Resistance in digital China : the Southern Weekly incident 9781501337680, 1501337688, 9781501337697, 1501337696

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For Katherine

Acknowledgements My journey from being a Chinese journalist to becoming a UK-based scholar has, to say the least, challenged the limits of my knowledge and capacity to critique. Had I continued to work as a journalist in China, I probably would not have attended to many of the ideas explored in this book, certainly not the critique of journalists’ resistance. I am indebted to the many people who took me on this adventure. The groundwork for the study presented in this book was laid during my doctoral study at King’s College London in the UK. I am first of all indebted to my PhD supervisor Professor Tim Jordan, whose support at the beginning of my academic pursuit was too profound to be stated in every detail. Tim was extremely humble and forgiving, listening to many underdeveloped ideas. Tim always offered generous evaluation and encouragement for my work and approached my thoughts with genuine interest. He showed limitless patience while reading my lengthy writing on numerous occasions. Tim also voluntarily read one of the early proposals for this book and provided valuable comments. Dr Florian Schneider and Professor Nick Crossley reviewed and helpfully commented on an early version of the Southern Weekly Incident, which greatly encouraged my production of this book. My colleagues in the School of Media, Film and Music at the University of Sussex, Kate O’Riordan, Kate Lacey, Caroline Bassett, Pollyanna Ruiz, Simidele Dosekun, Katherine Farrimond and Eleftheria Lekakis read some chapters from an early version of the manuscript and provided frank critiques that helped enormously to improve the structure and arguments. I thank anonymous reviewers of the proposal and manuscript of this book, whose guidance to an extensive body of literature on relevant studies is valuable far beyond the writing of this book. I also would like to thank my undergraduate and postgraduate students who sat in my classes analysing the Southern Weekly Incident and shared with me their interesting thoughts. I owe an enormous debt to my interview participants in China. These people were certainly taking a risk in talking with me about the 2013 Southern Weekly Incident, which is considered a sensitive event in China. They offered me trust and provided remarkable accounts of their experiences during the incident. Many of them unreservedly shared with me their life histories, which genuinely

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touched me and proved extremely valuable for the purposes of this study. For some journalists, their stories are so unique and well-known that it is almost impossible for me to conceal their identities in my writing. Despite this, they generously gave me permission to include their stories in this book. So too did the activists in my interviews who insisted that I reveal the names by which they are publicly known. I know these decisions were not made lightly. I hope the value of this study lives up to their expectations and will honour the trust they gave to me. I owe thanks to journalists and editors I used to work with in the Southern Media Group in China. They demonstrated to me the persistent pursuit of social justice, consciousness and professionalism under censorship. They always inspired me to explore humanity and individuality of Chinese society. We together struggled with censorship on numerous occasions, and the backroom conversations we held motivated me to conduct this study. As a friend of the journalist network involved in the Southern Weekly Incident, I re-encountered the emotions of Chinese media workers when the incident emerged, which again inspired me to strive for a complex understanding of China. Journalists in my interviews contributed not only to the data used in my research, but also to the imparting of valuable observations and insights on various aspects of both journalism and Chinese society. Six years after the Southern Weekly Incident, many journalists I interviewed for this study had left journalism, joining the huge army of media workers migrating to internet businesses in the past five years or so. But their hopes, journalism dreams, regrets and resignations when working for Chinese media under censorship deserve a sincere record in the history of Chinese media, which I hope this book is able to contribute to a little. My deepest and most apologetic gratitude goes to my parents, who have spent their lives in a modest southern city in China. Despite having little information about my work and being somewhat concerned about the topics I have been exploring, they unconditionally gave me financial and spiritual support for my doctoral study, which formed the groundwork of this book. My daughter Katherine arrived five months prior to completing the writing of the manuscript. Taking care of a newborn while writing an academic book has been an almost-overwhelming challenge in my life. I am sincerely grateful to Chris for his unconditional support and love, and particularly his taking care of our daughter while I was trying to write. Without his faith in me and love for the family, the completion of this book could not have been possible. I am

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also grateful to Marion and Clive, who brought so much joy to Katherine in my absence, making the maternal guilt more bearable. Finally, my little girl has been a patient listener to my mumbling of nonsensical ideas about the book when I carried her for her daily walk in the park and tried to untangle ideas that have trapped me in writing. This book is about meanings of life. Perhaps nothing is more thrilling than witnessing how this little being is growing to embody meanings in her life.

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Introduction: The 2013 Southern Weekly Incident and Resistance in Digital China

Resistance in Digital China is about political contention and activism in a digitally networked Chinese society. Studies on contentious politics in China have largely focused on Chinese people’s struggle to contest officials’ wrongdoings and negotiation with the state over certain policies (O’Brien and Li, 2006; Yu, 2006; Yang, 2009; Cai, 2010). These studies highlight the evolving strategies adopted by both the state and citizens in the negotiations of power with each other, particularly in the digital environment. As insightful and inspiring as these studies are, they are prone to create a deceptive impression that the Chinese population is struggling on a daily basis to resist the government or party authorities, with the Chinese state exercising relentless repression on them. In fact, Chinese people involved in popular political contention often do not challenge the Communist regime or their political agenda. Recent surveys have shown that a considerable number of Chinese individuals embrace guidelines and policies of the CCP (the Chinese Communist Party) (Pan and Xu, 2015).1 With an increasing number of Chinese intellectuals and the New Leftists2 (Zheng, 1999) endorsing China exclusively as the world’s economic and cultural superpower, new waves of Chinese nationalism and statism further complicate Chinese people’s perception of and relationship with the Party state. It would be a fallacy to assume ever-present confrontational incentives underpin Chinese individuals’ participation in popular resistive events. It is in this context that Resistance in Digital China asks about how Chinese individuals make sense of the type of resistance they are involved in and the personal trajectory they take in participating in resistance. Resistance in Digital China contests the dichotomy of a top-down repression by the Chinese state and a bottom-up resistance by the Chinese people. The relations between the Party state and Chinese citizens are never one dimensional – not simply one controls and the other one resists, nor is simply cooperating, but co-habitant, co-evolving,

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always dynamic and at times merging. Resistance in Digital China argues for a nuanced understanding of the multifaceted state-society relationship, in which the Chinese Party state plays a dominating role in regulating the relationship. The state plays this role within the society rather than in the opposition to it. It ensures that the overall regulation is interwoven into Chinese people’s self-regulation of social relationships with others. Whilst Chinese people often are involved in collective expression of resistance, they consciously frame their action within party limits and individually pursue self-detachment for protection. Chinese people are careful about safeguarding their lives in Communist China. To examine the complex meanings behind Chinese people’s participation in popular contention, this book unpacks meanings of three dimensions – the political, cultural and sociological meanings. Resistance in digital China is episodic, featuring occurrence and reoccurrence of contentious events. Not to understate the significance of quantitative work that endeavours to reveal the scale of Chinese contentious events through statistical analysis, this book, by contrast, gives much-needed attention to examining a single event in detail. It provides a nuanced account of the 2013 Southern Weekly Incident, examining political and cultural issues of ideologies, perceptions, emotions, memory and embodiment in-depth within the complex context of this resistive event. The 2013 Southern Weekly Incident was triggered by the censorship of Southern Weekly (Nanfang Zhoumo), particularly the New Year Edition and the editorial of New Year Greeting, by the Provincial Propaganda Department in January 2013. Southern Weekly is a prominent nationally circulated newspaper belonging to Southern Media Group,3 and has been embraced by liberal intellectuals as the most outspoken newspaper in China and considered by Western media (e.g. Rosenthal, 2002; Fallows, 2013; Kaiman, 2013) as China’s most influential liberal newspaper. The incident involved contestation by Chinese journalists, citizens and activists on the long-term issues of media censorship and press freedom in China and street protests organized by citizens and activists. The incident represents popular contention led by public professionals (Stern and Hassid, 2012) online and amplified by Chinese citizens and activists. It reveals the multi-layered power relations involved in the interplay between politics, internet business, technology and civil society in digitalized China. It unveils how Chinese people’s engrained self-constraint in political contention is interwoven into the ongoing negotiation between the Chinese state and society. The political meaning of resistance in this incident is immanent in civic connectivity promoted through collective contention. The cultural meaning has

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to be understood through individuals’ experience of embodiment during the course of emotional expression. Embodiment in this book is concerned with individuals’ sensory experience of connecting physicality and subjectivity in the course of taking action with other people together (McDonald, 2006). The sociological meaning is inherent in Chinese people’s construction of a Chinese public sphere, which, as I will demonstrate, is elite-led, but it engages real – though circumscribed – mass participation, and the content is highly emotional rather than rational. The analysis of the Southern Weekly Incident foregrounds Chinese people’s utilization of new technologies, particularly social media, for political contention. China’s internet population, the world’s largest since 2015, reached 802 million by June 2018. The internet penetration in China has reached 57.7 per cent (CNNIC, 2018). Chinese people are highly interactive online, regularly participating in activities such as posting to a blog or a microblog site, updating their location, uploading photos and videos, sharing files (Sullivan, 2012). Chinese people are efficiently networked through individuals’ proactive selfrepresentation on predominant social media platforms, such as Sina Weibo4 (hereafter referred to as ‘Weibo’) and Tencent’s WeChat.5 WeChat, currently the most popular social media platform in China, had around 1.08 billion Monthly Active Users (MAUs) worldwide in the third quarter of 2018 (statista, 2018). Although Weibo’s popularity has been challenged by WeChat since 2014, Weibo’s MAUs reached 431 million in June 2018 (CIW, 2018). Whilst acknowledging the significant changes of Chinese society brought about by new technologies, particularly in the context that popular political contention in contemporary China had until this point been relatively closed, this book is by no means endorsing the ideas that the Chinese society has been democratized or Chinese people have been technologically empowered. There are multiple meanings of resistance to be unpacked in digital China, such as those I explore in this book, which may not fit within frameworks of technological empowerment or social democratization. Precisely because contention on digital networks is meaningful on various dimensions, this book also eschews generalizations made by political economists that digital activism on the internet simply contributes to strengthening the status quo in China and promoting neoliberalism. Resistance in Digital China argues that digital collective action, despite not leading to immediate policy or legitimate changes in China, is part of Chinese individuals’ subjectification in the ever-changing economic world they are facing.

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Prior to my academic life, I spent several years working as a journalist in Southern Media Group. This experience helped me establish a personal network of journalists that greatly assisted my close observation and textual analysis of the Southern Weekly Incident. Having worked with journalists from both official newspapers and relatively liberal papers in China, I was also aware that journalists involved in the Southern Weekly Incident might present diversified or even contradictory perceptions of their resistance, and thus giving them opportunities to attribute the meanings of their activities was crucial in this study. The main arguments of this book, particularly those about the meanings of Chinese people’s resistance in a self-constraint scenario, emerge distinctively from semi-structured in-depth interviews. Over the course of 2013 and 2014, I made regular trips to Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing, where most journalists, citizens and activists involved were based, and conducted forty-five in-depth interviews for the purposes of investigating the Southern Weekly Incident, each lasting between ninety minutes and three hours. Interviewees included thirtytwo journalists, seven non-journalist citizens and six activists. Interviewees’ discursive and explanatory accounts of emotions, perceptions, ideology and memories helped me explore how they made sense of resistance. There are essentially a number of arguments and theoretical pay-offs demonstrated in this book. The book argues for a nuanced understanding of the meanings of Chinese people’s resistance from the political, cultural and sociological dimensions, as opposed to focusing on resisting the state or challenging the Communist regime. From the political dimension, the book argues for a particular form of civic connectivity between Chinese people during popular contention. Following the initialization of elite-led contestation, Chinese people participate in public discourse by mostly commenting on and posting relevant materials online to exercise ‘surrounding and watching’ (weiguan) of the unfolding of particular events. On rare occasions, some of them even protest on the street. What makes the logic of connectivity in the Chinese context special is that, despite the apparently collective resistance in particular events, Chinese people pursue emotive and personalized expressions and often stay politically and ideologically disengaged with each other. People promote discussion and contention with various incentives but do not collectively aim to undermine the regime. Chinese people’s various ideological beliefs are often irreconcilable, complicated by different understandings of authoritarianism and democracy. Chinese individuals also have vastly different perceptions of whether it is politically safe

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to be involved in a contentious event. The particular form of civic connectivity allows collective resistive action with political subtlety or ambiguity. The end here is not collectivity but individuality. Yet, individuality is constituted through the emotive bond with others. From the cultural dimension, this book explores the sensory experience of embodiment of Chinese people participating in popular contention, acknowledging the meanings of resistance on the personal level that are concerned with individuals’ memories and emotions. Embodiment is individual connection between physicality and subjectivity, which is promoted through taking action with other people together. The process of embodiment is selfrevealing of emotions and inner vulnerability (McDonald, 2006). For Chinese people, embodiment is the process of subjectification and identity seeking in the country where modernization and globalization have taken place dramatically in a relatively short space of time. Facing the fast-changing economic world, what is even more surreal for Chinese people is the evolvement of official discourse regarding socialism and capitalism in practice that serves the nation’s economic development, hence the need for individuals to resolve the conflicting self (Touraine, 2002) through certain processes of subjectification, particularly through non-disruptive resistance that promotes embodiment. From the sociological dimension, the meaning of resistance perceived by Chinese people derives from their construction of a Chinese public sphere. The construction of a Chinese public sphere is dynamic, with the concept of the public sphere being constantly evoked and rejected at the same time. Albeit elite-led and highly emotional, the formation of a Chinese public sphere engages real mass participation that should not be overlooked.

Resistance in digital China defined This book focuses on popular resistance in digital China practised by a large population of Chinese people in contesting various issues in the society. Chinese people’s involvement in political contention, at the current stage, is often an urban phenomenon that involves mass discussion on Chinese social media. For the demography concerned, urban political contention is often promoted by journalists, lawyers, intellectuals, professionals and university students. Using social media for acquiring and sharing details about controversies relating to particular official figures or public policies, Chinese people are involved in

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expressing varying degrees of critiques or emotions around grievances, and demonstrating them to government authorities and other members of the public. Although the type of resistance concerned in this book differs from dissidence that is exercised exclusively by dissidents from the activist community,6 popular contention initiated by ordinary citizens (as opposed to professional activists or dissidents) has often attracted the engagement of activists, who intend to promote large-scale civic mobilization when possible. Therefore, the artificial distinction between popular resistance and dissidence is sometimes blurred. Popular contention on party policies and government officials, in the form of radical and organized demonstrations, has been strictly controlled by the CCP, despite claims made by the CCP authorities that the right of assembly is protected by the Chinese Constitution (as is freedom of expression and publication). Through the entire propaganda apparatus that operates a total management of Chinese media (Zhao, 2001, 2008), the CCP has clearly warned Chinese citizens of the high risk of participating in mass incidents, which refers to street assemblies of various forms ranging from public speeches to protests expressing civil disobedience. Arguably, digital social networks have changed the dynamics of control of collective action on certain topics. Text messaging, online local forums and contingent social media groups have been proven efficient in maintaining and expanding online petitions and street protests in cases relating to environmental issues, LGBTQ+ rights and contestation of police brutality or corrupt public figures (Yang and Calhoun, 2007; Tong and Lei, 2013; Yang, 2019). This is comparable to other countries where the internet has facilitated e-tactics and e-mobilization, in which people protest merely online or are mobilized by discussions through digital networks to take action on the street (Earl and Kimport, 2011). Even in countries where control and repression by the authorities were intensively carried out, online social networks helped mobilize emotions and provide action scripts, acting as the choreographer of the assembly (Gerbaudo, 2012). At the time of writing, most Chinese cases of popular contention remain merely online, especially under the more pervasive repression of civil action by Xi Jinping’s leadership (2012 to present). Regular message exchange through digital networks nurtures individuals’ engagement in public conversation by enabling them to effortlessly and immediately communicate their own observations (Benkler, 2006). Being able to attain information from sources beyond official Chinese media and interact with diverging views in political discourse is novel in China. Chinese people’s frequent adoption of creative tactics to circumvent censorship in their

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interactions about both political and apolitical topics shapes the distinctive form of contentious politics and online activism in digital China (Yang, 2009, 2014). The type of online activism that involves virtual demonstrations, such as bombarding a specific computer network, virtual sit-ins and so on, loosely referred to as hacktivism in democratic societies,7 has not been widely discovered in China. But online interaction and contestation already imply a remarkable collectivity of resistance in contemporary China. Events that involve issues of social unfairness, injustice, corruption and power abuse often trigger an emotional outpouring that demonstrates anger, hatred, compassion, outrage and sympathy, forming a sentimental dimension on the internet in China (Tong, 2015). The new term mass online incidents or internet mass incident, drawing upon the previous term mass incidents, has been adopted by the state in policies of controlling online activism (Yang, 2009; Ren, 2011). A decade ago, Yang’s (2009) work theorizes forms of Chinese people’s online activism as rightful resistance, artful contention and digital hidden transcripts, which resort to official policies and rely on creative strategies to promote online mass communication around controversial issues whilst circumventing censorship and thus avoiding immediate repression. Staying non-disruptive, Chinese people online have effectively demonstrated mockery, satire and sarcasm aimed at the authorities. Through commenting and reposting on social media to demonstrate surrounding and watching (weiguan) (CDT, 2012; Tong and Lei, 2013), Chinese people exercise ‘citizen witnessing’ (Ellis, 2000; Peters, 2001; Allan, 2013) of controversial individuals and their response to the issue at stake. Here, citizens avoid openly challenging party officials whilst quietly imposing pressure through their collective activities. The CCP’s censoring has not always been efficient enough to control information being spread during sensitive events, particularly when messages were well hidden and circulation was too vast to monitor fully. The gap of a few seconds or minutes needed for post deletion to take place allows some information to be released. Policies for regulating the internet are created and updated frequently by Chinese party authorities, particularly responding to emergence of new digital platforms and online tactics that may undermine existing control of political discourse. Yet, the lag of control on a particular internet application after it has already become popular has inspired Chinese people to play with unwritten rules of what may be regarded as permissible by the authorities. In addition, many Chinese citizens have learned to use proxy servers and anti-blocking software to access information that has been censored.

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They may even rewrite computer programs to defuse the filtering system (Yang, 2009; Sullivan, 2012). In cases where websites are shut down by censors, some Chinese internet users manage to open new ones under creative guises (Sullivan, 2012). News stories on overseas websites or social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, which are blocked on the Chinese network, are regularly accessed by activists who then distribute this information on Chinese online platforms (Xiao, 2011). Both the government’s control and Chinese internet users’ contentious techniques online are becoming more sophisticated over time (Yang, 2009). Creative and artful contention has become the style of Chinese citizens’ online communication, shaping a distinct online culture in China. Of course, the limit of online posting is firmly guarded by the CCP. Chinese internet users rarely pose threats to the regime. The deliberate manoeuvring of online posting for Chinese people is arguably a continuous process of finding a way to contest public issues while ensuring maintenance of the co-habitant relationship with the authorities and, for some, protect their self-interests within the Party system. Understanding the logic behind the practice of online tactics is key in exploring meanings of resistance which may appear circumscribed, disorganized, casual and often short-lived, but ultimately meaningful for individuals. Tactical resistance has been documented in other authoritarian societies in previous studies. James Scott’s (1985) ethnographical work depicts everyday resistance in rural Malaysia, where countryside peasants adopted underhand rebellious tactics against local dominants through foot dragging, sabotage, poaching and other activities, working the system to minimize their disadvantage in everyday life. Whilst Chinese people’s usage of online tactics resembles the mocking and vengeful tone displayed off-stage by Malaysian subordinate groups three decades ago, people in digital China do not simply rebel to demand short-term benefits, but to react to unfair treatment by the powerful and claim the desire of living a more meaningful and respectable life. To be more precise, urban Chinese people’s resistance in many cases of online contention is not merely ‘a critique of power spoken behind the back of the dominant’ (Scott, 1992, p. xii), but an open demand for attention from the authorities and other members of the public in the course of pursuing individuality and subjectivity. Another relevant concept here is rightful resistance coined by O’Brien and Li (2006). O’Brien and Li (2006) explore rural Chinese people’s resistance to local cadres and define the technique as rightful resistance, which is operated through legitimate and authorized channels and can be justified by the regime’s

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policies. Rightful resistance is ‘within (yet in tension with) official norms’ (p. 2) and ‘in accord with prevailing statutes (or at least not in open violation of them)’ (p. 3). Relying on legal tactics, rightful resisters normally frame their claims with reference to protections implied in party ideologies or conferred by policy makers and provoke political pressure on local authorities. Rightful resisters spot the gaps between rights promised by the Centre and rights actually given at the local level. They often turn a disapproving eye towards local cadres who are unqualified or incompetent and lodge complaints about, for instance, undemocratic or unethical practice of local elections, implicitly threatening that they could escalate the case to the central government who publicized relevant policies. Therefore, rightful resisters ‘use the regime’s own pledges to assail corrupt, predatory, and coercive cadres’ (p. 10). Rightful resistance is episodic, local and regional. O’Brien and Li (2006) are shrewd to point out that the contractual approach of rightful resistance relies on resisters’ aspiration that they share values with the authorities and would win their entitlement of political life should they stay lawful. Rightful resisters therefore would only make demands within the regime’s framework and maintain an obedient relationship with the state. They acted as if they took official guidelines of policies to heart. Rightful resistance is a partly institutionalized type of contention: ‘They [rural resisters] openly and opportunistically engage the structure of domination (and pierce the hegemony) at its weakest point’ (O’Brien and Li, 2006, p. 24). The rightful tactics have certainly been inherited by many Chinese people today in the sense that they mostly make claims within existing hegemony by the regime and resort to lawful action online that is non-disruptive. Resisters in digital China, as strategic as their rural counterparts in the past, claim citizen rights and individual values of equality, fairness, justice and so forth, which are often publicly represented by recent party leadership. They contest topics that appear to violate such values. They often shape their grievance as if they are pursuing the high ground on official values which would fit the image of modern and internationalized China. However, compared to rural resisters who protest economic benefits or material gains, resisters in digital China push the borderline of institutional contention further to contest ideological concepts of identity, human rights and citizenship, demanding the very meaning of life. Resisters initiate discourses over popular topics, such as workers’ rights, food safety, habitant environment and even questioning existing power relations between local governmental and

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business institutions. They even sometimes make claims with reference to ideas from other liberal societies. Unlike rural resisters, who had scarce resources, today’s Chinese resisters, relying on digital networks for spreading information, are more able to efficiently inform other members of the public of controversies. By appealing to people’s emotions, they are able to effectively promote largescale discussions about certain issues (Tong, 2015). Through multiple events of online popular contention, Chinese people test the limit of authorities’ tolerance and push the boundary further whilst restricting their action within the existing frame of party politics. Resistance in digital China therefore follows strategies concerned with rightful resistance in rural China but contests more bravely existing policies and ideologies and expands it to cover a digital repertoire enabled by digital technologies. Resistance in digital China sits somewhere between a traditional social movement which is constituted by multiple campaigns (Tilly, 2004) and daily practice of resistance in both Scott’s (1985, 1992) and O’Brien and Li’s (2006) accounts. Albeit not quite a social movement in a traditional sense, resistance in digital China openly demands attention or even response from the authorities, which is a level above the practice of rebelling tactics against local dominants and working the system to minimize their disadvantage in everyday life (Scott, 1985, 1992). Resisters in digital China appeal to public emotions and popular ideologies, pledging to change Chinese society in more fundamental ways than pointing at discrepancies between Party promises and policy implementations by local cadres, which is at the core of rightful resistance (O’Brien and Li, 2006). Resistance in digital China is urban based and nationally publicized and mobilized. It is often initiated by urban elites. Regular interaction and practice of playful techniques on social media have made online contention on social media part of urban Chinese people’s life. Increased exposure to international news events online has also made Chinese urban citizens more aware of human rights and potential controversies of Chinese authoritarianism. More importantly, it is only with the digital logic of connectivity between different social groups that Chinese people of otherwise disconnected social groups began to become collective in contentious events, blending digital tactics with self-enlightening exercise to seek meanings of subjectification in political life. To be more precise, the elite-led and widely spread contention in digital China follows what Bennett and Segerberg (2012, 2013) call the logic of connective action enabled by digital networks, which facilitates personalization of political expressions. In this book, I argue that this logic of

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connectivity on China’s digital networks allows people to demonstrate collective resistance without individual commitment to challenging the authorities.

Resistance of Chinese journalists within the system The Southern Weekly Incident represents a typical formulation of popular contention in urban China, which involves initiation by public professionals, participation by the public mass to a certain extent and further promotion by activists for their own interests. By public professionals, I am following Stern and Hassid’s (2012, p. 1232) definition to refer to ‘those whose jobs offer a platform […] to attract public attention and broadcast opinions’. In many contentious events in current China, journalists play a pivotal role in mobilizing social discourses. Understanding Chinese journalists’ role as resisters within the system is particularly important in understanding resistance in digital China. The role of Chinese journalists in promoting social change in China has been shaped essentially by the agendas of political propaganda and media commercialization since the 1980s. Discussing the power relations around the media at the age of media reform is crucial for the understanding of the media logic (Meng, 2016) and varying perceptions of journalistic professionalism and idealism in China. Media commercialization is often expected to enhance liberalization of society. However, media commercialization in China since the 1980s effectively serves the CCP agenda of maintaining regime stability (Stockmann, 2014). Media reform was part of the Reform and Opening-up policy launched in the late 1970s by Deng Xiaoping’s leadership (normally referring to the period from the late 1970s to the late 1980s), which endeavoured to liberate Chinese people from anti-capitalist ideas and to introduce the ideology of the market (Zhao, 2001). Newspapers, which used to receive government subsidies for operation, were forced to directly face the market. Commercial media that appeared from the 1980s exhibited commodity properties. However, the CCP still regarded the media as promoters of the party’s agenda and ideology (Qian and Bandurski, 2010). The CCP’s licensing policies defined particular terms of licences for different media (Qian and Bandurski, 2010). Chinese media have since been run under the framework of institutions managed as enterprises. The role of Chinese media was recast by ‘the dual imperative of state control and market forces’ (Zhao, 2001, p. 37). On the one hand, Chinese media continued to play the role of propaganda institutions and had no reason to offend the Party which provided them the fundamental basis of market business.

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On the other hand, the media needed stories that sold to a booming urban-based middle class as their customers in order to sustain a market profit model based on advertising (Zhao, 2001). Chinese media were operated within the so-called socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics framework. But as media sociologist Chin-Chuan Lee (2005, p. 108) points out, the media are in fact in ‘Communist (and postCommunist) state capitalism with authoritarian characteristics’. The public became the targets of both party propaganda and media advertising. Journalists started to develop their own tactics to gain audiences, while working carefully within the Party system. In the 1990s, the CCP considered it necessary to further marketize the media and foster competition between domestic media. This was to prepare Chinese media for facing the competition from foreign media and the challenge of global public opinions when China was seeking entrance to the World Trade Organization (Qian, 2014). In the meantime, economic reforms caused ideological debates in China and the CCP needed more than ever to manage public opinions to resolve the ideological crisis (Zheng, 1999). The CCP therefore carefully promoted market orientation of the media and censored the media. For many media managers, displaying obedience to the authorities and at the same time making money from the market were a creed (Qian, 2014). The increased number of newspapers and competition between them certainly caused fragmentation of the newspaper industry in China, which posed a challenge to supervision and regulation by the state (Stockmann, 2014). At the same time, commercial media, as opposed to Party media, gradually became favoured by Chinese audiences, particularly during occasions of crisis incidents (Qian and Bandurski, 2010). To tighten control, the CCP upgraded the main administrative body that implements licensing policies and content management on the media. The Publication Bureau under the Ministry of Culture was upgraded to first-tier status under the direct supervision of the State Council and renamed the State Press and Publication Administration (Xinwen chuban shu) (SPPA) in 1987, and further elevated to ministerial-level status and renamed the General Administration of Press and Publication (Xinwen chuban zongshu) (GAPP) in 2001 (Stockmann, 2014). The CCP also established propaganda departments under CCP Party committees at national, provincial, city and town levels. These propaganda departments are embedded in the corresponding levels of governments and practically take charge of guiding and planning of propaganda work and ideological development in China (Stockmann, 2014).

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In addition, the GAPP encouraged newspaper conglomeration in the face of anticipated foreign competition. With many commercial papers being merged into large press conglomerates, the CCP regained control over the fragmented structure of China’s newspaper industry (Stockmann, 2014). The institutional structure of conglomeration also allowed the propaganda authorities to intervene in the editorial process of newspapers and appointments of personnel who manage particular newspapers. Newspaper conglomeration effectively re-strengthened party newspapers, which have retained leadership position in conglomeration, although are often financially subsidized by commercial papers in the conglomeration. The CCP has also exercised careful personnel management by selecting CCP supporters to be top editors of the press and operating the so-called editor responsibility system, in which a media employee’s superior is held accountable for the employee’s non-compliance with party authorities. This policy apparently authorized top editors of a newspaper to directly take responsibility for ensuring compliance by all employees with the Party line. The co-existence of market force and party leadership has ensured a peculiar co-habitant relationship between official, semi-official and commercialized newspapers in China and that commercialization of the media in China does not undermine the CCP’s propaganda agenda (Stockmann, 2014). Stockmann (2014) argues that the CCP utilizes marketized media to increase the credibility of media in the eyes of citizens and hence effectively ensuring the means to influence public opinion, whilst strictly supervising Party papers or political organ papers to ensure continuous publicity of party propaganda. By carefully calculating output of party papers and commercial papers, the CCP warrant the party orientation of Chinese media as a whole. Indeed, the carefully crafted media landscape has ensured that the non-political media discourses have expanded but political coverage remains highly controlled (Lee, 2005). The distinctive structure of the Chinese media industry employs a diverse group of journalists serving various purposes and aims. The perception of journalism as a profession by people working for different media organizations varies tremendously. Hassid (2011, 2015) distinguishes four types of journalist in China. Many employees of Party organs are communist professionals, who, despite having become more professional in connecting to their audience in news reporting, remain committed to CCP leadership and party propaganda. They are generally contented employees who pursue communist-style journalistic professionalism. Many Chinese journalists are workaday journalists, who would

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regularly receive unethical payments for producing propaganda work and may be bribed by corrupted officials or individuals who buy their way into positive coverage. These journalists are unlikely to produce critical work that would offend the authorities. There are journalists who pursue an idealist American model of journalistic professionalism and would conduct critical reporting based on the norms of objectivity. These American-style journalists pursue high-standard news reporting and have a strong sense of being a media professional. However, their perceptions of the so-called American journalistic professionalism remain within a technical framework for producing neutral-sounding reports. They would not challenge the power of censorship and would even carefully confirm to technical ‘objectivity’ for the purpose of protecting themselves from punishment of critical reporting. In contrast to these three, advocate journalists are committed to guarding critical reporting when political risks are involved. They would exercise pushback over censorship or even outright resistance to the authorities in the course of pursuing their perceived higher good of the society. They are the media professionals who are most likely to be committed to public resistance and causing real changes of media policies (Hassid, 2011, 2015). Such a variation of different journalists in China acutely demonstrates the diverse approaches to journalistic professionalism taken by Chinese journalists, particularly in relation to the ideas about journalistic independence and the commitment to advocating their own opinions. To be sure, particular journalists do not exclusively belong to one typology. Many communist journalists also pursue American-style objectivity by adopting an evidence-based framework of news reporting, but they do so for producing effective party propaganda. Many workaday journalists work for party papers and view themselves as representing the Party spirit, and so are also committed to communist-style professionalism. The journalists who pursue the idealist American model of news reporting, though sharing common ethical norms in their professional practice, at times also opt for economic advantages and secure employment offered to them when considering conducting risky coverage. But regardless of different professional approaches, it is clear that the majority of Chinese journalists support, or at least do not challenge, the status quo of the Communist state. Media workers in China share a sense of journalist community based on the idea of professionalism often from American journalism, but the specific norms of professionalism, such as authentic and objective reporting, taking social responsibility and media autonomy, are interpreted differently in China and dominated by official discourse (Tong, 2006). As Hassid (2015, p. 90) argues, ‘many Chinese reporters

Introduction

15

claim to be American-style professionals, many fewer actually are, and even those few tend toward political passivity’. In a similar vein, Zhaoxi Liu (2016) also argues that many metropolitan newspaper journalists in China have the aspiration to be muckrakers and to make a difference, but in reality, they are frustrated by facing many political and economic barriers. As a way of reconciliation, some journalists try to help disadvantaged people find social help by writing stories about them. They see making small changes as rendering their job meaningful (Liu, 2016). Indeed, activities of Chinese journalists have been largely institutionalized, even for the so-called critical journalists, who specialize in producing investigative reports (Repnikova, 2017). Critical journalists are arguably seasoned practitioners of resistance at the boundary of what is accepted by the authority, but instead of undermining the Party’s political framework, they are indeed progressives who are trying to improve it. They are good at taking advantage of political loopholes in pursuing sensitive cases of news coverage. They often point the finger at local government officials for injustices, which attracts the public eye but does not directly challenge the central government (Tong and Lei, 2013). Repnikova (2017) argues that the relationship between the Party and critical journalists is a state-dominated partnership that involves continuous improvisation by both the state and journalists. The state improvises by tolerating a restricted amount of space for critical reports. Journalists improvise by creatively interpreting the Party’s instruction and bypassing party restrictions, at the same time carefully maintaining the collaborative ties with the censoring authorities. They are committed to constant self-censorship, which leads to obscure criticism and constrains the level of activism (Repnikova, 2017). Ultimately, critical journalists are state employees and integrated into the party system. They build trust with officials and cautiously maintain political connections with the establishment to secure personal protection (Repnikova, 2017). Many of those who are named advocate journalists by Hassid (2011, 2015) are not excluded from this framework. Interestingly, Hassid (2011, 2015) distinguishes what he calls the tactic of pushback and outright resistance practised by advocate journalists. Pushback takes place when advocate journalists utilize professional standing to oppose power holders within the boundaries of the permissible (e.g. publishing sensitive investigative coverage involving ostensibly neutral quotes), whilst outright resistance takes place when journalists directly challenge the Party state and move beyond the boundaries of the acceptable (e.g. publicly criticizing the CCP or taking strike action). Although both the tactics of pushback and

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Resistance in Digital China

outright resistance are proactive, they are, in my view, politically incomparable as ways of resisting the authorities. Whilst outright resistance throws caution to the wind, pushback is ultimately contained within the system. A critical reality of Chinese journalists is that outright resistance rarely emerges. The so-called advocate journalists are mostly committed to pushback within the system. In addition, the literati tradition of Chinese journalists has meant that Chinese journalists often regard themselves as intellectuals who carry the mission of reforming the nation, and educating and enlightening their audience (Lee, 2005). Fuelled by Western liberalism, Chinese journalists, who inherit the strong tradition of intellectuals working the Confucian press, hold the ideal of being defenders of social consciousness rather than fighters for citizen rights. What is left out in their perception of journalistic professionalism is the concern for the democratic public sphere (Lee, 2005). Some Chinese journalists may be actively involved in criticizing politics but, regarding themselves as intellectuals, they aim to provide suggestions to the power holder in resolving concrete problems. National wealth and strength are ultimately the core ideals for Chinese media workers (Lee, 2005). With this logic, Chinese journalists regard within the system resistance as effective in solving concrete problems in China and ultimately contributing to the progression of the nation. They resist certain issues, but might be unwilling to do so on others, depending on whether their resistance contributes to problem solving and stays within the system (F. J. Lin, 2010). Indeed, many of my journalist interviewees emphasized that by trying to push the boundary of reporting a little bit more each time, rather than challenging the whole system, they are expanding the limits and slowly widening the space of journalism and ultimately contributing to changing the system.8 In order words, they are collaborators with the government rather than state resisters. Even critical journalists may believe in maintaining stability and social order for the promise of a prosperous China, which follows the same ideology as the CCP. In short, Chinese journalists, when becoming resisters in some cases, remain mostly resisters within the system.

Southern Weekly and the media environment in Guangdong In the Southern Weekly Incident, journalists are public professionals who effectively mobilized a large population of urban citizens in the discourse of media censorship. Examining the evolving relationship of the newspaper with

Introduction

17

authorities, and the general media environment of Guangdong, where the newspaper is based, is crucial in exploring the mobilization of resistance by the related media professionals and how the Southern Weekly Incident is emblematic of the dynamism of resistance in digital China. Southern Weekly was established at a time when the previously discussed media reform began in China. A significant number of evening papers and metropolitan papers were established during the 1980s and 1990s. Although they were not free from political barriers defined by the licensing policies, these papers were unprecedented in their accessibility for ordinary Chinese people. In 1984, Southern Weekly was founded by the party organ South Daily as a commercial spin-off (Qian and Bandurski, 2010).9 It was initially established under the Department of Culture and Entertainment of South Daily and was created to focus on cultural and entertainment issues in order to cater to the interests of the potential readership (Guan et al., 2017). The founders of the newspaper later decided to develop Southern Weekly to represent the spirit of the reform era in Guangdong. Guangdong was chosen by Deng as an experimental base for economic and political reform. Since the early days of media reform, Guangdong media was an important arena for introducing market economy. Therefore, although Southern Weekly started as an entertainment tabloid and a supplement to the Party paper South Daily, it was given the space to develop into a national newspaper representing pioneer spirits and culture. Its founders intended to enlighten readers with advanced ideas and values. In news production, Southern Weekly also had the ambition of transforming the Maoist-style news and establishing a new style of journalism that catered to the urban readership at that time (Guan et al., 2017). After rapid success in the first few years testing the market, Southern Weekly made a notable shift in its journalistic practices to cover social problems rather than only entertainment news. The circulation of the newspaper saw a continuous surge and Southern Weekly became financially and institutionally separate from South Daily in 1993. It gained the reputation of the ‘circulation king’ among commercial papers. Soon Southern Weekly was able to contribute to its parent press group a large portion of annual revenue (Guan et al., 2017). More radical reforms were made in the newspaper in the 1990s, most notably a shift towards investigative reporting. It published political criticism, revealing the dark side of many social issues and local officials’ wrongdoings. It exercised remote supervision (yidi jiandu), a strategy commonly adopted by Chinese investigative journalists for practising

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investigative coverage in other provinces so as to avoid offending local officials in their jurisdiction.10 Quickly, Southern Weekly became the boldest newspaper in China, well-known for exposing corrupted officials beyond Guangdong, advocating the rule of law and promoting advanced spirits. Chinese newspapers are subject to control by the vertical propaganda censorship system and the horizontal local Party administration (Guan et al., 2017). However, the interests of the local authority and the CPD (Central Propaganda Department) are not always compatible and, in fact, are contradictory at times. In the case of Southern Weekly, this dual accountability of the propaganda department for both the CPD and the local government has contributed to a certain level of autonomy of the newspaper in the early years (Guan et al., 2017). Southern Weekly’s muckraking of negative stories in other regions apparently offended local officials from these regions, and caught the attention of media censors from the CPD, who had since been seeking an opportunity to discipline the newspaper. Local leaders in Guangdong in the 1980s and 1990s, in the interests of developing Southern Weekly as Guangdong’s cultural influence, protected Southern Weekly from punishment by the CPD on several occasions (Guan et al., 2017). Indeed, Southern Weekly developed fast in its first two decades of operation, partially owing to fortunate timing as the Party was still fumbling with the concept of establishing regulation of market-based media enterprises, which granted the newspaper opportunities to test the limits of the Party line (Guan, 2014). Such a political experiment for a newspaper was certainly risky, but Southern Weekly benefited from the unique media environment in Guangdong province. The top party officials of Guangdong and the leaders of the media group at the time were mostly Guangdong natives who shared a commitment to supporting transformation of local media (Guan et al., 2017). This assisted Southern Weekly’s trajectory in finding its way of becoming a critical newspaper in the process of establishing itself as a commercial market institution. The newspaper, like many others in the past few decades, saw the affluent and urban middle class as the most desirable target audience. Intellectuals and middle-class readers championed the liberal and democratic values presented by the newspaper. This readership gradually forced the expansion of space for expression and thus challenged censorship (Qian and Bandurski, 2010). To some extent, media power and market power started to merge; together they entered the interplay with political power (Qian, 2014). Journalists were finding ways to push the boundaries of censorship. A number of hard-hitting reports

Introduction

19

by Southern Weekly were proving highly influential, such as the Putian Medical Group series reports starting in 1999,11 the Zhang Jun case in 2001,12 the Project Hope case in 2001.13 The newspaper’s ongoing advocation of individuality and the theme of keeping up with the times have been particularly demonstrated through its publication of New Year Greeting every year, which often celebrates dreams, human spirit and progressive lifestyles. The editorials of New Year Greetings thus have a unique appeal to readers, which was a key factor that mobilized protests in the Southern Weekly Incident. Since 2000, the authorities have removed top editors of Southern Weekly, including the well-respected Chief Editor Jiang Yiping in 2000 and her successors, who intended to preserve the paper’s liberal tradition. Following the removals of top editors, Southern Weekly saw a sharp decline in the amount of investigative reporting. A large number of influential journalists left the newspaper after 2002 (Guan et al., 2017). Not only Southern Weekly, but also its parent media group – South Media Group – was hit hard by serious crackdowns by the authorities. Propaganda officials, who had no previous connection with Guangdong or Southern Media Group, were appointed to top positions in the press to directly manage Southern Weekly. In the wider environment of Guangdong, top officials have also been replaced by people parachuted in by the central government from other provinces. Southern Weekly gradually lost protection from local officials. Controls on the newspaper became even tighter after 2008. In 2008, when reporting the Sichuan Earthquake, which killed nearly 70,000 people and left more than 18,000 missing (USGS, 2008), Southern Weekly and its sister daily newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily (also belonging to the Southern Media Group) demanded accountability of the local government for the fatal disaster and questioned the official death toll figures for schoolchildren and teachers. Reporting on the Beijing Olympics in the same year, these two newspapers were brave in commenting on some negative issues, which set them apart from other newspapers in China.14 Since then, the CPD has labelled them as Two South (liang nan) and significantly tightened regulation of them. The term liang nan indicates that they are regarded by the authorities as two troublemakers. The trajectory of Southern Weekly saw the rise and fall of its autonomy as a critical newspaper. It has evolved with the needs of the elite middle-class market, and also been continually transformed by increasingly tightening authoritarian regulation. Jiang Yiping, the former chief editor, who was widely respected as a contributor to Southern Weekly’s rise, provided this comment in my interview.15

20

Resistance in Digital China The 1990s was an era when civil awareness in Chinese society was awakened, hence it was the call of the time that we [Southern Weekly staff] focused on individuals’ needs and civil rights. So the guideline Justice, Conscience, Love, Rationality emerged […] In the 2000s, Southern Weekly put forward the aims of Understanding China from here. It somehow showed the target of the elite group as our readers, as they are the target group of our advertisers […] Maybe Southern Weekly has always been changing, but the direction and procedure of the change have always been to progress the country, always been pushing this country forward to be more civilized, more integrated into the world, and more a society with universal values. With Southern Weekly being labelled as liang nan, they [Southern Media employers] kept replacing the Chief Editor of Southern Weekly to tighten the regulation of the newspaper, but I have always been emphasizing that the people who manage this newspaper should really understand what this newspaper has experienced and understand the people working for it.

