him of participating in a bizarre left-wing conspiracy. (Isikoff, if you recall, was key to the crucifixion of our last real president, serving as a dictating machine for Lucianne Goldberg and Paula Jones). The whole thing is utterly crazy. The Koran story could only have inspired such bloodshed if there was a lot of pent-up rage. That’s the real story — that their hatred of us is so intense that a rumor could ignite a murderous free-for-all, and that maybe Afghanistan is a bit further away from being a peacable democracy than Instpuppy and Dow Jones-funded fraudster Arthur “Good News!” Chrenkoff would have us believe.

This was the right blogosphere at its very ugliest. Michelle Maglalang instantly started to pimp the phrase, “Newsweek lied, people died.” As though Newsweek was maliciously lying. Isikoff’s man in the government gave him the information, Isikoff used it, then after it was out the guy said he couldn’t confirm it. Tragic, that something so stupid can arouse the warbloggers to such frenzy, damning the “MSM” and calling for blood, for punishment.

I remember someone else who lied not so long ago — and I mean really lied — costing more than 1,600 American soldiers’ lives and countless Iraqis’. But to go after him is unpatriotic and treasonous.

The entire thing is warped and incomprehensible.

Update: If you don’t read Fafblog on this topic, it’s your loss. Sample:

The Medium Lobster has learned that while it was spreading lies about Korans at Guantanamo Bay, Newsweek managed to torture hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Afghanistan, killing dozens of them in the process. And apparently Newsweek has not been content to torture prisoners on its own. It has also kidnapped citizens of other countries and flown them to dictatorships to be tortured! The Medium Lobster has said it before and he will, no doubt, say it again: no blood for mainstream media.

If this were not enough, it has just come to my attention that Newsweek spread discredited rumors and outright lies to goad the United States into invading another country, with no justification and no plan for the occupation, costing tens of thousands of innocent lives. And not only has the lumbering dinosaur of legacy media turned to the callow slaughtering of innocents, but it hasn’t even come up with an exit strategy! You can bet the plucky pajama-clad kids in the blogosphere would have us in and out of a war in a couple of months.

“Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing.”

This is interesting. Under Hu the reformer China has created a secret group of online busybodies whose mission is to post comments on the Internet to shape public opinion in favor of the government. I’m giving a longer-than-usual snip because it’s a topic of great interest to mr.

China has formed a special force of undercover online commentators to try to sway public opinion on controversial issues on the Internet, a newspaper said on Thursday.

China has struggled to gain control over the Internet as more and more people gain access to obtain information beyond official sources. The country has nearly 100 million Internet users, according to official figures, and the figure is rising.

A special force of online commentators had already been operating in Suqian city in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu since April, the Southern Weekend said.

Their job was to defend the government when negative comments appeared on Internet bulletin boards and chatrooms, the weekly quoted local officials as saying.

Suqian city’s propaganda department recruited the commentators from among government officials, the weekly said, adding that they must “understand (government) policies, be versed in (political) theories and be politically reliable.”

“They will guide public opinion as ordinary netizens. This is both important and effective,” Ma Zhichun, one of the recruited commentators, was quoted as saying.

Zhan Jiang, dean of journalism at China Youth University for Political Sciences, did not approve of Internet special forces writing anonymously on the Internet.

“It’s okay if they voice their opinions on the government Web sites as officials, but it is suspicious if they do it this way,” Zhan told Reuters. “It’s not good for the natural expression of public opinion.”

But city governments in at least three provinces were recruiting online commentators, the weekly said.

“We are not the first and won’t be the last (to have online commentators). The whole nation is playing the same game,” Ma was quoted as saying.

The Communist Party’s top disciplinary and supervision body trained 127 officials for such jobs last year to “strengthen Internet propaganda on its anti-corruption undertaking,” the weekly said.

Beijing has created a special Internet police force believed responsible for shutting down domestic sites posting politically unacceptable content, blocking some foreign news sites and jailing several people for their online postings.

In March, bulletin boards operated by the country’s most prominent universities were blocked to off-campus Internet users as part of the campaign to strengthen ideological education of college students.

So tell me the truth, are any of the commenters here on the CCP payroll? Just kidding, but it is insidious, not knowing whether the person you’re sparring with on that Chinese BBS is a paid CCP propagandist.

Thanks for the tip, ACB.

Heh.

I’ve been trying to access one of my favorite China sites all day, but keep getting the dreaded “cannot find site” window. I hope everything’s okay.

UPDATE: They’re back. Hack attack.

Hilarious.

Just go hear what he says. Your life will never be the same. Astounding.

JR, thanks for the link.

Galloway must be okay, as Charles Johnson sees him as the Antichrist. Today he rips Galloway to shreds, although he can’t find anything wrong with the speech and instead goes back to old posts he’s written about Galloway, hissing and cursing at the liberal media and Daily Kos all along the way, and never addressing the issues.

Update: LGF Watch raises the same point about our friend Mr. Johnson:

But it’s interesting, isn’t it, that while Charles has three threads on the hearing, calling Galloway “pro-terrorist” and “anti-semitic”, HE DOESN’T ACTUALLY SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THE HEARING ITSELF. What is Charles afraid of? That his ignorance about the oil-for-food programme and the allegations surrounding it will show him up for the ex-hippy bird brain demagogue that he is?

Just asking…

The fact that China’s film bureau is letting director Wang Xiaoshuai make what sounds like a true-to-life down and dirty look at the grim life of transplanted peasants in Guizhou strikes me as very good news. I loved Wang’s Beijing Bicycle (which wasn’t allowed to be shown in China, if I remember), and Shanghai Dreams sounds far grittier and more upsetting. If they actually allow it to be shown in China, without pulling out (pardon that phrase) the way they did with Vagina Monologues, I’ll be impressed.