Still, many media counterparts and journalism students regarded Southern Weekly as the newspaper that represented the highest standard of journalism in China. The newspaper however found it hard to live up to the expectation of its readership, although at rare times it still demonstrated its resistive tradition.16 With Southern Weekly receiving stricter regulation since 2008, it is no surprise that some senior members of Southern Weekly now reject the value of liberalism attached to the newspaper. As a Southern Weekly editor explained,17 The liberalism and leftism of Southern Weekly are imposed by outsiders. The labels of liberalism are forcefully entrusted to the newspaper. After so many years adjusting, Southern Weekly has become a middle ground and mixedculture place. Being radical is not what modest media such as Southern Weekly is like. Southern Weekly is actually a media of hybrid values. It is conservative in politics, generally more tamed in reporting ideological issues, more liberal in economics, and maybe a bit liberal in culture, but in general it is a very modest newspaper, very much and necessarily follows the Party line, not that liberal.

Indeed, when the Southern Weekly Incident took place in 2013, Southern Weekly had arguably lost its capacity to conduct significant investigative reporting. The highly integrated leadership formed by local officials and press directors that protected the newspaper in the 1980s and 1990s no longer existed. New provincial propaganda Chief Tuo Zhen (from 2012 to 2015) exercised the so-called pre-censoring policy to keep the editorial process of Southern Weekly in his control. In the policy of ‘pre-censoring’, editors were required to inform

Introduction

21

the propaganda department of planned reports before they were written. Precensoring eliminated the possibility of any coverage that may push the censoring limit before the process of news gathering started. Outside the media, the emerging force of Chinese New Leftists has labelled Southern Weekly and other Southern Media outlets as ‘the Southern Faction’ (Nanfang Xi), accusing them of being traitors who endorse Western values. The Southern Weekly Incident, in many of my journalist interviewees’ view, may be regarded as an eruption of repressed confrontation building up over a number of years. Seeing themselves as representing a high standard of journalistic professionalism, some Southern Weekly employees emphasized that the relentless censoring of the newspaper in recent years had caused an unprofessional and even twisted presentation of the newspaper, by which they were irritated. ‘Southern Weekly does not do this to our readers’, an editor claimed.18 In this sense, the emergence of the Southern Weekly Incident was partially a demonstration of the struggle between political power and market force around the development of a commercial newspaper under Party control. The impression that Southern Weekly had to compromise professionalism was powerful in mobilizing many media counterparts from other institutions, as they admired Southern Weekly as a place of journalism ideal. However, the end of 2012 also saw newspaper advertising revenue significantly decreased, strongly hit by the internet (Hassid and Repnikova, 2015). Chinese media scholar Zhang Jiang describes the Southern Weekly Incident as the last struggle of the Chinese press. The irony is that although the last struggle was emotionally attended by many journalists, the power of the newspaper was no longer felt by the people working for it. Picking a fight with the authorities was apparently not that inspiring for many journalists who would soon be seeking another job in the promising digital industry.

The Southern Weekly Incident The use of new technology by a large proportion of the Chinese people participating in the discussion of the Southern Weekly Incident demonstrates the power of civil society at some level. It is in this sense that the meanings of the Southern Weekly Incident are beyond the field of journalism. The incident was first sparked on Weibo after some Southern Media staff accused provincial censors of crudely modifying the planned New Year Editorial of Southern

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Weekly newspaper which called for a constitutional government.19 The Weibo posts promptly generated online discussion and further triggered a barrage of statements, open letters and online petitions initiated by journalists and citizens, which was followed by citizens’ and activists’ protests against media censorship outside the office buildings of Southern Media Group. The week-long discussion and subsequent events were met with severe suppression by the authorities and ended with street protests being suspended and online discussion dissolved. Three activists were charged in December 2013 for organizing these protests (I provide a detailed timeline of the Southern Weekly Incident in Chapter 3). Whereas media censorship in China has often been discussed by Western media and politicians, the censorship issue is not as widely recognized by the Chinese public. The Southern Weekly Incident was the first occasion whereby the usually hidden conflicts within editing rooms were exposed to the public. It thus became a case of contentious politics, whereby media censorship was publicly contested. The incident ended without leading to policy change on editorial autonomy, leaving an air of disappointment and resignation, with Southern Weekly journalists being criticized for not being determined enough during the incident. Yet, it is revealing the extent to which Chinese professionals and the public together may utilize new technologies to challenge the limit of the Party’s tolerance of political contestations. Weibo, as the arena and the tool for expression, played a pivotal role for facilitating the incident. Launched in August 2009 by SINA Corporation, a Chinese technology company founded in 1998 and listed on the Nasdaq National market in April 2000, Sina Weibo was in its heyday at the beginning of 2013.20 Weibo assumes features that are akin to a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook, which are blocked in China. Weibo was the most popular web networking service in China in 2012. It had become an indispensable part of the life of urban Chinese and most young Chinese people. Ever since its establishment, Weibo had been walking a fine line between state and society, allowing, on the one hand, popular contention to thrive and, on the other hand, assisting the Party authorities to enforce heavy-handed regulation. The government’s seemingly contradictory push-and-control strategy on social media, namely, promoting internet business whilst controlling political contestation on social media, creates a real dilemma for the development of internet companies (Zhang, 2006). Business interests favour contention, particularly the contention in creative and symbolic forms that appeals to public emotions and generates large volumes of internet traffic (Yang, 2009).

Introduction

23

This dilemma has sometimes led social networking sites to strategically loosen control of contention. The Southern Weekly Incident most vividly demonstrated this scenario, particularly when a Sina Weibo employee, in an emotional post, publicly acknowledged that Sina chose not to shut down all accounts involved in circulating relevant information, despite shutting down a great number of journalists’ and activists’ Weibo accounts. By manually deleting particular posts that were too sensitive rather than exercising total silencing of all relevant accounts, Sina allowed certain information about the Southern Weekly Incident to flow while, on the whole, complying with the authorities’ instruction (CDT, 2013c; FreeWeibo, 2013). Owing also to this deliberate ‘partial’ deletion, information about the Southern Weekly Incident was promoted particularly by people utilizing the timing delay before deletion was carried out to form a post relay, which maintained a distinctive dynamic of resistance in the Southern Weekly Incident. Weibo provided the digital network for the demonstration of the Southern Weekly Incident. Southern Media journalists published open letters, declarations about the modification of Southern Weekly. They exposed information about previous cases of censorship that effectively engaged other media workers and appealed to the emotions of the public. Yet, they made relatively modest appeals to certain administrative change and avoided directly challenging media censorship. They wished to attribute blame to particular censorship officials and newspaper leaders but not to confront the system. In Hassid’s (2011, 2015) investigation of four types of media professionals in China, he calls journalists working for Southern Weekly and a number of Southern Media outlets advocate journalists. Hassid is right to associate Southern Weekly with advocate journalism. However, my examination of the history of Southern Weekly and Guangdong media, as elaborated earlier, shows that the current Southern Weekly employees are much less resistive than their predecessors in the 1980s and 1990s. I would argue that it may be pertinent to consider many current Southern Weekly employees as pursuing the American-style model of professionalism on a technical level, and only a small number of them are at times committed to advocate journalism. They may often demonstrate the spirit of striving for journalistic professionalism when conflicts with the authorities occur, but their account of journalistic professionalism contains little meaning of media autonomy. They are also more willing to practise pushback rather than commit to outright resistance. Southern Weekly journalists maintained an ambiguous stance during the Southern Weekly Incident. They shied away from endorsing

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press freedom whilst also embraced sympathy from the public for their suffering from censorship. A great number of interview accounts presented in this book demonstrate that journalists hope to, for example, ‘solve the problems within the system rather than challenge the system’.21 There were, however, journalists from outside Southern Weekly trying hard to push outright resistance during the Southern Weekly Incident. In fact, a number of former Southern Media employees, who used to work for Southern Weekly and other commercial Southern Media outlets, effectively promoted the Southern Weekly Incident, but ultimately they made up only a small minority and were unable to lead a unified confrontation in the media industry of China today. Nevertheless, some citizens protested outside Southern Media to support Southern Weekly and bravely made appeals for press freedom. Some citizens protested outside Southern Media to support Southern Weekly and bravely made appeals for press freedom. They were apparently less sensitive about the political risks involved in action; they shared journalists’ suffering with their own life experience and showed sympathy to journalists. Activists decided to utilize the Southern Weekly Incident for mobilizing large-scale civic participation, and therefore also determinedly promoted online and offline protests. Of course, participants in the Southern Weekly Incident did not protest to demand press freedoms as a consensus; the levels of challenge to the party system varied among individuals. The risks involved in participating in such a political event is largely unknown by individual Chinese people, including journalists and other public professionals who are experienced in interacting with the state. Stern and Hassid (2012) discuss control parables utilized by the Chinese state to produce fear among citizens. Through spreading a type of didactic story that convinces citizens that certain action may get them into trouble and even cause life-threatening dangers, the Chinese state manages to register fear into Chinese people and prevent potential political uprising without committing to heavy-handed state coercion (Stern and Hassid, 2012). Fear promotes self-restriction and non-participation. Many participants in the Southern Weekly Incident strategically adopted ambiguous political stances out of self-protection. It is also too simplistic to assume that all liberal-minded people in China are deep-down revolutionists. The complex ideologies in contemporary China are presented in Chapter 6. To be brief here, many Chinese reformists pursue liberalism and democracy and believe that the CCP would reform itself to serve a contemporary globalized China. Whilst pursuing democracy and freedom of

Introduction

25

speech, many Chinese people are also convinced that China’s unique history requires the CCP’s uncompromising measures in maintaining social stability. The spectrum of Chinese people’s ideological beliefs is far more complicated than a division between pro-Party and pro-democracy. Understanding this complicated spectrum has to also draw on concepts of statism and nationalism in China in the context of China’s remarkable economic development during the past few decades, as well as considering people’s vast interests in relation to the Party. Many journalists and citizens involved in the Southern Weekly Incident are indeed reformists within the system. Challenging the authorities and even undermining the CCP regime are far beyond many people’s aspirations. This is arguably the crucial context for studying collective action in digital China. In general, the contour of the Southern Weekly Incident was obscure, construed by the ambiguous perception of censorship deliberately maintained by journalists, the mixed demands made by different social groups and the silence on the side of the authorities during the unfolding of the incident. The political detachment between different groups, ironically, allowed room for each group and individual to take action further and hence sustained the activism. Both the Party’s and citizens’ action and reaction to one another were sophisticated; both moderated the levels of action for their own benefits. The party-state exercised control on the orientation and scale of contention on the internet during the incident, and more effectively through negotiation with journalists behind the scenes. They avoided explicitly responding to the public outrage and punishing individuals during the incident, although they efficiently shut down a great number of Weibo accounts at the time and prosecuted relevant individuals later on. Journalist individuals cautiously tested the water and pushed the boundary of contention and, on the whole, they maintained the ‘within the system nature’ of activism without offending the authorities or challenging the party system. Citizens pushed the contention along and eventually amplified the incident, which was then also utilized by activists for initiating civil action. The broad context of the Southern Weekly Incident is the interplay between powers of the state, market economy, technology and a developing civil culture in China. In essence, this book is about Chinese people’s ways of seeking a political life in contemporary China. Understanding the emerging dynamics of resistance in digital China requires analysis of not only the technicality of resistance but also nuanced accounts of ideologies, political perceptions and experiences of embodiment in particular events. The hybridity of these dimensions, in my view,

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Resistance in Digital China

can be illustrated through exploring meanings of resistance on three dimensions, namely, the political meaning of civil connectivity, the cultural meaning of embodiment and the sociological meaning in relation to the construction of the emotional public sphere in China.

Approach and structure The book approaches dialectic meanings of resistance in digital China through theoretical articulation of political, cultural and sociological meanings, and empirical exploration of the 2013 Southern Weekly Incident. Chapter 2 theorizes the meanings of resistance in digital China from the political dimension of civic connectivity, the cultural dimension of identity and embodiment, and the sociological dimension of Chinese people’s construction of a Chinese public sphere. I argue that Chinese people’s commitment to pursuing civic connectivity, embodiment and the construction of a Chinese public sphere is constantly shaped by the interplay of powers between politics, market economy and civil culture in digital China. Ideas elaborated in Chapter 2 provide a framework for empirical examination of the Southern Weekly Incident presented in Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6. After briefly introducing the timeline, investigation and political milieu of the Southern Weekly Incident in Chapter 3, Chapter 4 recaps the unfolding of the Southern Weekly Incident, featuring Weibo users’ resistance to online censorship during the incident, the media company’s internal struggle to settle this incident behind the scenes, and division among journalists from inside and outside Southern Weekly, and between journalists, readers and activists during the Southern Weekly Incident. It explores mobilization for resistance of these different groups during the Southern Weekly Incident, as well as the compromises some of them made during the contention. Drawing on abundant interview data and close textual analysis, Chapter 5 seeks to further explore the sensory dimension of people’s action. It is concerned with the meanings perceived by Chinese people in their action. It illustrates experience of embodiment by journalists, citizens and Southern Media readers, and activists in the Southern Weekly Incident, and distinctive appeals and motivations of these groups of individuals when promoting the incident. It demonstrates the mechanisms of connectivity facilitated by embodiment rather than consensus political appeals.

Introduction

27

Whilst Chapter 5 analyses experiences of embodiment that promote the connective logic of Chinese people’s contention on digital networks, Chapter 6 explores the wider context of the Southern Weekly Incident that shows potential limitations of contentions systematically existing in Chinese society. Using Southern Media as an example, I discuss the institutional culture of Chinese media, which illustrates a hierarchical system strictly regulated by Party officers. I discuss journalists’ self-restriction and self-protection in their daily practice of journalism, highlighting the fine line they walk between attracting the public eye to maximize profits and not overstepping the limits imposed by the Party, which also nurtures their peculiar approach to participating in online contention. Whilst most journalists avoided publicly discussing press freedom, they also experienced embodiment that mobilized their emotive expression, as well as public pressure and expectation for them to confront censorship. The result was a vague political stance adopted by many of them during the Southern Weekly Incident. By carefully expressing dissatisfaction with the regulation enforced on their journalistic practice from the Party, journalists claimed to stick to their ideological values and showed resistance of a certain level to Party regulation, whilst obviously not posing a fundamental challenge to censorship. Nevertheless, journalists’ relatively more sophisticated approaches to adopting a vague political stance, nurtured in their everyday practice of resistance to and compliance with censorship, allowed them to assume support from the public whilst also suffered criticism from some radical journalist counterparts and activists. Finally, I examine the complex ideologies, particularly China’s ideological division, to understand the limit level of collectivity in contemporary China and to argue for the focus on individuality in resistance. The final chapter of this book concludes the political and cultural meanings demonstrated by the Southern Weekly Incident, and further discusses the sociological meaning of resistance in digital China in relation to Chinese people’s construction of a unique Chinese public sphere. I discuss the current formation of the public sphere that features elitism and emotionality. Arguing that the construction of a Chinese public sphere is continuously invoked and refused at the same time, I highlight that studies on this topic should pursue the changing dynamics of Chinese politics.

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2

Meanings of Resistance in Digital China: Connectivity, Embodiment and the Construction of a Chinese Public Sphere

This book argues for the need to explore three dimensions of meanings of resistance in digital China. Meanings are related to things that matter for individuals. Concerned with particular activities of resistance, I argue that individuals are committed to pursuing meanings on the political, cultural and sociological dimensions. What matter for Chinese individuals are their civic connectivity as citizens, cultural experience of embodiment and the prospect of establishing a public sphere. In this chapter, I will articulate the concepts of civic connectivity, embodiment, and the public sphere and examine these concepts in the context of digital China.

Online contention and civic connectivity in digital China Resistance in the form of online contention promotes unprecedented civic connectivity in digital China. In practice, civic connectivity on a large scale in contemporary China is contingent, based on events of collective action around contentious topics, rather than community based (Cai, 2010). This section elaborates on ideas about civic connectivity through collective action in Chinese society in the digital age.

Collective action and connective logic in the digital age Collective action, for the purpose of this book, is discussed in relation to democratization and contentious politics rather than other cultural assemblies of rituals and cooperation. Collective action, as it concerns this book, also does not include collective petitions made by Chinese people using the courts, although

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Resistance in Digital China

collective petitions have become a popular mode of collective action in China since the 1990s (Cai, 2010). Collective action, as a core component of social movements, is intense demonstration and construction of civic connectivity (DellaPorta and Diani, 1999; Touraine, 2004). Classic social movement theory in political science, most predominantly the political process theory, emphasizes movement as a sustained interaction between the state and the people who act on their interests and collectively make their demands publicly visible (Tilly, 1984). The political process involves collective challenges that are ‘based on common purposes and social solidarities’ (Tarrow, 1998, p. 4). Concerned with meanings of collective action, Melucci (1996a) defines collective action as ‘a set of social practices (i) involving simultaneously a number of individuals or groups, (ii)  exhibiting similar morphological characteristics in contiguity of time and space, (iii) implying a social field of relationships and (iv) the capacity of the people involved of making sense of what they are doing’ (p. 20). Digital networking and communication have fundamentally changed mechanisms of collective action and civic connectivity. Bennett and Segerberg (2012, 2013) coined the logic of connective action as a means of analysing contemporary action that is based on personalized action frames and digitally networked communication, as opposed to collective action that relies on formal organization and resources, and whereby people need to make difficult decisions about participation and adopting collective identities. Connective action, in Bennett and Segerberg’s account, involves ‘peer production and sharing based on personalized expression’ (Bennett and Segerberg, 2013, p.  35), which is self-motivated and based on ‘already internalized or personalized ideas, plans, images, actions, and resources with networks of others’ (p. 36). During the process of sharing, communication technologies become organizing agents in connective networks in their own right. In contrast to the institutional organizing of collective action in which power is normally centralized and individual calculation of loss and gain is involved, communication per se becomes organization in connective action. The logic of connective action illustrated by Bennett and Sergerberg (2012) highlights the role of digital networks in allowing for personalized action frames and accommodating various individual framing of action. It is concerned with how traditional process theories may evolve in the context of the networked society (Benkler, 2006) and contemporary contention politics (Tarrow, 1998). The logic of connective action can be identified in most cases of contemporary Chinese online contention, in the sense that networks of individuals scale up

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quickly through digital platforms in the absence of conventional organization, which is similar to the category of crowd-enabled connective action examined in Bennett and Sergerberg’s 2013 book.1 In the Chinese context, where legitimate channels for contentious politics in the form of protest are not established,2 digital networks promote opportunities and resources available for interacting with the authorities. For collective action to take place, there should be structural change that indicates increased political opportunities. Of course, opportunity is a multifaceted term. The political opportunity thesis that McAdam discusses assumes that movements take place when there are expanding political opportunities opening up. It seeks explanation for movement mobilization in structural conditions attached to dimensions of ‘relative openness or closure of the institutionalized political system’, ‘stability or instability of that broad set of elite alignments that typically undergird a polity’, ‘presence or absence of elite allies’ and ‘state’s capacity and propensity for repression’ (McAdam, 1996, p. 27). Structural openings of the system imply opportunities as they influence activists’ prospects for mobilizing more actors, advancing particular claims, employing particular strategies for action and realizing particular outcomes (Meyer, 2004). Changes in political conditions create incentives for people to undertake actions, which in turn create new opportunities for action (Tarrow, 1998). Objective opportunities, if they ever existed, are subjectively interpreted. The degree to which activists are cognizant of changes in political opportunity is key (Meyer, 2004). Potential activists must recognize that an opening exists and decide that they can exploit this opening to make change (O’Brien and Li, 2006). To a great extent, digital platforms promote sharing of the perception of potential political opportunities. They inspire Chinese people’s recognition of common interests when other channels of public expression are closed, thus making association possible.

Mechanisms of mobilization in digital China China provides a distinctive authoritarian scenario as context for its own shade of collective action in the digital age (Yang, 2009). Opportunities for collective action in China may be considered in relation to the authorities’ tolerance of contention and the possibility of challenging existing policies. Although neither of these opportunities is ever clear to the Chinese public, the secrecy maintained in Chinese politics sometimes creates imagination for political opportunities

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and hence the positive perception of making change. Very often, opportunities for challenging officials take place at the local level. It has been proven by other studies that Chinese people’s collective challenges to the authorities more often targeted local governments and officials rather than central government and policies (O’Brien and Li, 2006; Cai, 2010). Central government and local governments often have different interests, in that the former has greater interest in protecting the regime’s legitimacy and the operation of the overall political system, and the latter are more concerned with maintaining local social order in their policy implementation and dealing with local issues (Cai, 2010). Therefore, it is possible for people to seek extra leverage on the power relations between central and local governments in planning their resistance to local officials (Cai, 2010). I have elaborated O’Brien and Li’s (2006) observation that rural Chinese people exploited the gap between what central policies have promised and what local governments and officials have implemented to stage rightful resistance. People may succeed in challenging local authorities if their demands are well grounded in central policies and if they can make local officials eager to stop contention by threatening to seek intervention from state authorities. Previously, they did this through permitted channels such as petitions or noninstitutionalized action such as protests on the street. In the age of digital contention, potential protestors often utilize public discourse on social media to prevent the governments from pretending not to know about the contention and the public’s concern (Cai, 2010). Demonstrating common interests (Tarrow, 1998; Tilly, 2001) is crucial, precisely because the collective demonstration is also the process of actors mutually recognizing political opportunities. Social media platforms promote such mutual demonstration and recognition. Chinese people online may feel a certain level of security in participating in an online contention, believing that state punishment will only target the crucial actors rather than the large population (fa bu ze zhong) (Cai, 2010). While studies have highlighted the algorithmic power of social media in democratic societies to reveal common interests which may not be otherwise visible (Milan, 2015), Chinese social media certainly promote the visibility of hidden emotions commonly existing among Chinese individuals and hence the possibility for networking. In this sense, they intermediate the collective ‘we’ in the digital age, even though this may be primarily an emotive network. During the Southern Weekly Incident, the targeting of the provincial propaganda Chief Tuo Zhen united many journalists and citizens for collective action on Weibo. Tuo’s manner of

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censoring Guangdong media after he took up the post in 2012 was regarded by many Guangdong journalists and citizens as unfit for Guangdong’s politics and culture. My interviewees accused Tuo of ‘an abnormal level of censoring compared to previous propaganda officers’ and claimed that ‘Tuo was sent by the National Central Government, parachuted into Guangzhou and obviously not quite fitting in’.3 These journalists and citizens recognized that Guangdong media have been granted more liberal form of regulation than other media in mainland China, owing to their historical position in political reform of China.4 They decided that officials at Tuo’s position should have a better understanding of Guangdong media, and Tuo did not live up the central government’s expectation. Many journalists and Guangdong citizens also assumed that the new leader of China Xi Jinping welcomed more liberal approaches to reforming China and the media.5 Apparently, the timing of the Southern Weekly Incident, a time when Xi newly took the post and publicized a series of policies for political reform, inspired many Chinese people’s positive aspiration for press freedom, thus indicating opportunities for contention on media censorship (I also discuss the timing of the Southern Weekly Incident in Chapter 3). In general, perceived opportunities are promoted by people’s understanding of Guangdong media’s distinctive need, and that reforming media regulation may be supported by central leadership. Journalists posted stories of struggling with censorship under Tuo’s leadership on Weibo to share the common frustration and determination to fight, although avoiding the discussion about the censorship policy of the CCP. Many citizens followed journalists’ posts to condemn Tuo, expecting that the public exposure of Tuo’s censorship approach on social media would push central government, particularly the new leadership, to replace Tuo.6 However, the later development of the Southern Weekly Incident had also convinced many that the provincial propaganda Chief Tuo had strong support from the central government and he was not as easily challenged as low-ranking local officials.7 Potential structural opportunities in China are also related to the power relations between particular senior officials with government agencies at the same local level. For example, protesters may assess the relation between the provincial government leadership with institutions that are under criticism and speculate whether the government would support their challenge to particular institutions. They may also assess the risks of being arrested by police or punished by the court before they go to protest against the local government or other institutions. Many Guangdong citizens during the Southern Weekly Incident believed that the Guangdong government was relatively liberal and would not

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suppress civilized protests. Some also believed that Guangdong’s justice system was a relatively fair one compared to others in China and would be lenient if they considered protests events to be non-disruptive. They expected Guangzhou police, who had a reputation of civilized law enforcement, as opposed to violent enforcement in other cities, to maintain the order during a protest rather than resorting to violence to control the group.8 These perceptions had a significant impact on people’s decision-making in relation to the level at which they participated in online contention and offline protests. In general, participating in online contention for Chinese individuals is meaningful for establishing a sense of civic connectivity. Collective action on digital networks is formed and sustained through people’s co-production and distribution of personally expressive content. This framework of civic connectivity is particularly significant for Chinese society where Chinese people’s ideologies and political perceptions are diverse and often appear to be impossible to reconcile. Collective action facilitated by digital networks allows contingent connectivity to be formed in particular events without requiring adoption of consensus views on the issues at stake. Chinese people are also selfprotecting in conducting online and offline expressions in order to live within realistic political constraints on their individual lives. Posting online is a personal act that allows room for self-assessment and management of the risks one wishes to take in participating in contentious discussions. Individuals’ self-censoring is ubiquitously exercised online at various levels, which, to a great extent, helps sustain the unfolding of collective contention.

Identity, individuality and embodiment in digital China Despite significant changes in the dynamics and mechanisms of political mobilization in China brought about by digital communication (Yang, 2009, 2014), digital political contention carries realistic costs in China. Online activism can result in detention or imprisonment. In this context, the ‘free rider’ issue in traditional social movement, which is concerned with non-action in participation resulting from personal calculation of gains and losses (Olson, 1965), is not automatically resolved by the low barrier to entry for digital action. Bennett and Sergerberg (2012, 2013) claim that digitally connective action is self-motivated in that personalized expression of political views for individuals is emotionally engaging. Indeed, emotions matter even more in the Chinese

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context where attempts of political expression require stronger will to overcome political concerns. In order to conceptualize the cultural agency of political participation by Chinese people, I argue that the connective logic is enabled by embodiment of individuals. Digital personalization involves the complex processes of perception, anticipation, resonance and embodied memory (McDonald, 2015). What happens through these processes is key to establishing meanings of digital communicative practices. The concept of connective logic can be better explained through understanding embodied processes of the mutual establishment of intersubjectivity (McDonald, 2006), particularly in the context of digital China. This is the cultural dimension of meaning of resistance in digital China. In this section, I first elaborate the cultural quests for identities in modern China, then examine concepts of identity, individuality and embodiment to explain my approach to examining the cultural meaning of resistance in digital China.

Cultural quests for identities in modern China The cultural dimension of meaning is related to Chinese people’s pursuit of sensory experience and quests for identity in participation in public contention. In a broad sense, the cultural meaning of being engaged in resistance is related to individuals’ symbolic identification of the worthiness of life. Identities provide the sources and organization of the meaning in life (Castells, 2010). Identity building involves the process of individuation (Castells, 2010). In China, people’s exploration of identities may relate to their cultural identity, professional identity and citizenship. Post-Mao China has seen Chinese people’s ongoing quest for cultural identity. Despite having been released from the all-encompassing socialist ideological control (Kleinman et al., 2011), Chinese people however experienced a severe ‘cultural crisis’ during the Great Cultural Revolution and its aftermath. Economic reform since the 1980s has pushed Chinese people to the world of self-guarded individuals and market competition, which encourage the individual to proactively calculate, pursue and protect self-interest (Kleinman et al., 2011). The Chinese state’s construct of the socialist market economy takes the neoliberal form of governmentality that utilizes market calculations for policy making and consolidates the Party’s control on power (Zhao, 2008). The initiation of the market economy enabled some people to make quick fortunes by knowing what opportunity means in marketized China, whilst leaving others disillusioned

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with communist ideas. At the same time, Chinese people experienced a moral struggle between the collective socialist interest and self-realization (Yan, 2011). The broad socioeconomic changes, particularly reform of public enterprises, have threatened the interests of tens of millions of Chinese workers from the second half of 1990s to the early 2000s (Cai, 2010). The moral landscape was profoundly reshaped; collective duties and selfsacrifice for the society were still emphasized but personal pursuit of material gains was also pragmatically legitimized and even endorsed (Yan, 2011). From communism to neoliberalism, from the moral ideals of altruism to the legitimate boost to egoism, Chinese people struggled to search for identity in the fast-developing economic world. Pursuing self-interest was then practised as the life philosophy of ‘“subjectively for oneself, but objectively for all others” (zhuguan wei ziji, keguan wei dajia)’ (Yan, 2011, p. 42). The divided subjective and objective approaches to personal consideration of social activities, particularly the personal accommodation of the entanglement of collective and individualistic values, have resulted in crumbling individual values and ethics (Yan, 2011). The era of deepening market reform more determinately guided Chinese society through ‘the neoliberal revolution’ (Zhao, 2008, p. 5). New market forces operated through thought reform of Chinese people, overwhelmingly promoting devotion to business values from 1990 onwards (Lee, 2011). Financial status has increasingly become the symbol of winners; Chinese people associated material gains with happiness, and not being able to make economic progress made them frustrated (Lee, 2011). Since the mid-1990s, Chinese youth have learned to embrace the concept of ‘the enterprising self ’, participating in various forms of self-development ranging from higher education to small workshops for learning computing skills and philosophy for success (Kleinman et al., 2011, p. 4).9 Socially disadvantaged people come to attribute failure in career development to their personal responsibility (Kleinman et al., 2011). Accompanying the enterprising self is the rise of ‘the desiring self ’, demonstrated through various forms of consumption and instant gratification. Sexual, material and affective desires have been celebrated on mass media, online chat rooms, social media etc. (Kleinman et al., 2011). Material gains and success, the two interweaving concepts, are expressions of the desiring China of modernity (Rofel, 2007). For many, a meaningful life is about building and sustaining a good life with sufficient material gains and simple pleasure, if not for themselves, for their future generations (Kleinman, 2011).

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However, the dilemma at the heart of China’s modernity is illustrated in both rural and urban China. Wu Fei (2009, 2011), who studies family relations and the suicide phenomenon in rural China, points out that modernity has endangered traditional moralities in China; people cannot attribute a good life to traditional Confucianism, and conflicting family ethics has made their family life dissatisfactory. In numerous prosperous cities, gentrification has caused social divisions illustrated by material procession, places of living and moral ground (Pan, 2011). The booming middle class are wavering between the fullness of desire and pursuit, and the emptiness of life’s meaning. In Xin Liu’s (2002) anthropological study of business practices in China, a group of successful entrepreneurs expressed complex feeling about life and success, the feelings of timeless, endless and meaningless. Kleinman (2011) claims that Chinese people as political subject are experiencing ‘the divided self ’. On the one hand, Chinese people experience power of repression and control by the authorities and, on the other hand, they aspire for a better life promised by the Communist Party. Kleinman argues that the narrative of pursing a materially rich life is a narrative that regards the current political reality as acceptable because it has made possible the opportunity to live a good life. And it is also a narrative that tends to deemphasize the troubles of the past and to sublimate resentment and remorse into more pragmatic emotional responses that can advance personal interests. This collective emotional response is highly pragmatic in its effort to serve those interests that are believed to bring about a good life, to deny (or, at least postpone) the wages of trauma and humiliation, and to avoid obsessing over memories that can’t be changed. (Kleinman, 2011, p. 268)

In addition, political violence in the radical Maoist era and post-Mao 1980s left Chinese people with the life philosophy of ‘getting by’ and being sceptical of ideology (Kleinman et al., 2011). The result is self-censorship in Chinese people’s daily communications and self-discipline in their social activities (Kleinman, 2011). The divided self shows Chinese people’s accommodation of and collaboration with China’s political realities. It is their self-construction that negotiates a way of living in an authoritarian society while getting on with a relatively safe and satisfying life. This moral conflict in Chinese people has created an inner burden, the contradictory feeling of being part of an unjust political system whilst trying to safeguard or even advance personal interests in the system (Kleinman, 2011). The divided self of Chinese people embodies their expanding subjectivity in emotion, memory and sensibility (Kleinman, 2011). Sing Lee (2011) claims that personal emotions and thoughts were concealed

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behind the legitimized emphasis on thought reform in the China going towards modernity, and as a consequence China has become one of the most depressed countries in the world today. The conflicting self is further forged by the globalization of culture. Whilst some Chinese young people today pursue Western lifestyles and even concepts of democracy and freedom, they also consciously guard a peculiar nationalist discourse. Chinese nationalism emphasizes statism and patriotism, the terms endorsed and consciously mediatized the party state (Zheng, 1999; Stromseth et al., 2017). Within the nationalist discourse, the branch of new nationalism endorses modernization but forcefully rejects Westernization. For new nationalists, Westernization-oriented modernization in 1980s China has resulted in the decline of national identity and traditional Chinese values; Confucian and Maoist values should be readopted in order to resist Western influences (Zheng, 1999). Facing the rise of China’s economic power and the contrast between Chinese and Western lifestyles and politics, these sorts of argument seem convincing to many Chinese. The Party narrative that individual identity is defined by loyalty to the country is popular.10 Individuals’ search for the soul and the self threatens the ideological control of the Communist state in the environment of globalization. But the CCP has been able to maintain, at least on the surface, ideological hegemony since the late 1970s, due to their efficient adjustment of policy and censoring of official media outlets (Zheng, 1999; Tong and Lei, 2013).11 Understanding resistance in the form of online contention in contemporary China requires dialectic examination of the intensified and complexified inner self of Chinese people. This book shows that urban Chinese people have come to seek new meanings of life. The booming middle class, who are game players (and sometimes ‘winners’) in the material world, are at the same time searching for a more meaningful life through seeking cultural identity, professional identity and citizenship, and eventually a respectful life. By cultural identity, I mean the general identification with a common sense of being ‘good people’ in Chinese society; ‘good’ means to promote a better China for future generations. Professional identity refers to the identification with expertise and achievement in people’s relevant professions. Citizenship is related to acknowledgement of citizen rights protected by the law and the government. Global flow of information across the internet has made Chinese urban citizens more aware of human rights and potential controversies of Chinese authoritarianism. Cultural, professional identification by individuals and their increased

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awareness of citizen rights have brought in new meanings for people’s life in modern China, which have arguably promoted political contention of all sorts. Emotions accumulated in the course of economic reform require a platform for expression that is outside traditional media (Tong, 2015). The abundant expression on the internet in China, which sometimes appears to be apolitical, is in this sense political.

Identity, individuality and embodiment The collective action of resistance in relation to the inner drive of identity and the conflicting self has been explored by a number of European scholars, most notably the French sociologist Alain Touraine and the Italian social psychologist Alberto Melucci, who try to make sense of action by asking about personal conflicts and identity in post-industry and post-modern societies (Crossley, 2002). To explain how Chinese people make sense of participating in collective contentions, I follow their ideas of self-construction of subjectivity and individualism to explore concepts of identity, subject and individuality. Identity, as Touraine (1981) sees it, is the product of life project of self-construction, composed simultaneously by one’s consciousness of an economic life and by one’s cultural desire of living with the self. Identity is to be found in the individualism of the subject, the individualism that is seen in the ‘self-referential effort of each individual or group to create itself as a principle of integration of more and more diversified experiences’ (Touraine, 2002, p. 387). This is the effort of individuals to seek to combine their sense of cultural identity with their participation in the economic world (Touraine, 2002, p. 392). Melucci puts forward the idea of the playing self to depict individuality in the world of modernity. Melucci (1996b) argues that in the fast-expanding information network, there is always a division between what he calls ‘interior times’ (inner times) – ‘the times of desire and of dreaming, of the affections and the emotions’ – and ‘outer times’ (social times) – the times ‘measured by social rules’ (p. 14). Outer times are inexhaustibly and endlessly extending. People are exposed to the multiplicity of social sectors within a concentrated time, having to constantly change social identities and act on multiple roles. But their conflicts with time, space and ‘the other’ increasingly become a personal issue (Melucci, 1996b). ‘The self ’, as Melucci (1996b, p. 3) puts it, ‘can succumb to trembling and lose itself, or it can learn to give itself “play”’. This probes the notion of identity.

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Contemporary collective action is the product of querying one’s personal identity. Economic life has increasingly become more atomized, and social life has become fragmented. The playing self calls for deeper integration of individual practices (Melucci, 1996a, p. 8). In this sense, people’s desire to extend their inner times underpins various forms of rituals of social gatherings, from art performance to political protests, which allow the ‘breaking with everyday order’ and thus expanding ‘subjective time’ and giving ‘access to new dimensions of the self ’ (Melucci, 1996b, p. 15). During collective rituals, people deny fragmented ways of life by relating with others and thus being ‘reintegrated into the communicative networks’ (Melucci, 1996b, p. 26). Both Touraine’s idea of the life project of the subject and Melucci’s idea of the playing self address people’s social activities driven by inner need for individualism and subjectivity. Collective action is in this sense the cultural expression of a conflictual self. Touraine and Melucci are leading scholars of new social movements which present cultural challenges to modern life. Melucci (1996a) argues that new social movements represent individuals’ action to upset the dominant cultural codes of social practices. The ideas of identity, individuality and subjectivity in this sense are distinct from collective identity, which derives from particular class, gender, sexuality, race and so on (Taylor and Whittier, 1992), and becomes a resource for mobilization of community members, as famously elaborated by Tilly (2004) through the invention of ‘WUNC display’ – movements display worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment. The identities that Melucci is concerned with, and this book argues in relation to Chinese reality, are those embedded in individuality. The network of mobilization for collective action exists pre-action, as a latent network, and is culturally bounded together by individuals’ search for individuality (Melucci, 1996a). Melucci (1996a) discusses the latent network as a hidden structure, which only becomes explicit during collective mobilization over particular issues and conceals itself again in people’s daily life. Moments of mobilization transform latent cultural networks into visible collective action, and mobilization in turn strengthens integrity through focusing on specific goals and the present struggle. The ‘action systems in action’, as Melucci (1989, p. 235) calls them, are essentially individual processes of translating meanings into challenging codes of culture. Underpinning these individual processes are also Laclau’s (2005) ideas that the subject does not pre-exist as an actor but is turned into an actor, and that political identities are discursive and precisely a social construct. During collective action,

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problems of individual identity and collective action become meshed together: the solidarity of the group is inseparable from the personal quest and from the everyday affective and communicative needs of the participants in the network. (Melucci, 1996a, p. 115)

Following the ideas about identity and individuality, this book suggests that collective action in China, in the form of popular contention, is a cultural expression of individuality in modern China. The insights on the identity crisis in modern China and the idea of the divided and complexified self, as I have elaborated, show that the playing self discussed by Melucci and the life project of constructing the subject discussed by Touraine are pertinent concepts in Chinese reality. The latent structure establishes the backbone of collective action in China. During contentious events, Chinese people break away from their daily routine to participate in large-scale discussions about particular issues. In doing this, they seek identities, placing value in meaningful activities and demanding respect as professionals and citizens. Public contentions create opportunities for the experience of embodiment, which enables people’s identity building and pursuits of a more meaningful life. Kevin McDonald (2006) calls embodiment12 the ‘grammar of action’ in his exploration of acting sensually rather than intentionally in global movements (p. 17). The grammar of embodiment refers to individuals’ connection between physicality and subjectivity when acting with other people together. In acting with others, people encounter their vulnerable selves. This is a sensory process of people reconnecting physicality with subjectivity, their own subjectivities with the subjectivities of others, hence the ‘embodied intersubjectivity’ (McDonald, 2006, p. vi). This experience involves the intensification of emotions, which are like unseen lenses that colour people’s thoughts, perceptions and judgements (Goodwin et al., 2001). Emotion is the expression of the juncture between the self and the culture (Hewitt, 2017), working powerfully as reciprocal and shared emotions (Jasper, 1998). Wood (2001) discusses ‘emotional in-process benefits’ in people’s participation in the Salvadoran peasants’ movement (p. 268). He argues that participants benefited from ‘expressing moral outrage and experiencing the pleasure of agency’ (p. 272). Barker (2001) argues that it is the shifts of emotions during action that allow people to make sense of action. For example, Barker (2001) found that memories facilitated the shifts of actors’ emotional expressions from fear to laughter, from doubt to pleasure etc., in the 1980 strike movement in Gdansk. These are the processes of ‘interactive discovery’ (Barker, 2001, p. 193).