Read the article to see what Wang went through to get this film made. He sounds like quite a person.

You might have heard that Moyers delivered a rather shocking address at a recent conference on media reform. The entire speech is available at Salon (you have to watch an ad to get to it) and I strongly recommend you read it all. I found it incredibly moving, and surprising, too, to see how his show Now came to be, and how it became the bete noire of the far right.

“Sometimes I would offer a small prayer of gratitude that I had been born in a country whose institutions sustained me, whose armed forces protected me, and whose ideals inspired me; I offered my heart’s affections in return. It no more occurred to me to flaunt the flag on my chest than it did to pin my mother’s picture on my lapel to prove her son’s love. Mother knew where I stood; so does my country. I even tuck a valentine in my tax returns on April 15.

“So what’s this doing here? Well, I put it on to take it back. The flag’s been hijacked and turned into a logo — the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism. On those Sunday morning talk shows, official chests appear adorned with the flag as if it is the good housekeeping seal of approval. During the State of the Union, did you notice Bush and Cheney wearing the flag? How come? No administration’s patriotism is ever in doubt, only its policies. And the flag bestows no immunity from error. When I see flags sprouting on official lapels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao’s little red book on every official’s desk, omnipresent and unread.

“But more galling than anything are all those moralistic ideologues in Washington sporting the flag in their lapels while writing books and running Web sites and publishing magazines attacking dissenters as un-American. They are people whose ardor for war grows disproportionately to their distance from the fighting. They’re in the same league as those swarms of corporate lobbyists wearing flags and prowling Capitol Hill for tax breaks even as they call for more spending on war.

“So I put this on as a modest riposte to men with flags in their lapels who shoot missiles from the safety of Washington think tanks, or argue that sacrifice is good as long as they don’t have to make it, or approve of bribing governments to join the coalition of the willing (after they first stash the cash.) I put it on to remind myself that not every patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us. The flag belongs to the country, not to the government. And it reminds me that it’s not un-American to think that war — except in self-defense — is a failure of moral imagination, political nerve, and diplomacy. Come to think of it, standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.”

It never lets up and builds to a climax that left me speechless. It’s worth the time to read it all.

“Disappointing” is the word that best describes the track record of Hu Jintao since he became general secretary of the CCP in the fall of 2002, according to NY Times columnist and former China correspondent Nicholas Kristof. Aside from some foreign policy skills and a half-hearted ooutreach to China’s rural poor, Hu is actually more of a throwback than a reformer:

More than anyone else, President Hu will determine whether China can continue to surge and whether its rise will be stable and peaceful. Ever since he vaulted into the top ranks of the Communist Party in 1992, there have been vigorous debates about whether he is a closet reformer or a closet hard-liner, but now that he has been the Communist leader for two and a half years, we can form a tentative conclusion: the second camp seems to have been right.

Mr. Hu appears to be an intuitive authoritarian who believes in augmenting the tools of repression, not easing them. Most distressing, Mr. Hu has tugged China backward politically. He has presided over a steady crackdown on dissent, the news media, religion, Internet commentary and think tanks. China now imprisons far more journalists than any other country.

At The New York Times, we’ve seen this crackdown firsthand. Zhao Yan, a colleague who works for the Times bureau in Beijing, was seized last September and tossed into prison. Why? We don’t know for sure, because Mr. Zhao has never been tried and neither his lawyer nor his family members have even been allowed to see him.

Likewise, the bravest and boldest Chinese newspaper used to be Nanfang Dushi Bao. But then the paper reported that the police had beaten a university student to death because he wasn’t carrying his ID. Two staff members were sent to prison last year for long terms, and China’s newspapers are now more docile.

Mr. Hu also has a knack for using old-style propaganda phrases that make him sound like a time capsule from a more Communist past. And Chinese intellectuals were horrified when Mr. Hu issued an internal statement saying that while North Korea had made economic mistakes, it had the right ideas politically.

Still, Mr. Hu’s clampdown has had only a limited effect, because China is now too porous and complex for anybody to control very successfully. Ordinary people are hiring lawyers to enforce their rights, and the rule of law is steadily painting the party leaders into a corner.

“They can’t control everything any more,” said a Chinese with long connections to the country’s leaders. “They’re like a fire brigade, rushing around to put out the fires that burn hottest, and leaving the others alone.”

Interesting that Kristof, like Jerome Keating in the previous post, says China would do well to learn from Taiwan’s example, as well as South Korea’s.

Mr. Hu’s basic problem is that he is trying to achieve stability by keeping the lid sealed tight on the pressure cooker. But the lesson of Taiwan and South Korea is the need to expand freedoms to provide outlets for those pressures. Otherwise, as Ukraine and Indonesia showed, pressure cookers can explode.

So Mr. Hu’s emphasis on short-term stability may ultimately be increasing the risks of major instability in China down the road. And in that sense, the victims of Mr. Hu’s crackdown are not just the individuals sitting in jail, but the entire Chinese people.

Is the pressure cooker at risk of exploding? I’m reading reports on warblogs (which I won’t link to yet because they provide zero proof and contain many gross generalizations – you can find them over at Strategy Page) that demonstrations are becoming a way of life in China as never before. My own sense is that there’s still not nearly enough steam built up to generate an explosion. But Mr. Hu hasn’t helped maters; quite the contrary.