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Meanings and values of activism, and the identity felt by one, are interdependently recognized by the network of others (Crossley and Ibrahim, 2012). Emotions are often engineered by the rituals during collective action (Goodwin and Pfaff, 2001). This is also illustrated by what Juris (2008, p. 65) calls ‘affective solidarity’, a process of performative rituals amplifying emotions and then transferring the emotion into a sense of collective solidarity. The experience of embodiment is the process that connects people’s memories, emotions, the self and the culture. It enables what psychologists (Snow et al., 1986) call as ‘frame alignment processes’ (p. 464), in which individual mobilization takes place when personal grievances are translated to the interpretation of injustice. In the context of online contention, the conception of embodiment invites the discussion of online body and online embodiment. While embodiment has been discussed as the reconnection of corporal bodies and internal subjectivities through physical action, some have argued that online action is disembodied (Miller and Slater, 2000). A starting point to address this argument is to understand bodies in the digital age and particularly to answer the question of what meanings online bodies are loaded with. Balsamo (1995) argues that the body embedded in the use of technologies is ‘a boundary figure belonging simultaneously to at least two previously incompatible systems of meaning – “the organic/natural” and “the technological/ cultural”’ (p. 215). The body embedded in technologies is both a social and cultural product which materially embodied identities and other sociological elements, and a cultural process which makes sense of the world and the self (Balsamo, 1995). The body online is not disembodied; sociological and cultural elements underline frameworks of technological embodiment (Balsamo, 1995). Online gaming researchers offer probably the most immersive type of technological embodiment in the worlds of avatars (Jordan and Taylor, 2004; Jordan, 2013). The virtual body and the real body inhabit in one and construct and circumscribe each other, and hence the so-called bodily duality as a cultural construct (Jordan, 2013, p. 85). In a broader sense, the sensory perception of the biological body always needs technics to configure, and therefore humans have always been bodies in technology (Coté, 2010). Or as Boellstorff (2010, p. 33) claims, ‘humans have always been virtual’, in that cultural elements are by nature virtual symbols that open up imaginary worlds and enable bodies to engage with the world. This is also a process when selfhood is shaped. Following these comments, I argue that online communication and participation enable experiences of embodiment, serving effectively as the agency of culture.

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It is in this sense that the digital context, that increases opportunity to witness, enables embodiment. Witnessing is ‘an intricately tangled practice’ (2001, p. 707) and it ‘places the mortal body in time’ (p. 714), as John Durham Peters writes. Witnessing bears morality and culture. China is at the age of contention; various issues ranging from economic conflicts to cultural discrimination are presented online unprecedentedly (Yang, 2009, 2015). The suffering of others in cases of social unfairness and injustice, food scandals, air pollution and political repression of groups and individuals regularly appear on social media, reminding individuals of the risks of living, which may be brought about by political power struggles, ideological control or unethical practice of power. The anger promoted by social media is not wasted energy on the internet. Rather, it can inspire various social groups and individuals to express themselves and enable embodiment, thus facilitating realization of meaningful action. I have elaborated concepts of identity, individuality and embodiment in relation to digital China, and argue that the cultural dimension of the meaning of resistance in digital China resides in individuality and experience of embodiment during contentious events. The key to exploring this dimension is to examine individual participants’ emotions, perceptions and life histories which they relate to in being committed to action. Of course, this does not mean that Chinese people would forget the political realities, and risk their material interests and a secure life to seek enhanced meaning. They are sophisticated in participating in contention and social discourse, carefully guarding a life of financial stability and political security for their family and future generations. Examination of this sophistication requires nuanced analysis of individual cases.

Constructing the Chinese public sphere The idealist public sphere, in which the public gather together, using reasoning to articulate the needs of society in relation to the state, as introduced by Jürgen Habermas’s (1989) seminal book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, has not existed in China. The opportunity for collective contention on social issues is unprecedented in digital China and thus it is inspiring, for Chinese people, to pursue the construction of a Chinese public sphere. In this section, I  consider the sociological dimension of the meaning of resistance in relation to Chinese people’s construction of the Chinese public sphere. I first discuss the concept of the public sphere and the Chinese context. I then review internet

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control and the neoliberal approach to internet regulation in China, which are important in the discussion about a Chinese public sphere. I also discuss political economic views in relation to Chinese online commerce and entertainment culture. It will become clear that the construction of the Chinese public sphere is necessarily distinctive from the idealist model in democratic societies. I will return to further examine this construction in the final chapter of this book.

Inspecting the conception of the public sphere in China The bourgeois public sphere, which emerged and developed in seventeenthand eighteenth-century Europe and degenerated in the nineteenth century, has a resistant political nature. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe was a time when the middle class of intellectuals, businessmen, lawyers, doctors and other literary and political elites began to form allies to demand a political influence consistent with their economic status. As financially empowered social groups demanding political power, this group of European elites supported the formation of the public sphere and civil society (Kocka, 1995). The formation of the public sphere was a form and the means of resistance. The bourgeois construction of the public sphere was significant in opposing the privileges and autocracy of feudal regime (Kocka, 1995). It transformed feudal societies into a bourgeois liberal order that distinguished the public and private realms. It is certainly not correct to analogize social conditions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe to those in current China. Also, the public sphere theory has now been commonly recognized as an ideal of civic participation in deliberative democracy, which is structurally contrasting to the authoritarian Communist China. Nevertheless, the aspiration of a Chinese public sphere is demonstrated by Chinese people’s participation in resistive events and their pursue of civic connectivity. In the idealist model of the public sphere introduced by Habermas (1989), people’s gathering and articulation of political views in this sphere are, to some extent, proactive rather than being forced or constrained by the state or external pressure. People’s opinions are openly and freely exchanged. Critical publicity is the nature of the public sphere. Critical opinions and rationality are at the centre of people’s communication and discussion. The parity between people during social intercourse within the public sphere is crucial in allowing democratic interaction.

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The intimate domain of conjugal families was the primary space for nurturing people’s ‘audience-oriented subjectivity’ (Habermas, 1989, p. 28). Literacy and the science of psychology, two quickly developing subjects during the eighteenth century, also became a vital force in influencing people’s capacity in critical discussion (Habermas, 1989). A clear threshold between the state and society was essential for the ongoing articulation of public opinions in political debates. Habermas argues that transformation of social and political conditions in nineteenth-century Europe was detrimental for the bourgeois public sphere. Nineteenth-century Europe experienced the degeneration of the public sphere, largely because of mutual penetration of the state and society, the intimate sphere losing its social function, and the development of a commercial culture that finally undermined meaningful communication supposedly facilitated by cultural industries and mass media (Habermas, 1989). The parties and organizations were able to manipulate effective publicity through propaganda and advertising. The bourgeois forms of sociability became ‘apolitical’ and were dominated by leisure activities; the culture-debating public at the centre of the public sphere shifted to a culture-consuming public (Habermas, 1989). As a consequence, the public was split apart into a small group of specialists who un-publicly pursued critical arguments and a great mass of consumers whose opinions were uncritical (Habermas, 1989). Habermas’s critiques provide an indispensable resource for theorizing the public sphere in commercialized societies. Certainly, post-bourgeois models of the public sphere should be developed distinctively from the one in Habermas’s account (Fraser, 1990). But it is in examining these critiques in the modern conditions that we can extract the norms and conditions from Habermas’s account of the public sphere in order to invoke different versions of the public sphere in relation to particular contexts. Positive anticipation of the Chinese public sphere has highlighted the facilitation by the internet of the communal sense of interaction and the negotiation between the state and society (e.g. Calhoun, 1989; Zheng and Wu, 2005; Yu, 2006). Inspecting the construction of the Chinese public sphere should necessarily consider information availability and accessibility in the public sphere; the relationship between the public sphere and state power; and the formation of a public who are rational, critical, and motivated in initiating and maintaining public contention. These factors are arguably dynamic in current China; they are constantly being shaped by the interplay between politics, the market economy and civil culture. In a broad sense, the concept of the public

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sphere has been (and may always be) invoked and refused at the same time in its dynamic construction. It is therefore more meaningful to examine the dynamic process of constructing the Chinese public sphere, one that is currently constituted by and contributed to popular resistance, rather than an entity within civil society that is already in existence. Studying the dynamic making process of the public sphere should try to capture the contextual meanings of the structures of feeling in digital China. Raymond Williams (1977) coins the phrase structures of feeling to suggest that the living presence of different thoughts of a society is always only vaguely felt at the time and articulated retrospectively. The construction of a Chinese public sphere is an ongoing social movement, a social movement that involves episodes of victory and failure and foresees unknown outcomes that would be perceived differently by people of various interests. Discussion about a Chinese public sphere and the internet has been contested by the idea of the digital divide in China. Specifically, it has been argued that online contention is mainly practised by urban middle-class Chinese people, excluding the majority of Chinese population, particularly a large rural population (Yu, 2006; Zhao, 2008). Interestingly, Habermas’s bourgeois focus on the public sphere has been commonly criticized for not living up the anticipation of the popular public sphere, which is supposed to involve the constituents of the majority population, particularly the plebeian public. For many, the bourgeois constituents of the public sphere undermine the parity and universal accessibility of civil participation; the white, elite dominant characteristic may have devalued the public sphere as an idealism (Fraser, 1990). Instead of attempting to pre-define the constituents of the ideal of the Chinese public sphere, I would argue that the formation of the Chinese public sphere at different stages absorbs particular sociological elements. Just like the European bourgeois class in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European societies, the booming middle class in urban China embody the power of contention in a transitioning period of Chinese history and enable a social category of resistance. The formation of the Chinese public sphere at the current stage may be elitist and sometimes exclusive for the rural population who do not have similar levels of technological accessibility or conscience of ideological issues at stake, but this does not undermine the meaning of resistance relating to Chinese people’s construction of a public sphere. The construction of the public sphere in China is undoubtedly interfered with by the Communist state. Many have contested that the internet has been utilized by the CCP as an instrument for control (Zheng, 2007). Acknowledging

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that the friction between free internet usage and strict government regulation is a defining characteristic of contemporary Chinese internet culture, I will now briefly outline key elements of internet control in China. Examining the mechanisms of control is necessary for understanding the dynamic formation of the online space as a discursive public sphere, which is progressive but confined.

Internet control and neoliberalism in China Chinese state control of the internet is evolving and has become more expansive, sophisticated and hegemonic over the years through the establishment of institutions, legal and technical instruments and enforcing citizens’ selfdiscipline ethics (Yang, 2009). The Chinese internet infrastructure and supporting technologies are managed by cabinet-level governmental units (e.g. Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People’s Republic China (MIIT)) and monopolistic state-owned enterprises (e.g. China Telecom and China Unicom). Physical internet access is provided by eight state-licensed internet service providers (ISPs) controlled by MIIT (Deibert et al., 2010). Chinese leaders are enthusiastic about the economic benefits of the internet and intend to develop China into a digital superpower on the one hand and, on the other hand, are highly vigilant of the possible political effects of the internet and closely monitor and censor political information (Zheng and Wu, 2005; Zhang, 2006; Yang, 2009; MacKinnon, 2011; Sullivan, 2014). The statism endorsed by the CCP since the 1980s implies that the primary concern of the sustainability of Party rule is put before other development initiatives (Zheng, 1999). Lena Zhang’s (2006) interviews with Chinese internet policy makers, from an insider’s perspective, reveal that the government has a ‘push-and-control plan’; the socalled two-hand strategy ensures the implementation of promotion and control of fast developing digital business at the same time (p. 279). The government has tried to control internet inventions that have the potential to enable large-scale networks of discourse, and at the same time enforce lawful and administrative regulations to prevent the internet from distributing disgruntled emotions against the government (Zheng and Wu, 2005). Mechanisms of control involve website blocking, regulations, surveillance, propaganda, imprisonment and proactive provision of discursive content (Zittrain and Edelman, 2003; Yang, 2009; Xiao, 2011). The ‘Great Firewall’ and ‘Golden Shield’, two well-known infrastructures for internet control in China, started in the 1990s. The Great Firewall is used to block foreign websites and

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harmful foreign content (Xiao,  2011). It guards the gateways through which foreign network content enters the country. For example, the government used it to block Twitter following the 2009 Xinjiang uprising,13 and Bloomberg and the New York Times official websites after they exposed the wealth of Chinese leaders’ families in 2012. The Great Firewall is regarded as the world’s most advanced national firewall and has evolved from blocking entire websites to blocking particular pages within websites. The Golden Shield, the national security project, is used for domestic surveillance and filtering. It effectively deletes and filters sensitive words. The Chinese government frequently expands the list of banned vocabulary on particular occasions (Zittrain and Edelman, 2003; Xiao, 2011). Surveillance and filtering are often knowingly tightened during periods of political significance, such as the periods before and during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, after 2009 Xinjiang uprising, around the anniversary of the Tiananmen uprising each year and around annual National Congress (Xiao, 2011; CDT, 2014; Ng, 2015). On top of the two security projects which are run centrally, multiple levels of Party institutions form an overlapping nationwide system to govern internet content. The CCP’s CPD ensures that internet content tows the line of media and cultural regulation. The State Council Information Office (SCIO) oversees all official and independent news-providing websites. Both the CPD and SCIO have municipal, provincial and county divisions (Xiao, 2011). Censorship directives are frequently disseminated from the top levels of the CPD to the lower levels. Local CPD officials also sometimes issue their own censorship directives to ban media information they regard as threatening to authorities or that they prefer to keep away from the public (Xiao, 2011). Joss Wright’s (2014) study on the regional variation of online filtering in China demonstrates that the Chinese online censoring approach is not a monolithic entity but decentralized; Local authorities and organizations are left to make lower-level filtering decisions through their control of the Domain Name Service, the service that maps between human-readable names and machine-routable internet addresses (Wright, 2014). Censors do not always explicitly clarify what content should be banned (Zhang, 2006; Xiao, 2011), but the government controls the registration of ISPs and requires business operators to be responsible for the behaviour of their customers through implementation of a censorship policy. Online commercial sites and news portals are privately owned, but they are best characterized as government-regulated commercial spaces which, since the point of establishment,

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have been subject to government regulation and censorship (Jiang, 2010). Citizens who post information that is regarded by the government as sensitive – ‘endangering national security and contradicting officially accepted political theory, conducting activities in the name of an illegal civil organization, and inciting illegal assemblies or gatherings that disturb social order’– will be fined or face criminal charges (Deibert et al., 2010, p. 456). Website owners are regularly warned that their sites can be shut down if they provide or circulate information which is labelled politically incorrect (Xiao, 2011). Business operators have to stay vigilant and pragmatically use direct instructions from propaganda officials as well as their own judgement to determine what content to ban (Xiao, 2011). On social media, post deletion is exercised to prevent certain information from spreading and as a means of sending a warning from state surveillance to chill future discussion. In 2012, the real name registration system was launched on microblogging sites, requiring users to disclose real identities by registration with verifiable data, such as their identity card number or mobile phone number (Fu et al., 2013). Both the government and websites employ staff (including the so-called internet police, propaganda workers and in-house monitors at websites) to manually delete posts (Xiao, 2011; The Economist, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d, 2013e). In 2013, it was reported that ‘more than 100 Chinese companies have made a total of at least 125 products for monitoring and filtering public opinion online’ (The Economist, 2013c). For example, Sina reportedly employs around 1000 staff in their censorship department to monitor Weibo messages (Fu et al., 2013). Sina Weibo is reportedly required to delete harmful posts within five minutes (Fu et al., 2013). Research on the deletion of Weibo posts found that nearly 30 per cent of the total deletions of original posts (not including reposts) occur within five to thirty minutes and nearly 90 per cent of the deletions happen within the first twentyfour hours. The deletion of a sensitive post is later followed by deletion of a chain of reposts. Deletion speed of particular posts is related to the sensitivity of the topics discussed (Zhu et al., 2013). Certain users (such as those who frequently post sensitive content) receive closer scrutiny (Zhu et al., 2013). Weibo may choose to delete a post and inform the sender that the post cannot be released because of sensitive content. It may also suspend a post until it can be manually checked, telling the user that the delay is due to server data synchronization. And on occasions, it can make a post appear to the sender as though it has been successfully sent, but other users are not able to see the post and the sender receives no warning message (Zhu et al., 2013). Certainly, internet companies

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also face conflicts between compliance with authorities’ censoring instruction and the pursuit of business profits promoted by popular contention. Weibo posts have often been utilized by the authorities to support political prosecution. For instance, in May 2014, a well-known human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang was detained after he attended an event to commemorate the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen protest. Pu was however accused of committing the crimes of inciting ethnic hatred and provoking trouble on Weibo through posting messages that questioned the authorities’ action in repressing regional uprisings (BBC, 2015; The Initium, 2016). Pu was held in detention and was officially given a three-year suspended sentence in December 2015 (Lu, 2015). ‘Sensitive vocabulary’ is updated case by case. A recent and critical example was the relentless censoring on social media after Xi Jinping proposed amendments to the Constitution, which include the most controversial and politically influential change to eradicate the current term limit (two five-year terms) for PRC presidents and vice-presidents (CDT, 2018). The proposed changes were passed at the National People’s Congress held in March 2018, which effectively set Xi Jinping up to maintain his seat as president indefinitely. After Xinhua News Agency reported on the proposed changes in February and during the National People’s Congress, the list of censoring words was expanded significantly to include words such as Winnie the Pooh (images of Winnie the Pooh have been used to mock Xi Jinping since as early as 2013), my emperor, life-long (literally ten thousand years), Xi Zedong (implying Xi’s resemblance to Mao Zedong), 1984, I oppose and so on. Of course, there is a fine line between restricting information flow and minimizing the counterproductive effects caused by control for the internet economy (Yang, 2009). By exercising selective control (Zheng and Wu, 2005; Yang, 2009; The Economist, 2013b), the Chinese government ‘allows limited information liberalization, but once internet users exceed that limit, governmental intervention will come to “correct” online behaviour’ (Zheng and Wu, 2005, p. 521). King et al.’s (2013) study of Chinese censorship based on participation and systematic analysis conducted in 2013 provides strong evidence suggesting that criticism of the state, leaders and their policies can be routinely published online, but posts with collective action potential (in physical offline locations) are much more likely to be censored. Online activists are regularly detained, which effectively prevents cross-regional coalition of the activist network (Sullivan, 2014). Certainly, the government has also demonstrated that, in extreme cases, such as the Xinjiang unrest in 2009, the

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government can control technological infrastructure to totally deny access to the internet from a particular region (Sullivan, 2014). The state’s approach to regulating the internet is in line with, and an extension of, the general framework of the mass media control policy (Yang, 2009). As I have discussed, traditional media companies in China, since their transformation to profit-oriented businesses in the 1990s, have faced intense pressure in complying with Party control whilst also appealing to the market for their own sustainability. Anthropologist Yongming Zhou (2006) claims that the current PRC regime is confident and sophisticated in working with international and domestic pressure, manipulating the communication system in China. Political economists are concerned with neoliberalism in relation to the whole communication system in China (e.g. Zhou, 2006; Zhao, 2008). Yuezhi Zhao (2008) claims that the Chinese state’s attempt to construct a socialist market economy corresponds to global neoliberalism. The defining characteristics of China’s neoliberal governmentality are ‘the infiltration of market-driven truths and calculations into the domain of politics’, and that media and the whole communication system are intensively regulated to guarantee social stability for the development of economy (Zhao, 2008, p. 6). The Chinese state faces acute division and heightened conflicts caused by the dramatic change of economic landscape in China in the twenty-first century (Zhao, 2008, p. 7). Neoliberal ideas about regulating the communication system have been adopted by postMao leaderships to address the crises of socialism and sought new ways to develop China while maintaining the Party’s grip on power (Zhao, 2008, p. 7). The ideas of Chinese neoliberalism argued by Zhao are explored by political scientist Steve Tsang through the concept of consultative Leninism (Tsang, 2009). Tsang argues that the CCP has kept but modified the Leninist political system after the 1989 Student movement and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The CCP incorporated consultative elements into the Leninist political machinery which, as a result, has become more resilient in facing political and social challenges. A few characteristics define a social contract imposed by the Communist Party on Chinese people (Tsang, 2009, p. 866): first, the CCP’s obsessive focus on staying in power and maintaining stability of the country; second, continuous governance reform both within the Party and in the state apparatus to ‘pre-empt public demands for democratization’; third, sustained commitment to enhance the CCP’s capacity to ‘to elicit, respond to and direct changing public opinion’; fourth, sustained efforts to promote rapid economic growth; fifth, the promotion of particular nationalism ‘that integrates a sense of national pride in a tightly guided

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narrative of China’s history and its civilization with the greatness of the People’s Republic under the leadership of the Party’ (Tsang, 2009, p. 866). Through the pragmatism of these approaches, the CCP delivers ‘stability, order, rapid growth and general improvement to the living conditions of the people’, and in return, it earns ‘continued dominance of government and politics’ (Tsang, 2009, p. 866). The Chinese party-state has strongly promoted new terms to characterize China’s development, including socialist market economy, socialism with Chinese characteristics and democracy with Chinese characteristics (Zheng, 1999). The core here is patriotism (aiguo zhuyi) that could strengthen people’s confidence in the regime. Patriotism, as the Chinese state construes, is about ‘loyalty to the State and a desire to serve it’ (Zheng, 1999, p. 90). The online space has been effectively utilized by the government to set the agenda for propaganda through manipulation of nationalism and patriotism (Tsang, 2009). The Chinese government uses Weibo messages to inform official media and identify potential threats (Sullivan, 2014). Policies for surveillance and control of public opinion have evolved to adapt to increasing diverse thoughts in Chinese society (Stockmann, 2014). From ‘Guidance of public opinion’ endorsed by Jiang Zemin’s leadership (1989–2002) to ‘Public opinion channelling’ by Hu Jintao’s (2002–2012), the state has moved away from banning content and reports, shutting down media, to a combination approach that involves pushing the CCP’s message out more actively through both official and commercial media and the internet (Qian and Bandurski, 2010, p. 56). Various state agencies of different levels utilize online commentators (the so-called Fifty-Cent Army) to promote pro-government discourse (Deibert et al., 2010; Han, 2015).14 Online commentators are hired by the CCP but disguised as online participants producing apparently spontaneous pro-regime commentary in accordance with propaganda principles (initially rumoured to be paid fifty cents per post) (Sullivan, 2014; Han, 2015). They sometimes use multiple usernames (ghost accounts) to fabricate a crowd and stir up a certain topic (Han, 2015). Since 2007 a cartoon featuring two police officers occasionally pops up on Chinese internet users’ screen, encouraging the public to report illegal online information to the authorities by following the links to the internet police section of the public security website (Xiao, 2011). On Sina Weibo, a feature has been introduced to allow Weibo users to report each other for spreading untrue information (Fu et al., 2013). This more proactive approach and the whole range of corresponding propaganda policies have been coined as ‘Control 2.0’ by the China Media Project in the University of Hong Kong (Qian and Bandurski, 2010, p. 56).

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Having discussed the mechanisms and neoliberal approach to internet control in China, it is clear that the online space in China is not free from government control, as is envisioned in the concept of the ideal public sphere. Rather, it is a social space seriously confined by authoritarian control. It is in recognizing the ever-present political boundary that we may understand the significant meanings of Chinese people’s proactive construction of a public sphere. Public contention on political issues in such a space involves higher risks than in other national contexts. For critical views to be publicized on the internet, Chinese people often have to make a deliberate effort to circumvent censorship. Online profiles are traceable to citizens’ real identities. To share critical opinions involves risks of exposure to the authorities. The struggle to establish the public sphere per se is self-revelation of individual desires for a more meaningful life.

Commercial culture and communicative capitalism on the internet in China Certainly, the commercial and entertainment culture on the internet in China should be considered when discussing the construction of a Chinese public sphere. Technology is politically programmed with biases of contextual politics and culture (Schneider, 2015). The Chinese state plays a crucial role in promoting non-political usage of online space. In the global context, political economists have already criticized digital media for contributing to a new form of imperialism through a global market (McChesney, 2001). Cultural imperialism is facilitated by what Thussu (2007) introduces as ‘global infotainment’ which is led by American-style journalism that ‘privileges privatized soft news – about celebrities, crime, corruption and violence – and presents it as a form of spectacle, at the expense of news about political, civic and public affairs’ (Thussu, 2007, p. 8). Scholars’ concerns echo Habermas’s account of the invasion of commercialization in people’s personal space, which damaged a politically engaged pubic. Indeed, e-commerce and entertainment have been enjoyed as much in Chinese markets as in other markets. China has grown to be the world’s biggest online marketplace (eMarketer, 2014). As of June 2018, CNNIC’s (2018) most recent statistics suggest that the Chinese online shopping population reached 569 million, accounting for 71 per cent of all Chinese internet users, an increase by 6.7 per cent from December 2017. The dilemma faced by internet companies of making profits while complying with party censorship has real consequences on

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Chinese people’s online consumption. Similar to traditional media’s commercial strategies to cope with political pressure and maximize profits, internet companies also favour commercial and entertainment content. Whilst it is prudent to avoid discussing politics in public, abundant promotions of online shopping, demonstrations of beauty and fashion, affectation of food and holidays, discussion of celebrity gossip and popular reality TV shows dominate Chinese people’s online personal leisure and interpersonal exchanges. Leibold (2011) claims that the blogosphere in China produces similar types of shallow infotainment and pernicious misinformation, which do not lead to greater political participation and democratization. It is true that the most popular trending stories on Weibo are often entertainment, celebrity gossip and commercial information, which broadly reflect Chinese online culture (Sullivan, 2012). However, the critical publicity that features in the emerging formation of the Chinese public sphere is not dismissed simply by the fact that the majority of Chinese enjoy online shopping, entertaining news and may share ingenuine information. A public space for sharing individual views on public affairs is noble in the Chinese political context. The construction of the Chinese public sphere, at the current stage, values initiation of all sorts for public discourse that may mobilize different levels of political engagement. To follow Clay Shirky’s (2009) optimistic account of technology and modern connectivity, Chinese people’s new habit of sociality indicates collaboration in political and social transformation. I am also aware of the contestation from the idea of communicative capitalism introduced by the political scientist Jodi Dean (Dean, 2003, 2005). Dean (2005) argues that the internet is not a public sphere because people submit messages online that only contribute to circulation of content rather than meaningful protests that are responded to and considered in policy making. Dean also claims that the intense circulation of content in networked communication creates the fantasy of abundance, which consumes people’s drive to real political participation (Dean, 2005). The fantasy of abundance is more precisely operated by what Dean calls a technological fetish, which makes people believe that what they contribute online matter and so the complexities of politics are condensed into the issue about technological facilitation and better information accessibility. People’s everyday activities are all perceived as being political thus displacing the real politics that is supposed to be produced from the hard work of organizing and struggling. The technological fetish, implying the political immediacy of people’s everyday activities, excludes the actual possibility of politicization

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thus foreclosing real politics. In short, essential values of democracy are now materialized and social issues are reduced to technical concerns (Dean, 2005). Dean’s critiques express similar concerns by theorists of slacktivism and clicktivism, who have called the effectiveness and worthiness of online activism into question (Morozov, 2009; Shulman, 2009; White, 2010). Participation in politics online is regarded as ineffective clicking and typing for the purpose of changing politics (Shulman, 2009), a lazy form of action (Morozov, 2009) and cheapening political engagement (White, 2010). Slacktivism and clicktivism may result in long-term costs for the public sphere, as individuals may find their online comments ignored (Karpf, 2010). Scholars studying China have also made the case that all incidents and events seem to have experienced cycles of concern, excitement, calming down and ultimately being forgotten by the public (Tong and Lei, 2013). Tong and Lei (2013, p. 311) describe the government’s concessions in some events as ‘micro accountability’ and argue that ‘if you can have justice served sitting at home in front of the computer, there is no pressing reason to go to the street and risk your life’. Concerns about communicative capitalism, slacktivism and clicktivism are based on the idea that the ideal type of communicative interactions in the public sphere is supposed to impact official policies. Taking these thoughts seriously, I however see meaningful effects brought about by online contention to Chinese politics that do not necessarily enforce immediate policy change or governmental response. In Arora and Rangaswamy’s (2013) critical review of new media practice in the global south, she criticized scholarly and journalistic biases that assume digital technologies in developing countries must be used for progressive political purpose, whereas similar assumptions are rarely made about the developed world. Indeed, the lack of policy change caused by public contentions does not mean that sociality on Chinese social media is merely entertaining. In the Chinese context where Chinese authorities have seldom faced public scrutiny nor directly responded to public demands in the way that Western societies expect (Zheng and Wu, 2005), what would be considered political effects remains an issue for debate. It is also simplistic to consider democracy as the end of Chinese political and cultural change. Democratization, which implies transformation of multi-layered elements such as participation, representation, deliberation, accountability, transparency and so on (Zheng and Wu, 2005), is beyond the scope of this study. Political effects in China have a much more multifaceted presence. While there is no mechanism for legitimizing and discussing democratic values

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(Zheng, 2007; Zhao, 2008), online contention submits citizens’ demands to the authorities, nurtures citizens’ awareness of rights and demonstrates plurality of ideologies in China. Early case studies on Chinese internet incidents have demonstrated that urban Chinese people online exercised the right to know, the right to speak and citizen rights through their participation in the making of media stories with journalists (see, for example, Yu’s 2006 case studies on the Sun Zhigang15 case and Li Siyi16 case). People’s daily exchanges online establish latent networks for collective action at various levels (Melucci, 1996a). In the sense that a contentious event teaches both the government and citizens lessons about resistance and makes them more sophisticated in negotiating with each other, Chinese people’s technological appropriation for contention in the online communicative domain has meaningful implications for the development of a civil culture. The political context in China may have made Chinese online collective contention rank higher politically than that in democratic countries (Yang, 2014). Previous events have shown that emotional expressions stirred up public sentiments and, on occasions, led to the removal of corrupt individuals from powerful and privileged groups. The 2003 Sun Zhigang case17 saw Chinese people express sympathy towards the victim and condemn the coercive custody and repatriation (C&R) system. The collective outrage presented through sharing experiences of unjust detention and police brutality arguably led to the abolishment of the C&R law. In the 2008 milk scandal,18 Chinese citizens expressed care and sympathy towards vulnerable infants and their parents, and condemned the profit-driven milk companies. In the 2011 Wenzhou high-speed train incident that caused 40 people to be killed and nearly 200 to be injured, citizens online expressed enormous fury towards the cover-up of the incident by the authorities and officials’ refusal to take responsibility. In the 2015 case ‘My Father Is Li Gang’, abuse of power by government officials was pushed into the spotlight because of the collective outrage expressed towards a senior local official. In the 2017 Beijing clamp-down on so-called illegal migrants,19 images of the migrants suddenly becoming homeless in the freezing cold winter were widely circulated, prompting expressions of sympathy and critiques on China’s urban modernization. In the 2018 Peking University scandal involving the coverup of sexual harassment,20 university students, journalists and academics wrote sentimental blog posts to praise the university student Yue Xin, who posted an open letter online to expose her experience of being intimidated by university authorities after she showed support for the investigation of the case.

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These examples are suggestive of a unique Chinese public sphere that Chinese people are continuously exploring through resistive events. This constitutes the sociological meaning of resistance in digital China. The political, economic and cultural complexities in the construction of the Chinese public sphere cannot simply be dismissed by emphasizing the political economy and Party control of the internet in China. A critical understanding is that the formation of the Chinese public sphere is mediated online. The processes of mediation, remediation and mediatization on the internet in China are both cultural and political in shaping sociology and the affordances of technology (Yu, 2006; Meng, 2010). These processes are co-construed by different actors involved, including the authorities, internet companies and internet users. While the authorities certainly have the power and intention to mediatize politics in contentious events, market forces and the media logic of social media platforms also shape the particular contention (Meng, 2016).21 Citizens’ online contention is mediated based on their political knowledge and individual perceptions of political opportunities and risks in participating in contention. Individuals remediate meanings of a topic by sharing and reposting based on their own ideologies. Their strategies of online posting shape a particular form of resistance in digital China, which produces confronting meaning, but is also linguistically confined within the party ideologies. What can Chinese people aspire to achieve in the construction of a public sphere at the current time? After the in-depth study of the Southern Weekly Incident, I will return to this topic and examine the current construction of the Chinese public sphere. This chapter has outlined three dimensions of meanings of resistance in digital China – the political, cultural and sociological dimensions. The ideas I have elaborated on in respect to these three dimensions instruct my approach to studying the Southern Weekly Incident, which is presented over the course of the next four chapters. My focuses are on individuals’ connectivity facilitated by digital networks, people’s quests for identities and a meaningful life through the experience of embodiment in participating in a contentious event, and the construction of the Chinese public sphere that takes place in the midst of the interplay between politics, market economy and civil culture in digital China.

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3

The Southern Weekly Incident: Timeline, Investigation and Political Milieu

In the following four chapters, I present my investigation of the Southern Weekly Incident. This in-depth case study illustrates the complex power relations between the party-state, journalists, ordinary citizens and activists involved in a contentious event in digital China. In this chapter, I provide the storyline of the Southern Weekly Incident and discuss my investigative approach to the incident. I also discuss the political milieu of Guangdong to provide geopolitical context for the Southern Weekly Incident, as well as the incidental timing of the incident that triggered particular action of resistance.

Outline of the incident The Southern Weekly Incident saw battles unfold on three fronts – on the internet, within the media circle and on the street. The online front (mainly on Sina Weibo, less predominantly on NetEase microblogging site, Tencent microblogging site, WeChat and Twitter) was a field for information dissemination, online discussion and online declaration and petitions made by journalists and citizens, as well as for information control by the authorities. Statements, declarations and open letters were posted and reposted by journalists and citizens to form a post relay, confronting the relentless post deletion conducted by internet companies under censorship instructions from the authorities. The media circle front extended from Southern Media to other major media institutions in China. It was a field where the Party imposed censorship instructions to prohibit the reporting of the Southern Weekly Incident and to enforce Party guidelines of public opinions about the incident. It was also the place where intensive negotiations between Party officials and journalists took place for the purpose of resolving the incident. The street front refers to street protests practised by citizens and activists supporting the newspaper.

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A timeline of the Southern Weekly Incident is briefly summarized below.

2 January 2013 ●●

Two Southern Metropolis Daily staff members posted messages on Weibo indicating that Southern Weekly New Year Edition, particularly the New Year Greeting, had been modified by Guangdong Propaganda Department after the edition was finalized.

3 January ●●

●●

In the morning, the modified Southern Weekly New Year Edition was published. At 18.50, Southern Weekly Editorial Department posted the first open letter on Weibo, publishing the details of the modifications made to the New Year Edition, associating the modification with censors, particularly the propaganda chief from the Guangdong Propaganda Department.

4 January ●●

Three open letters drafted by journalists outside Southern Weekly were circulated on Weibo. They respectively addressed Southern Weekly former staff, Southern Media staff and citizens, calling for signatures to show support.

5 January ●●

With public support increasing online and many journalists’ Weibo accounts being shut down by the authorities who intended to halt relevant discussions, Southern Weekly staff posted their second open letter, confirming that the article has been modified and declaring the establishment of a Southern Weekly Ethics Committee for investigating the incident.

6 January ●●

Southern Weekly’s official Weibo account was seized by Southern Weekly Chief Editor Huang Can and a message was sent from the account to deny online information about the modification of the article.

Timeline, Investigation and Political milieu ●●

●●

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Following the seizure of Southern Weekly’s Weibo account, the Southern Weekly economics desk threatened strike action. Two hours after the strike threat, a statement signed by ninety-seven Southern Weekly staff members was posted on Weibo, declaring that the Southern Weekly’s official Weibo account had been forcibly taken over and the post ‘To our readers … ’ was untrue.

7 January ●●

●●

●●

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The Southern Weekly Ethics Committee posted two investigative reports of the Southern Weekly Incident, reviewing the process of production of the New Year Edition and modification after finalization, as well as the struggle within Southern Weekly in which chief editor of the newspaper forcibly seized the Weibo account of Southern Weekly. Approximately 300 people, consisting of loyal readers of Southern Media, activists and other citizens, gathered outside Southern Media to protest censorship and support Southern Weekly. The main protest lasted for three days. Global Times (a subsidiary of the Party organ People’s Daily), published editorial ‘Southern Weekly’s “Message to Readers” Is Food for Thought Indeed’, attributing ‘foreign forces’ for promoting the Southern Weekly Incident. The Central Government Propaganda Department instructed media and websites in all locales to prominently republish the Global Times editorial ‘Southern Weekly’s “Message to Readers” Is Food for Thought Indeed’.

9 January ●●

●●

Many journalists and citizens online witnessed and expressed support for Beijing News employees confronting a Beijing propaganda officer’s request for republishing the Global Times editorial. Street protest was suspended. Southern Weekly printed the week’s edition as usual.

Nearly a year later (December 2013) ●●

Three activists who joined the Southern Weekly protest in January were charged and Southern Media issued a testimony to assist in the prosecution of the activists.

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Investigation My investigation of the Southern Weekly Incident follows the three fronts outlined above. I focus on the involved individuals’ employment of technologies, emotions, perceptions, ideologies and life histories in the examination of their connectivity and experience of embodiment during the incident. Analysis of these dimensions emphasizes the interplay of powers between politics, the internet economy and growing civil culture in digital China. Data was mainly obtained through online observation and in-depth interviews. Interview data also reveals the negotiation between the authorities and Southern Weekly staff behind the scenes. Contextual data, including leaked official censoring instructions which banned domestic media’s coverage of the incident, and reports on the incident by overseas media, was collected to assist my investigation and analysis. Obtaining data from Chinese social media requires manual collection on regular basis, as opposed to the approach that scholars have adopted to accessing historical data on Twitter, which may rely on the Twitter public API. Post deletion of various levels in Chinese contentious events means that a great number of social media posts are unattainable retrospectively. Realtime posts are thus invaluable. I collected real-time posts mainly on Weibo and occasionally on other microblogging sites during the unfolding of the incident in January 2013 and the following testimony incident episode in December 2013 in which three activists participating in the Southern Weekly protest were detained. My previous working experience as a journalist in Southern Media Group had helped me establish a personal network of contacts on my Weibo account. At the time of the incident, I was following 300 journalists and media organizations on Weibo, of which many were employees or former employees of Southern Media, who were at the centre of this incident. By having a close connection to this network, I was exposed to real-time posts that provided a dynamic account of ongoing communication about the incident. I regularly took screenshots to archive relevant messages. I identified particular Weibo accounts that were active in the Southern Weekly Incident and regularly archived updates on these accounts. Journalists often reposted supportive messages sent from their networks of scholars, lawyers, readers and activists. By following these links, I was able to access an increasingly wider network of relevant individuals and observe other relevant accounts. I relied on my personal journalistic network and a snowball strategy to recruit interviewees, which created a sample group consisting largely of journalists

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working for liberal media (particularly Southern Media Group) and holding liberal journalistic ideals. My forty-five in-depth interviews are, of course, not representative of Chinese people as a whole, and at a stretch may be broadly representative of liberal-minded Chinese people. But given that this study is about the dialectical practice concerned with both ideals and political reality, which is represented most acutely by the liberal journalists and active urban citizens, my research group is valid for generating meanings of concern to this study. The in-depth interviews with thirty-two journalists, seven non-journalist citizens and six activists (see Appendix A for the anonymized list of interviewees) that I conducted over the course of 2013 and 2014 pursued individuals’ discursive accounts of interpretation and explanation of their activities relating to the Southern Weekly Incident. Each interview lasted from ninety minutes to approximately three hours. I chose the cities of Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing for this fieldwork. Being the headquarters of Southern Weekly and Southern Media Group, Guangzhou offices saw a tense atmosphere during the incident, with negotiations between the authorities and Southern Weekly staff attempting to resolve the incident taking place on multiple occasions. The venue outside Southern Media Group was where street protests lasted for three days. Feeling more uncertainty about the incident and not being restricted by the ongoing negotiations, some Southern Weekly journalists in Shanghai and Beijing offices discussed the incident more actively on Weibo, compared to their Guangzhou counterparts. Many former Southern Media employees currently work in Shanghai and Beijing. They were obviously still emotionally connected to the newspaper and wished to promote their resistance to the Southern Weekly Incident. The distance between them and their former colleagues in Guangzhou, particularly as they were not in the thick of negotiation with the authorities during the incident, in some way allowed them to observe the incident critically. As they had an overall understanding of the newspaper and its internal structure, many of them had a critical view of the Southern Weekly Incident, which was documented in my interviews. Interviews were semi-structured, encouraging interviewees, when recalling their experience of the Southern Weekly Incident, to freely associate their past experiences and their particular personal circumstances (Rubin and Rubin, 2011). Both Touraine and Melucci, in their social movement research, experiment with rebuilding the movement system by inviting participants to self-reflect on their action and re-form the action system in the intervention setting.1 Though not setting up artificial movement environments for research,

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my interviews sought meanings attributed to action by actors themselves and tried to encourage interviewees’ self-exploration and expression of meanings of their experience. Though as the interviewer I occasionally provided stimuli (e.g. showing screenshots of their Weibo posts) and asked questions in a specific sequence to guide the interview, the role of the interviewer here was not only asking. Instead, my role was guiding the discussion, listening to and interpreting not only what they said but also how they said it (Mason, 2002). Despite being active communicators during such a sensitive event, many interviewees tended to downplay sentimentality during the incident. It is understandable that many Chinese people are, to various extents, self-restricted and self-protected in discussing political issues. It also should be noted that the period between the Southern Weekly Incident and my interviews had seen changes in the political climate under Xi Jinping’s new leadership, which reinforced all-encompassing control of political contention (Chen, 2016). Not to simplify the causes for individuals’ de-sentimentality, responses to my contact and subsequent interviews reflected my interviewees’ sensitivity to the unique political moments they lived in. When the testimony episode unfolded in December 2013, a few journalists briefly suggested that the testimony might have signified a clearer and more concerned official attitude towards the Southern Weekly Incident and consequently withdrew from my interviews. When interviews did take place, many participants spoke with noticeable caution. During the first week of January 2014, Guangzhou authorities apparently carried out strict control to prevent the emergence of events that attempted to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Southern Weekly Incident. A number of my interviewees also preferred to suspend their contact with me. In June 2014, my activist interviewees were under strict monitoring by the authorities due to the upcoming anniversary of the Hong Kong handover, which caused noticeable tension during our interviews, including an occasion when my interviewee and I had to quickly leave a café after my activist interviewee identified a state security agent sitting nearby. This type of tension posed both challenges to my research and valuable hints for my reflexivity of research. In-depth interviews were then complemented by close textual analyses for the purpose of investigating contextual meanings at the time. Anonymity and confidentiality are ensured when presenting the interview data in this book and pseudonyms are used. Yet some of the journalists’ personal experience presented in this research is so unique that their identities cannot be fully disguised. In these cases, interviewees had been consulted and

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consent obtained before I proceeded to tell their stories here. I however use a few activists’ names (the names they were then known as) in this book. These were the activists who had previously spoken out in overseas media. They had exposed their dissident identities in other social affairs and therefore concealing their identities from the stories they told became impossible. They were willing to reveal their identities in my writing of the Southern Weekly Incident.

The political milieu of Guangdong and the timing of the Southern Weekly Incident The Southern Weekly Incident took place in Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong province in South China. My investigation of the Southern Weekly Incident suggests that the relatively more open political environment and a more developed civil cultural of Guangdong and particularly Guangzhou should be acknowledged as one factor attributing to the incident. Deng Xiaoping’s reform policies in the late 1970s and 1980s featured decentralization of decisionmaking power, assigning local governments in Guangdong and a few other coastal provinces more power to explore their own developing models (Zheng, 1999). Guangdong was chosen by Deng as an experimental base for economic and political reform, with a number of cities in Guangdong appointed as ‘special economic zones’. Located on the south eastern coast of China and neighbouring Hong Kong, Guangdong was able to take advantage of its access to trade with Hong Kong and foreign markets. Since 1989, Guangdong has been the largest province in mainland China by GDP (Ministry of Commerce of PRC, 2018). The establishment of the ‘Guangdong Model’, benefiting from more autonomy of Guangdong’s local governments, reached far beyond economic development to other sectors of culture and politics. Yan Changjiang, an author of Guangdong’s transformation, commented, ‘Decentralization meant that Guangdong people were able to manage Guangdong affairs by themselves’ (cited by Zheng, 1999, p. 31). The development of the media and civil culture in Guangdong took a distinctive trajectory in this context. Newspapers in Guangdong have been regarded as the most liberal and influential media outlets in China. I have briefly mentioned in Chapter 1 that Guangdong media was an important arena for introducing the market economy since the early days of media reform, and that some Guangdong newspapers, including Southern Weekly, were particularly

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protected by high-ranking local officials in Guangdong. It is thought that Southern Weekly was able to weather a number of political storms because it had support from provincial leaders (Qian and Bandurski, 2010). However, Guangdong media has suffered from increasingly tightened control in recent years, with Southern Weekly and the whole of Southern Media being most seriously hit. The current leaders of Southern Media, appointed by the government and the CPD, were propaganda officials who had little journalistic experience.2 In May 2012, Tuo Zhen, the former vice president of Xinhua News Agency became the head of Guangdong Propaganda Department. Tuo has been accused by Southern Media staff of not following the Guangdong tradition and exercising heavy-handed censorship on Guangdong media. Attempting to remove Tuo was a direct reason to unite in action during the Southern Weekly Incident for many Southern Media staff members, who thought that central government would protect Guangdong’s special status for developing the media, and that Tuo could be removed if his unsuitability for Guangdong media management was exposed to the central authorities. They would only later find that Tuo had strong support from the central government, as I mentioned in Chapter 2. When the Southern Weekly Incident took place, Huang Can was the chief editor of Southern Weekly. Huang was appointed to strictly regulate the newspaper, but was not a chief editor who, in many Southern Weekly senior editors’ view, understood the newspaper. Huang was regarded by most Southern Weekly journalists as unfit for the newspaper; replacing the chief editor was also arguably a crucial incentive for many Southern Weekly journalists’ rebellion during the incident. Guangdong readers and activist networks played an important role in the Southern Weekly Incident, particularly street protests. The activist community has seen more expansion in Guangdong, compared to other regions of China.3 Being able to organize regular protests and gathering events, according to my activist interviewees, is in part due to the more civilized policing style in Guangdong.4 In recent years, the Guangdong activist networks have been involved in an increasing number of street demonstrations. Activists aim for a wide social mobilization and civic participation. Initiated in August 2011 in Guangzhou, a series of street demonstrations, named by activists themselves as the Southern Street Movement, figured prominently in engineering the development of activist networks in South China. Activists joining the Southern Street Movement gathered at a particular time each month in a park in Guangzhou, working on the idea of ‘moving

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from the internet to the public square’ (China Change, 2013). They intended to promote ongoing offline demonstrations and initiate a form of direct, conscious political action, openly calling for democratic freedoms. Despite repression, the Southern Street Movement was able to help individual petitioners organize public demonstrations, exercising what they claimed to be rights defence, which resorted to rightful resistance. They provided different resources to cooperate (financial support, legal aid etc.) and acted strategically together on demonstrations. For instance, they often organized themselves to take action at various times during a particular event, trying to avoid action being completely stopped. Guangzhou provided a relatively tolerant environment for their action. As one of the initiators of the Southern Street Movement explains, ‘the police would intervene in the demonstration but were by and large lenient’. Very often protesters would be summoned ‘to drink tea’, or make a record of the event.5 Sometimes, activists were detained for a few days, in which they built a strong personal connection during detention (China Change, 2013). Over a few years, more petitioners have been recruited as members of the activist community. The so-called ‘same-city dinner gathering’ events were organized by the activist community on every last Saturday of the month. This was an ongoing activity in which online activists organized a meet up for discussing social issues over a meal (RFA, 2013; Xiao, 2013).6 The Southern Weekly Incident turned out to be a significant opportunity for the activists’ network building. Some prominent activist leaders revealed that the networks, despite active in multiple street actions, needed to be consolidated by a major offline event.7 It was no coincidence that the Southern Weekly Incident, taking place at the beginning of 2013, coincided with the transition to Xi’s leadership at the end of 2012. The end of 2012 was, for Guangdong media employees and for Guangdong activists (and broadly for those with a liberal viewpoint), a time of both political uncertainty and hope. On 15 November 2012, the Eighteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China elected Xi Jinping to the post of general secretary of the Communist Party and chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission. Xi has since become the paramount leader of the PRC. In China, changing leadership often inspires anticipation for a different political climate. Xi Jinping, like his predecessors taking the leadership, vowed to bring in reforms, and particularly to tackle corruption at the highest levels. In December 2012, on his first trip outside Beijing since taking the Party leadership, Xi visited Guangdong, calling for further economic reform and a strengthened

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military. Xi’s visit was regarded as following in the footsteps of Deng’s southern trip in 1992, in which Deng reenergized the momentum for deepening economic reforms after previous efforts were stalled by conservatives of the CCP after the 1989 Tiananmen protest. Xi was said to reaffirm repetitively his signature slogan of ‘Chinese Dream’ during the five-day-trip, which, in some people’s view, signaled a more liberal approach to the governance of China, though the meaning of Xi’s ‘Chinese dream’ has been an ongoing debate (Shapiro, 2018). By the time the Southern Weekly Incident took place in January 2013, though Xi had only been in post for less than two months, he had initiated massive scale campaigns targeting anti-corruption and deepening market reforms. For some liberals in Guangdong, these campaigns enhanced their optimism about liberal transformation and consequently stimulated action during the Southern Weekly Incident. In addition, the Southern Weekly Incident took place soon after the Eighteenth National Congress. During the Eighteenth National Congress and First Plenary Session of Eighteenth CPC Central Committee (in which the Politburo of the Communist Party of China was elected) in November 2012, political contention in the media and on the internet, coverage of sensitive topics and activist activities were strictly suppressed. For journalists, the relentless censoring of news reporting during the end of 2012 was already testing their patience, and the optimistic anticipation for the new leadership had an impact on their risk assessment of action during the Southern Weekly Incident.8 My analysis of the Southern Weekly Incident presented in the next three chapters shows the potent impacts of Guangdong’s particular political status and media history on people’s perception of political opportunity and risks involved in the Southern Weekly Incident. This is revealed vividly by people’s self-reflective accounts.

4

The Southern Weekly Incident Unfolds: From Mobilization to Division The following three chapters provide a nuanced account of the Southern Weekly Incident along with my analysis of the incident. My research draws on in-depth interviews and close textual analysis of Weibo posts, as well as my study on contextual data from multiple journalistic and academic sources. This chapter recaps the unfolding of the Southern Weekly Incident, online censorship around the incident and the media company’s internal struggle to settle this incident behind the scenes. It follows episodes of information fermentation of the Southern Weekly Incident on Weibo, the power struggle inside Southern Weekly during the incident, Weibo users’ strategic posting to circumvent deletion, and citizens’ and activists’ voluntary protests outside Southern Media Group in support of Southern Weekly. It is worth noting that the account presented in this chapter is based on interviews with the journalists, editors, citizens and activists involved. I could not hope to have reached the authorities in the propaganda department, who would have provided additional key accounts.

Contesting censorship: Contention on Weibo On the evening of 2 January 2013, a Southern Weekly journalist received a WeChat message posted in a WeChat contact group for Southern Weekly staff. The message informed the group that the New Year Edition of Southern Weekly (which was due to be published on 3 January) had been modified and Tuo Zhen, head of Guangdong Propaganda Department, may be responsible for the modification. Photographs of the modified articles (including the New Year Greeting, the most influential article of New Year Edition) were uploaded to the WeChat group. It was suggested that the modification took place after all edits of the New Year Edition were finalized by Southern Weekly Editorial Department at 03.00 on 1 January.

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When the Southern Weekly journalist received this message, he was having a New Year gathering with around twenty other colleagues from Southern Media Group in Lijiang, a city 1,264 miles away from Guangzhou where the newspaper is located. Most of this group worked for Southern Metropolis Daily and Southern Weekly (the two notorious newspapers labelled as liang nan, as discussed in Chapter 1). Having felt frustrated by the current propaganda chief ’s regulation for more than half a year (Tuo took up post in May 2012), these twenty journalists experienced a shared sense of grief. That night in Lijiang, journalists’ discussion quickly focused on finding ways of voicing their resistance. As a strategy for efficiently spreading information while minimizing risk, it was finally agreed that two Southern Metropolis Daily staff members (rather than their Southern Weekly counterparts), who had the largest number of Weibo followers, would post the first messages of the news on Weibo and other people would all help repost them. The messages were reposted several hundred times during the night. Although it felt like an internal discussion within Southern Media Group, Southern Media journalists hoped that the online voice would stop the modified New Year Edition being published.1 On the morning of 3 January, Southern Media employees were surprised to see the newspaper with the modified New Year Edition published as scheduled. While online rumours about the modification of New Year Edition by the propaganda department were still awaiting verification, readers identified other issues on the front page, including mistyped characters and historical inaccuracies. They posted these issues online and associated them with the rumours of modification, mocking propaganda officials’, especially Tuo Zhen’s, poor level of literacy as shown up by these superficial mistakes. At the same time, authors of the first posts were repeatedly rebuked by senior staff at Southern Media Group who instructed them to delete the Weibo posts and not to post further information.2 The two authors from Southern Metropolis Daily had not felt much support from staff of Southern Weekly. Public support had not been significantly felt either. Under huge pressure from the company leaders, they were concerned about how they may be punished. The early messages were finally deleted. On 3 January, Huang Can, chief editor of Southern Weekly, and Wang Genghui, one of the senior leaders of Southern Media Group taking charge of Southern Weekly, called for a New Year dinner with Southern Weekly staff. Being suspicious of the purpose of the meal and concerned with the pressure which might be put

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on them by Huang and Wang during the meal, Southern Weekly staff posted online at 18.50, just before the meal, the first open letter, as a confirmation of the online rumours. In this open letter, Southern Weekly staff accused Guangdong Propaganda Department of heavy-handedly interfering in the production and final editing of the New Year Edition, and of conducting modification after the New Year Edition was finalized. They pointed out five aspects of the published New Year Edition that were allegedly made after finalization.3 They demanded thorough investigation of the incident and the re-opening of the blocked Weibo accounts of journalists and citizens whose accounts were disabled following their discussion about the Southern Weekly Incident. Chief Editor Huang Can and his boss Wang Genghui were accountable to the senior leaders of Southern Media Group and Guangdong Propaganda Department in managing Southern Weekly. They apparently had a very difficult power game to play with Southern Weekly journalists and editors, who were at risk of unspecified punishment. At this early stage, everybody seemed to be extremely cautious of initiating a tit-for-tat fight, and both sides played it subtly. Huang and Wang were apparently trying to settle the incident and prevent radical action of the staff, while the staff were trying to get a signal from the newspaper leaders about how they might be punished but at the same time staying firm to show that they could take radical action and that they held huge support from the public. As recalled by a few editors who attended the so-called New Year meal, Huang and Wang avoided directly responding to newspaper editors’ probing about the incident. Instead, they portrayed a positive future of the newspaper. Apparently, Huang’s portrayal of a promising prospect intended to calm down Southern Weekly staff, particularly to help resolve the confrontational atmosphere inside Southern Weekly. Large-scale information fermentation eventually started on Weibo after the publication of the open letter. So too did a race against post deletion. Online contention about Southern Weekly’s modification incident was further accelerated on 4 January, with three open letters being circulated on Weibo, respectively calling for signature support from Southern Weekly former staff, Southern Media staff and the public. These open letters were drafted by journalists outside Southern Weekly (current and former journalists of Southern Media Group). They criticized Tuo Zhen’s censoring of the New Year Edition as an act overstepping his remit and demanded that Tuo should take the blame and resign – one of the letters requested an apology to be publicly made by Tuo. They called for acknowledgement of the issue protested by Southern Weekly staff

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and requested that no punishment of the relevant people should be made. They urged authorities to reopen the Weibo accounts which were closed or blocked. A few hours later, more than seventy Southern Media staff and more than fifty Southern Weekly former employees co-signed the open letters. The open letter addressed to the public received 3,000 signatures within two days, and new signatures were constantly updated on Weibo. Having struggled for more than half a year under Tuo Zhen’s leadership of Guangdong Propaganda Department, many journalists of Southern Media were greatly mobilized to confront ‘Tuo-style-regulation’, as they called it. They accused Tuo of ‘an abnormal level of censoring compared to previous propaganda officers’ and claimed that ‘Tuo was sent by the National Central Government, parachuted into Guangzhou and obviously not quite fitting in’.4 The so-called pre-censoring policy, initiated by Tuo’s leadership and executed particularly for Southern Weekly and its affiliated magazine Southern People Weekly (officially affiliated to Southern Weekly but editorially independent), was particularly contested. Like most media outlets in China, Southern Weekly and Southern People Weekly used to be censored after editorial work was completed (before they were published), but in the policy of ‘pre-censoring’, editors of these two media outlets were required to inform the propaganda department of planned reports before they were written. Chinese journalists, when reporting on sensitive topics, often have to adopt particular reporting and writing techniques to circumvent censorship, for example, focusing on an individual’s story of mistreatment rather than touching on deeper systematic problems.5 Pre-censoring pre-emptively eliminated the possibility of any coverage that may push the censoring limit. As a Southern People Weekly editor revealed, We used to know where their [censoring officers’] line was and how to play the game. But then with the pre-censoring, we were deprived of any opportunity to play. There had been many times when our topics were rejected – most obvious in the news section [compared to sections for soft news] – and we had to run with blank pages or advertising in its place. So when the Southern Weekly Incident emerged, we thought that at least we should vent about what we had experienced during the past year.6

The frustration of journalists also coincided with the tightened censorship during the eighteenth National Congress, which took place in November 2012. As a seasoned employee of Southern Media put it,

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We have always known that any time around important political occasions our media reports are strictly regulated. It was understandable that they tightened the restriction of reports before and during the eighteenth Party Congress. However, we expected the restriction to become looser after the Congress but it turned out to be even tighter. So the target was automatically towards Tuo.7

For Southern Weekly staff, repression associated with the particular propaganda chief was prominent during the whole month of producing the New Year Edition since early December 2012. The production of the 2013 New Year Edition involved intense negotiation between the Southern Weekly editorial staff and propaganda officials. Huang Can, chief editor of Southern Weekly, who was responsible for routinely censoring of the newspaper, efficiently delivered the propaganda officials’ orientation about the New Year Edition, as well as used his own judgement to ensure that no ‘political mistakes’ were to be made. Journalists and editors already had an intense working relation with Huang; they often argued with Huang about his weekly censoring of the newspaper. During the production of the New Year Edition, negotiation was frustrating, as Southern Weekly senior editors recalled.8 The original author of the New Year Greeting revealed that his writing was adjusted a number of times following requirements from ‘above’ (media workers used ‘above’ to refer to political leaders, propaganda officials and company leaders) and 90 per cent of the content had been changed (Guan, 2014). Many articles were removed during the negotiation and the total number of sub-sections in the New Year Edition was reduced from sixteen to twelve by the end. In the finalization stage, five editors in charge worked three whole nights in a row to make sure the final version did not contain any ‘political mistakes’. However, the final version was still modified after finalization. Obviously, an anti-censorship incident such as the Southern Weekly Incident was unreportable for mass media, including news websites in China. Being then in its heyday, Sina Weibo became the main information source of the Southern Weekly Incident for Chinese people. Many Southern Media journalists saw a dramatic increase in numbers of Weibo followers during the incident, with some seeing an increase of more than 10,000 followers.9 Reports on the Southern Weekly Incident from overseas media were also shared on Weibo. Using proxy technologies to access foreign websites, some Chinese media workers and citizens regularly picked up overseas reports on the Southern Weekly Incident from the BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, CNN, and media from Hong Kong and Singapore, and shared them on Weibo. The Chinese

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community on Twitter (blocked in China), despite only being a small minority formed largely by intellectuals, human rights lawyers, journalists, writers and activists, again utilized Twitter for maintaining politicized interaction. Being banned in China has made Twitter a relatively free space for political discussion among those who use proxy service to cross the Great Fire Wall on regular basis (Sullivan, 2012). In the face of Weibo’s position on the frontline, WeChat as a relatively private social networking tool10 became another important platform for information disclosure behind the scenes. Given that the regulation of WeChat at the beginning of 2013 was relatively loose with much less message deletion being seen compared to Weibo, Southern Media journalists used WeChat groups as the main platform for instant internal communication. Interaction about the Southern Weekly Incident flooded WeChat groups, including big groups consisting of almost all Southern Media staff, and small ones formed within particular departments (such as the Southern Weekly Editorial Department group) and in other categories.11 Very often, some journalists provided updated information about the incident in their WeChat groups and called for group members to repost particular messages on Weibo to support Southern Weekly.

Seizing control of the Weibo account: The power struggle within Southern Weekly Propaganda Chief Tuo being the target of protest in the Southern Weekly Incident, as several Southern Weekly journalists revealed, was more emotional than fact-based. Soon after information about the Southern Weekly Incident fermented on Weibo, Southern Weekly staff were warned by outside sources that the phrase first posted on Weibo – ‘The New Year Edition was modified by Tuo’ – might be problematic and might cause these journalists significant trouble for spreading misinformation. To a great extent, the uncertainty about who actually modified the New Year Edition concerned many journalists who were involved in spreading relevant information. Chief Editor Huang Can and Deputy Chief Editor Wu Xiaofeng were the key people who oversaw the final modification of the New Year Edition. The demands for their accountability quickly grew inside Southern Weekly. On the night of 5 January, Huang Can, Wu Xiaofeng, several senior editors and staff representatives from other offices attended a meeting held for the

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purpose of investigating the modification incident. Huang Can first clarified that the New Year Greeting article, where literary mistakes were made, was drafted by Southern Weekly staff and modified following the instructions from the Provincial Propaganda Department, and the leading paragraph was drafted by Wu Xiaofeng. He emphasized that Propaganda Chief Tuo Zhen had nothing to do with the conduct of the modification. Deputy Chief Editor Wu Xiaofeng was then pressured to confess that he drafted the leading paragraph and made the errors. Wu explained that he and Huang were called to the office of the Provincial Propaganda Department on 1 January, where a propaganda officer pointed out that some of the text on the front page should be modified and instructed the way to modify them, in particular adding the leading paragraph. Wu recorded the instructions and conducted the modification. This meeting made it clear to Southern Weekly staff that the Deputy Chief Editor Wu drafted the article texts and made the literary mistakes. As a Southern Weekly journalist commented in my interview, it was the violation of normal working procedures – ‘they [Huang and Wu] added and changed content by themselves without going through the usual editing and proofreading process’ – that finally caused the mistakes to be published in the newspaper.12 The information revealed in this meeting was key for Southern Weekly staff. It dampened some staff ’s determination for confrontation. Despite journalists’ long-term accumulation of outrage towards Tuo, journalists were now halted by concerns that they may be charged for spreading misinformation regarding the association of Tuo with the New Year Edition. As Senior Editor Jian revealed, Southern Weekly employees felt that we did not have a leg to stand on anymore. Although there was obviously pressure and specific instructions from the Provincial Propaganda Department behind the modification, when we journalists posted the information on Weibo, the written words apparently became serious accusation. Weibo is a strange place […] We all know that Weibo posting is a form of causal chatting, but it turned out that some very influential people in media circles really treated those posts as formal accusation. When people like Hu Shuli [a famous media leader in China] questioned the validity of the accusation, the posts became problematic. We could not ignore the fact that those posts created the image in some non-media people’s mind that Tuo modified the newspaper, which was not true.13

Chief Editor Huang Can then instructed Wu Wei, the Weibo account manager of Southern Weekly, to post an apology to readers on the newspaper’s account, and confess that the New Year Edition was produced entirely by Southern Weekly

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staff themselves, and Southern Weekly Editorial Department was accountable for the mistakes on the front page. Arguing with Huang, many Southern Weekly journalists stressed that posting that message would completely destroy the reputation of Southern Weekly. After Wu Wei refused to post the particular message, on the night of 6 January, Huang Can forced Wu Wei to hand over the password of the Weibo account. Many people on Weibo on that night witnessed a dramatic show unfolding around the seizure of Southern Weekly’s Weibo account. At 21.18, Wu Wei (named Feng Duan on Weibo) posted the following statement on Weibo: @Feng Duan (6 January, at 21.18): I have handed over the password of Sina Weibo account @Southern Weekly to Mao Zhe, General Manager of Southern Weekly’s New Media business. I will not be responsible for the following statement and any future content posted by the account.

Wu’s statement was censored and removed shortly after by Sina Weibo. Two minutes after Wu posted the statement, Southern Weekly’s official Weibo account sent out a statement: @Southern Weekly (6 January, at 21.20): To our readers: The New Year Greeting we published in the January 3rd New Year Edition was written by our editors under the theme of Chasing Dreams; the preface on the front page was written by one of our directors. The related rumours on the internet are untrue. We apologize to our readers for the mistakes we made due to our negligence in haste.

This statement, denying the interference of the Guangdong Propaganda Department in the production and publication of the New Year Edition, apparently intended to prevent further demands for the accountability of the department. Following this, Southern Weekly staff members successively posted messages condemning the seizure of the Weibo account. However, these Weibo posts were soon censored and removed by Sina Weibo. The intensity triggered a strike threat made by editorial staff of Southern Weekly’s Economy Edition at 21.49. At this point, Huang Can has become the primary target of attack. Huang Can was appointed to take charge of Southern Weekly in 2011.14 As chief editor, Huang conducted routine censoring before the newspaper was submitted to the senior members of Southern Media and then to the Provincial Propaganda Department (on rare occasions, some issues have been directly

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published after Huang’s censoring). After one and a half years in the role of chief editor, Huang had received criticism from Southern Weekly journalists and editors for his ‘peculiar and unreasonable censoring style’.15 Jian, a senior editor of Southern Weekly, revealed that Huang killed more than 70 per cent of the articles they produced. As he put it, Huang Can was not an editor with whom you could communicate. He killed many articles without explaining why. When the Chief Editor conducted censoring either before the articles were published or before they were submitted to be censored by the above, we needed the Chief Editor’s professional explanation of his censoring, in particular what were the risks of publishing the particular article and what was the evidence for the judgement. He was never able to provide those. We often found us speaking a foreign tongue to him when we were discussing professional matters. Once we did a series of political reports on Myanmar. We were already very careful with ensuring the balanced reports on different parties, the left, the right, and the centrist, but Huang insisted ‘to follow his instinct’, only allowing one part of the reports to be published. The published reports turned out to be criticized by the above. In my experience I knew that the key to international reports was that they should be very balanced. The ridiculous thing was that, after being criticized, Huang finally concluded that we should not have published anything about that topic at all. Why do we need you [pointing to Huang] if we were not going to publish anything? Another time we did a report that had the potential to be very influential. He killed the topic. Other media did it and it was praised by the Central Propaganda Department. Neither your professional ability could earn our trust, nor could your political judgement in many cases. Why do we want you to be the Chief Editor?16

Despite feeling suffocated by Huang’s censoring for one and a half years, Southern Weekly staff did not challenge his position at the beginning of the Southern Weekly Incident. As Jian explained, We all had the common sense that even if another Chief Editor was appointed to replace Huang, not much would change anyway. At least we had been working with him for such a long time and we’ve gradually learnt the way to work with him. Tuo-style-regulation, as we like to call it, was the chief culprit.

Huang’s seizure of Southern Weekly’s Weibo account obviously changed the dynamic of contention for Southern Weekly employees as a whole, promoting ‘the most united of moments during the whole incident’.17 As a Beijing journalist of Southern Weekly recalled,

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Resistance in Digital China When the challenge to Huang Can was initiated, we all joined in. I heard about Tuo’s abnormal censoring, but he was too detached from us, especially journalists in Beijing. We did not directly feel that […] Huang Can’s censoring was so unbearable. He censored articles sentence by sentence and word by word, rather than conducting a general control. He often deleted the parts of a sentence that he felt were politically negative and kept the rest of it. In this way, he twisted the meaning. He also made very brutal changes to article titles which made us so uncomfortable.18

In an inconspicuous hotel near Southern Media in Guangzhou, Southern Weekly’s Guangzhou employees secretly gathered to discuss ways of resisting after the Weibo account was seized. Squashed into two rooms, journalists and editors were sad and somewhat fearful, with some proposing resignation. As one journalist recalled,19 a senior editor cried when he arrived in the room. Another editor shouted, ‘what’s the point of crying. Quickly go draft the statement!’ An editor who was normally quiet spoke out, trying to break depressing atmosphere, ‘Don’t panic. No resignations from now on. We are going to fight it out with them!’ The Deputy Chief Editor Wu Xiaofeng, who was also in the hotel room, was urged to draft a detailed report explaining the whole modification episode. As a deputy chief editor, Wu Xiaofeng was in the same boat as Huang Can, being accountable to the leadership group of Southern Media and for the propaganda department. However, the message posted on Southern Weekly’s Weibo account, stating that all mistakes were made by Southern Weekly staff themselves, obviously enforced huge pressure on him to take all the blame. Apparently, Huang’s post on the account, for Wu, seemed to be a betrayal by his employer. That night, he was standing at the side of those journalists. Beijing staff of Southern Weekly also gathered in the Beijing office. As a journalist described, We all took our laptops to the office, like going to battle. We registered many Weibo accounts and made sure that they would not be all closed and there were always accounts to be used for reposting the planned statements and declaration. We arranged to do the posting in turns and use different accounts in turn. That atmosphere and the tension reminded me of my experience of reporting Sichuan earthquake in 2008. At that time journalists from all over China gathered in a hotel in Sichuan, taking turns to sleep and waited for the updated information.20

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At 23.04, a statement signed by ninety-seven Southern Weekly staff members was posted on Weibo (on personal accounts and department accounts), declaring that the Southern Weekly’s official Weibo account was taken over forcibly and the post ‘To our readers … ’ was not genuine. On 7 January, Southern Weekly Ethics Committee posted two investigative reports, respectively revealing the two-day struggle within Southern Weekly with the chief editor before the newspaper’s Weibo account was seized and the modification process of New Year Edition in which Huang and Wu were involved. Unsurprisingly, these were soon deleted by Weibo. Many Southern Weekly employees also individually posted their experiences to promote contention. An investigative journalist of Southern Weekly revealed that at one time Huang’s censoring of a political issue caused hundreds of thousands of copies of Southern Weekly to be destroyed before distribution and a huge financial loss was incurred. He asked one of his celebrity friends to repost another of his messages accusing Huang of relentless censoring. Within less than three hours, the message reposted by the celebrity gained around 40,000 reposts.21 An editor working in the Commentary Department in Southern Weekly received a great number of private Weibo messages sent by readers showing their support. He anonymized the senders and posted these messages on his Weibo account to demonstrate supporting voices from the public.22 After the episode of seizing control of the Weibo account, there was a clear split in the aims of contention between Southern Weekly staff and other people. While Southern Weekly staff had already shifted their target to Huang Can, journalists outside Southern Weekly still had their sights fixed on Tuo Zhen. For most citizens, the power relation in the media system was simplified to be between Southern Weekly and ‘those above’, who modified the newspaper and seized the Weibo account. Their attack target was censorship in general, and Tuo in particular. As several Southern Weekly staff revealed in my interviews, they would not try to explain to the public about the complex structure and multilayered regulation within media, as ‘the public would not understand and would not bother trying to understand’.23 Nevertheless, the relentless deletion of Weibo posts noticeably triggered a race voluntarily taken by Weibo users who tried to keep the information flowing. This demonstrates a peculiar form of information dissemination and intensive dynamics for contention on the internet in China.

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Truth! Truth! – A race against deletion @Xiao Dang (5 January): Just logged on to Weibo, got forty-eight deletion notices. @Kao Er La GZ (6 January, at 10.45): ‘Sorry. This Weibo post is not appropriate to be publicized.’ Browsing Weibo, this sentence is the most seen […] most of the posts about Southern Weekly Incident became like this. It may be one of the weeks when online post deletion was most heavily conducted. Yet, Tuo himself is so calm, showing no reaction. We should thank Tuo as he woke us up from the fog of New Policy [referring to the proposed policies of Xi’s new leadership].

Posts which were identified as containing sensitive words were deleted within seconds after they were posted. According to CDT Chinese (China Digital Times), which runs a project24 that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo, the following terms were among those unsearchable on Weibo on 3 January: ‘Tuo Zhen’ (the name of Guangdong Propaganda Minister) and words that sound like ‘Tuo Zhen’ (people adopted homophones and near-homophones to refer to the name), ‘Chidu’ (which is synonymous with the Chinese character ‘Tuo’ and literally means ‘measurement’ or ‘scale’ – people online started calling Tuo Zhen ‘Chidu Minister’ during the incident, implying association with Tuo’s censoring work), ‘China dream’, ‘dream of constitutionalism’ (the earlier version the New Year Greeting was entitled ‘China’s Dream, the Dream of Constitutionalism’), ‘Guangdong Propaganda Department’, ‘Southern Weekly New Year’s Greeting’ and ‘Nanzhou New Year’s Greeting’ (Nanzhou is an abbreviation for Southern Weekly). On 4 January, words like ‘open letter’, ‘Dayu Flood Control’ (an ancient Chinese story told in the published New Year Edition in which a historical mistake was made) were added to the blocked list. On 6 January, each of the four individual characters in the newspaper name, as well as ‘nfzm’ which stands for ‘Nanfang Zhoumo’ (the Chinese name of Southern Weekly), was blocked. Many journalists and citizens presented screenshots of their Weibo pages which showed their posts repetitively replaced by the same message – ‘Sorry. The Weibo you posted has been encrypted by the manager. This Weibo post is not appropriate to be publicized. If you need help, please contact customer service’, creating an atmosphere of despair during the Southern Weekly Incident. The sticker of a candle image was one of the most popular expressions used by Weibo users to pass information about a particular Weibo account being shut down. A

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one-word Weibo post ‘Test’ was often seen from many accounts, suggesting that the user was checking whether his/her Weibo account was still ‘alive’. Other media in China were repressed from expressing support for Southern Weekly. Media accounts on Weibo are assigned to particular government agents, who would contact the media companies if sensitive information is identified on the company accounts. The manager of a magazine’s Weibo account explains to me, Very often, the posts I send can only be seen by myself, like they are self-shielded. I can tell that they are blocked when I find that the number of ‘read’ is only zero or one. I have called this number [the dedicated phone number for contacting the account inspector] a few times to argue with the person, stressing that the post does not contain any sensitive information and asking him to check again. There is also somebody from the Cyber Division in the Guangdong Propaganda Department calling me frequently. He normally pointed out that our official Weibo account had sent out an inappropriate message and commanded me to delete the message. Or sometimes, he pointed out that there were, below our messages, some negative comments on the Party which needed to be deleted. There was once I asked him on the phone, ‘Don’t you feel meaningless to do this every day?’ He said, ‘We all have to do the job. I have no choice’.25

Post deletion and account closure on social media during a contentious event are knowingly exercised as a means of sending a warning from state surveillance to chill future discussion. Sina Weibo is reportedly required to delete ‘harmful’ posts within five minutes (Fu et al., 2013). Deletion of a sensitive post is often followed by the deletion of a chain of reposts (Zhu et al., 2013). As previous studies have shown, certain users (such as those who frequently post sensitive content) receive closer scrutiny (Zhu et al., 2013). A seasoned content examiner of Southern Weekly, Zeng Li’s Weibo posts and blog articles during the incident inspired much support from Southern Weekly employees. Inside Chinese media, a content examiner (shenduyuan) is a news censoring role inside a particular Chinese media organization, responsible for media ‘self-monitoring’ before work is submitted to the official censors above. As a content examiner at Southern Weekly, Zeng worked on a daily routine with other censoring officers to make sure that the newspaper did not make ‘political mistakes’. Zeng’s Weibo account was closed during the incident. On 3 January, Zeng posted on Weibo discussing the ways in which the provincial propaganda chief controlled Southern Weekly. About 2,000 people reposted or commented on this Weibo post within three hours. Then his Weibo post was deleted together

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with some of his previous posts. Zeng then posted a Weibo image showing his Weibo posts and comments that had been deleted. In less than ten minutes, his Weibo account was closed down. Enraged by this, on 6 January, Zeng wrote a blog article entitled ‘Who Revised the New Year’s Greeting at Southern Weekly?’. The article introduced readers to how, on a routine basis, censoring of Southern Weekly newspaper was procedurally conducted by content examiners, the chief editor of Southern Weekly, senior staff in Southern Media Group and propaganda officers. He also revealed that each issue of Southern Weekly saw at least two to three articles, sometimes seven to eight, removed and more than ten significantly modified. Zeng also claimed that around fifteen Weibo accounts of Southern Weekly staff were closed down with his at a similar time. His post was soon censored. Many Southern Weekly journalists regarded Zeng’s online confession about his work as evidence from an insider about the censoring of Southern Weekly and reposted it continuously in the form of a ‘long Weibo’ post26 on 7 January. For Chinese citizens who were not working in the media, it was the first time that censorship tactics had been brought to light by an insider. Zeng explained, ‘When the Southern Weekly Incident was blowing up online, the Weibo accounts of many Southern Weekly staff were blocked, including myself. I can no longer be silent.’ Post relay demonstrates a special technique voluntarily adopted by Chinese internet users to keep information flowing and circumvent deletion. They attempt to utilize the few seconds or minutes before the deletion in order to spread information to other accounts, thus lengthening the lifespan of posts. The Southern Weekly Incident demonstrated efficient post relays voluntarily initiated by journalists and supporters for Southern Weekly, particularly owing to journalists’ wide networks of followers and hence rapid spread of information.27 ‘Posting for truth’ has become the incentive claimed by online protestors.28 On the night of 6 January after the Weibo account of Southern Weekly was seized, as my interviewees revealed, many of them (journalists and newspaper readers) stayed up for the whole night to repost messages from Southern Weekly staff, hoping to quickly pass on the information before it was deleted. A Southern Weekly journalist reposted messages from his colleagues every few minutes, together with the request: ‘Please spread it far and wide. Thank you, friends who care about and support us.’ He believed that information on Weibo, after it was widely diffused, was not possible to be completely cleared by censors.29 Chinese internet users’ skills of creatively using homophones, punctuation, reference items, word separation, images and various artful forms of posting to

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get around the filtering system have been well demonstrated by previous studies (Yang, 2009; Xiao, 2011). Over the week of January 2013, Weibo users changed their profile photos to the logo of Southern Weekly to support the newspaper. Referring to the propaganda Chief Tuo Zhen, Weibo users replaced the surname Tuo with a homophonic alternative, a measure word normally associated with faeces. The website of the popular magazine Caijing (on Weibo @Caijing Wang) posted a message entitled ‘Wei-dictionary’, explaining the meaning of the Chinese character ‘Tuo’, implying from the literal meaning of the character that a person should restrict his behaviour and crossing lines would invite humiliation himself. An image depicting a pile of faeces was used to make comments that condemned the propaganda official. ‘No. 289 Yard’ was widely used by current and previous journalists working in Southern Media Group to refer to the company by its address on Guangzhou Avenue. The Chinese writing tradition chunqiu bifa, which expresses critical opinions in subtle ways, was adopted during the incident to avoid direct confrontation. People online recited meaningful sentences that were published in New Year Greetings of previous years and made linguistic changes to those sentences to ridicule the current political environment. Using quotes and poetry is typical in exercising chunqiu bifa. As the following examples show, @Yao Chen (7 January, at 23.20): One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world. – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Russian)

The movie star and Weibo celebrity (among the first celebrities to open a Weibo account) Yao Chen quoted the sentence from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (a Russian novelist, dramatist and historian) when she also attached the brand avatar of Southern Weekly below the text. This quote was once used by Southern Weekly as the title of 2006 New Year Greeting, thus inspiring readers’ association with Southern Weekly. In less than seven minutes, this post accumulated 96,945 reposts and 32,091 comments. @Southern People Weekly (6 January, at 22.45): History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamour of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Within less than one and a half hours, this post was reposted 68,736 times, often with the logo of Southern Weekly, and commented on 13,212 times, encouraging people to stand up.

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Satirizing the authorities through various forms of story writing, poems and cartoons in the Southern Weekly Incident created entertaining effects that promoted a large number of reposts. On 4 January, when asked about the Southern Weekly Incident on a news conference of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of PRC, Hua Chunying, the spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said she did not know the specific circumstances about the incident but she emphasized: ‘In China, no so-called news censorship system exists. The Chinese government protects journalistic freedom according to the law’ (Richburg, 2013). An image showing her aggressive gesture while making this speech was widely forwarded on Weibo to mock the authorities with the caption ‘There’s no censorship in China. Believe it or not!’ At the time of writing, many of my interviewees’ Weibo pages from the 6 and 7 January 2013 had become fully dominated by deletion notices: ‘Sorry, the Weibo post has been deleted by the author … ’; ‘Sorry, this Weibo post is not appropriate to be publicized. If you need help, please contact customer service.’ On 7 January at 04.06, a manager at Sina Weibo posted a message on his Weibo account @Zhengban Yu Yang (See ‘Weibo Censorship and Southern Weekly’ (CDT, 2013c) for the full Weibo text of this post). As he explains, the storm of attacks, condemnation and blame for Sina had ‘grown to a fevered pitch’ and made him no longer able to hold back the anger, needing to explain to the public so that they ‘can understand the facts of the matter’. As he wrote, If [Sina] did not delete certain Weibo posts, then that would probably mean entire topics would be deemed off limits. Weibo is a public platform. No one can deny how Weibo has changed our lives in terms of society, government, as a means of quickly and conveniently expressing public opinion, etc. The problem is, on one end we have over 100 million public Weibo users, but the other end is not Sina […] that special group of knee-jerk reactionary bureaucrats have been able to throw up the yellow light and deduct points any time they so pleased. They really have no responsibility to consider public opinion whatsoever. They could institute a ‘game over’ for Weibo as effortlessly as smashing an ant. So when they issue the 18th Golden Edict, you have no choice but to execute their demands […] a certain amount of sacrifice is necessary to reap some gain. This is the kind of country we live in. There are all kinds of special, sensitive restraints placed on us. The game can only be played well by staying within the bounds of the rules. (CDT, 2013c)

This expression revealed Sina’s difficult position under the pressure imposed on them by the propaganda department, and pointed to fundamental conflicts between the authorities who paid little attention to public opinion when it comes

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to maintaining political regulation and Sina as an internet business which cared about customers. It forcefully stressed that Sina had no choice but to grasp the ground for survival. Despite this, as he continued to explain, Sina had already raised the barrel of its gun up a notch. As he put it, I posit the following question to you all: You are all crazily posting Weibo messages, and those ‘little secretaries’ are busily deleting them all. But with the situation as it is, has your ability to see this information been hindered? If they didn’t delete individual Weibo posts, they would just directly shut down entire accounts. Wouldn’t that limit our worry even more? Wouldn’t that let us feel like real smart alecs? Hasn’t everyone already seen the post before it was deleted? For all of those who have had their Weibo posts deleted, have your accounts been shut down? Many of you are veteran internet users. So you know internet technology, you know that deleting something seconds after it is posted is not a big deal. There’s always more than one side to things. Everyone should consider this carefully […] In fact, pressure already exists right when, and even before, a situation breaks out. But we can deal with it. The fact that all information can make it out represents a hard-fought victory in itself.

This long Weibo message had since been removed. The account @Zhengban Yu Yang soon disappeared (CDT, 2013c; FreeWeibo, 2013). Besides post deletion, Chinese authorities have certainly taken more proactive approach to promote particular narrative of the Southern Weekly Incident, reflecting on the ‘channelling public opinion’ approach (Qian and Bandurski, 2010). On the morning of 7 January, Global Times, which is a subsidiary of People’s Daily and is well-known for its strongly nationalistic and pro-government slant (CDT, 2008; Branigan, 2009), published an editorial entitled ‘Southern Weekly’s “Message to Readers” Is Food for Thought Indeed’(‘Message to Readers’ referred to the message posted by Huang Can on Southern Weekly’s Weibo account). This editorial attributed ‘foreign forces’, in particular Chen Guangcheng, a blind Chinese civil rights activist who worked on human rights issues as a lawyer in rural China and, in 2012, escaped house arrest to seek refuge in the United States, for the sparking and promotion of the Southern Weekly Incident. The article ended with a forceful comment: Whether these people [journalists and protesters] are willing to accept it or not, this is common sense: given China’s social and political realities, the kind of ‘free media’ that these people dream of simply cannot exist. All of China’s media can develop only to the extent China does, and media reform is part of China’s overall reform, and the media absolutely will not become a ‘political special

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The blaming of ‘interference of foreign forces’ has been frequently adopted by the CCP when they intended to shut down discussion about certain affairs, with a warning that further discussion may cause danger for citizens. The term ‘foreign forces’ became one of the targets being attacked in citizens’ posts. Mocking posts also hinted at the irony of the CCP’s utilization of this term while many CCP officials were reportedly engaged in money laundry overseas and could be regarded the real ‘foreign forces’. @Li Wan (7 January): I am a blind person, but you framed me for peeping at national secrets …

@Li Chengpeng (8 January): These foreign forces are evil indeed. They live among the rich in the US, but aggressively interfere in China’s domestic affairs. They stole money from Chinese people, and store it in Swiss banks. Their sons and daughters drive Ferraris themselves and never care about tragedies of school buses in China. Most hatefully, they manipulate some Chinese media, and when they saw Chinese citizens pursuing constitutionalism that has long been advocated by Mao Zedong, they scolded these citizens as traitors and sent them to re-education through labour. Let’s seize these foreign forces quickly!

Red coloured underwear which was labelled ‘foreign forces’ was marked by the text ‘the omnipresent underwear that is used to cover all the shame’. The famous cartoonist Kuang Biao created a cartoon showing a monstrous man facing a mirror with the caption of ‘You, the forces outside the mirror still do not admit it?’31 This also satirized the authorities by pointing out their selfhumiliation in the accusation of foreign forces. Artful photography produced by citizens was uploaded to Weibo to express good wishes to the newspaper, such as one focusing on two big characters ‘Ping An’ (means ‘safe’) on an advertisement outside the office building of Southern Weekly. A photo of Southern Weekly’s building under sun light was posted with the text ‘Sun light is shining on your face, while the warmness remains in our hearts’, a well-remembered sentence in the 1999 New Year Greeting of Southern Weekly. A photograph of an elephant with chains on its legs was uploaded by a well-known journalist to Weibo with the caption: ‘people who chain you may not necessarily be stronger than you’ (7 January).

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News websites, while prohibited from reporting on the event, showed their support via particular editing decisions on their websites. Without specifically discussing the Southern Weekly Incident, the website of NetEase ran a feature that collected each year’s Southern Weekly New Year Greeting. A classical Chinese intellectual game of composing acrostic poetry was skilfully played by a number of news portals run by Sina, NetEase, Sohu, Tianya and Yicai. On 7 January and 8 January, website viewers found that the first characters of each article title in the same column formed a vertical sentence, which read ‘Go ahead, Southern Weekly!’, ‘Hold on, Southern Weekly!’ etc. On the evening of 7 January 2013, a censoring instruction, issued to the media by central government authorities, was leaked and distributed online. The instruction pointed out that Party control of media was ‘an unwavering basic principle’. It demanded media organizations to ensure employees stop voicing support for Southern Weekly online. It also asserted that Guangdong Propaganda Department Chief Tuo Zhen should not be blamed for the incident and external hostile forces were involved in the incident. The instruction commanded ‘media and websites in all locales’ to prominently republish the Global Times editorial ‘Southern Weekly’s “Message to Readers” Is Food for Thought Indeed’ (CDT, 2013b). It was obvious that the CPD was determined to ban the discussion of Southern Weekly Incident in public media by asserting the nature of the case as political dissent. Under huge pressure, main news websites, including Sina, NetEase, Sohu and Tencent and more than ten mainstream newspapers, which were nationally distributed and respectively based in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Hangzhou and Changsha complied by reprinting the Global Times editorial on 8 January and 9 January. To distance themselves from the views of the editorial, many media added statements at the end of the reprinted article to state that the views in the article did not represent their stance. For example, Tencent stated, ‘Publishing this article does not mean Tencent agrees with their views or confirms the content’ at the end of the article (Tencent, 2013); Sina’s publication also included the following statement – ‘Declaration: Sina publishes this article for the purpose of passing more information. It does not mean Sina agrees with their views or confirms the content’ (Sina, 2013). Yet, media in Southern Media Group and some other media refused to reprint the Global Times editorial. A confrontation taking place in Beijing News created another emotional wave on Weibo. Beijing News was co-founded by Guangming Daily32 and Southern Media Group in 2003, with staff originally from Southern Media Group as the main editors and journalists. Since September 2011, Beijing

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News has moved under direct control of the Beijing Municipal Propaganda Department.33 At midnight on 9 January 2013, Beijing News received a visit from a Beijing propaganda officer after it refused to publish the Global Times editorial. The officer reportedly warned that the newspaper would be banned from publication if the editorial was not included, and threatened to dissolve Beijing News press if it did not comply with the republishing instruction (CDT, 2013a). As a journalist from Beijing News recalled, the proprietor of the newspaper Dai Zigeng organized a vote among on-duty editors and journalists to decide whether or not to comply with the propaganda order. With the vote in favour of ‘not reprinting’, Dai stood in a stalemate with the Beijing propaganda officer and finally submitted an oral resignation in the office. Beijing News eventually had to reprint the editorial, renaming it ‘Global Times published an editorial about “the Southern Weekly incident”’. The signature of editor-in-duty was left blank. Photographs were uploaded to Weibo by some Beijing News staff to show the confrontation taking place in Beijing News press. These photographs showed a dismal atmosphere with many staff in tears. They were widely forwarded by other media workers with comments to show support and encouragement. At the same time, posts that accused Global Times of disgracefully and shamefully cheating the audience quickly filled Weibo. The following post, as one of the responses to the criticism, was posted by a key editor in Global Times: @Wangwen Pinglun (9 January): Many people are scolding us […] Let me tell you: many years later, your words on Weibo will definitely disappear. When people review the history, they will only find the record on the printed Global Times […] This is our contribution to history.

This message may appear to be irrational, but summed up the daunting challenges faced by Chinese internet users in pursuing truth. It ironically reflected many people’s concern about the fatal effects of Weibo deletion in many social affairs in digital China. Under the Party’s forceful guidance of controlling irresponsible rumours, truth remained a puzzle in many Chinese affairs.

Go to the street? – Division and dissolution After Southern Weekly staff members learnt about the newspaper Deputy Chief Wu Xiaofeng’s exercise to modify the New Year Edition, many of them became highly cautious and some completely withdrew from further discussion about the

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Southern Weekly Incident. However, division between journalists, citizens and activists was more explicitly illustrated once street protests were initiated. Protests outside the office buildings of Southern Media were organized by loyal Southern Media readers and activists. Journalists were absent from the street protests, despite their active role in mobilizing online contestation about censorship. Shen, a teacher and writer, was the first person to hold up a sign outside Southern Media offices to protest on 5 January. Next to the gate of Southern Media office buildings, Shen lifted a sign which read ‘Go! Southern Weekly; Step down! Tuo.’ Despite being told off by the police, he managed to hold up the sign for half an hour (Yibao, 2013). The photos of Shen protesting outside Southern Media were posted on Weibo and Twitter, but those on Weibo were quickly censored. Shen revealed in an interview with a Hong Kong magazine that he had preferred not to join street action until the Southern Weekly which challenged his tolerance of the CCP. He decided to take action and hoped to mobilize others34 (Yibao, 2013). Shen’s friend Yedu, a prominent member in the activist community, saw Shen’s photos on Twitter and thought that ‘Shen’s behaviour outside Southern Media was very meaningful and it may be something that can further ferment’.35 As Yedu put it, We [activists] knew about the Southern Weekly Incident before Shen went to protest. But we didn’t think about making collective action for the newspaper. There is kind of a distance between the party-run newspaper and us. I did not see the point of taking action until Shen protested there. Shen’s action gave us inspiration that we should use the case as a stage for civil expression, although we may not actually care about the newspaper.

That day, Yedu invited Shen to a meal attended by more than ten activists. Activists in the meal listened to Shen’s experience and agreed to use the Southern Weekly Incident as an opportunity to mobilize ‘an event of civil expressions’. The activists on the night made the plan for protesting outside Southern Media office buildings on 6 January and outside Guangdong provincial government office buildings on 7 January. For Chinese activists, Twitter (and for some the messaging app Telegram) was their main platform for exercising political contention. Using Twitter instead of Chinese domestic social media has become an agency for establishing the activist identity and building solidarity, interpreted as activists’ desire to receive information and exchange views freely without censorship (Sullivan,

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2012). Twitter is crucial in connecting activists both in China and overseas who are mostly liberal, critical of the Chinese state and pro-democracy. The activist groups may be hidden from the majority of Chinese people who were on domestic social media, but they wish to connect to the population through street movements. The protest on 6 January proceeded as planned. As expected, Yedu and other activists’ posts on Twitter and Weibo showing their action outside Southern Media attracted their followers to also go to the protest site. The protest on that day ended with the police taking away Yuan, who lifted a sign asking to ‘have a talk’. The police confiscated the protesting sign Yuan held, and set him free not long after. However, Yuan soon found himself followed on the way back, and warned Yedu to be careful via a phone call. Given the plan of continuing protesting the next day, Yedu spent the night of 6 January in a spa to avoid being found by the police. It was that night when the official Weibo account of Southern Weekly was seized. Online initiation of protest by some citizens made Yedu and his peers change their plans for the next day from protesting outside government offices and decided to continue protest outside Southern Media. Witnessing the seizure of Southern Weekly’s Weibo account, Xiang, a loyal reader of Southern Weekly in her thirties, decided that for the first time, she would publicly demonstrate resistance, because she ‘felt insulted’.36 Before the Southern Weekly Weibo account was seized by the authorities, I already felt the censoring and the modification of the New Year Edition went too far. But it was the seizure of the Southern Weekly account, the message that was posted there by those above that really disgusted me. I felt insulted. It was an insult to both the emotions and intelligence of citizens.37

Xiang expressed online her plan to present flowers outside Southern Media office buildings the next day. Reposting Xiang’s message, a number of other citizens also pledged to attend the protest the next day. Lyrics of a song which some people planned to sing in the protest were quickly circulated. The next day, readers who came to support Southern Media met with the pre-organized activists on the site. Presentations of creative and emotional forms were demonstrated through photography and videos uploaded on Weibo. Yan, a middle-aged university lecturer, decided to ‘have a look at the protest’. As he explained, I am too old to feel the impulse of doing something radical. But I am still interested in observing. I have been to most of the protesting events in

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Guangzhou. I just wanted to take some photos, show the photos to other people, in particular my students, to let them know something is happening outside of the campus. I always feel sad that today our students know very little about what’s actually happening in this country. I made friends with people in those events. Now those friends usually send me a message when they know an event is taking place.38

Yan went to Southern Media on his own, but he found many of his friends also on the site, including a few charity workers, a previous student who had been active in a number of other social events and an independent drama producer whom Yan had come across several times at other protests. Yan uploaded on Weibo photos of the yellow chrysanthemums clutched by citizens and banner signs that read ‘freedom of expression is not a crime’ and ‘Chinese people want freedom’. Activists and citizens met and merged together at the site. Many people stood by the protest, like Yan and his acquaintances. They claimed that ‘we didn’t do anything. We were all just looking on’.39 Photographs and videos were uploaded to Weibo on a minute-by-minute basis, creating a real-time commentary of the protest. ‘Somebody is giving a speech … ’ (at 13.12) ‘More and more people are coming, so are more and more police … ’ (at 15.44) ‘This woman travelled a long distance, wanting to give this placard [on which read: Love Southern Weekly. Protect Southern Weekly. We support Southern Weekly by our conscience] to the press, but the security people did not let her in. So she could only hold up the board. All the people at the scene were reading the words together again and again.’ (at 19.51)

From the online images, people saw protesters giving speeches, holding banners containing words of democracy and freedom, and singing songs. Online witnesses of the protest strengthened the online voice, which mobilized more people to participate in or stand by the protest. Some activists were soon identified by the police who noticed their intensive posting of protest photos and were then taken home by the police to be placed under house arrest for a number of days.40 It may feel ironic for many involved that no journalists from Southern Media Group (or outside Southern Media Group) participated in the protest taking place outside their offices. Obviously, journalists felt it was riskier to take street action, in the Southern Weekly Incident, compared to other citizens and

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activists. A journalist, who had previously initiated a number of online petitions, revealed that offline action risked unemployment or even imprisonment and, furthermore, their online account might be shut down and personal life activities would also be limited.41 As a journalist of Southern Weekly pointed out, ‘What we need to do is, to develop the case online to the maximum, whilst ensuring the development remains only online’.42 This view was shared by other journalists during the incident. As Pin, a senior editor of the magazine Southern People Weekly put it, Why should we go to the street? We journalists have raised our voice and generated emotion for the whole society. We journalists have finished our part, and the rest is not up to us. Isn’t this the strategy? If we go to protest, we would be arrested.43

On the night of 6 January, Pin witnessed citizens online discussing about going to protest, after they were provoked by the seizure of Southern Weekly’s official Weibo account. Pin recalled, I of course understand those people’s passion. But I have been working in this career for more than ten years. I have sacrificed so much. I have compromised the passion, the reports I wanted to write, only for staying in this career. You should not expect me to protest. You should not use this big stick of morality to drive me. Once I sacrifice myself, what I earn would be only your one word of ‘well done!’44

Southern Weekly staff, after they learnt that the literary mistakes in the New Year Edition were made by Vice Chief Editor Wu Xiaofeng, felt the need to restrict their online action in order to facilitate their negotiation with senior staff of Southern Media. There was also an explicit command from the company leaders prohibiting journalists from having contact with protesters and foreign press. In the Beijing correspondents’ station, journalists were advised by Southern Weekly Editorial Committee to work from home in order to avoid direct contact with citizens who went to the office building to support the newspaper. The Southern Weekly Editorial Committee explained that either journalists forming an alliance with supporters or journalists initiating a conflict with the citizens would hinder the ongoing negotiation with the leaders of the media. For them, the intention was to resolve some problems of management within a framework that did not challenge Party policies. Some Southern Weekly journalists suggested that people’s radical action, though demonstrating goodwill by supporting the newspaper, would by

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necessity bear the idea of sacrificing the newspaper, and would eventually destroy the newspaper. In their view, the negotiation between them and those above (senior leaders of Southern Media and the propaganda department) was delicate and radicalization of action from the public could be unhelpful. It was somehow paradoxical. Southern Weekly staff successfully mobilized the online population after their Weibo account was seized, but the protest that followed was unwanted by Southern Weekly staff and out of their control. As observed by a Southern Media commentator, The outside voices grew rapidly, to some extent encouraging many Southern Media staff members to speak louder. However, people from outside Southern Weekly were all ignorant of the core facts in the modification incident. Southern Weekly staff knew this deep down, but could not resist promoting the contention, which could bring them trouble.45

On 7 January, a meeting was held between Southern Weekly Editorial Committee and the Party Secretary of Southern Media Yang Jian, to negotiate a resolution to the Southern Weekly Incident. Lu, a staff representative from Shanghai office of Southern Weekly, travelled to the Guangzhou headquarters to assist the negotiation between the newspaper and Southern Media leaders. As Lu recalled, this meeting was of great significance, as Southern Weekly journalists planned to negotiate with Yang Jian for ‘a fair and open rule of the Southern Weekly Incident and the removal of Huang Can’.46 They were devoted to negotiating the adjustment of the way their newspaper was censored, in particular rejecting the process of pre-censoring. As frankly emphasized by a senior editor of Southern Weekly who played an important role in the Southern Weekly Ethical Communities (which was established for investigating the Southern Weekly Incident), they ‘only wanted to go back to the same censoring circumstance before Tuo took post’.47 Certainly, some members of Southern Weekly Editorial Committee were also concerned with the potential for ‘being controlled in the meeting room’ – ‘such as that the leaders of Southern Media portrayed our people as reactionary forces and physically controlled them in the meeting’, as explained by Lu. However, during the meeting, Lu and colleagues who did not attend the meeting received information from multiple sources on WeChat network groups suggesting that the Global Times’ editorial on the morning of 7 January, entitled ‘Southern Weekly’s “Message to Readers” Is Food for Thought Indeed’ should be regarded as an official ruling on the incident. This implied that the newspaper

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was officially accused of colluding with foreign elements to divide China. Lu gathered these sources and presented them through WeChat to Southern Weekly Editorial Committee, who were in the meeting. It was intense; Southern Weekly staff in the meeting needed to adjust their negotiation strategies once they held updated information of how the authorities would portray and rule the case. To assist the negotiation, Lu was trying to calm down journalists outside the meeting who became too emotional and ‘uncontrollable’. As Lu explained, ‘if some journalists outside the meeting did something too radical, the meeting inside could not continue’. Understanding the peculiar power relations involved in the negotiation of the Southern Weekly Incident, it is useful to speculate about the position of the leadership of Southern Media. The company’s leadership group then was led by the Party Secretary Yang Jian, consisting of members from mixed backgrounds ranging from journalists and editors, who used to practise journalism, to Party officials. Before the current post (starting in May 2012), Yang Jian was the deputy chief of Guangdong Propaganda Department. Yang Jian and a number of other officers were directly appointed to particular senior roles by the government.48 Some senior editors inside the leadership group were promoted internally but needed Party approval to work in their positions; they are familiar with daily editorial affairs and may have a closer relationship with journalists and editors. Working as leaders of the media in general, these people from different backgrounds were, on the one hand, accountable to their Party superiors in the provincial and central propaganda departments (and other government institutions which regulate press and publication), and so responsible for regulating the publication of the media and, on the other hand, they represented the interests of the media corporation. A key leader of Southern Media (deputy chief editor of Southern Media), Jiang Yiping was also former chief editor of Southern Weekly. Jiang had been well respected by Southern Weekly staff. In her post of chief editor of Southern Weekly from 1996 to 2000, Southern Weekly established its reputation of being a sharp critic of social corruption and injustice. She and her colleagues drafted New Year Greetings that had been well-memorized by readers, most famously sentences such as ‘empower the powerless, let the pessimists move forward’ (published in 1999). In 2000, Jiang was removed from Southern Weekly by the Provincial Propaganda Department and appointed to take charge of other newspapers in Southern Media. Jiang had a difficult role to play in the Southern Weekly Incident. As a senior leader of Southern Media, she was part of the

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leadership group attempting to settle the incident, whilst as a former leader of Southern Weekly and the veteran who established the newspaper’s values, she was expected by Southern Weekly staff to bring fairness and sympathy to  the newspaper. When the anger was heavily directed at Chief Editor of the newspaper Huang Can, many journalists demanded Jiang’s return to lead the newspaper. Jiang tried to calm down Southern Weekly staff and promote the negotiation between them and senior staff of Southern Media. Like journalists of Southern Weekly, she was hoping that the meeting on 7 January would agree to replace the chief editor of the newspaper. However, she was also surprised to hear from outside sources that the incident was already ruled by the authorities as involving foreign forces. As she revealed, And so the negotiation was forcefully ceased, and the discussion could only point to the central question of ‘how are you [the authorities] going to define this incident?’ All of the previous negotiation of changing the internal management and replacing the Chief Editor was wasted, because the accusation of the newspaper colluding with foreign forces was much more a dominant concern.

Like many journalists who exclaimed that ‘we never saw any foreign forces in the press’, Jiang lamented the authorities’ decision to rule on the incident in this way. ‘It was a huge and complex state apparatus assessing all the aspects of the incident from a political point of view. The explanation of such a decision of ruling the incident might not be revealed until a future point’,49 she said. On the night of 9 January when the drama of confronting the Beijing propaganda officer to resist reprinting the Global Times editorial unfolded in the office of Beijing News, Southern Weekly staff were extremely upset by the possible expansion of the confrontation. As Lu put it, We tried very hard to restrict the action to online only, preventing it from becoming a social movement. But the confrontation in Beijing News was out of our control. If Beijing News kept firmly resisting the propaganda officer’s command, the incident may have expanded to a level that we could not predict, and we may all have been charged if the incident became too big. This is the complexity […] we wanted the incident to be settled soon but other people kept escalating it.50

Obviously, pressure to respond to the protests was increasingly put on Southern Weekly staff as the incident progressed. A then journalist in Southern Media Group and one of the authors of the open letter addressed to Southern Media

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staff recalled that he felt excited when he finally saw Southern Weekly staff cosigned a statement after the Weibo account of Southern Weekly was seized. We had been waiting for them to do some real things. However much we had done, we were just the surrounding people who played the role of passing by, but they [Southern Weekly staff] were the key players. They initiated the case, but if they didn’t continue acting strongly, we could not progress the case and we felt we were fooled. When I saw their names, one by one, row by row, listed in the statement posted online, I thought, they were finally forced out and now it looks a bit more like how things should be. I felt very excited and at that point I forgave their previous cowardliness.51

The approach of Southern Weekly staff to protecting the newspaper and themselves through negotiation with authorities apparently disappointed many media counterparts. As one former Southern Weekly journalist and currently an editor of a magazine based in Beijing put it in my interview, Their [Southern Weekly staff ’s] response to the outside support was first, lagging behind; second, very weak. Although it was true that some of them couldn’t speak online as their accounts were closed down, they gave people an impression of hesitating from the beginning and they somehow did not live up to other journalists’ expectations. […] Although we, people who have left Southern Weekly, decided to take the risks for speaking for them, we felt frustrated at some point because they [current Southern Weekly staff] responded so little. We were sad for their suffering but also angry with their non-resistance. After all, they were the people who could make the thing grow and we could not meddle in their affairs. We felt disappointed but we couldn’t say anything. Gradually, some of us gave up and left the WeChat group where we discussed strategies for progressing the case.52

A Southern Media journalist also provided the following account, They [Southern Weekly staff] were both sophisticated and casual in this case. They were calculating and sophisticated in the way that they weighed up the losses and gains very carefully. They were very casual in maintaining their personal values of work and of life. They are just snobbish people who are selfinterested. They came out to have a shout in the case and then left, leaving other emotional people to fight to take the risks and they did not care about them anymore. You cannot expect these people to really do a thing.53

Although many Southern Weekly journalists felt guilty that they were not able to give ordinary citizens who were drawn into the protests a pledge, and this

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became ‘a big factor for consideration of action’ by several journalists,54 they also claimed that the Southern Weekly Incident had been utilized by both leftists and rightists (e.g. activists) for their own interests. They stated that joining their protests would serve the wrong purpose. The incident was like any current social event that is always used by the left and the right for their political propaganda. The common and most defining characteristic of both the extreme left and extreme right is that they never really care about the fact itself when they come to an event.55

Indeed, people outside Southern Media protested with various agendas. I have discussed that activists utilized the Southern Weekly Incident as an opportunity to air their political resistance to the authorities and to practise mass social mobilization. On the site, there were also rural villager protesters and others who protested for issues that were not directly relevant to the Southern Weekly Incident. The so-called Mao Leftists (or New Leftists), who criticize the influence of Western institutionalism on Chinese polices (Zheng, 1999), also appeared in the Southern Weekly protests, accusing Southern Weekly and Southern Media as traitors colluding with Western media. They held a huge portrait of Mao and a banner with slogans of ‘Support the Communist Party; Support Mao Zedong Thought; Support combatting the media of traitors Southern Media’ on it. The following confrontation was recorded and uploaded to Weibo: ‘Why do we need to learn from America? Why don’t we let the Americans learn from us? The whole world envied us in Mao’s age’, said a Mao’s supporter. ‘You are very poorly educated. I don’t want to talk to you’, said another citizen. ‘I am poorly educated, but I know Chairman Mao was great. You are more educated, but useless. How can you be anti-Mao!’ said the Mao’s supporter.

There reportedly were people putting fifty-cent bank notes by the banner holder’s feet and shouting, ‘your money fallen out’. This was an act indicating the recognition of Mao’s supporters as representing the so-called Fifty-Cent Army. Disguised as ordinary online participants, the Fifty-Cent Army are paid to spread pro-Party ideologies and disrupt confrontational discussion online (I discussed the Fifty-Cent Army in Chapter 2).56 The Mao Leftists on the site were disproportionate in numbers (around 10 people each day out of the total number of near 300), but their conflict with the pro-democracy protesters on the scene somewhat attracted more passers-by and more police to maintain order in the scene.

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The leftists on the protesting site also reportedly included people from April Media (formerly Anti-CNN)57 and Utopia.58 The former is a website established by a 23-year-old Chinese university student in 2008, which claimed to break the monopoly of Western discourse by identifying the ‘lies and distortions of China’ in Western media, and the latter is a website established in 2003 promoting Marxist and Maoist thought. These people were commonly considered as leftists who had an extreme nationalistic and patriotic orientation. The Southern Weekly protests generally ended on 9 January. On 10 January, about twenty farmers from the rural village of Sanshan (a suburb of Guangzhou) went to protest outside Southern Media. Under the name of supporting Southern Media, they also intended to use this opportunity to air their grievances publicly about illegal land seizures in their village, as explained by Sui, the lawyer handling the Sanshan village land seizure case.59 In 2011, Southern Metropolis Daily reported Sanshan villagers’ conflict with the local government, which was accused of confiscating agricultural land. Other media were not able to report on the conflict because of censorship. Having felt thankful to Southern Media, Sanshan villagers were emotionally engaged with the Southern Weekly Incident. But more importantly, the Southern Weekly Incident was utilized as an effective setting for publicity for the villagers’ appeal of the land issue. The villagers were removed by police and detained briefly.60 The Sanshan villagers and other protesters who similarly joined the Southern Weekly protests but mainly protested their own issues obviously intended to take advantage of the resource on the site that had been mobilized by the Southern Weekly Incident. Although departing from protesters pursuing press freedom, these people’s behaviour also ironically enhanced the momentum of the Southern Weekly protest as a whole. The division of Southern Weekly staff, media workers outside Southern Weekly, loyal Southern Media readers, activists and other people joining the protests was obvious towards the end of protests. It was not unreasonable for some observers to associate this division with the eventual dissolution of the Southern Weekly contestation both online and offline. As they lamented, there was no unity and no leaders who could have spoken on behalf of the protesters.61 The Southern Weekly Incident, from online initiation to offline protests, lasted for about one week. Negotiations between Southern Weekly and the authorities eventually led to an agreement being made to replace the chief editor of Southern Weekly, and that no punishment would be given to individual journalists should they go back to work and stop relevant discussion. It would be fair to say that

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the fundamental issue of censorship remained ingrained in the media system after the Southern Weekly Incident. Although the pre-censorship process was abolished after the Southern Weekly Incident, my follow-up interviews in 2014 with some journalists revealed, from journalists’ perspectives, that media control and internet regulation were generally tightened in 2014 and this was the CCP’s response to the Southern Weekly Incident. As a journalist described, ‘Once you struggle, you find the chain becomes tighter.’62 The testimony episode at the end of 2013 echoed the somehow disappointing dissolution of the Southern Weekly Incident. Three activists joining the Southern Weekly protest were charged by the court with the crime of assembling a crowd to disrupt order in a public place. Southern Media issued a testimony to assist in the prosecution of activists. The testimony issued by Southern Media read, […] Between 6 to 9 January 2013, there were huge crowds gathering outside the gate of No 289 Guangzhou Avenue where the corporation is located. They greatly obstructed the normal working order in the corporation and impeded people and vehicles’ normal access to the press. The corporation had to open a side gate in order to allow the staff to enter and exit the press. Some meetings and activities in the corporation had to be cancelled.

The testimony was made public on Weibo by a former journalist and activist. For many citizens and journalists who were not employees of Southern Media, the testimony was shocking and infuriating, as they felt betrayed by Southern Weekly which they risked their personal safety to support. An article entitled ‘It would have been better for Southern Weekly to die back then, rather than keep it alive for today’s humiliation’ was posted on Weibo by a media worker and quickly reposted by many people. Zhang Xuezhong, the lawyer of one involved activist Guo Feixiong, expressed the following condemnation of Southern Weekly on Weibo, Southern Media issued the particular explanation in order to cooperate with the police in prosecution [against Guo Feixiong], providing evidence of [Guo’s] disturbing public order. Back then, Southern Weekly called for people’s support, and now they claimed that those supporters obstructed their working order. They turned white into black and avenged people’s goodwill. They are an accessory to the tyrant’s crimes. Aren’t they ashamed of printing their paper?

In an open letter addressed to journalists posted by Zhang and another lawyer in December 2013, they called for support from journalists all over China. The open letter read,

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[…] the death of Southern Weekly does not mean the death of Southern Weekly spirits. The Southern Weekly in the Southern Weekly Incident was already not representative of Southern Weekly spirits, but the betrayer of Southern Weekly spirits […] Southern Weekly spirits will never die and will always provide us with power and hope […] All my friends in Chinese journalism, as the defenders of Guo Feixiong, we hope you once again show your courage and conscience and give attention and support to Guo Feixiong and other people, who are prosecuted because of their pursuit of constitutional democracy and the country’s advancement.

Defending themselves, Southern Weekly staff pointed out that it was Southern Media, rather than Southern Weekly which issued the testimony and Southern Weekly staff were not informed of relevant documents. Such activity taken by Southern Media leaders was not surprising for Southern Media employees,63 given that prominent senior leaders of Southern Media acted the role of party officials inside the media corporation, which I have discussed. Yet, being represented by the testimony, for some journalists, was shameful and frustrating. Within two days after the testimony was revealed on Weibo, nearly twenty journalists in Southern Media posted their disagreement with the testimony, clarifying that their work during the few days was not disrupted. As the following posts demonstrated on 28 December 2013, @Su Shao: I am Su Shaoxin, an editor responsible for the editorial in the comment section of Southern Metropolis Daily. On 7 and 8 January, I was on duty editing the editorial section. Our daily meetings at 16:30 were held as normal. Our editing work was conducted as normal. The censoring and signing of the newspaper were conducted as normal. It was as normal as any other time during my two and a half years working in this department. I hereby present this clarification. @Xi Men Bu An: Facing that testimony of being an accessory to the tyrant’s crimes, as a member of the corporation I feel shamed and disgraced. I declare on behalf of myself, what I saw differed from what was explained [in the testimony]. Those supporters were civilized, polite, and orderly. I hold different opinions from that of the testimony. @Kuang Haiyan: I am from Southern Metropolis Daily. As a member of Southern Media, I also feel ashamed! On that day, the people who supported Southern Weekly were very orderly. They stood on two sides and kept the middle path clear. Even when

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some people were accused to be Wu Mao [Fifty-Cent Army], they [supporters of Southern Weekly] said ‘Wu Mao should also be given the right to speak’. They showed real civility. @Gong Xiaoyue: […] Those leaders [Southern Media leaders] who whitewashed their unjust action, in the guise of protecting their staff, you may be timid, but you must not be dishonest. The jobs of the staff were not given by you. You don’t have the right to kidnap the passionate young people. They still have a boundless life and should not have to bear the disgrace brought about by your cheap values.

These posts were deleted shortly after but reposted by many other people. The episode of the testimony, as dramatic as other episodes in the Southern Weekly Incident that I have elaborated, summed up an irony underlining the Southern Weekly Incident – Southern Weekly was initially supported by the public and finally condemned by them. As an observer critically put it, ‘Southern Weekly fell from grace, from being a hero promoting press freedom to a traitor colluding with the authorities.’64 The complex hierarchy of Southern Media was obviously not easily understood by citizens. As a journalist revealed, it was ‘too complex to explain to outsiders in such a massive event like the Southern Weekly Incident’ and ‘unlikely to be able to explain, given the political sensitivity of the issue’.65 For outsiders who treated the Southern Weekly Incident as an ideological struggle, Southern Weekly and Southern Media as a whole represented their ideological pursuit of democratic values and press freedom. It may be fair to say that the secrecy of the backroom negotiations between Southern Weekly and Southern Media leaders, the vague political stance taken by journalists, and the relatively mild appeals made by Southern Weekly had already sown the seeds for a dramatic final scene of the Southern Weekly Incident. The division and dissolution of the Southern Weekly Incident at the end illustrate a peculiar employer-employee relationship and the conflicts within an institution under prevalent political control. More fundamentally, the division and dissolution reveal a deeply engrained culture of self-restriction among Chinese journalists, which has also caused division and conflicts between journalists themselves. As a journalist critically revealed, We may push the blame of Southern Weekly in the testimony episode to the leaders of Southern Media. However, it is worth asking why we could not be like a united group and give the outsiders a convincing explanation. In this sense, there is nothing wrong when the outsiders criticized Southern Weekly.66

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Conclusion: Mobilization and compromises The Southern Weekly Incident illustrates both the efficiency of social mobilization through social media in a Chinese contentious event and the farfetched compromises of people’s approach to action caused by their political struggles. It demonstrates a common pattern of resistance in digital China. Whilst digitalization empowers people to participate in various issues of social contention, complex power relations in China restrict further radicalization of resistance. The process of information fermentation of the Southern Weekly Incident demonstrates the most celebrated achievements of the internet in China, that is, multiplication of information sources and an unprecedented interactive space for Chinese people (Zheng and Wu, 2005; Zheng, 2007; Yang, 2009). The use of proxy services to access overseas networks for obtaining relevant information also to some extent illustrates Volkmer’s (2003) anticipation for a global public sphere, in which she optimistically sees that the global flow of information may allow people in relatively closed countries to access certain censored information. Mobilization for contention through digital networks is efficient. Relying on the use of social media, the news that Southern Weekly New Year Edition being modified first went out of the internal circle of Southern Weekly, then spread beyond Southern Media Group to the whole country. To be sure, this is not an effortless process that serves the thesis of technological determinism, a simple cause-and-effect correlation in which technologies are themselves considered to have intrinsic social effects, enforcing consequences of social change (Mackenzie and Wajcman, 1999; Schneider and Goto-Jones, 2014). The information fermentation and digital mobilization in the Southern Weekly Incident involved journalists’ initial decision to spread the information, their determination in confronting the authorities’ misleading accusation and people’s deliberate application of various skills to race against post deletion on social media, all of which required the courage and conscious determination of Chinese people. The possibility to interact directly and instantly with other people facilitates collaboration (not necessarily non-conflictual) in political contention between Chinese people. The online action in the Southern Weekly Incident aggregated elements that were important in traditional street protests which had been tightly restricted in China. Staff of the Southern Media Group published statements, declarations and updated investigative reports about the Southern Weekly Incident, and sent out open letters to call for support. Citizens reposted declarations and statements and signed petitions, creating momentum comparable to that of traditional street protests but more efficiently publicized through social media.

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These activities were not pursued without planning, but loosely organized through private conversations (such as those on WeChat groups). Weibo was both a tool for communication and publicity, and an arena where the action unfolded, as the ‘battle’ over the seizure of the official Weibo account clearly demonstrated. The posting race against deletion exercised by Chinese internet users in the Southern Weekly Incident demonstrates that while online censoring and post deletion were relentless, the gap of a few seconds or minutes needed for post deletion was efficiently utilized by Weibo users to promote the release of information. Here, it is demonstrated that contestation outran control in the sense of keeping the news story alive online for certain people. Chinese people’s skills of creatively circumventing online censorship effectively helped diffuse relevant information while keeping it unspoken and unwritten. These skills had arguably been practised daily, creating a playful folk culture on social media. The expression of huo (fire, go viral), adopted by Chinese internet users, illustrated the playfulness created in coded communication on the internet to promote public discussion (Xiao, 2011). Huo processes were often initiated by news stories that were released online and promptly promoted by citizens ridiculing controversial characters in the stories to the extent that the topics went viral. Although not all these processes are related to political contestation, Chinese people in these activities practise creation of satire, jokes, songs, images, memes, poetry and quotes with subtle political meanings (Chunqiu bifa), animation and other artful forms of expression which were popularly adopted in political contention (Yang, 2009; Meng, 2010; Xiao, 2011). These forms of expression were not directly disruptive and thus avoided immediate repression (Yang, 2009). Most of the Chinese people discussing the Southern Weekly Incident, particularly journalists, did not directly confront media censorship or the CCP in their posts, but effectively promoted digital hidden transcripts for online contestation (Yang, 2009). In the Southern Weekly Incident, Chinese people expressed emotions of anger, compassion, outrage and sympathy, on the issue of media censorship that may not directly affect their life, forming a noticeable sentimental dimension on the internet. The perception of collectively negotiating with the state promoted a communal sense among Chinese people (Zheng and Wu, 2005; Yu, 2006). Similar to McDonald’s (2015) discussion about memes, Chinese creative forms of contestation online should be understood as ‘a tagging of emotional connections’ (p. 973). Strategies for contestation provided the mask. As a form of social practice, masking is about not only concealing, but also accessing and revealing a form of power of citizens (McDonald, 2015). The surround and watch activity they practised created public pressure on the authorities.

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The Southern Weekly Incident also, most vividly, demonstrates how the power relations between authorities and different groups of interests determined the dynamics of contention, and subsequently caused the mass contention to dissolve. The intensive backroom conversations taking place in formal and informal meetings, WeChat group chats, and in-person communications focused on concerns about how the authorities would portray the incident and people’s behaviour, and how they would punish the people involved. The ruling of the incident by the authorities dominated journalists’ concern and restricted their confrontation. To avoid political punishment for initiating the Southern Weekly Incident, Southern Weekly staff emphasized the focus on internal management of the newspaper rather than Party policies. They avoided disruptive action which might create distraction and hinder their negotiation with the corporation leaders and the propaganda department. They separated themselves with protesters outside the press and were cautious of establishing associations within Southern Media or with external media to promote confrontation. The peculiar structure of Southern Media, which guarantees Party regulation of the corporation, played a crucial role in channelling Southern Media employees’ approach to contention, particularly through people’s self-restriction. The division between different groups involved in the Southern Weekly Incident is blamed by some as the most detrimental factor that led to the dissolution of collective action. Mobilization for contention in current China is often accompanied by conflicts between different groups with various appeals. This is related to different levels of concerns about political sensitivity and personal interests, as well as diverse ideological beliefs in current China. In the Southern Weekly Incident, the most determinant groups for confrontation are activists and loyal readers, who aired their resistance to censorship and respectively demanded democracy and a reconsideration of media regulation from the state, the appeals that were highly sensitive in current China and avoided by journalists themselves. As a consequence, it appeared that action online and offline in the Southern Weekly Incident was segmented in the way that the online mobilization was promoted by journalists whilst the offline protests seemingly became citizens’ and activists’ action. Unpacking the mechanisms and compromises of mobilization and examining the meanings attached to them perceived by Chinese people in a contentious event are the goal of this book. The next chapter further analyses mechanisms of mobilization in the Southern Weekly Incident and the cultural and sociopolitical meanings attached.

5

Mechanisms of Connectivity and Experience of Embodiment: Identity, Individuality and Memory

Building on the procedural analysis of the incident, this chapter seeks to further explore the sensory dimension of people’s action, which underlines the question of how the Southern Weekly Incident developed when Southern Weekly staff were themselves self-restricted. It is concerned with the meanings perceived by Chinese people in their action. This chapter draws on a large number of interview accounts and close textual analysis of people’s Weibo posts, and provides my overview of emotions, memory and embodiment experienced by people actively involved in the Southern Weekly Incident. It also further unpacks the mechanisms of connectivity in the Southern Weekly Incident, considering how factors of timing, risk assessment and technological employment played out in a suppressed event when sensory experience was powerful for mobilization. As I have elaborated in Chapter 2, embodiment is a cultural agency connecting people’s sensual needs and means of action (Touraine, 2002). In social movement, embodiment explains how people act sensually, particularly that individuals act with other people together to reencounter the vulnerable self in memory and reconstruct their subjectivity (McDonald, 2006). This is the experience of sharing emotions with other people through bodily action (Wood, 2001), and together they transform the emotions of fear, outrage and sadness to pleasure and pride (Barker, 2001). In digital space, bodily action may not look the same as physical action on the street, but the cultural and sociological meanings of online body suggest that digital action is not disembodied, but another effective form of experience of embodiment (Balsamo, 1995; Jordan and Taylor, 2004; Boellstorff, 2010; Jordan, 2013). Embodiment of Chinese people, however, would not take place in circumstances where realistic political concerns disappear. Arguably, political restriction is ever-present, but particular timing and leadership change indicate

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political opportunities that may provide positive mechanisms for connectivity for some people. Therefore, this chapter, while endeavouring to illustrate people’s experience of embodiment, also pays attention to other structural conditions that facilitated people’s action. I have discussed Southern Weekly staff ’s intention to maintain their negotiation with the authorities and hence compromise on contestation at the later stage of the incident. In this chapter, I start by discussing Southern Weekly staff ’s self-portrait of ‘passive actors’ who were ‘irritated by the authorities’ during the incident. Following this, further analysis of mechanisms of connectivity and experience of embodiment follow a general demographic division of groups outside Southern Weekly, namely, journalists from outside Southern Weekly, ordinary citizens (Southern Media readers) and activists. This nuanced analysis will help illustrate how Chinese people with different motivations, political ideologies and appeals were digitally connected through individuals’ own experience of embodiment.

Journalists from Southern Weekly: ‘The passive initiator’ While some citizens and journalists outside Southern Weekly vividly recounted their experience during the Southern Weekly Incident with high spirits, many Southern Weekly employees in my interviews claimed that Southern Weekly staff were ‘passive actors’. A senior editor of Southern Weekly provided the following account to explain how the decisions of posting declarations, statements and open letters were made simply because ‘they were irritated’, and irritation was a reactive emotion rather than proactive approach to acting. When you [pointing to senior staff in Southern Media Group, the same onwards] decided to conduct criminal proceedings against the people who first released the news about the New Year Edition being modified, we felt that we had to tell people the truth, clarifying that the newspaper was indeed modified and those people were not rumourmongers. Though we did not necessarily agree with what they did [releasing the news online], we got to protect them as they spoke for us and there was a brotherhood here. When you wanted to tell people that all the superficial mistakes of the New Year Edition were made totally by the Southern Weekly editors on our own, we had to defend ourselves to tell people that it was modified after finalization without letting us know. When you wanted to post a message on our Weibo account claiming that the propaganda department had nothing to do with the modification, we of course would not

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agree. Then when you forcefully seized the Weibo account and posted that message, we had to stand up to tell people the account did not represent our voice any more. Then when you quibbled by arguing that Tuo did not directly conduct the modification and accused us of slander, we had to tell people how the propaganda department worked in cooperation with the senior staff of the media [Southern Media Group] in conducting the censoring of the newspaper, and we finally had to post the investigative report of the incident. It was a mutual simulation step by step, and gradually we were irritated enough to release more information.1

The above senior editor emphasized that Southern Weekly employees themselves ‘had no intention of action’.2 Similarly emphasizing ‘not feeling motivated enough to confront’, another senior Southern Weekly editor explained that colleagues mainly felt lost and did not know how to deal with the situation. He recalled that he felt ‘very lost and bewildered by the unpredictable future of the newspaper, but somehow touched and moved by what was happening, and sometimes felt a strong sense of emotional torment’.3 There was certainly the factor of Southern Weekly staff downplaying their role in my interviews, for the reason of self-protection. As demonstrated in Chapter 4, Southern Weekly staff experienced long-term dissatisfaction with the management under Chief Editor Huang Can and Guangdong Propaganda Chief Tuo Zhen. The desire to ‘adjust current management of the newspaper’ did motivate action by many Southern Weekly staff members to a certain extent. Indeed, the first Weibo messages revealing the modification of the New Year Edition were not posted by Southern Weekly employees. However, Southern Weekly staff became somewhat active in promoting the incident on Weibo at various moments, despite the self-portrait of ‘being simply irritated’ and ‘passive actors’. Other people’s emotions were provoked by Southern Weekly staff ’s online declarations and statements, and hence collective action triggered. A Southern Weekly journalist commented, Southern Weekly staff only provided a blasting fuse for the case. Some staff members were drawn into the contention with no intention to do so. Many people in Southern Media wanted the incident to end as soon as possible. We did not want it to develop to such a scale but it was out of control. There were apparently many social tensions and conflicts existing in Chinese society. For many years after 1989 there has never been a platform in Chinese society for these tensions and conflicts to be publicly presented. Now the internet provides this platform. The action in fact went on without being attached to Southern Weekly.4

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Indeed, the incident was promoted in accordance with the different motivations and demands of journalists from outside Southern Weekly, ordinary citizens represented by loyal readers of Southern Media and activists – all of whom departed from those motivations and demands of Southern Weekly employees. What brought these different groups together in the Southern Weekly Incident was the emotions and individual experience of embodiment, which facilitated connective action in digital China. I will now demonstrate the experience of embodiment of these groups.

Journalists from outside Southern Weekly: ‘We had been suffering for a long time’ Journalists from outside Southern Weekly also did not publicly challenge media censorship. They demanded the propaganda Chief Tuo take the blame of modifying the New Year Edition and resign. They did not participate in the protests outside Southern Media either. Some explained that they were waiting for counterparts from Southern Weekly to take the lead, but ultimately felt disappointed by them. Some journalists during the case urged Southern Weekly staff to resign. As one journalist from Southern Metropolis Daily expresses, ‘If they resigned, we would definitely join in [the resignation] too. But they disappointed us.’5 The expressions below reveal similar blame on Southern Weekly staff members, They [Southern Weekly staff members] said they were looking at the bigger picture of the newspaper. What was the bigger picture? Would the survival of the newspaper ensure a bigger picture? Or was it that a bigger picture meant that they should protect the meanings and values which this newspaper had long been representing? They were just hiding and did not want to take any responsibility. – A journalist of Southern People Weekly6 Many respectable staff members in Southern Media suggested that holding the ground should be the priority. This was a very outdated idea. They did not know that if Southern Weekly staff did not act strongly then the credibility of the newspaper would be consumed. Using the power of the internet, we could have developed the Southern Weekly Incident into a social movement. This is how social movements happen in the digital age in many countries. But those people were cowardly. They were not only morally flawed for not being responsible for the brotherhood with outside journalists. They were also, and more seriously, politically immature for insisting on holding the ground. – A former journalist of Southern Media7

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Obviously, the Southern Weekly Incident stimulated journalists’ long-term accumulation of grief working with censorship. In Chinese journalists’ daily work, censorship on various levels determined what topics and from which angle of a particular topic journalists were allowed to report. Journalist interviewees vividly expressed the emotions of outrage, excitement, humiliation, sadness, shame and insult, frustration, and so on to reveal their motivation for online posting during the unfolding of the Southern Weekly Incident. The following confessions made by two Southern Media journalists, who were representative of many journalists’ interview accounts, revealed an emotional drive to join the online posting. I cannot remember how many of my reports were killed last year since Tuo arrived. On one occasion last year I had six reports killed in a row. No matter how much this was directly associated with Tuo’s censoring, my emotion was heightened after I heard about the modification of the New Year Edition. I just felt excited and wanted to keep reposting those messages, the declarations, the statements, the open letters that supported Southern Weekly until Tuo was sent away, and I felt hopeful about this good opportunity.8 Being a journalist, we have been reporting so many cases of safeguarding legal rights. This time we became the subjects in a case of defending our rights. How can we be quiet? There have been many times when our newspaper [Southern Metropolis Daily] had similar cases [being censored], but on a much smaller scale and was internally resolved, I mean, repressed by the internal senior staff of our newspaper. So we have been angry for a long time. Doing journalism for many of us is not only a job or a career, but a dream. But I have not been happy [being a journalist]. This job does not give me the sense of honour any more, but only disgrace. We see so many discussions online about all sorts of social problems, but we cannot write about those topics which are so important for the current China. We are like co-conspirators with the Communist authorities, working to shelter the real history and castrating people’s memory. I feel guilty. Not only that we are singing the praises of the current regime, but the worst thing is that we dishonestly shelter the truth and, in this way, we create a twisted and disgusting version of Chinese history. We cannot even make online comments on those topics because of our identities representing media. This time the censoring of Southern Weekly by Guangdong Propaganda Department was directly exposed on the internet. For many journalists in our generation, Southern Weekly is the place where the journalism dream starts. Southern Weekly has been the most respectable front in China for pursuing universal values. So of course, I am going to use the opportunity to make a scene.9

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These statements reveal that embodiment was key to implementing action. Journalists attributed emotions to action, a process whereby individuals explored subjectivity and identity as a journalist and the way of living at the current time. The first journalist’s emotion transited from frustration to excitement through the temptation and action of posting. The second journalist revealed a deep concern of losing honour of the journalist identity. He saw the opportunity to ‘make a scene’, because the Southern Weekly Incident was already exposed online and Southern Weekly had great potential to mobilize journalist counterparts. Another representative account of journalists’ embodiment is from a former Southern Weekly investigative reporter, who worked for Southern Weekly for three years and left to establish a magazine in 2008. The journalist revealed that he felt ‘the instant passion of joining in online’ after hearing the news about the modification of the New Year Edition. As he explained, I thought about my experience in Southern Weekly. I was young and full of energy for doing good reports on those dangerous and controversial investigative stories. I knew that doing investigative reports in China was a race against time and against news regulation. I tried very hard to compete with the timing, trying to get the stories out before the ban arrived. Once I failed, I tried another story. I had the experience of three front-page stories being killed in a row within three weeks. But I was still full of combative force to do more. When the Southern Weekly Incident emerged, I understood that current Southern Weekly staff might not be able to say much as doing so was too risky for them. But we, the people who have left the newspaper, had such deep connection with the newspaper that we were very determined to make a scene and take whatever responsibility and risks came our ways.10

The motivation here draws on the passionate self in the past that was attached to Southern Weekly as embodiment of journalistic idealism and compassion. Memory is the resource of embodiment. Journalists’ passion, inspired by their suffering with censorship, is the cultural form of lived experience and lived memories (Kleinman and Kleinman, 1994). Individual journalist’s experiences with censorship were regularly drawn upon by journalists in my interviews to explain their emotions. Here I use a selection of editors and journalists from the magazine Southern People Weekly for illustration. Ever since the establishment of Southern People Weekly, the magazine had established a distinctive democratic and liberal temperament and assembled journalists who were concerned with journalism idealism and professionalism. Some Southern People Weekly staff

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members had experienced strict repression in doing news reports for other media before being recruited by Southern People Weekly. Mu Tian, also former senior editor of Southern Weekly, founded the magazine Southern People Weekly in 2004. Mu Tian was then forty-one. Having been working for Southern Weekly for fifteen years, Mu Tian ‘witnessed the newspaper becoming extremely influential and then starting to suffer from special restrictions employed by the authorities’.11 He decided to adopt the approach of focusing on individual stories in high-profile figure reporting and in-depth reports of current affairs in China. The magazine intends to present the complexity of Chinese society through individual stories and promote universal values of equality, fairness and humanity in Chinese society. Only half a year after the magazine was established, Mu Tian was deprived of the title of chief editor after the magazine published a special topic of influential public intellectuals in China which contained figures considered by authorities as controversial. As a punishment, the senior officers of Southern Media changed Mu Tian’s title to associate chief editor, though in practice he remained in charge of editing of the magazine. He recalled that he felt grateful that the magazine was not completely closed and he was not ejected from working for his magazine. However, two months after the incident of reporting on public intellectuals, another report focusing on National People’s Congress delegates was criticized by the authorities for ‘making mistakes’ and Mu Tian was summoned to Guangdong Propaganda Department on the eve of traditional Chinese New Year. As Mu Tian recalled, I was on the way to buy some flowers for celebrating New Year when I received a call from the Provincial Propaganda Department condemning the ‘mistakes’ and commanding me to immediately bring some copies of the magazine to the office of the propaganda department. Suddenly the mood of celebrating New Year was destroyed. It was very miserable, and I did not know what would happen to the magazine this time. The office of our press was closed for the New Year holiday and I had to drive to a news stand to buy my magazines and bring them to the propaganda department. Later I received a call from the senior officers of Southern Media telling me to prepare for submitting a self-criticism report after New Year. For the whole New Year holiday, I was so upset and at some point, I thought, ‘fuck you, I am not going to play with you anymore.’ But I still calmed down, thinking that I was prepared for this since the beginning of doing the magazine.12

Mu Tian had submitted thirty self-criticism reports in less than ten years. He joked about a statement made by his previous boss of Southern Media which

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stated that the most essential skill for being a journalist in China is knowing how to write a self-criticism report. For the survival of the magazine, Mu Tian took whatever criticism enforced on him. As he put it, [In self-criticism reports], first you need to admit your mistake and explain why you made such mistake. You should assert to stick to Marxist journalistic viewpoints and follow the correct political guidance for editing. You have to bear the ‘shame’ enforced on you. They slander you by accusing your magazine of making up stories and spreading disinformation. You have to take the blame and admit it by yourself. It is all for the survival of the magazine. Then you have to propose how you are going to deal with this incident, normally something like how you are going to punish the relevant journalists, for example, by cutting their salary, administer a caution, or issue a demotion, but sometimes if those above decide to sack them then I cannot resist the decision.13

Mu Tian actively reposted many Weibo messages during the Southern Weekly Incident. His posting was regarded as extremely risky by his colleagues in Southern Media, given that he was in a senior position in the company. He explained, I could not post my own opinions about the issue, and could not sign those open letters because doing so would really threaten the survival of the magazine. But I had no excuse to keep quiet […] Southern Weekly and Southern People Weekly were in a similar circumstance of being censored. So I reposted other people’s opinions to represent myself.14

Li Jian was one of the three co-founders of Southern People Weekly. In 2003, Li Jian was a journalist and editor of Southern Weekly, where he experienced what he considered as ‘the highest and lowest points’ of his journalistic career. He published two front-page stories about the legal and justice fields which were highly influential.15 He was encouraged by the achievement and took the risks of conducting reports on several controversial topics, including SARS16 and retired veteran soldiers. However, none of them were allowed to be published in the end. With a number of reports being killed in a row, he felt ‘frustrated and lost in career’.17 He explained, ‘Being a journalist in China was not paid well but at least you felt what you were doing made a difference to people’s life. It was not the case anymore. I might have left the media industry if it was not for the founding of Southern People Weekly.’18 Li Jian recalled that he and other senior members of Southern People Weekly did not enforce strict repression on staff members supporting Southern Weekly

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during the Southern Weekly Incident, though they were required by senior staff of Southern Media to control staff ’s heated discussions about the incident. As he put, We could not say we supported our staff being so active during the case, but we did not want to stop them, though we obviously were required by the senior staff of Southern Media Group to regulate and restrict the behaviour of our staff in the case. We understood why they were so active as we all had been suffering for the whole career. We told those above that we were not able to control our staff. Of course those above would not be happy with us, but I don’t care.19

Yuan, a journalist who joined Southern People Weekly in 2012, recalled that she was sitting in front of the computer almost all day for three days during the Southern Weekly Incident, intensively posting relevant information and at the same time trying to persuade other media staff to repost the information. Yuan worked for South Daily for seven years before she joined the magazine. As a party organ newspaper in Southern Media, South Daily was censored on the strictest level in accordance with propaganda guideline. Yuan recalled, ‘I probably should not have given other journalists moral pressure, but I would blame my previous suffering for this impulse, in particular my seven years working for South Daily.’20 It was also the belief in other media counterparts’ similar suffering that effectively enabled journalists’ experience of embodiment. The feeling of collectively experiencing the memory of suffering in pursuit of one’s career was powerful. Arguably, intensive moments of expression and communication during the Southern Weekly Incident demonstrated a form of ritual, which expressed moral support and encouragement between journalists. Rituals presented during physical gatherings in traditional offline protests can effectively reduce fear and strengthen intimate ties between people (Goodwin and Pfaff, 2001). Expression becomes itself the goal of action (Wood, 2001). This effect was not reduced by digital gathering, but mediated through social media during the Southern Weekly Incident. The co-signing of three open letters created a feeling among journalists and citizens that they were collectively involved in a petition on a social scale, and with the number of people who signed the letters becoming larger, a sense of commitment was strongly felt. The seizure of Southern Weekly’s official Weibo account by the chief editor indeed enraged many journalists who regarded Southern Weekly as an ideal place of promoting justice, equality and other

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universal values in Chinese society. They felt the newspaper that encapsulated their journalism dreams was tarnished.21 At this point, many more journalists who were not committed at the earlier stage joined in the reposting relay. Journalists changed their WeChat group name to ‘the most shameful night’ on the night,22 intending to establish a ritual to unite people’s emotions and action. Media employees all over China posted on Weibo to mourn the death of Chinese journalism, denounce authoritarian control and call for more people to speak out, as exemplified by the following posts from several influential media workers on 6 January. @Yuan Guobao: Who is indulging the evil forces? […] When people were all looking forward to the fresh air that might be brought about by new policies, their hope was defeated again by the abuse of power […] The call for justice did not bring any change. People’s opinions were again raped. The indulgent of darkness is the worst damage of justice. Weibo lurkers, did you see this? @Mu Rong Xue Cun: Calling white black and black white. [The authorities] used to be secretively cruel and now are openly cruel. When the powerful throw out all senses of shame, the powerless should stand up and save [the country]. Tonight will go down in history. If now you are weak, you will be weak forever. If now you fear, you will fear forever. Dark clouds have filled the sky, so weak people please look up at the sky together, using our sights to shine on this long dark night. The wind is bitingly cold, so cold people please warm each other, using our temperature to melt this whole world of ice. @Lian Qing Chuang: For more than thirty years, several generations of journalists have been using blood and tears to protect it [Southern Weekly]. But all is destroyed tonight, in such a bloody way. @Mary Ling Shan: I am not left or right. I don’t like advocating justice and democracy. But I long for freedom and believe in human rights and law. Tonight I am here – supporting the fight for dignity. If we fail, we are still standing. Never be the slaves who are kneeling.

These expressions of sadness, outrage and courage were demonstrations of sympathy with Southern Weekly and with other journalists in China.

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The  following day, the Beijing News staff confronting the Beijing Propaganda officer to resist reprinting the Global Times editorial, which was live broadcast on Weibo, further strengthened their recognition of brotherhood among media workers in China. The self was drawn into expressions of embodiment, so much so that a sense of moral responsibility was felt by some journalists and became an important reason for online action. The discussion about journalists’ rationale for not participating in the protests outside Southern Media, presented in Chapter 4, already shows that journalists were highly cautious of street assembly. But even online contention indicated risks. Southern Media staff who were at the centre of contention obviously felt it much riskier to express resistance than people who were further from the centre (e.g. ordinary citizens). However, similar to movement leaders in previous cases of Chinese protests, who often felt that they would lose face if they stopped action before achieving any success (Cai, 2010), some journalists in the Southern Weekly Incident expressed moral shame for not pursuing further action. The internet, as a digital public platform and thus being used to manage personal profiles (Rogers, 2013), to some extent enforces public presentation from particular people. Social media created an environment where journalists were in the public spotlight, making them more visible and easier to be reached by the public. In some journalists’ own words, they felt ‘morally kidnapped by the public’ and under this pressure they had to express their dissatisfaction with censorship and to make their Weibo accounts look supportive for their colleagues, while some of them might have otherwise preferred to be silent. As a Southern Media journalist explained, When people saw that your Weibo profile was officially verified as a Southern Media staff member, they held expectations of you. If at that time you were still posting irrelevant or entertaining stuff on your Weibo account, there would be people blaming you for not caring about the Southern Weekly Incident. When most of your colleagues whom you followed on Weibo were all talking about this incident, you felt the pressure to say something. It felt like being morally kidnapped. Although I had actual anger about the censoring of the New Year Edition, I was somehow morally forced to post some very emotional messages during the few days. I deleted some afterwards […] When the co-signing of open letters was organized, although they emphasized that it was a voluntary choice of signing or not, you somehow felt the pressure that you just had to do the same as everybody else did, because they expected your name to be there and the list of the names would be shown online that everybody could see it.23

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In the midst of the incident, journalists faced, on the one hand, the risks of being punished by the authorities and, on the other hand, moral pressure from the public’s expectations to take further action. Whilst further action appeared increasingly risky, the cost of dropping out also increased. The pressure was ‘uploaded’ to the social network and can become very powerful. As one member of the Southern Media staff felt during the case, Once you light the fire, the fire will not be under your control, and you may end up burning yourself. Everybody online can say something even when they know very little about the issue. In most cases people cannot make the real issue clear in a 140-character Weibo post, and they don’t have the obligation to make it clear. The power of the public may become your pressure, and hurt you in the end.24

In summary, journalists from outside Southern Weekly experienced embodiment enabled by their memories of experiencing censorship. The belief in other media counterparts’ similar struggle with censorship promoted the embodiment generated through a sense of connectivity and thus promoted intersubjectivity. This is emotionally overwhelming to the extent that moral pressure effectively formed and enforced journalists to take further action. Arguably, journalists from outside Southern Weekly, despite not participating in street protests, were more willing to promote the incident in general, compared to Southern Weekly staff. Their emotional drive to seek individuality and identity as a journalist was powerful and effectively enabled the experience of embodiment.

Citizens and readers: ‘We came to mourn the death of our beloved newspaper’ Citizens, particularly readers of Southern Media who voluntarily supported Southern Weekly and protested media censorship, experienced a form of embodiment that may be different from that of journalists. Unlike journalists who had first-hand experience of media censorship in their career, citizens felt sympathetic and compassionate for their beloved media. Being not directly restricted by the threat of punishment from the authorities, citizens also endorsed what they believed to be the spirit of Southern Weekly, and protested for democracy and press freedom. Their activities of online posting and protesting

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opened up a form of embodiment that connected themselves with other people, particularly with the suppressed journalists, and with Chinese people in a broader sense. During action, they embodied other people’s suffering, awakening their own memories of social unfairness and injustice, and experienced passion and pride for demanding a better place to live. They excitedly shared details of their experience of participating in the Southern Weekly protest in my interviews. Their experience of pride and pleasure (Wood, 2001) when participating in the incident was evident. Apparently, a sense of justice was passed on by journalists through the posts to ordinary citizens online. With many online citizens’ sympathy for the newspaper being deepened by the emotional Weibo posts, more and more citizens joined the relay of reposting declarations written by Southern Weekly staff. A citizen put it like this, During those few days I saw so much information aggregated and presented to me, all was irritating information, but I have nobody to talk to face-to-face. It  made me feel fed up and sick and my emotion just needed to erupt and generate action. I am not easily irritated in face-to-face communication, but online it just happened.25

The rituals of presenting flowers, singing, making speeches and art performance at the protests site made mobilization more effective. People created signs and banners together, took photos at the site, creating unusual energy and solidarity that was also uploaded online, inviting more people to identify with the movement (Goodwin and Pfaff, 2001). Fears may be reduced when people identify themselves with a collective identity (Goodwin and Pfaff, 2001), and in the Southern Weekly Incident this identification is with the repressed and suffering people as a whole. A university student put it as follows: As students of journalism, we place higher value on the New Year Greetings of Southern Weekly than on other articles. Killing a New Year Greeting made us feel pessimistic and frustrated, like idealism was dead. I felt so angry and shameful and I wanted to be together with the huge supporting army.26

I introduced in the previous chapter that Xiang, a female citizen in her thirties, initiated the activity of presenting flowers outside Southern Media, after the seizure of Southern Weekly’s Weibo account made her feel ‘insulted’. Xiang’s photos of her wearing a mouth mask with three characters ‘Bi Yan Tao’ (‘speaking is prohibited’)27 on it were circulated widely on Weibo and overseas media.

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Xiang had been a loyal reader of Southern Weekly for many years and gradually felt disappointed by the lack of significant reports being published in the newspaper in recent years. She laid the blame on the censoring system. As she put it, ‘the newspaper had been dying, and this time it was completely sentenced to death’. Presenting the yellow chrysanthemums was an action of mourning the death of both her beloved newspaper and press freedom in China.28 Xiang used to work as a web editor in a popular online current affairs forum, where she was required to read citizens’ posts on the forum and delete ‘sensitive and inappropriate’ content. In the Taishi Village case29 in 2005, Xiang felt frustrated when she was conducting post deletion. ‘I deleted them, crying, knowing that otherwise the people who posted them would be in danger. It is so clear that there is no press freedom in China at all’.30 Xiang resigned after two years working on the forum. Xiang had never participated in offline protests. But she observed the 2011 Chinese pro-democracy protests,31 and was confident that her action of presenting flowers outside Southern Media would be too sudden for the police to react to it ‘as the police would need to wait for the instruction from the above to arrest people’.32 For her, the decision to present flowers was made ‘with not much concern with potential fallout’.33 She did not expect so many people to follow her to Southern Media and protest. To her surprise, Xiang was faced with many overseas media, which made her a star of the protest outside the press. Thousands of people whom she did not know followed her on Weibo and expressed their appreciation for her action. She felt more responsible to continue being engaged in supporting Southern Weekly. She became increasingly active online to interact with other people in the discussion of the incident. Adopting quirky language, she intended to add entertaining elements to the discussion in order to further attract attention of ‘people who did not care that much about the serious issue of the case itself ’.34 As she saw it, ‘making it fun’ and ‘creating some stars’ were always good for promoting social movements. On the night of 7 January, Xiang fuelled online discussion about Wei, who made speeches outside Southern Media offices. She asked people to ‘look at this man who is good-looking with fashionable dress sense’. Wei was thirty-one years old, homosexual, an NGO worker who managed an LGBT centre in Guangzhou and had long been committed to promoting LGBT rights in South China. Wei first knew about the Southern Weekly Incident from an email sent from Hong Kong on his NGO mailing list. Two days after reading the

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email, he was browsing Weibo pages when he saw the discussion about citizens presenting flowers outside Southern Media. He decided to join the action. Intending to make it a day of mourning, he put on a plain black suit and matched it with a dark blue scarf, creating a solemn, somewhat old-fashioned look. Wei arrived outside Southern Media at around lunchtime. He had experienced street protests in Hong Kong before, but seeing such big crowds protesting in mainland China was rare and to a great extent made him excited. When he was walking towards the crowds, he remembered witnessing a speech outside Peking University when he was a teenager. He tried to stay calm, observing the order of the scene, judging how police on the scene were reacting to citizens’ behaviour. Based on my experience working on NGO activities, my judgement at that time was that the police outside Southern Media were instructed to maintain order, not to break up the crowds. It was not too dangerous. I saw many people presenting flowers, quietly, orderly. I thought this was too quiet. Somebody has got to say something. The memory of the man making a speech outside Peking University stayed in my mind, and I decided to stand up on the edge of the flower-bed outside the press and started speaking to the crowds.35

A video, that was rapidly circulated online, shows Wei speaking to the crowd outside Southern Media in a booming, theatrical voice, waving his hands and clenching his fists: I moved from the north of China to the south five years ago. Here, I feel the air is fresher, the sun is brighter. However, the Southern Weekly Incident made me concerned about the future here […] If today we all remain silent, where would be the hope for our future? If today we do not speak out, the voice of citizens, of the south, of the real China, all of which demand reforms would be repressed. This is absolutely not to be allowed. So, we need to speak out, about the demands of freedom, about the support for media. Tuo, step down!

‘Tuo, step down!’ The crowds repeated. More people made speeches after Wei. More people raised banners and signs with writing addressing the demands of press freedom, democracy and constitutionalism. Some people started singing. As Wei recalled, the atmosphere of the scene was warming up. Spontaneously, he gave another speech in the afternoon. All Chinese are looking forward to the reform of the country. Where will reform in China start? It must be from the south. Where will the reform of the south start? It must from Guangzhou. We are looking at the south for possible press freedom. Media reform should start from here!

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Wei grew up in Xi’an, a northern city in China. He studied media at university and undertook an internship at a local TV company, where he felt disappointed and critical about the commercial restrictions of media production. In 2008 he moved to Guangzhou to work for an NGO. In Guangzhou, he noticed a completely different media culture, which he described as ‘the air of freedom’. He especially adored the publications from Southern Media, as ‘the editorials, and comments, and observation of Southern Media are so brave that publishing them in the north would be impossible’.36 He was impressed by the magazine Southern People Weekly for having made the topic of LGBT rights its cover story on a number of occasions. Wei left the scene after making his second speech. Later in the evening he logged into his Weibo account and was shocked that many people online were looking for him and worried about his safety. He reported online that he was safe. Wei later found out that it was Xiang and a number of others who endeavoured to promote his publicity. As he explained, They said these days the principle of movements is ‘to be cool, to be fun’. They liked my dressing and speaking style because that made the event romantic and revolutionary. They made me a symbol: ‘the handsome man with the blue scarf ’. They were very good at creating suspense and releasing the answer bit by bit. In this way, more people were mobilized to talk and interact on Weibo.37

Wei, however, decided not to engage in further action for the sake of protecting his NGO, which had been under constant surveillance since it opened in 2009. Employed by a Hong Kong NGO, Wei was responsible for establishing the Guangzhou LGBT centre in 2009. The centre organized social activities across a number of cities in China, promoting equal rights and raising awareness of health services for LGBT groups. In fact, Wei’s experience of organizing LGBT activities had taught him to cautiously judge political circumstances. On the opening day of the Guangzhou LGBT centre, more than thirty police went to his office building effectively shutting down the business. Wei was blamed by the headquarters in Hong Kong for not being able to build up a good relation with Guangzhou government in order for the Guangzhou centre to run. He was frustrated, but after some tough negotiation, the centre was reopened. Since then, he had been able to maintain ‘a good and peculiar relationship with the government’.38 As he explained, The national State Security officials know me very well. They know about my personality from our previous dealings. They know that I will not go too far

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in activism. I have many contacts with foreign embassies, which they should also take into consideration and be careful not to make things too complicated for themselves […] Anyhow, consequences of further protesting for Southern Weekly were so unpredictable that I had to stop here.39

Similarly, on the site protesting were Hui and Kai who were also loyal readers of Southern Media and wished to promote China’s justice and democracy. The Southern Weekly Incident was an erupting point for them to step into activism, which they then continued to exercise after the incident. Hui wore a V for Vendetta mask, holding a board which read ‘1.3 billion Chinese have the right to speak; we want democracy and constitutionalism’. His mask stood out from the protesting crowds, and for a few days it attracted passers-by to stop and stare. Noticing the effectiveness of the mask for getting the attention of the public, Hui later wrapped himself in newspaper from head to foot and sat on the floor to read a newspaper. He explained that his performance art connoted the message that ‘the media have been kidnaped’. A popular news website posted the photo of ‘the injured newspaper man’ on Weibo, with the text: ‘At the weekend, media employees were injured in the South’, alluding to the Southern Weekly Incident (Southern Weekend is the literary name of the newspaper). It was the first time that Hui participated in a street protest. Hui was in his thirties, a real estate businessman and a father of three children. A court case he experienced in 2007 made him pay more attention to events of injustice. He challenged a tenant renting one of his properties in the court and won his case, but the Executive Board would not help with the execution of the penalty. His friends who worked in the court told him that there was no solution but to seek help from the media to expose the case. He was later frustrated to find that the media, restricted by local officers, did not have the freedom to do the report either. After the case, he was ruined and felt despair that ‘the whole system, involving the judicial institutions and the media, was not working’.40 In 2012, his third child was born in Hong Kong with a genetic illness. He felt grateful that his daughter received efficient and careful treatment there without him needing to use personal connections to pull strings in hospitals. In contrast, when his other two children who often were ill and treated in a mainland hospital, he had to resort to personal relation for attention and care from the hospital. Travelling over the border between Hong Kong and mainland China when his daughter was born, Hui was also struck by the Hong Kong news reports of Chen Guangcheng, a Chinese civil rights activist and

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a human rights lawyer, who escaped house arrest and fled to the US Embassy in Beijing.41 As Hui put it, You saw the rolling news of Chen broadcast on Hong Kong media almost around the clock during those few days. But once you crossed the border to Shenzhen [the border between Hong Kong and mainland China], you could not hear even a tiny voice about this news story. You suddenly realized how ridiculous it is to live in a place where information is strictly controlled and you miss so much of what is actually happening.42

For many years, Hui had regarded the reports of Southern Media to be ‘the most enlightened and liberal writing in China’. He spent the whole night refreshing Weibo pages looking at updated information about Southern Weekly after the Weibo account of Southern Weekly was seized. As he explained, I saw so many media employees struggling. In the end the newspaper still had to give up the official Weibo account. Although media people were not able to say much, I felt the despair between their simple words. I felt so moved by the effort they had made and such urgency that I should stand up for them. It is time for me to step forward.43

Hui described his participation in the protest as being somewhat ‘irrational’. He forgot its political nature and ignored the fact that it could be dangerous.44 Another citizen protester Kai, however, perceived the Southern Weekly Incident as ‘a serious political case’ and anticipated high risks when he went to protest. As he put it, I was nine years old when the 1989 Tiananmen Student movement took place. I remember seeing the protesting scenes from our black-and-white TV set, hearing the narrative calling it ‘student riots’. Many years later from the internet I learned the real truth. I knew what the authorities might do to control confrontational people and manipulate publicity. I was very aware of the high risks. I wanted to be honest, admitting that the protest I was going to was a political and ideological struggle, rather than trying to de-politicize the case to protect myself. When I set off in the morning, I told my wife that if I was not able to come back, she should let our son [who was then seven months old] know what his dad had done.45

It was also the first time that Kai participated in a street protest. Kai made a placard which read ‘I am a citizen who should have the freedom to speak. I support Southern Weekly. News reports should be set free’ in the early morning. Having spent the previous night following the seizing control of the Weibo account conflict, Kai contacted Ling on QQ and both agreed to protest outside Southern

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Media. Ling was an online blogger and activist who had been promoting the public disclosure of the assets of government officials. Kai had been sharing opinions on public affairs with Ling for a few years but they had never met. On the train to Southern Media, Kai noticed that the surrounding passengers were curious about the board he was holding. He then made a speech. After he expressed on the train the support for Southern Weekly, he heard a sudden voice coming from a stranger: ‘Support Southern Weekly!’ Kai later found out that the person who shouted was Ling and it was their first offline meeting. Outside Southern Media, Kai stood side-by-side with the V for Vendetta masked man. Lifting the placard, Kai made a speech, As citizens we don’t dare speak out. The media help us to be heard. Now the newspaper is suppressed. How can we still be silent?

People on the site responded loudly to his speeches. As Kai recalled, some people brought him water and bread, and escorted him for protection when he went to use the toilet. Kai had successively worked in music, advertising, the lumber industry and animal husbandry. At various points at work he was frustrated by what he believed to be unjust management and abuse of power of the local authorities. An example was that in 2009, when he was running the lumber business in Yunnan province, he was not able to get a certificate for his business after refusing to give some benefits to the local authorities. His business went bankrupt. Kai described himself as being reborn after getting online in late 1990s. As he revealed, ‘The internet opened a complete new world to me which was very different from the one I knew. Particularly, the information I found by “climbing over the wall” [using VPN for accessing overseas websites] constantly shocked me and changed my whole view of the country where I had been living for my life.’ For many years, Kai had actively been involved in discussing public affairs on online bulletin boards, online forums, and now Weibo and Twitter. In the Southern Weekly Incident, he decided to make the shift from online to offline. As he explained, protesting in this incident was a chemical reaction, an eruption of emotion that had been accumulating over many years […] It was the longing for freedom, the pursuit of justice, and the anger with the evil power together that finally drove me to make the shift […] I did not have a clear goal when I went there. I simply wanted to contribute my voice and hoped that more and more people would realize the evilness of the current regime and do something together to change it. Deep down in my heart I was longing for some resonance from other people.

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Xiang, Wei, Hui and Kai were all first-time protesters in the Southern Weekly Incident. In many respects they may be representative of the majority of the citizens protesting in the Southern Weekly Incident. Some were reported to have travelled a few hours from other provinces to Southern Media (Yu, 2013). Generally, these are the people who protested the suffering of the newspaper or, in a broader sense, the freedom of the press and speech, who were relatively young and fearless, and did not have much experience of street protests before the incident, and who were influenced by a global culture that brought them democratic ideas to demand and defend human rights. A characteristic of the action of this group of people is that they were creative and saw publicity as one of the main goals of their action. Although democratic and political appeals were the ultimate goals, they had the consensus that strengthening the publicity of the case, informing people of the incident and mobilizing more people should be their direct and realistic target of action at the current stage. To achieve effective publicity, they emphasized using artful forms of action to mobilize people. For example, Xiang brought aesthetic perception to both the street action and online communication. This can be seen from her costume (a mouth mask), her initiation of presenting flowers outside Southern Media and her emphasis of the importance of ‘stars’ in social movements. As she perceived, using Weibo accounts for mobilizing people requires the accounts to be ‘alive’ and ‘attractive’. She explained that online accounts should be humanized by real-life activities and emotion, and it would be better if they were endowed with aesthetic feelings. Posting about her meals, clothes and daily activities, Xiang communicated with people online in quirky language, like a ‘girl next door’ who cares about being a normal and respected citizen. Wei’s dressing and speaking style, Hui’s V for Vendetta mask and his performance art of ‘the newspaper man’, citizens’ banners and boards containing inspiring words, the group singing and so forth, all showed the creativity of the people and their determined pursuit of publicity. These citizens were passionate and angry to the extent that concern with risks of protesting was sometimes overlooked. They identified themselves with the journalists and the newspaper, and other angry citizens. They were motivated by their affection of Southern Media. Taking online and offline action made them feel engaged with the employees of their beloved media. Their action sometimes appeared to be spontaneous, like Wei’s speeches, instigated by the atmosphere at the scene. They may also perceive their action as being impulsive, like Hui and Kai did. However, this spontaneity or impulsiveness embodied the

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lived memory carried by the body. Their action may not be fully controlled by their calculation and consideration, but sensibly taken over by their bodies. The experience of the abrupt inclination of emotion did not irrationally arrive out of nowhere, but was embedded in their individual past experience, as we can see from Xiang’s frustrating work censoring online posts, Wei’s stiff negotiation with local authorities in running his LGBT centre, Hui’s struggling with injustice in his legal case and experience of news censoring in mainland China, and Kai’s suffering from unfairness in his business. Their experience of emotional eruption opened up experiences of embodiment during protesting for Southern Weekly. I have mentioned in Chapter 3 that the timing of the Southern Weekly Incident coincided with the beginning of Xi’s new leadership, which inspired citizens’ anticipation about the more liberal governance. This encouraged some citizens to participate in the protest. Yan, the university lecturer who took and posted many photos of the protest on Weibo, explained that he thought ‘Tuo would have to leave this time’. He saw what Tuo did as being in ‘violation of the great undertaking which was strongly promoted by the new leadership at that time’.46 This kind of subjective (and, in hindsight, naïve) judgement created much room for positive imagination for potential victory, mitigating fears caused by the sensitivity of the issue at stake. For many of the citizens involved, it was their first time participating in a street protest, a significant step forward in their civic participation. Having experienced this breakthrough, some citizens were transformed into regular protesters, stepping into the activist community, as Xiang, Hui and Kai’s experiences after Southern Weekly Incident demonstrated. Xiang joined other dissidents in a number of events in the remainder of 2013. In February 2013, Xiang brought a number of activists together to urge local police to release a Guangzhou dissident named Li Xiaoling, who went to Beijing to petition for the rights of rural villagers and was escorted back to Guangzhou by the Guangzhou officers in Beijing, and then detained in a hotel. In the same month, Xiang participated in the protest against North Korea’s conduct of an underground nuclear test, during which the Chinese government arrested a number of people. Xiang was also active in a number of protests demanding that government officials publicly disclose their assets. Her publicity rapidly increased with the publication by overseas media of photographs of her protesting during particular social events and her active posting of relevant messages on Weibo. This quickly raised the sensitivity of her profile. Her Weibo account was blocked and shut down many times after the Southern Weekly Incident. Since the end

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of 2013, she and her family had received threats from authorities, the details of which Xiang did not wish to disclose.47 Hui and Kai became close friends after their first-time meeting at the Southern Weekly protests. As Hui explained, the Southern Weekly Incident was for him a tipping point when he realized the passion deep inside him for taking offline action, and from this point he was networked with other protesters he met in the Southern Weekly Incident. Having become members of the activist community after the Southern Weekly Incident, they attended regular activist events, for example, the ‘citizen banquets’ (‘Tong Cheng Fan Zui’, loosely translated as ‘Samecity dinner gathering’, an ongoing event organized by Guangdong activists for discussing social issues over the meals and is homonymous with ‘committing a crime in the city’ in Chinese).48 With regular contacts with activists on WeChat groups being established, Hui proceeded with further action in other protests with other activists. Towards the end of 2013, Hui also became increasingly sensitive to the authorities. By June 2014, Hui had registered thirty-seven Weibo accounts successively, creating a new one each time a previous one was shut down. Being prohibited to register new accounts, Hui later found a way to register new accounts through Weibo overseas service by using a proxy service to fake his IP address. Later in June 2014, Hui was detained in a hotel under twenty-four hours surveillance for fifteen days, stopping him joining the twenty-fifth-anniversary commemoration of the 4th June student protest. In July 2014, he was prohibited from crossing the border into Hong Kong. Similar to Hui, Kai believed that many Chinese people needed ‘to be woken up’ and so was very determinant to participate in activism after the Southern Weekly Incident. As he put it, There are of course fake sleepers who have vested interests and who care more about their stable job and income and pretend to not know the dark realities, and others are sleepers who need to be woken up. Some have already been woken up by the pain, like me. But there are still many sleepers who need to be woken up. We need to bring some enlightenment to them and let them see the evilness of the power.49

Kai was arrested for participating in the twenty-fifth-anniversary commemoration of the 4th June student protest in June 2014. Kai was also prohibited from going across the border to Hong Kong in July 2014. He protested this restriction outside the US Embassy in Guangzhou in September and was arrested again.

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However, it is understandable that transformation into an activist does not happen easily to everyone who was mobilized in the Southern Weekly Incident. The risk of being an activist is obviously high. For those who made the transition, it involved a complete change of their identity. Being an activist does not simply mean going to more protests but implies a total change of what they do and how they do it in democratic actions and, more importantly, involves higher tension between these individuals and the authorities. This point is further explored in the next section.

Activists: ‘It is a great issue to use’ This section focuses on the activists involved in the Southern Weekly protest. These were the people who had regularly participated in other protest events, or at least involved in the activist networks. They often asserted in my interviews that they belonged to ‘the democratic circle’, ‘rights defence circle’, ‘revolutionary circle’ or ‘rebel groups’. In a broad sense, they belonged to the activist community in the region of South China.50 Although activists did not make up a large proportion of the protest population in the Southern Weekly Incident (roughly 30 people out of the total number of 300 on 7 January and a smaller number over the next two days), they effectively enhanced the momentum of the protests and mobilized more citizens to participate in the action. They also recruited more people to their network during the incident, as exemplified by Hui and Kai’s experience. A distinction between activists and other citizen protesters, such as loyal readers of Southern Media, is that activists aimed to promote civil action rather than specifically protest against censorship or demanding press freedom. Activists experienced a form of embodiment that had to be understood in relation to their deep grief that had motivated them to maintain the activist network and regularly commit acts of dissent. For activists, the Southern Weekly Incident was more an opportunity for a mass civil mobilization rather than an issue they were particularly attached to. In other words, the Southern Weekly Incident was immaterial for activists. What mattered was the stage created by the Southern Weekly Incident that could assemble people together. As Yedu, an influential activist, claimed, ‘the newspaper provided a backdrop, and we took action, and then we were separated from the newspaper’.51 Yedu explained,

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We already knew that press freedom is impossible in China at this stage. So we only saw the Southern Weekly protest as merely an action for civil expression. To be more precise, it did not matter how the Southern Weekly Incident developed. The Southern Weekly Incident was only the background, the stage of our action. From the beginning I did not expect the action to be a cooperation between the staff of Southern Media, citizens, and our democratic circle. The newspaper is after all operated within the Party-state system. I am familiar with many people inside the media circle and I know very clearly that those media people will not want to pay the price for challenging the system. We cannot expect their cooperation […] I am personally not interested in Southern Weekly […] What we wanted in this case, as in many other cases, was to help citizens defeat the fear of joining street action. We wanted to let them know that civil expression is itself part of their rights. We hoped that after citizens join in more action and develop the habit of taking action, there will be a date for a large-scale revolution.52

Activists during the Southern Weekly Incident often spoke of bigger topics of democracy and freedom of speech. A video uploaded online shows the following conversation between Guo Feixiong (pen name of Yang Maodong), a leader of the activist networks in South China and some citizens, during the Southern Weekly protests. At present, Guangzhou is where civil society is most developed in China. The development of civil society is important for all of us. The power of civil society should be on top of Xi Jinping’s government. – Guo Feixiong spoke to the people surrounding him. What is democracy? We talk about democracy so much but actually many people don’t know what exactly it is. – A voice came from the crowd. You are joking. These days people are all well-educated. Who would not know about democracy? […] It is about the power of the citizens […] Why should we support Southern Weekly today? Because the newspaper has been excellent for decades for being the mouthpiece and the eyes of the people. Now it is suffering from political repression. We should support it, standing side-by-side with it. – Guo responded.

Guo Feixiong, a writer and legal consultant, was 47-year-old. He was intellectual-like, wearing black-framed glasses and speaking with the gentle tone of a lecturer at the protest site. He appeared to be calm and sophisticated in conversations. Guo had a long history of social and political activism. Guo was viewed by other dissidents as ‘a man of action’ and ‘very determined’ in exercising the rights ‘under constitution – freedom of speech, freedom of expression’

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(CDT, 2014). He was well-known for his connection with the 2005 Taishi village case in which he helped residents of Taishi village organize themselves against a local Communist Party director who illegally sold some land in the village for personal benefits. After the Taishi village case, Guo was arrested and later sentenced to five years in prison, for the crime of ‘running an illegal publication business’ (RFA, 2006; Phillips, 2015). He had reportedly faced police harassment and numerous beatings in prison (RFA, 2006). After his release in 2011, Guo remained active in a series of events defending human rights and citizenship. Most well-known were his participation in investigations into the Wukan village elections53 and the suspicious death of rights defender Li Wangyang54 in 2012. Guo had been actively calling for officials to disclose their assets since 2013, which was part of the Southern Street Movement, a movement that involved ongoing actions of petitioners holding banners or signs to protest against injustice or forced demolitions in main Southern cities such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen (China Change, 2013), which I briefly introduced in Chapter 3. Guo was detained in August 2013 (seven months after the Southern Weekly Incident) and indicted in June 2014, in connection with his alleged role in planning and organizing the Southern Weekly protest and a number of other events.55 He was officially indicted for ‘gathering crowds to disrupt order in public places’,56 together with the other two activists who also participated in the Southern Weekly protest. In November 2015, along with other charges, Guo was sentenced to six years in prison (Phillips, 2015; Reuters, 2015). Many activists in the Southern Weekly protest believed that the authorities had been seeking opportunities to arrest Guo and for the two years prior to the Southern Weekly Incident had been waiting for the right opportunity. His participation in the Southern Weekly protest presented sufficient grounds for arrest. As reviewed by a human rights lawyer Sui Muqing,57 who had been working with activists for three years and also acted as Guo’s lawyer in 2013, what made Guo more sensitive than other activists was Guo’s prominent role in initiating and expanding the activist community in Guangdong. In an article published online by Guo Feixiong in January 2013 after the Southern Weekly Incident, Guo wrote positively about what he saw in the incident. He set a high value on both the citizens’ action and the tolerance of the authorities, and suggested that the reform of the new government was foreseeable (Guo, 2013). It was revealed by an activist member that Guo confessed in a conversation that his judgement about Beijing supporting the civil action in the Southern Weekly protest somewhat motivated him to make public speeches at the site. Apparently, Guo failed to foresee the account that

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would be settled with him afterwards and the consequence that many associated activists would be briefly detained. Similarly, many activists protesting in the Southern Weekly Incident brought to the event their concerns already long existing in previous protests or rights defence.58 My activist interviewees’ life experiences are self-revealing of the embodiment they experienced during the Southern Weekly Incident. Yedu, one of the influential activists during the Southern Weekly Incident, recalled his life of being a dissident. Yedu was nineteen years old when the 1989 student movement swept many cities all over China. He participated in the movement in Guangdong, joining the protests at the provincial government and other activities. Yedu accused Deng Xiaoping, who was then the paramount leader of China,59 of being responsible for using force against students in the movement. In February 1997 when Deng Xiaoping died, Yedu was working in the local propaganda department in a Southern city in China. He refused to stand up to observe a moment of silence for Deng’s death, and then was reprimanded, being sent to do menial work in a Party-run book store. In 2000, a computer centre was established in the book store and Yedu, who was skilled with computers, was appointed to be the director. Being granted with convenient access to the internet, Yedu and two other people in Beijing launched a discussion forum named ‘Democracy and Freedom’, which soon attracted hundreds of visitors daily to discuss various social issues. But less than three months after the ‘Democracy and Freedom’ forum opened, authorities shut down the website which hosted the forum. Yedu and his colleagues managed to reopen the forum on another site, but since then the forum had been repeatedly shut down, blocked, hacked or incapacitated by the authorities. Each time the site was closed, Yedu and his colleagues found other ways (e.g. found another company in another city, bought online space for personal web pages) to reopen it. At some point, there were more than thirty people from different places in China working for the forum, and most of them never met each other. In November 2002, two co-founders of the forum in Beijing were arrested for running the forum, and Yedu was suspended by the book store, being accused of ‘keeping extremely reactionary essays’ on his office computer.60 In April 2003, Yedu was officially sacked by the book store and he went to Guangzhou where he worked as a part-time college lecturer and subsequently a HR administrator, and at the same time continued to run the forum. He lost his two jobs successively after intervention by the Ministry of State Security. With the forum becoming increasingly popular and the regulation of the internet

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becoming increasingly tightened, Yedu found it more and more difficult to maintain the operation of the forum. By the time the forum completely stopped running in July 2006, it had a record of being shut down forty-nine times within five years. When Yedu was running the ‘Democracy and Freedom’ forum, he met Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese writer and scholar who won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize while in prison for the charge of inciting subversion of state power (Liu died of cancer in July 2017 while still in prison).61 Back then, Liu was president of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre (ICPC) which is an organization active in promoting freedom of speech, in particular providing writers under arrest with humanitarian help such as paying legal fees, applying for grants or applying for human rights awards. Liu invited Yedu to help run the website of ICPC. Yedu later became the deputy secretary general of ICPC, and his connection with ICPC put him under constant and close surveillance by the Ministry of State Security. He had been arrested many times and experienced short-term detention and long-time imprisonment (in 2011 he was incarcerated for half a year), while remaining an active member of the activist community. Ye Yin, another activist protester, participated in the Southern Weekly protest on 8 January. Ye Yin was most known for publicly supporting Chen Guangcheng62 in 2012. He recalled his experience of the Southern Weekly protest, While I was there, seeing so many people making speeches at the scene, I felt impulsive at some point. But I saw so many police and state security staff there who already knew me and watched me, I strictly limited myself from making a speech.63

On 9 January, Ye Yin was taken away by the police. He was then ‘forced to travel’64 for five days. The activist and human rights lawyer Sui Muqing also participated in the Southern Weekly protest. Sui was in his forties. He was a participant in the 1989 student movement when he was studying law at a university in Beijing. He was imprisoned for a few years for participating in the student movement. After being released, he became a lawyer working in his hometown, during which he was regularly visited by the local police. In 1998 he went to Guangzhou and changed his name in order to start a new life. He did not tell anyone about his involvement in the 1989 student movement until he started using Weibo and felt willing to share his story with some people on Weibo. In 2012 he met Guo Feixiong, who introduced activists from various fields to him and encouraged

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him to handle human rights cases and become a human rights lawyer. Since then, Sui had joined the activist community, attending several events with other members together, including the Southern Weekly protest. Activists such as Guo, Yedu, Ye Yin, Sui Muqing and previous petitioners and rights defenders who participated in the Southern Weekly protests had formed a strong network through previous events such as the Southern Street Movement. They entered the activist network with memories of personal experiences which they regarded as unjust, unfair or politically unethical. What the activists shared in their identity was each other’s pain of past suffering and passion about dissent. Their connection with each other and the recognition of the activist identity were strengthened through acting together in multiple events and regularly meeting in the ‘same-city dinner gathering’ events (discussed previously). Activist participants experienced pride and joy in activism, opening up a form of embodiment that reached individual past suffering. Despite actions not always being organized, the strong network between activist members was a primary organization of their actions. Their online posts, despite not explicitly calling for other people’s participation in the Southern Weekly protest, inspired fellow members’ participation. The Southern Weekly Incident for many of them was only one of the many cases they had acted on. As Yedu elaborated, In many previous cases of holding up signs to protest in Guangdong, normally activists were detained for a few days. I saw the Southern Weekly Incident as merely one of these cases. I assumed that lifting signs for protesting outside Southern Media would at most result in a ten days detention, and this is nothing. I was put in prison for half a year in 2011.65

Activists were willing to act strongly to express appeals and pay the price worthy of the outcome. Yet, self-protection was sophisticatedly conducted.66 According to some activists, activists may also see imprisonment as an occasion for building their reputation and enhancing their influence in the activist circle.67 Of course, activists did not necessarily agree with each other’s political views. Some activists focused on promoting institutional reform within the government, whilst others believed that the regime of the Party should be completely undermined. As Yedu and Ye Yin elaborated, Some people have unrealistic imaginations, hoping to realize China’s democratic transformation without needing to pay much. Very few people can face up to the

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question that if the Party really did not change their principles, what should we do? I don’t believe in the idea of the top-down reform as long as the Communist Party is still governing the country. So I certainly am not convinced by the view that citizens’ action can push the Party-state to make change.68 We see from so many cases that the authorities never actually had direct conversations with the people protesting. The official institutions never talk to you about why you protest. They only arrest you. Some people thought that by taking action they could force the government to respond. So they limit their action to the level that would not irritate the authorities much and that they can use the current law for self-defence. It is naïve to have this expectation and people with this thought end up reducing the validity of their action for nothing.69

Despite the conflicts, the Southern Weekly Incident and many other events demonstrate that the various political views did not hinder the collective action taken by activists. They shared the idea of ‘using every opportunity for mass mobilization in order to help citizens reduce fears of confrontation’.70 As Sui commented, What’s different is probably what we believe to be the possible future of China, and this aspiration leads to different methodologies that we feel most efficient. Some want fundamental change, while some want mild change. Some want peaceful transformation, while some only believe in radical movements. The arguments are sometimes only a shouting match, and they don’t cause big problems for taking action together. Because action is after all individual. Each person just needs to do what he/she wants.71

Similar to some citizens, a number of activists also confessed that although they definitely did not feel positive about the political change brought about by the new leadership, they somehow saw certain potential in the change of political ecology and wanted to test the new leadership. They hoped that the Southern Weekly Incident could become an opportunity to start an interaction between the authorities and citizens. Furthermore, activists in the Southern Weekly protests claimed that they did not formally organize protests. They initiated the action and then ‘let the internet do the work of broadcasting their action and mobilizing more people to come’.72 Indeed, the use of social media has provided an effective guise of action organizing and allowed activists to rely on online publicity to assemble their peers for collective action rather than resorting to physical organization, and thus ‘reducing the political risks of being accused of organizing gatherings’.73

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In the sense of mobilizing more people to collectively demand transformation of the regime and establishment of a civil society in China, the Southern Weekly Incident was meaningful for activists.74 It was an opportunity for much publicity of activists, and also further ‘integrated members of the activist community in Guangzhou’.75 The action of activists, which was taken before most citizens went to protest and present flowers, enhanced the momentum of online discussion of the case, which attracted more citizens’ attention to the case and mobilized the discussion that facilitated their action later. As I have also shown, some citizens then became members of the activist community, regularly participating in street action after the Southern Weekly Incident. Yet, the meaning of action for activists is not bounded with a particular event. As Hui felt after he joined the activist community, I think what we [as activists] are doing is facilitating the unity of all the individuals and strengthening the power of the people as a unit. In this way we get the people ready for working at the right moment to make something big.76

Conclusion: Connectivity without consensus This chapter has examined the experiences of embodiment of journalists, citizens and Southern Media readers, and activists77 in the Southern Weekly Incident. It has illustrated various emotions, appeals and motivations of these groups when promoting the incident. I have demonstrated that anger and other emotions on social media can be translated to political action through individual experience of embodiment, which allows people to sensually establish their subjectivity through acting with other people together (McDonald, 2006). During the Southern Weekly Incident, although different groups and individuals’ appeals, demands, political ideologies varied, they needed each other to form connectivity for confrontation. Journalists from Southern Weekly were initiators of the incident. Although the first messages on Weibo about the incident were posted by journalists outside Southern Weekly, Southern Weekly staff ’s verification and further discussion about the modification of the newspaper initiated popular contention from various groups on the issue of censorship. They may be considered ‘passive actors’, in the sense of avoiding confrontation around censorship and only demanding the adjustment of the way the newspaper was regulated. Whilst

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carefully maintaining the negotiation with the authorities behind the scenes, their emotions of exasperation by the authorities, generated by past distress and caused by censorship policies, inspired their online posting at various points, which effectively motivated other groups’ confrontation. Journalists from outside Southern Weekly, through online posting, experienced the form of embodiment that awakened their memory and pain of practising journalism under censorship, which may be understood as a cultural form of lived experience and lived memories. They related their own pains with that of Southern Weekly staff. For many, Southern Weekly was a symbol of journalistic idealism and professionalism. They felt that the journalistic idealism that Southern Weekly represented for them was tarnished. They hoped that the influential Southern Weekly would take the lead to change the current regulation of Guangdong media and censorship in general. They also felt the moral responsibility to support Southern Weekly and speak up for the public who expected them to confront media censorship. Yet, they maintained their action only online and did not participate in street protest, carefully avoiding punishment by the authorities. Citizens and Southern Media readers, through online and offline action, related their own experiences of social unfairness and injustice to that of journalists’ suffering with censorship. By acting to support Southern Weekly, they demanded democracy and press freedom. Compared to journalists’ direct experience with censorship at work, citizens’ more abstract feeling about the issues involved triggered them to take on more idealist approaches and protested to express ideological demands for democratizing and liberating China. They experienced an emotional shift from outrage and sympathy to pride and joy, opening up the form of embodiment that took on each other’s pain and lifted each other’s spirits for pursuing a better life in China. Activists saw the Southern Weekly Incident as an opportunity to initiate mass civic action. For them, the actual issues of the Southern Weekly incident were generally immaterial. Action itself was the goal, in that it made their identity visible and mobilized more people to confront the current regime. Understanding their self-construction of the activist identity is key to examining their action, motivation and embodiment. This identity had been able to mobilize members of the activist network to be dedicated to multiple street actions. During action, they experienced the form of embodiment that touched hatred and outrage engrained in their past experiences, and empowered them to act bravely. This was made more effective when acting with other members in the activist

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network, who shared the pain and desire of transforming the current regime, despite their various ideas of the approaches of political transformation. They may be the most fearless group in the Southern Weekly Incident, prepared to pay the price for confrontation. Certainly, Chinese people’s calculation of gains and losses in the high-risk environment of protest, both online and offline, to a great extent restricted the free expression of emotions. This self-restriction was demonstrated through the different appeals made by different groups involved in the Southern Weekly Incident. Fighting against censorship was not a consensus appeal as may be expected in the Southern Weekly Incident. While ordinary citizens and readers demanded press freedom and democracy, journalists who were seen as the victims of censorship did not directly challenge the long-existing issue of news censorship in China. Instead, they simply demanded the adjustment of regulation implementation in news censoring. Former Southern Weekly staff and journalists who were from outside Southern Weekly requested the resignation of the provincial propaganda chief, whilst Southern Weekly staff did not publicly express their willingness to challenge either censorship or the post of the propaganda chief, but emphasized their focus on the ‘publication accident’ of the New Year Edition. Many Southern Media employees pointed out that the nature of the Southern Weekly Incident was originally far from demanding democracy, and was more an internal negotiation about the operation of news editing, but the nature of the case was transformed by the public on the internet. As one journalist explained, ‘It was the people online that somehow forced a more fundamental issue of press freedom to this case. Then when the online voice was pushed to that level, Southern Weekly staff had no way back.’78 Journalists obviously had to make difficult decisions about pursuing action in such a politically sensitive case. Depending on how far they were from the centre of the contention, journalists held different evaluations of the risks involved in participating in action. Southern Weekly staff were the most cautious group during the incident. The further people were from the centre of contention, the safer they felt, and the more likely they were to express political appeals. Even between Southern Weekly staff members, personal choices could be very different. As some Southern Weekly journalists confessed, they were surprised and extremely disappointed to see some of their colleagues change their attitude to the case all of a sudden, for example, a sudden withdrawal from any further online action.79

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For many citizens, their approach was based on the perception of Southern Weekly as ‘a liberal and leftist newspaper’, as they repeatedly stated in my interviews. I have discussed the history of Southern Weekly in Chapter 1, which revealed that Southern Weekly had experienced different stages of party regulation and accordingly transformed itself over the years. Its high standard news reports appeared to maintain a challenge to authorities and thus it remained on the ideological high ground in many Chinese people’s views. Southern Weekly staff may no longer feel there is a progressive slant to the newspaper, but journalists from outside Southern Weekly and citizens, who had great fondness for the newspaper, certainly retained the perception of the newspaper as a ground for asserting democracy, liberalism and human rights. The complexity of the evolution of the newspaper is not revealed to people outside. The peculiar Chinese political regulation of media had shaped a media culture that was detached from public understanding. This had a profound impact on different approaches taken by journalists and citizens in the Southern Weekly Incident. From the views of activists, the Southern Weekly Incident brought up issues that were well-suited for civic mobilization. Democracy and press freedom were abstract and ideological concepts that allowed people with various personal needs to make emotive expressions. For some people, the outcome of the Southern Weekly Incident was a disappointment. The one-week incident, which was initiated as a confrontation with Chinese censorship, ended without creating new opportunities for Chinese press freedoms. However, for activists, the Southern Weekly Incident, to some extent, served the purpose of promoting democratic ideas in the public. The absence of the journalists was immaterial and the segmentation between the online contention and offline protests promoted by different groups of people actually allowed the sustainability and the efficiency of their action. A somewhat paradoxical detail about contestation through digital networks in current China is that although censorship is relentless and noticeable, the rules for censoring in actual practice, and specifically what kinds of online behaviour lead to personal punishments (e.g. sacking, arrest), are ambiguous. Ironically, the ambiguity of the regulation of the Chinese internet leaves internet users much room for imagination and temptation. The issue at the centre of the Southern Weekly Incident was therefore personalized flexibly by different groups of people and individuals, according to their own risk assessment of action and political knowledge. A senior editor of Southern Weekly put it as such,

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We consciously did not want to have much connection with the outside people. Their appeals were very diverse. Ours were also very different from theirs. I don’t think people needed to impose their opinions on other people. Some people even wanted to sacrifice the newspaper to pursue more fundamental change. This was very selfish. We did not need this consistency with them, but I don’t think we needed to draw a line between us and the outsiders either. The different goals and approaches did not prevent us from all having an independent say about the case.80

Indeed, in the Chinese context where the authorities have closed most channels of political contention, and where both online and offline contention implies potential risks such as losing jobs, violent reprisals, threat against participants’ families, non-consistent or even conflicting expressions are still meaningful in promoting connectivity. The logic of connective action, which, as Bennett and Segerberg (2012, 2013) argue, works through personalization of political views, was implemented through people’s individual experiences of embodiment. People reposted other people’s posts and in doing so released their emotions, without necessarily agreeing with the views. Individual’s search for more meaning in their lives allows people to connect their own memories and establish subjectivities. Participation in this sense was self-motivated (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012, 2013). The value of a particular view may not lie in the view per se, but in the force it generates that strengthens connectivity through digital network. People online co-produced and co-distributed personally expressive content (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012, 2013). Voices from journalists within and outside Southern Weekly, citizens, readers and activists with diverse appeals sometimes appeared to be chaotic, yet, they created echoes that promoted the Southern Weekly Incident. Digital networks themselves became an organizational structure. Different voices were accommodated and coordinated through digital networks and in general were shaped into a collective force confronting the authorities. Collective rituals through digital networks enhanced citizens’ feeling of the collective voice being so loud that it was less possible for the authorities to act against individuals. In most contentious cases in contemporary China, ideas of different groups and individuals appeared to be impossible to reconcile. Chinese society is divided in ideological beliefs and Chinese people are arguably always selfprotected in conducting online and offline expressions in order to live with realistic political constraints in their individual lives. The meaning of action is individually shaped and not to be understood in relation to a consensus appeal.

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In the Southern Weekly Incident, some journalists from outside Southern Media initiated the discussion about the possibility of calling for a national strike of all media workers, with a definite list of demands, including abolishing media censorship in China. Obviously, a national journalists’ strike did not emerge. The Southern Weekly Incident indeed gained space to evolve from the division, presented through the segmentation of action subjects. Because of the detachment from each other, journalists and outside protesters felt somewhat free from the accusation of leading, planning or organizing the development of the incident. Mobilization for connectivity in a contentious event is made possible through not only the facilitation of digital networks, but essentially, the latent network (Melucci, 1996a) established in people’s everyday life. This is the network constructed by people’s live presence in current China, which generates and accumulates emotions and memory, and inspires the sensory experience of embodiment in particular events. For example, in the Southern Weekly Incident, journalists shared the pain of practising journalism under censorship. The live presence of citizens included life experiences of state regulation in which they felt the authoritarian pressure (e.g. in cases related to environmental issues and unfair employment hierarchies), their past witnessing of social events where there was a threat from authorities (e.g. in cases related to police brutality), their daily experiences of online censoring in posting on Weibo and so on. For activists, the past pain of their democratic ideas being suppressed still powerfully triggers their pursuit of activism. I have provided a nuanced account of my investigation of the Southern Weekly Incident and its meanings for different groups of people. Arguably, issues around the development, division and dissolution of the Southern Weekly Incident need to be understood from the broader context of Chinese society. I will continue to examine this context in the next chapter.

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Implications of the Southern Weekly Incident: Institutional Boundaries, Self-Restriction and Complex Ideologies in China

This chapter examines the Chinese context that shaped the Southern Weekly Incident. The purpose of this further discussion is to demonstrate wider implications of the Southern Weekly Incident for other social contentions and the contentious culture in digital China. I first discuss the hierarchical context of Southern Media and, in doing so, attempt to build a representative picture of the environment of Chinese media institutions. I then discuss issues of selfcensorship and self-restriction in the Southern Weekly Incident, in order to understand Chinese people’s cautious decision-making in a contentious event. I further discuss the diverse ideological beliefs in Chinese society, which cause great challenges to collective action. I argue for the significance of connective action for civic connectivity in a divided China.

Institutional culture of Chinese media The framework of institutions managed as enterprises (shiye danwei qiyehua guanli) essentially manages Chinese media institutions which have faced paradoxically the imperative of state control and market forces since the 1980s, as I discussed in Chapter 1. Through this framework, the CCP maintains the paramount leadership and at the same time allows media to respond to market demands (Stockmann, 2014). In practice, this framework has been administered by a carefully crafted topdown hierarchy inside media institutions. Whether a topic is politically sensitive and how a topic may be approached in news reporting are communicated from propaganda officials to senior media managers, who pass on the information to journalists. The power of this hierarchy, enforced in daily editorial processes by

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people at various positions of the media institution, shapes a distinctive culture relating to collaboration and confrontation between media workers. I have mentioned some figures serving in key positions of Southern Media Group when the Southern Weekly Incident took place. The company was at the time led by Yang Jian, who represented the party officials and executed propaganda directives to conduct daily regulation of the media outlets of the company. In the Southern Weekly Incident, the top leaders such as Yang Jian were responsible for repressing the incident and negotiating with journalists. In the middle layer of the company are the senior staff of media outlets, such as then Chief Editor of Southern Weekly Huang Can, who conducted routine censoring of the newspaper. In the Southern Weekly Incident, Huang Can and other senior managers of the newspaper were responsible for resolving the incident. Senior media managers are well paid in comparison to average incomes. Promotion to these positions is often based on considerations about individual’s capacity to capitalize on market opportunities while at the same time complying with the CCP demands (Stockmann, 2014). Senior media managers are often regarded as looking upwards at opportunities to become leaders of the company. As journalism in China is considered a bureaucratic branch of the political system, working in important positions in the media field is considered a springboard to the political hierarchy (F. Lin, 2010). As media peers view it, important editors in the company are the people climbing the ladder to the higher Party positions. These people would understandably be extremely cautious about being involved in a contentious event like the Southern Weekly Incident. At the bottom of Southern Media Group, as of most other media institutions, are the majority of journalists who may suffer most under censorship in their daily professional practice. While these journalists may potentially be the most passionate actors for confrontation, being in the lower-ranked positions in the institution meant that they were vulnerable in the system. The CCP has abolished permanent employment of journalists since the 1990s. Journalists are employed on a performance-based contract. This certainly provides incentives for journalists to comply with Party requirements, especially given that journalists’ pay and promotion are often tied to the quantity and quality of their output (Stockmann, 2014). Effectively, as media sociologist Fen Lin (2010) argues, many journalists at the bottom of the media institution regard journalism as simply a job; they get paid according to what they have done. As they see no higher moral ground in journalism than in other occupations, there is also little incentive to pick a fight with censors.

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In addition, the editor responsibility system gives top editors responsibility and pressure to ensure journalists working for the media outlet comply with the Party guidelines. Avoiding causing trouble becomes a typical concern for maintaining a good relationship with superiors. This concern also contributed to the restriction of journalists’ confrontation in the Southern Weekly Incident. Similarly, the rule of self-restraint was widely abided by for the purpose of maintaining a harmonious relationship with colleagues and with the majority of journalists. This rule was extended to the online discourse of the Southern Weekly Incident. Indeed, many Chinese internet users often observe but do not participate in online discourse out of the concern about how their close network may perceive them (Stockmann and Luo, 2015). In general, the power hierarchy derived from the distinctive media management structure effectively controls the potential rebellion of media workers. Certainly, the higher the position, the more power, the more responsibility for accountability to the Party, the riskier for people to play a rebellious role, and thus the less possible to participate in the confrontation. But the lower the position, the less power, and the more desperate to secure employment and a living. To be sure, the positions of individuals within the institution are sometimes obscure. Given that some senior staff members had worked as journalists for many years, the views of senior and junior staff members are sometimes compatible. But in sensitive and high-risk events, individuals need to take extra care to exercise responsibility and protect personal interests. This often means that the discrete power relation would become irreconcilable. As demonstrated in the Southern Weekly Incident, individuals in different positions had vast interests to take care of; employees of Southern Media were not always on the same page in promoting contestation. Southern Weekly journalists and the chief editor were also cautiously maintaining negotiations with the leaders of Southern Media, in order to minimize potential punishment for their involvement in the incident. Unification within Southern Weekly and the whole of Southern Media became impossible. The imagination that journalists from this liberal media company altogether would unite to fight for press freedom became only an illusion. In summary, the intensity of top-down negotiations and power relationships in a media institution significantly restricts how media workers contest issues around censorship. The political and cultural dynamics of media institutions are also far more complicated than controlling and being controlled, suppressing and being suppressed; it is executed via people’s voluntary maintenance of their

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professional profiles within the party system to facilitate career progression. This should also be more specifically examined from the perspective of journalists’ self-censoring and self-restriction which had been forged in their journalistic practice and daily online posting. The next section examines the self-censoring and self-restriction exercised by journalists. In reviewing media workers’ delicate choice of methods for action in the Southern Weekly Incident, I seek to understand what these journalists meant by ‘political maturity’ as their living philosophy in current China.

A delicate choice: Self-censoring, self-restriction and political maturity The distinctive characteristic of Chinese journalists’ work ‘within the system’ (ti zhi nei) separates them from many activists involved in the Southern Weekly Incident who regard themselves as revolutionaries. People working within the system are restricted by Party policies and have vast interests relating to the Party system to consider. Chinese media workers may appear to be rebellious in certain cases, but the institutional limitation of their activities to a great extent forges their general philosophy of living, which is closely related to how they maintain so-called political correctness in China whilst still exercising the type of journalism expected by the public. This, in many media workers’ views, means to develop a type of political maturity. Li Jian, the senior editor of Southern People Weekly, whose experience of working for Southern Weekly and Southern People Weekly I discussed in Chapter 5, explained his experience of the Southern Weekly Incident in accordance to his understanding of political maturity. I was very careful. I was included in a WeChat group of former Southern Weekly staff but I did not proactively join the discussion. I knew that every word and every sentence I posted would be monitored by the authorities. I did not do anything more than looking at what they were saying. The only time I spoke there was when they proposed to draft an open letter and I said that I supported it […] I expressed my values within my framework. I did not betray my values. That’s enough for me. Other people may want to do something radical. It was their freedom and I would be happy to see other people doing that […] I of course had moral pressure to support media counterparts during the incident. But I was mature enough to calculate the risks and benefits before I did anything. I decided not to speak out, because speaking out meant that I may have to leave

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the job. The worst situation would be that they framed you saying that you were the organizer and arrested you […] I am still doing well in the job and had not come to the point that I wanted to leave it. Why should I need to resign? Staying here, within the system, was my way of expressing my values […] As senior managers of our magazine, we did not restrict our journalists’ activity. Of course, in this way we lost the trust from those leaders of Southern Media. But they did not have any reason to sack me. I did not want to be promoted anyway […] I think this was so called political maturity. You may say I was sophisticated and tricky. But it is the way of living in this system and at the same time doing something meaningful.1

In Li Jian’s view, his restricted expression ‘was the only way to work within the system’ and he and his colleagues were in this particular way also contributing to China’s democratization. As he put it, We are the liberalists within the system. If China is progressing towards democracy, the activists and other brave people who take radical action are important, and so are we. We are also an integral part of the force in this progress.2

Self-restriction was exercised carefully by journalists both from Southern Weekly and outside Southern Weekly for self-protection. Certainly, this was not simply a temporary strategy adopted during the incident but related to a deep-down self-discipline that had been forged in their careers. This selfdiscipline in daily journalistic work allowed them to attract readership whilst avoiding making political mistakes. Arguably, journalists often walk a fine line between attracting the public eye to maximize profits and not crossing the Party limit (Tong and Lei, 2013). Stern and Hassid (2012) discuss the deep-rooted uncertainty about the permissible political margins that causes constant selfcensorship and keeps the majority of Chinese journalists in line with the Party agenda. Uncertainty magnifies the effect of each didactic story of crackdown. Although only a small number of journalists have suffered from coercive repression, unclarity around the cause instils fear and amplifies silence (Stern and Hassid, 2012). Journalists cope with the anxiety of not knowing where political boundaries lie in their reporting on a daily basis and stick to the safe zone (Stern and Hassid, 2012). As Jiang Yiping, the seasoned journalist and a leader of Southern Media, put it, It is still a real luxury to talk about pursuing press freedom in current China. Practicing journalism for so many years, I know that the ceiling is always there

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and what we are doing is just to try to touch the ceiling. We expand the boundary until it touches the ceiling, and that is the best result we can pursue.3

Touch the ceiling, cut the corner, hit the red line etc. were the phrases very often used by journalists to describe their strategies for reporting sensitive issues whilst avoiding political risks at work, meaning that knowing where the boundary was, and fully expanding journalistic coverage close to but within the limitation of the boundary. For example, journalists in my interviews often said, ‘I only hit the red line but did not cross it’. As equivocal as the phrases themselves may imply, journalists’ working strategies were constructively played with flexibility and caution in every step when approaching a topic. Many journalists, however, emphasized the value of holding a positive attitude in doing journalism rather than focusing on the limitations brought about by censorship. As a senior editor of Southern Weekly put it, If you always feel helpless and frustrated and only complain, you cannot do anything useful […] I am already very used to self-censoring. Very rarely have my articles been killed. Even when I begin to choose the particular topic for report, I am already conducting strict self-censoring. There are some good topics I have chosen not to report. This is an issue of life value. I think being content is important in life. So I appreciate the current space given to us to do something and I try my best to do a good job […] Some of my colleagues tried every method to challenge the policy and ended up losing ground for practicing journalism. I think that was a huge loss, both for the very talented people themselves and for society. I believe that though I self-censor my work, I still produce useful reports for society. It is the same on Weibo, I don’t want to lose ground for posting. So self-censoring is important and not a big deal.4

This was complemented by another journalist, From the beginning to end of the Southern Weekly Incident, I believed that we should solve the problems within the system rather than challenging the system. There had never been examples showing the possibility of breaking the Party regulation of media, so the best would be that we respect it, and strive for a better survival within it. I might feel some frustration in the early years of my career, but it was not long before I came to understand the reality of working in media in China. I have known that there is no point in resisting news censoring. If you cannot do your report in this way, then you change the way you do it [bypassing the censoring]. If you cannot do the kind of report you want to do in this media, then change your employer. If you cannot find a good one in this city, then change another city. If you still cannot work, then change your career

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and leave media. As long as you stay in media you should just work within and around the rules. There are still so many valuable stories for me to write within the space I am given. Why do I waste time pursuing pointless confrontation? What we want is not a street movement, but the survival of this newspaper which can still provide us much room for doing journalism. Our specific appeal was that the minister and the Chief Editor should stop censoring the newspaper in such an extreme way. Not long after the incident ended, the Chief Editor was replaced. I am satisfied with the outcome.5

An environmental reporter in Southern Weekly made such statement, I understand journalistic idealism in a different way. Although there are environmental issues I cannot touch on, I think that as long as I do some good quality environmental reports, these reports no doubt have a positive impact on our habitat. This is also the realization of journalistic idealism.6

Very often, the concept of idealism is ridiculed by journalists, despite the fact that they may have once pursued idealistic social values such as social justice, equality, human rights, in news coverage. As a journalist confessed, ‘talking about journalistic idealism felt like we are innocent journalists who had never experienced Chinese journalism’.7 Ridiculing idealism or keeping away from the concept was a somewhat peculiar way by which Chinese journalists demonstrate so-called political maturity. By contrast, journalistic professionalism (xinwen zhuanye zhuyi) is a concept that Chinese journalists willingly discuss when considering their profession. Although I have pointed out in Chapter 1 that norms that Chinese journalists often associate with journalistic professionalism (such as authentic and objective reporting, taking social responsibility, and media autonomy) bear complex and ambiguous meanings in the Chinese context and contrast from those in Western journalism (Tong, 2006), Chinese journalists use this term often to refer to their accountability for consumers of the media and to defend their coverage on certain topics when facing authoritarian pressure. Rather than seeing professionalism as a normative regulation taken by Chinese journalists, it would be more apt to understand the regular reference to this term by journalists as a pragmatic and constructive way of working with censorship. Journalists tend to challenge censorship when they felt their professional pursuit at work was undermined, whilst they find it riskier to do so when they are not framing censorship as damaging their professionalism. Professionalism for Chinese journalists is therefore both a work principle and an effective weapon

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for resisting being censored beyond their tolerance, and this professionalism facilitates a commensalism of resistance and self-discipline. Professionalism provides journalists with a sense of how far they can challenge censorship when assessing political risks of certain coverage. As I have mentioned in a Southern Weekly editor’s comment, Southern Weekly staff took action when they felt annoyance that their journalistic professionalism was being undermined. They preferred to discuss professionalism rather than idealism and rejected being viewed as being keen to confront censorship. Some Southern Weekly staff members emphasized that their online action was a form of resistance to their journalistic work being cast in an unprofessional light. As an editor explained, ‘the most annoying thought’ was that their ‘professionalism of editing the newspaper was being challenged’.8 The first open letter from Southern Weekly was posted after online discussion was initiated around a few mistakes found on the New Year Edition and they felt insulted by ‘the enforced unprofessionalism’. The co-signing of the statement within Southern Weekly after their official Weibo account had been seized was also a response to feeling ashamed that they had to take the blame for making editorial mistakes, which violated their pursuit of high-quality production of the newspaper. As another senior editor explained, ‘reputation is everything for this newspaper. Those stupid mistakes were really damaging the reputation of the newspaper and we cannot accept that’.9 The confrontation against Chief Editor Huang Can was provoked by many Southern Weekly employees’ resentment that Huang’s frequent cutting and changing details of news stories resulted in ‘twisted’ meanings, and this had challenged their perception of journalistic professionalism. To again draw on James Scott’s (1985) concept of everyday resistance, which argues that the subordinate people secretly resist the dominant and powerful people whilst never take radical action to challenge the power, Chinese journalists’ fondness of the term ‘journalistic professionalism’ is their resort to a weapon for both resistance and self-defence. Relying on the measurement framed by their understanding of professionalism, Chinese journalists may sometimes challenge the authorities, but mostly stay on a safe ground and pursue perfection of work on this limited ground. Journalists’ reluctance to discuss journalistic idealism should also be understood against the backdrop of traditional media being significantly challenged by new media. The struggle to face down competition from new media had made traditional media more desperate to secure their survival by accepting Party regulation. In light of the huge amount of capital flowing to new

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media industries, many newspaper workers felt that journalistic idealism was less rewarding than ever before. Being critical about media culture, Mu Tian, chief editor of Southern People Weekly, expressed his disappointment about journalism in recent years as such: ‘In China, good journalism is covering something meaningful and although it may be risky to report but we still do it. Disappointingly, it is rare in recent years and it is not all about Party regulation.’10 During the Southern Weekly Incident, several elders who were former Southern Weekly editors encouraged current Southern Weekly staff to ‘fight with revolutionary spirits’ and ‘initiate a real strike11 and make a big noise internationally’.12 However, current staff members did not show the same passion. The everyday practice of journalism in a cautious and self-censored fashion is also adopted by journalists when posting online, shaping journalists’ distinctive approach to the Southern Weekly Incident. Some journalists described themselves as being ‘self-immune’ – ‘like frogs boiled in warm water’,13 meaning that they had become apathetic about the repression enforced on them and lost the sense of fighting after being regulated for a long time by the Party. They explained that their frequent encountering of censorship had lessened their sensitivity to suffering. They made sure that all information posted should be well-grounded, and ‘every word had a reference’.14 A Southern Weekly editor confessed, Having been doing this job for a long time, I have already become an abnormal person. I always over-censor myself. In the Southern Weekly Incident, I was not very active. I said things that really discouraged my colleagues when they were quite excited about the potential victory.

A journalist, who had been a reporter specializing in political coverage for ten years in Southern Weekly, explained, I was more apathetic rather than feeling much. This was related to my experience as a politics reporter. I already feel very little political passion in any incident […] If we confronted [the authorities] to the point where we had to quit the job, then they would be just as happy about that. Our resignations did not pose a threat to them. It would be just pointless. No matter how much you say on the internet, it is pointless.15

Another Southern Media journalist asserted, You work with this system every day. You know how powerful it is and how cruel they [the Party] could be so it is naïve to talk about such a big issue. Even those who wanted Tuo to step down were being unrealistic. If they [the Party] really removed him then they made themselves look too weak.16

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Indeed, many journalists expressed cynicism about the outcome of confrontation, quoting from their past experiences of witnessing other protests. Having also observed the contrasting motivations of different groups involved in promoting the Southern Weekly Incident, some journalists explained their philosophy about less trouble being better and not to stir things up. In the context of self-restriction and self-censoring, journalists, both from Southern Weekly and outside Southern Weekly, faced a delicate choice between holding the flag of press freedom and keeping away from it. Whilst most journalists avoided publicly discussing press freedom, they also experienced embodiment that mobilized their emotive expression, as well as public pressure and expectation for them to confront censorship. The result was a vague political stance adopted by many of them during the Southern Weekly Incident. By carefully expressing dissatisfaction with the regulation enforced on their journalistic practice from the Party, journalists claimed to stick to their ideological values and showed resistance of a certain level to Party regulation, whilst obviously did not pose a fundamental challenge to censorship. Facing accusations of not showing support for protesters, Li Jian explained, The journalists had done their part in helping the case ferment online, then it was other people’s turn to continue promoting it. Why would we put ourselves in trouble by mixing together with them? It is non-organized and non-planned. I believe that the whole society in this kind of case had an automatic mechanism to balance action. Nobody needed to lead the way.17

Apparently, diverse appeals and personalized expressions online allowed more room for the vague stance in the Southern Weekly Incident. The sheer amount of traffic on the web from multiple sources, which may simply be a release of emotions rather than expressions that intended to initiate serious discussion and debates, effectively shielded some journalists’ ambiguous political stance in the Southern Weekly Incident. A vague political stance was thus accommodated by an inclusive network of connective action. There were techniques adopted by journalists that allowed them to maintain this vague political stance. Obviously, journalists carefully avoided being associated with citizens and other people who protested for press freedom. Very often, journalists did not actively send posts, but only reposted and shared other people’s opinions. Reposting also was carried out selectively with caution, certainly not including activists’ posts. Avoiding support for protesters and ‘reposting only’ were also strategies for self-protection when facing official charges. It was true that strategies for self-protection were adopted by most people involved in the

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Southern Weekly Incident, both consciously and unconsciously. Nevertheless, journalists’ relatively more sophisticated approaches to adopting a vague political stance, nurtured in their everyday practice of resistance to and compliance with censorship, allowed them to assume support from the public whilst also attracting criticism from some radical journalist counterparts and activists. In summary, journalists’ resistance to censorship in the Southern Weekly Incident was restricted by their concern with rulings by the authorities and the need to maintain negotiations within Southern Media and with the propaganda department, as well as their own philosophies of living and working within the Chinese media system. The distinctive institutional culture of Southern Media facilitated hierarchical negotiation between people at different positions and with various interests relating to career progression. Political repression worked through osmosis in journalists’ habitual consideration of professional and social behaviour, and led to their self-censoring and self-restriction in the Southern Weekly Incident. Self-censoring exercised in journalists’ professional practice desensitized them in contentious events and forged an attitude of ‘the less trouble the better’. Various posting strategies were adopted by journalists to assume public support whilst self-protecting themselves from authoritarian charge. Journalists endeavoured to maintain the public’s support and stick to their democratic values without posing a direct challenge to the Party system. As a result, a vague political stance was taken by journalists who rejected clearly expressing the pursuit of press freedom while still loosely promoting resistance in the Southern Weekly Incident. The so-called political maturity was commonly claimed by journalists as their philosophy of working and living with censorship in current China. Understanding journalists and different groups involved in the Southern Weekly Incident also requires an examination of the diverse political ideologies in China. Meanings of action are revealed in people’s ideologies. The implications of the Southern Weekly Incident should be considered in the broad context of China’s ideological division, which I explore in the next section.

The complex ideologies and elusive democracy in China The way in which individuals made sense of their approaches to online and offline action in the Southern Weekly Incident was engrained in their ideologies. Whilst people’s sensory experience of embodiment was effectively promoted

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during the incident, particularly for people who considered their suffering from previous circumstances as relating to Party policies, power abuse of officials or political control, ideologies may constraint their action at a certain level. To take one example, an investigative reporter for Beijing News, who had conducted many influential investigative reports and gained a reputation for being brave and firm when confronting local authorities to report social unfairness and injustice, chose not to participate in co-signing open letters during the Southern Weekly Incident. Her elaboration of ideological belief shows a complex attitude of compliance, resignation and acceptance to Party ideologies. When there is a ban passed by the propaganda department, we just see how we can interpret the ban in a different way. For example, if the ban instructs that a particular news story needs to be ‘correctly’ guided, then we know we can still report it carefully; if the ban instructs that we cannot comment on the news story, then we know we still can report it and just not to publish comments. Everybody has their job in this system. The propaganda officers are responsible for carrying out censorship and drafting accurate instructions. We are to interpret the instructions and do our job. I would not confront the regulation. I am against attaching extra meaning to this job, for example, something noble, moral, or heroic, but I just want to be professional and objective in doing reports. It is just a job, like being a tailor. Maybe journalism is loaded with more social responsibility, but as journalists we are the same as tailors who pursue perfectionism at work. A good tailor cares about making perfect clothes for both patricians and plebeians. The same, I don’t care for whom I produce my work. My family is a military family. I grew up in the army’s compound. My dad just retired last year from his post as a senior officer in the army. Growing up in that environment, I naturally agree with the Party system. I believe that the Party system is so powerful and strong that cannot at all be challenged and it is thus pointless to make the effort. I don’t have dissatisfaction with the Party system […] I don’t like talking about June 4th protest [in the 1989 student movement]. That is a very sensitive topic for the military. I cannot accept talking about it. When I was studying in university, some very left-leaning scholars talked about June 4th protest in class. In my mind that incident is a student riot, and this is a definite fact in my knowledge since I was very young. I felt them talking about the incident was an insult to my many years’ life experience. I had to leave the class. I may have the sense of resignation. I don’t hope to promote more press freedom in the current environment and don’t want to be a victim or a hero of pursuing press freedom. I only want to expand what we can do for journalism within the current news regulation. Maybe it is a cynical reason […] My university

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education of journalism also did not make much reference to ideologies but emphasized the professionalism of doing journalism [She graduated from a university whose journalism education is top in China]. This education was given to me at that age when my brain was blank and since then the pursuit of professionalism rather than anything ideological has been deep in my mind. I don’t understand why I should sign the open letters in the Southern Weekly Incident. I don’t understand how those people made their decision to sign it. Did they really not care about making money and earning a living? Some people criticized journalists for not daring to resign in the incident. I don’t understand that. Don’t they need to earn money to raise their kids, take care of their parents, and buy a house?18

This explanation may appear to be a mixture of belief in Party ideologies and compliance after feeling not being able to challenge the system, illustrated by the journalist’s expressions of ‘I naturally agree with the Party system’ and ‘the Party system is so powerful and strong that cannot at all be challenged and it is thus pointless to make the effort’. It reflects a mix of her resignation with Party suppression and her personal beliefs. It is important to understand that in the Chinese context, what is regarded as ideal and what is realistically possible are always intertwined to shape people’s ideology. In other words, the political restriction is consciously and unconsciously internalized as part of people’s ideology. Many journalists expressed doubts about democracy, particularly democratization of China. Whilst they felt genuine discontent with the Party’s regulation at work, they may not agree that abandoning censorship would be good for China. A senior Southern Weekly journalist who was also a university lecturer in journalism is another example worth mentioning. The journalist and scholar claimed to be a centrist in political orientation and believed that certain types of political news should be restricted in publication. He frankly revealed that he taught authoritarian regulation of news in class (as he was required to) but the content was in line with his genuine thoughts.19 I have also mentioned the protests by Maoist leftist during the Southern Weekly protests, showing that these people firmly adopted the anti-Westernization principle. The key to understanding the diverse ideologies in the Southern Weekly Incident, as well as in other ideological contentions in current China, is that the advocation of liberty, democracy and rule of law remains a subject for debate even among most Chinese people, rather than being perceived as a consensus desire. Pan and Xu’s (2015) large-scale survey of 171,830 Chinese individuals shows that disbeliefs

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and concern for democracy persist, and that the CCP’s utilization of nationalism to legitimize authoritarian power is effective in influencing a considerable number of Chinese people. The spectrum of Chinese people’s ideological beliefs is far more complicated than a division between pro-Party and pro-democracy. Understanding ideologies in China requires drawing on concepts of statism and nationalism in the context of China’s remarkable economic development during the past decades, as well as considering people’s vast interests in relation to the Party. The concepts of statism and nationalism, internalized by Chinese people in different forms, are closely forged by party policies and ideological guidance over the years. The Party’s management of ideology is a long-term project through comprehensive engineering in almost all sectors of Chinese society, most effectively in propaganda and education. After decades of education across generations, the faith of the Party has ensured obedience to authorities. I have in earlier chapters mentioned that Deng Xiaoping’s Reform and Opening-up policy in the late 1970s brought overnight fortune to some people whilst leaving others behind, causing some people’s disillusion with the Party who have claimed to be the vanguard of the working class and serve people. The remarkable inequality of development between east coastal areas and inland areas in China also cast suspicion on the CCP’s endorsed socialist values. This resulted in the widely perceived nation-state crisis among Chinese leaders and citizens. Personal and collective disillusion with the Party led some people to re-embrace socialism, re-adopt class discourse and reject capitalism (Zhao, 2001). Reacting to both international diplomatic challenges (particularly from the United States) and the perceived domestic crisis in the 1990s, Chinese thinkers reinvented China’s nationalism. Nationalism in China articulates statism. Chinese leaders emphasize that an overriding aim of China’s economic reform was to strengthen the state. Despite the division between reformists who prioritize economic development and leaders who highlight the vital role of democracy in China’s development, the consensus can be found in their belief in statism. Deng Xiaoping’s modernization programme values Western democratic principles to a certain extent. Deng noted the importance for intellectuals and students to engage in political activities and promote healthy democracy. But once the state loses control of political participation, leaders become intolerant. This, as Zheng (1999) argues, was arguably one major reason for Deng and the regime to crackdown on the 1989 student movement.

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As Yuezhi Zhao (2001) sees it, the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) left Chinese elites with a sense of national trauma and a deep ‘aversion to popular participation’ (Zhao, 2001, p. 26). The post-Mao search for democracy through the 1978–1979 Democracy Wall movement and the 1989 student movement, in which the mixture of socialist democratic ideas and liberal ideas was presented, also suffered from fierce suppression, which has profoundly affected some liberal democrats who now ‘endorse political apathy and reject popular political participation’ (Zhao, 2001, p. 35). The initiation of economic reforms that soon followed in the 1980s and the deepening of market reforms in the 1990s successfully won the hearts of Chinese intellectuals and the booming middle class, leading to many intellectuals’ embrace of political conservatism (Zhao, 2001). Following the collapse of the former Soviet Union and communist rule in Eastern Europe, which triggered a warning about the danger of domestic disintegration of China, nationalism became an even more popular discourse among Chinese intellectuals. With China becoming more confident in the international environment, Chinese intellectuals also found that Western models were not perfect and the West has an anti-China bias (Zheng, 1999). Jessica Chen Weiss’s (2019) study of Chinese public opinion on foreign policy shows that the attitude of many Chinese netizens and elites is generally hawkish, endorsing greater reliance on military strength and greater spending on national defence. The so-called new nationalism appeared in this context. As opposed to the old nationalism which pursued Communism and Maoism, the new nationalists are also reformists. They emphasize the need to modernize China, in a way that is distinctive from Western modernization. For the new nationalists, Westernizationoriented modernization in 1980s China has resulted in the decline of national identity and traditional Chinese values. The ‘Chineseness’ based on Confucian values needs to be established as the core value in China’s modernization in order to resist Western influences (Zheng, 1999, p. 47). The branch of the socalled New Left criticized any Chinese policies that are influenced by Western institutionalism. For the New Leftists, the Party should safeguard China’s national interests at any expense and should not let political reforms get in the way of the ‘Chinese-ization’ of economic reforms. Instead of pursuing freedom, citizen rights and other Western values, the New Leftists believe that Maoism can be the core for China’s democratization because Mao Zedong had led China to practise a particular type of deliberative democracy through the culturalist approach (Reilly, 2011). At the same time, there is also an increasing number of radical reformists who disagree with the overemphasis of Chineseness; they

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believe in the importance of China becoming more cosmopolitan and appealing to the universal value system from the West (Zheng, 1999). It is hard to accurately locate Chinese journalists, the middle-class readers of Southern Media, activists and others who were involved in the Southern Weekly Incident in this complex ideological spectrum. Chinese citizens’ discourse on ideologies often mixes certain aspects of nationalism, statism, and liberal and democratic values. This is related to Chinese state’s deliberate promotion of certain aspects of China’s nationalism but not others among the Chinese public. On the one hand, the Chinese leadership utilizes nationalism as a new ideology to fill the ideological vacuum created by the decline of faith in Marxism and Maoism. On the other hand, the Chinese state needs to retain popular nationalism which emphasizes that the people themselves are the bearers of sovereignty (Reilly, 2011). Popular nationalism may stir public debates, destabilize Chinese society, and potentially obstruct the Party’s policies of deepening domestic reform and promoting China’s globalization (Zheng, 1999; Reilly, 2011). As a consequence, the Chinese state promotes the distinctive and ambiguous narrative of China’s nationalism, which is forceful in emphasizing statism and patriotism, but ambiguous around issues of democracy, freedom, liberalism and citizen rights. The ambiguity of democratic values has been sophisticatedly maintained by the CCP in particular events and contentions. This is also revealed by the Southern Weekly Incident. As a senior editor of Southern Weekly commented on the result of the Southern Weekly Incident, It is very unclear looking at the result. In this Party system, all things that are related to ideologies and political power will all end up being ambiguous. For the Party system, maintaining stability with ambiguity is the best ruling situation. But for a newspaper which pursues professionalism, surviving within this ambiguity in many cases is terrible, but not the worst. The worst is that they dismiss the whole team and close the newspaper. It is very important for a newspaper like Southern Weekly to survive in this system.20

Yuezhi Zhao (2001) argues that the concept of democracy in China is elusive. The connotation of minzhu (Chinese for democracy) is multifaceted, adopting meanings from ‘populist and Marxist participatory concepts’ (Zhao, 2001, p. 22). The CCP has articulated minzhu together with minben (meaning focusing on people’s livelihood). This approach ‘excludes participation and denotes nothing more than a passive people and a benign ruler’ (Zhao, 2001, p. 22). As a result,

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democratic ideas pursued by some Chinese citizens are themselves obscure (Zhao, 2001). A liberal notion of democracy is only held ‘among some idealistic and probably more farsighted elite reformers as a way to secure Chinese capitalism against threats from within (official corruption) and from below (worker and peasant revolts)’, Zhao (2001, p. 23) claims. As I have elaborated in the section about the institutional culture of Chinese media, the overriding role of the CCP in regulating Chinese institutions has ensured a close correlation of personal vast interests with the Party state. The calculation of personal vast interests in relation to the Party system complicates people’s ideological choice. Chinese scholar Xiaokai Xiang (2012) articulates a two-dimensional framework that divides the Chinese population into various political factions; the Party-system relational dimension is concerned with people’s beneficial relations with the Party and the progressive-conservative dimension with the degrees of people’s belief in liberalism. According to Xiang’s (2012) framework, people who rely more on the Party-system for their personal gains are more likely to support the current Party system and oppose fundamental reform, and others who rely little on the system endorse reform and advocate a limit on official powers. However, the progressive-conservative dimension further expands the spectrum. For example, people who have the reformist attitude may strongly rely on the Party-system for personal benefits and they may become ‘liberals within the system’ or endorse the so-called democratic socialism. They often draw upon Marxism and advocate reform that does not undermine the current institutional interests. People who have relatively weak Party ties and are themselves conservative may endorse the socalled Confucius constitutionalism. People who were extremely conservative and also have strong ties with the Party may become so-called Maoist Leftists. Extreme Party supporters may endorse state power above human rights, rather than socialism and communism which at first appears to be advocated by them. There are also an increasing number of technocrats who promote and manipulate the development of democracy and rule of law to support party policies. The progressive faction is divided into the market liberalist group and the political progressive group. The market liberal reformists advocate economic liberality and the reform of markets, while avoiding discussion of the legitimacy of the current system. The political progressive groups focus on the legitimacy of the system and advocate democratic constitutionalism. Among these progressives, there is the modest reformist group who recognize the legitimacy of the current system and maintain vigilance of the potential social risks brought

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about by the radical reform, while there are also the radicals who deny the legitimacy of the current system and advocate democracy and constitutionalism as the legitimate foundation of regime (Xiang, 2012). The complex ideological spectrum in contemporary China, though not explicitly disclosed by most people, is more than ever demonstrated in digital networks. The complicated ideologies and elusive concept of democracy in Chinese society mean that the presentation of political stances is often blurred, which ironically allows individual vague stances to widely exist in the network of connective action. Digital networks facilitate the inclusion of various political opinions through people’s personalization of participation in a contentious event, as I have discussed. Chinese historian Qin Hui lamented in his book that current China lacks a ‘common base line of ideologies’ (2013, p. 4). Surely, some observers claim that the non-consistency or even conflicts between individuals with different ideologies ultimately hinder the realization of collective radical action in the Southern Weekly Incident. My research does not accept the approach of focusing on ‘radical action’, but recognizes potential limitation of collectivity in contemporary China and argues for the focus on individuality in resistance. This chapter has foregrounded the context of the Southern Weekly Incident and explored topics transcending the Southern Weekly Incident. Specifically, I hope the discussions about media institutional culture, self-restriction and the vague political stances adopted by journalists based on their sophisticated approach to living in current China, help reflect the profound institutional culture existing in other sectors in Chinese society. From this wider perspective, the Southern Weekly Incident is one historical incident which, in some respects, mirrors many other incidents forged by the political and commercial conditions in China. Journalists from Southern Weekly and other media institutions, citizens and activists involved in the Southern Weekly Incident are part of the wider Chinese society with varied ideologies and personal political calculations. Whilst Chapter 5 analysed the experiences of embodiment that promote the connective logic of Chinese people’s contention on digital networks, this chapter highlights the limitations of contentions systematically existing within Chinese society. The Southern Weekly Incident demonstrates a point in history where individuals resisted political suppression. Certainly, the Southern Weekly Incident did not remove Chinese censorship. However, the nuanced account I provided of the Southern Weekly Incident depicts the shape of one single block of the public sphere in formation. I will address the political and cultural implications of the public sphere in formation in the final chapter of this book.

7

Resistance in Digital China and an Elite-Led, Emotional Chinese Public Sphere: Conclusion and Discussion

The analysis of the Southern Weekly Incident that I presented in Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 explores the political and cultural meanings of resistance in current China, where digital networks have become the prominent passages for communication and social activities. I have demonstrated that a form of civic connectivity was promoted by people’s collective online contestation during the Southern Weekly Incident, in which people personalized their political views and individually associated their emotions and memory with the issue at stake. This process enabled embodiment. In the case of journalists, embodiment allowed them to surface memories of frustration and bring them to the front of the struggle with censorship. In the case of the newspaper’s supporters, embodiment allowed them to connect journalists’ suffering with their own and experience a sense of collective resistance. In the case of activists, embodiment expressed a deep grief engrained in their life histories, which incited their determination to transform (or even undermine) the current regime. Individuals’ experience of embodiment addressed their quests for identities and more meaning in their lives. From initial mobilization, to division between groups, to finally the dissolution of discussion about the Southern Weekly Incident, journalists, their reader supporters, activists and other people involved were collective in their political pursuit for civic connectivity and their cultural quest for identity. But this collectivity was challenged by the disjointed approaches to the topic by different groups and the diverse perceptions of so-called political maturity, which was to a great extent depending on the institutional framework in which each resided and their personal assessment of political risks. Collectivity was also interrupted by people’s unreconcilable ideological beliefs, which had to be understood in relation to the macro management of ideology by the Party state.

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Resistance in digital China is not simply a one-dimensional reaction to authoritarian suppression of society but involving multifaceted mechanisms that at the current stage allow the state and society to negotiate and maintain a cohabiting and co-evolving relationship. So, what is the significance of resistance in current China in respect to changing politics in China? I explained in Chapter 2 that the sociological dimension of meaning of resistance is concerned with Chinese people’s construction of a public sphere. The construction of the public sphere in China is a dynamic process of political sociality that assumes various features which distinctively define a Chinese public sphere at the current time. The rest of this final chapter considers how elements of emotions, embodiment, diverse ideologies and perceptions are accommodated in the construction of the Chinese public sphere and discusses a number of features construing a Chinese public sphere. Specifically, I argue that the Chinese public sphere is elite-led, but it engages real – albeit circumscribed – mass participation, and the content is highly emotional rather than rational. The construction of the Chinese public sphere is often driven by elitist online contention, contributed by an urban and middle-class population. Journalists, academics, lawyers and urban and middle-class citizens (who are mainly university graduates) currently form the majority of the population who creatively and courageously promote public discourse in contentious events. Full accessibility of the whole population for public deliberation in the idealist model of the public sphere is out of reach in current China. However, the digital divide (Norris, 2001) in current China is not so much a divide between the rich and the poor population, given that internet access in China has become relatively low cost for the majority of the Chinese population and that rural internet population has dramatically expanded in the last few years.1 Instead, there is a divide between an urban, better-educated population who are more aware and capable in participating in discussions about social issues, and the rural not as well-educated population who show less care for non-material life. The elitist constituency of online activism practitioners was already identified in early case studies of the internet in China. For example, Yu (2006) argues that individuals who are capable of using the internet for political contestation form ‘a tiny fraction of China’s total population’ and that the ‘minoritized community’ on the internet in China is effectively ‘micro-public spheres’ (Yu, 2006, p. 309). There is a concern that these middle-class urban citizens come from privileged class and education background and do not represent rural and less-educated groups. Critics have also paid much attention to further fragmentation of Chinese

Conclusion

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society created by elitist discourse (Leibold, 2011). At the time of publication, elitist discourse is still predominantly the feature of Chinese online contestation. Nevertheless, this study argues that elitist discourse in digital China is potent in initiating the construction of the Chinese public sphere. The micro elitist spheres are vital in exercising citizenship. They bring critical issues relating to, for instance, urban habitat and food safety, to the centre of public life (Yang and Calhoun, 2007; Sima, 2011). They promote exposure to various information sources. They demonstrate possible forms of public engagement and new dynamics of grassroot politics in China. More importantly, they explore forms of negotiation with the state within the limit, forcing the officials to face public pressure and at times increase their tolerance a little more. More inspiring is that elite intellectuals even have the capacity to sometimes mobilize people from all class groups in establishing counter-hegemony (Tong and Lei, 2013), though it should be acknowledged that high-profile figures in China, who, for example, have a significant number of followers, are monitored by the authorities more closely (Fu et al., 2013). The elite’s significant contribution to the construction of the Chinese public sphere should not simply be quantified. New patterns of how people come together to work as groups (Shirky, 2009) adopted by elitist discourse on the internet in China show the potential of transforming Chinese society, although not always in the political domain in the first instance. Despite being elite-led, it is hard to dismiss the momentum and dynamics of mass participation represented by a large Chinese population in certain contentious events. Although mass participation in these events may be, to a large extent, circumscribed, it represents real transformation of Chinese people’s public life. Another key feature of the current formation of the Chinese public sphere is related to the emotive dimension of public discourse. I have demonstrated, in the 2013 Southern Weekly Incident, that emotions of outrage, shame, sympathy and so forth directed at issues relating to censorship expressed cautiously and sophisticatedly by individuals who have personalized their views and selfcensored their online expressions. Indeed, the presentation of current public discourse is often emotional, drawing on an emotively engaged public. I have articulated that Chinese people seek meanings from emotional expression and experience of embodiment. Sentimental expressions online enable embodiment, in which Chinese citizens associate the issues at stake with their personal experiences. Jingrong Tong (2015) claims that ‘emotional expressions and conflicting sentiments, rather than rational deliberative discussions, characterize China’s Internet communication’ (p. 337). Indeed, individual emotions, which

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were rarely exposed publicly in post-Mao China in the pre-digital era, now are regularly made visible through digital networks. Tong argues that expressing emotions in China should be understood as ‘a practice of citizenship and a nurturing of the consciousness of resistance’ (p. 340). The sentimental dimension of the internet in China may have appeared to be a violation of the rational reasoning identified by Habermas in his idealist public sphere. However, an emotional public sphere may be highly valuable in China. In fact, the rational consensus required by the public sphere has been contested. Chantal Mouffe (1999, 2005) points out that the political is emotional and antagonistic and that agonistic confrontation is the ‘very condition of existence’ of politics (Mouffe, 1999, p. 756). Mouffe rejects the Habermasian theory of a rational public in deliberate democracy and claims that the existence of a rational consensus in the public sphere is a fantasy. Mouffe’s articulation of passion and hegemony of politics focus on a form of democratic politics that is partisan and that often provokes collective identities within different political groups. She claims that passions should be recognized as the core democratic design whereby collective identities of different groups can be accommodated rather than compromised for the so-called common good. My focus on the Chinese public sphere is not contextually comparable. Nevertheless, the dimension of antagonism and passion brought to the forefront by Mouffe is an ineradicable characteristic of the human coexistence within societies, which I would like to also emphasize in understanding the formation of the Chinese public sphere. The public discourse based on highly emotional expressions rather than rational debates may often appear chaotic. Certainly, the chaotic presentation is more deeply related to the irreconcilable ideological beliefs and perceptions that I have discussed. I would argue that the chaotic representation of Chinese society is itself meaningful, precisely because the development of a Chinese civic culture requires representation of China’s complex ideological orientations that were not as visible before. It is enabled by the framework of digital personalization of political views that allows non-consistent appeals to be made individually, based on individuals’ personal exercise of risk assessment. Mouffe (1999, 2005) argues that representation of agonistic pluralism is essential for the public sphere and that it is important to legitimately ensure the publicity of political conflicts. Although isolation and niche grouping on the internet in China are true to a certain extent (Leibold, 2011), it comes second when considering the novelty of various ideologies being visualized to the public.

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As pointed out by Mouffe (2005), it is problematic to emphasize rationalist thoughts that will eventually constitute a harmonious and non-conflicting ensemble. Not to repeat what I have elaborated on the diverse ideologies of Chinese people, I would just point out that both the representation of Chinese intellectuals’ ‘within the Party’ approach and the representation of dissidents’ ‘undermining the regime’ approach in a single event contribute towards the mobilization of Chinese society for participating in contention. Intellectuals bring wide social networks together to face critical issues, and activists’ passion for activism echoes the relatively low volume of the intellectuals’ modest approach, enhancing the momentum of critical discourse. The apparently chaotic representation of antagonistic views has a significant meaning in the current formation of the Chinese public sphere. In summary, the current formation of the Chinese public sphere features elitism, emotionality and agonism. These characteristics are part of the developing culture of resistance in digital China, shaping a particular form of the Chinese public sphere. The formation of the Chinese public sphere is itself an ongoing social movement that is continuously promoted by events, in the sense that events set agendas for discussion and trigger mass mobilization, as well as providing a framework of time and space for exercising contestation. Networks formed during an event could also become effective in another event. The in-depth study of the Southern Weekly Incident demonstrates one such event, highlighting effective mobilization through embodiment, constraints from political circumstances and individual self-restriction during contention. The construction of a Chinese public sphere experiences both progression and regression within a single event, and hence the concept of the public sphere in China being both invoked and rejected at the same time. The current construction of the Chinese public sphere is elite-led, but it engages real – albeit circumscribed – mass participation, and the content is highly emotional rather than rational. Certainly, the dynamics of power relations between the state, society and the civil culture are continuously in the process of forming, negotiating, struggling, changing and becoming, which indicates potential new features of the Chinese public sphere. With the idea of continual observation of the formation of the public sphere in China, I should briefly note the tightened political control since 2013 under Xi Jinping’s leadership. Compare the Southern Weekly Incident with other events that took place afterwards under Xi Jinping’s leadership: the Southern Weekly Incident was given a relatively generous space for contestation. Although Weibo was censored

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relentlessly during the incident, I discussed in a previous section that Weibo may have deliberately allowed relevant information to continue. Xi Jinping’s leadership (2012 to present) has significantly tightened control over popular contention and civil action, particularly through an all-encompassing approach to regulating the internet. In February 2014, the central government established the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, a central organization specializing in ensuring the security of information and the internet, with Xi himself as the leader. ‘Civil society’ and ‘universal values’ became prohibited political words. Xi’s government has introduced new policies and taken new measures to obtain a firmer grip on information control both in traditional media and in the internet. The year 2013 witnessed a series of crackdowns and high-profile arrests of online activists on Weibo. In September 2013, China’s Supreme Court announced that any online rumour viewed more than 5,000 times or reposted more than 500 times can result in a jail sentence of up to three years for its original author if proved ‘untrue’, with a special exemption for state-owned news outlets (Malcolm, 2013). In this way, the government unveiled tough measures to stop the spread of what they regard as irresponsible rumours (Reuters, 2013). Arguably, WeChat during the Southern Weekly Incident provided a relatively safe space for private discussion. The regulation of WeChat at the time demonstrates the lag between its popular application and the state’s control of it. However, WeChat has replaced Weibo to become the predominant social media for Chinese people since then, and control of WeChat has been significantly tightened since 2014, most effectively through arresting people and prompt censoring of ‘public accounts’. The authorities had arrested people spreading petition letters in private group discussions on WeChat, which had led many group administrators to disband the groups or strengthen self-control and selfcensoring (SCMP, 2017b). Research has shown that WeChat ‘public accounts’ since 2014 have seen strict censorship on rumours, speculation; and political commentary was also being censored. Under the name of cracking down on rumours and falsehoods, even harmless posts that contained sensationalist content would be censored (Ng, 2015). New media, particularly those established by popular internet giants – including Sina, NetEase, Sohu, Tencent, Phoenix and so forth – had through years of strategic practice brought numerous controversies to light. Their journalistic and editorial teams carried out investigations and reported on popular news topics such as air pollution, the milk safety scandal, police brutality and local officials’ corruption. They were crucial in initiating popular critical discourse on

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the internet in China. In fact, since 2005, ‘The Provisions on the Administration of Internet News Information Services’ had already stipulated that commercial websites may reprint news from official traditional media, with sources clearly denoted and content not distorted, but may not produce original news reports. But as is often the case in many grey areas of Chinese state authority, this regulation has not been strictly enforced. In the summer of 2016, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), China’s highest-level censor, announced a crackdown on online news reporting, targeting China’s most popular internet giants. This reinforcement of ‘The Provisions on the Administration of Internet News Information Services’ shows the determination of the current regime for all-encompassing internet control (Chen, 2016). New internet policies initiated by Chinese authorities under Xi’s leadership will certainly shape the formation of the Chinese public sphere in new orientations that should be further explored in new studies. As this book demonstrates, negotiation between the state and society is not stopped by censorship. Contention taking place in the peculiar political environment of China contains meanings of cultural and political dimensions. Chinese people’s desire for civic connectivity and their quest for identity through embodiment experiences arguably will not be halted by tightened control, but the form of practice of resistance may evolve. This study thus calls for further exploration of the construction of a unique Chinese public sphere through examining later events. The ongoing ‘anti-rumour campaign’ that is sweeping Chinese social media, ironically, resonates with the international drive to tackle online misinformation and post-truth news. This is arguably helpful for the Chinese authorities in validating their heavy-handed approach to controlling so-called rumours. In the 2018 annual World Internet Conference taking place in the south China town of Wuzhen, Chinese authorities spoke of the ultimate right for national governments to regulate the internet in their own countries and collective governance among countries worldwide. Indeed, concerns have been raised regarding the efficient international spread of the ‘China Model of Internet Control’. Research has shown that China has made determined efforts to export to other countries its vision of online control and pervasive surveillance, including huge sales of telecom infrastructure, AI surveillance tools, and provision of new media or information management training to officials (‘Freedom on the Net 2018’, 2018). In this context, this book argues that the study of the internet in China and resistance in digital China provides a particular prism, where the complex power relations

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between politics, market, technology and civil society allow valuable exploration of what may also be true of the internet in other countries. This book presents a nuanced account of a contentious event to explore political, cultural and sociological meanings of resistance in digital China. This in-depth account responds to concerns about the political economy of the internet in China, particularly that the internet has effectively assisted the CCP for propaganda and repressing political contention. In the global context, political economists also argue for communicative capitalism that entrapped online activities into a framework that strengthens the status quo (Dean, 2003, 2005, 2010); speed elitism that criticizes the elitist narratives of transcendence, connection and progress promoted by technological acceleration, which ultimately consolidates dominant discourses of neoliberalism (Hoofd, 2009, 2012); and that digital networks reproduce inequalities of class, gender and race; and this inherent inequality for online political participation hinders genuine digital citizenship (Papacharissi, 2010). In this book, I show that empirical examination is needed for testing theories of political economy. I provide an example of such an examination that considers the co-habiting and co-evolving relationship between the Chinese state and society and the complex relational web between powers of politics, the market economy and civil society. The Southern Weekly Incident demonstrates counter forces that arguments of communicative capitalism and digital divide cannot deny. This book contributes to the non-Western perspective in understanding neoliberalism and the political economy of the internet. Research on digital culture in any society is ultimately about the meanings people attribute to their digital mediated activities. The Chinese divided self and individuals’ quest for the cultural identity that I articulate in this book should be considered as partially an expression of global modernity. Giddens (1991) argues that in ‘late modernity’, the building of self-identity is a reflexive project foregrounding dispositions of individuals in the globalizing world, which constantly poses to individuals the disjunction between the local and the global. The cultural quest for a more meaningful life is a universal topic that this study attempts to understand.

Appendix A: List of Interviewees

Number

Title

Pseudonym or Interview time and location name known as

SMS1

Southern Media Senior Manager

Jiang Yiping

SMS2

Southern Media Senior Manager

December 2013, Guangzhou

SMS3

Southern Media Senior Manager

January 2014, Guangzhou

SMD1

Southern Metropolis Daily Commentator

December 2013, Guangzhou

SMD2

Southern Metropolis Daily Commentator

January 2014, Guangzhou

SW1

Southern Weekly Journalist

SW2

Southern Weekly Journalist

SW3

Southern Weekly Senior Editor

SW4

Southern Weekly Journalist

January 2014, Beijing

SW5

Southern Weekly Senior Editor

December 2013, Guangzhou

SW6

Southern Weekly Senior Editor

January 2014, Guangzhou

SW7

Southern Weekly Editor

December 2013, Guangzhou

SW8

Southern Weekly Editor

January 2014, Beijing

SW9

Southern Weekly Editor

January 2014, Guangzhou

SPW1

Southern People Weekly Journalist

December 2013, Shanghai

Lu

December 2013, Guangzhou

December 2013, Shanghai January 2014, Beijing

Jian

December 2013, Guangzhou

Appendix

168 Number

Title

Pseudonym or Interview time and location name known as

SPW2

Southern People Weekly Journalist

January 2014, Guangzhou

SPW3

Southern People Weekly Journalist

January 2014, Guangzhou

SPW4

Southern People Weekly Journalist

December 2013, Shanghai

SPW5

Southern People Weekly Senior Editor

SPW6

Southern People Weekly Editor

SPW7

Southern People Weekly Senior Editor

Li Jian

December 2013, Guangzhou

SPW8

Southern People Weekly Senior Editor

Mu Tian

December 2013, Guangzhou

SPW9

Southern People Weekly Journalist

Yuan

December 2013, Shanghai

SPW10

Southern People Weekly Journalist

January 2014, Beijing

SPW11

Southern People Weekly Journalist

June 2014, Guangzhou

FJ1

Former Journalist

January 2014, Beijing

FJ2

Former Journalist

January 2014, Beijing

FSW1

Former Southern Weekly Employee

January 2014, Beijing

FSW2

Former Southern Weekly Employee

January 2014, Beijing

FSW3

Former Southern Weekly Employee

December 2013, Shanghai

FSW4

Former Southern Weekly Employee

January 2014, Beijing

BN

Beijing News Journalst

January 2014, Beijing

R1

Southern Media Reader

Xiang

December 2013, Guangzhou

R2

Southern Media Reader

Kai

June 2014, Guangzhou

R3

Southern Media Reader

Hui

June 2014, Guangzhou

Pin

December 2013, Guangzhou December 2013, Guangzhou

Appendix

169

Number

Title

Pseudonym or Interview time and location name known as

R4

Southern Media Reader

Wei

R5

Southern Media Reader

R6

Southern Media Reader

R7

Southern Media Reader

AV1

Activist

Yedu

June 2014, Guangzhou

AV2

Activist

Ye Yin

June 2014, Guangzhou

AV3

Activist

Sui Muqing

June 2014, Guangzhou

AV4

Activist

June 2014, Guangzhou

AV5

Activist

June 2014, Guangzhou

AV6

Activist

June 2014, Guangzhou

January 2014, Guangzhou January 2014, Guangzhou

Yan

January 2014, Guangzhou January 2014, Guangzhou

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Index activism 15, 25, 42, 163 online 7, 34, 55, 160 activist community 24, 66–7 activist identity 89, 127, 132, 135 same-city dinner gathering (Tong Cheng Fan Zui) 67, 126, 132 Southern Street Movement 66–7 Central Propaganda Department (CPD) 18, 48 Chinese journalists critical reporting 14–16, 72 different positions within institution 143–5 journalist identity 110 journalistic idealism 110, 135, 146–8 journalistic professionalism (xinwen zhuanye zhuyi) 14–15, 21, 23, 147–8 performance-based contract 142 remote supervision (yidi jiandu) 17 touch the ceiling 146 see also Hassid, Jonathan Chinese nationalism 25, 38, 154–6 April Media 98 New Leftists 97–8, 155 new nationalism 38, 155 popular nationalism 156 Utopia 98 Chinese public sphere 3, 5, 45–7, 57 Chinese civic culture 162 construction of 3, 5, 43–57, 160–6 elite-led 160–1 emotional 5, 161–3 in formation 158, 163 mass participation 3, 5, 161 circumventing internet censorship creative and artful 7–8 post relay 23, 103, 117 proxy services 7, 73–4, 102, 126 civic connectivity 5, 30, 34 in the Southern Weekly Incident 105–39, 159 clicktivism 55

collapse of the former Soviet Union 51, 155 collective action 6–7, 25, 29–43, 56, 158 CCP policy on 6, 32, 50 (see also Xi Jinping’s policies) communicative capitalism 54–5 fantasy of abundance 54 technological fetish 54–5 consultative Leninism 51–2 control parables 24 see also amplifying silence under media censorship cultural crisis 35 see also cultural under identity Cultural Revolution 35, 155 Dean, Jodi see communicative capitalism Deng Xiaoping 11, 65, 130, 154 economic reform 11, 35, 154–5 Reform and Opening-up policy (see economic reform) digital divide 46, 160 digital media 21, 148–9 divided self 37 see also cultural under identity e-commerce and entertainment 53–4 Eighteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China 67, 72–3 Eighteenth National Congress see Eighteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China elusive democracy 153, 156–7 embodiment (Kevin McDonald) 3, 5, 35, 41–2, 105, 152 activists in the Southern Weekly Incident 127–34, 135 citizens in the Southern Weekly Incident 116–27, 135 journalists in the Southern Weekly Incident 110–16, 135 online 42, 105

Index emotions 32, 34, 37–9, 41–2, 105 on the internet in China 7, 10, 56, 161–2 2003 Sun Zhigang case 56 2008 milk scandal 56 2011 Wenzhou high-speed train incident 56 2015 case ‘My Father Is Li Gang’ 56 2017 Beijing clamp-down on illegal migrants 56 Guangdong 17–19, 65–8 Guangzhou, provincial capital city 43, 63–7 media environment 17–19, 33–4 Guangdong Propaganda Department 20–1, 60, 66, 75 see also Tuo Zhen Habermas, Jürgen see idealist under public sphere Hassid, Jonathan 13–16, 23 advocate journalists and pushback 14–16 American-style journalists 14 Communist professionals 13 workaday journalists 13–14 identity citizenship 38, 41 cultural identity 35–8, 41, 154 professional 38, 41 ideologies 12, 24–5, 38, 151–8, 162–3 In-depth interviews 62–5 anonymity and confidentiality 64–5 individuality 39–41 internet censorship 7, 47–51, 81, 86, 137 anti-rumour campaign 165 (see also Xi Jinping’s policies) China (MIIT) 47 Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) 165 Golden Shield 47–8 Great Firewall 47–8 Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People’s Republic push-and-control strategy 22–3, 47 real name registration system 49 selective control 50 sensitive vocabulary 48, 50

199 State Council Information Office (SCIO) 48 in Xinjiang unrest 48, 50–1

late modernity 166 licensing policies on the media 11–12 Liu Xiaobo 131 logic of connective action (Segerberg and Bennett) 10, 30–1 logic of connectivity 10–11, 30, 35, 158 McAdam, Doug see political opportunities meanings of resistance 4–5 cultural 3, 5, 34–43 political 2, 4–5, 29–34 sociological 3, 5, 43–57 (see also construction of under Chinese public sphere) media censorship 12–13 amplifying silence 145 circumventing 72, 142–51 (see also Chinese journalists) editor responsibility system 13, 143 General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) (Xinwen chuban zongshu) 12 institutions managed as enterprises (shiye danwei qiyehua guanli) 11, 141–2 media commercialization 11–13 media institutional hierarchy 13, 141–3 see also institutions managed as enterprises and editor responsibility system under media censorship mediation and remediation 57 Melucci, Alberto cultural codes 40 latent network 30, 40–1 new social movements 40 playing self 39–40 memory and past experience 35, 105, 139, 150, 152, 159 activists in the Southern Weekly Incident 135 citizens in the Southern Weekly Incident 116–27 journalists in the Southern Weekly Incident 109, 113, 117, 135, 150

200

Index

mobilization 31–43 Mouffe, Chantal see antagonism under public sphere neoliberalism 35–6, 47, 51, 166 newspaper conglomeration 13 1989 student movement 51, 122, 130, 131, 152, 154, 155 Party newspapers 12–13 patriotism (aiguo zhuyi) 38, 52 political contention 1, 39, 163 political effects of 55–6 risks of 6, 32, 34, 91–2, 105, 115 ( see also CCP policy on under collective action) political correctness see political maturity political economy of the internet 3, 51–7, 166 political maturity 144–5, 147, 151, 159 political opportunities 31 in China 31–2, 106 political process theory 30, 32 Pu Zhiqiang 50 public opinion CCP control of 12, 13, 52 channelling of 52 Control 2.0 52 Fifty-Cent Army 52, 97–8 guidance of 52 see also ideologies public professionals 11, 14, 16 public sphere antagonism 162 global 102 idealist 43–5 resistance 5–11 everyday resistance 8, 148–9 at the local level 8–9, 32 (see also rightful resistance) rightful resistance 8–9 within the system (ti zhi nei) 2, 11–16, 24, 144–5 Scott, James see everyday resistance under resistance self-restriction 24, 34

and self-censoring 37 Sina Weibo (Weibo) 3, 22–3, 49–50, 164 see also post relay under circumventing internet censorship slacktivism 55 socialism with Chinese characteristics see socialist market economy socialist market economy 51–2 Southern Media Group (Nanfang Media Group) 2, 17, 19, 66, 70, 92, 94–5, 100 institutional hierarchy 100, 142–3 South Daily (Nanfang Ribao) 17 Southern Faction (Nanfang Xi) 21 Southern Metropolis Daily (Nanfang Dushibao) 19, 70, 109 Southern People Weekly (Nanfang Renwu Zhoukan) 72, 92, 111–13 Southern Weekly (Nanfang Zhoumo) 2, 16–21 control of 19–20, 82 critical reporting 16–20 editorial of New Year Greeting 2, 19, 69 Jiang Yiping 19, 20, 94–5, 145–6 liberalism 17–20 local protection 17–20 New Year Edition 2, 19, 69 pre-censoring 20–1, 72 reports on Beijing Olympics 19 reports on Sichuan Earthquake 19 Two South (liangnan) 19–20 Southern Weekly Incident activists 88–99, 125, 127–37 assessments of risks 92, 110, 118–25, 129–31, 136–7, 142–51 Beijing News 61, 87–8, 95, 115 Chen Guangcheng (see Global Times editorial) compromises 102, 104 division 88–102, 104, 135–9 (see also journalists outside Southern Weekly) emotions 21, 23, 103, 106–9, 114–27, 127–34, 134–9 foreign forces (see Global Times editorial) Global Times editorial 61, 85–8, 93–5, 115 Huang Can, Southern Weekly Chief Editor 60, 66, 70–1, 73–4, 76–8, 93, 113–14, 142 (see also seizing Southern Weekly’s Weibo account)

Index implications 141–58 investigative reports 61, 79 irritation 106–7, 117 journalists outside Southern Weekly 70–1, 79, 108–16 mistakes on New Year Edition 70 mobilization 23, 69–74, 102 modification of New Year Edition 60–71 moral shame 115–16, 144 motivations 135–9 (see also emotions) negotiation between the authorities and Southern Weekly staff 92–6, 104 New Year dinner 70–1 online rumours of modification 70 open letters 60, 71–2, 99–100, 106 outline of 2, 21–5, 59 overseas reports 73, 118 passive actors 106–8 political opportunities 32–4 post deletion 23, 25, 69–74, 102–3 (see also Sina’s dilemma) production of New Year Edition 73 protests 61, 88–99, 117–37 race against post deletion 23, 71, 80–8, 103 Sanshan villagers 98 seizing Southern Weekly’s Weibo account 74–9 self-restriction and self-censoring 101, 104, 117, 144–51 Sina’s dilemma 84–5 Southern Weekly Ethics Committee 60–79, 92–4 strike 61, 74 testimony 61, 64, 99–102 timeline of 60–1 timing of 33, 67, 72–3, 125 Twitter 73–4, 79, 89–90, 123 vague political stance 150–1 Wang Genghui, manager of Southern Weekly 71 WeChat 69, 74, 93–4, 96, 104, 144

201

Weibo accounts shut down 60, 71, 81–2 Wu Wei, Southern Weekly’s Weibo account manager 75–6 Wu Xiaofeng, Deputy Chief Editor 74–5, 78 Yang Jian, Party Secretary of Southern Media 93–4, 142 Zeng Li, content examiner (shenduyuan) 81–2 see also journalists in the Southern Weekly Incident, citizens in the Southern Weekly Incident, activists in the Southern Weekly Incident under embodiment and memory and past experience statism 25, 38, 154 Stockmann, Daniela 11–13, 52, 141, 142 structures of feeling 46 subjectivity 5, 37, 39–40, 101 surrounding and watching (weiguan) 4, 7, 103 Tilly, Charles see political process theory Tong, Jingrong 7, 10, 14, 39, 147, 161, 162 Touraine, Alain individualism of the subject 39 life project 39 Tuo Zhen, Guangdong propaganda chief 20, 32–3, 60, 66, 69–75 urban middle class 10, 18, 38–9, 46, 56, 63, 160 WeChat 3, 126, 164 witnessing 7, 43, 150 Xi Jinping’s policies 50, 64, 67–8, 164–5 Yang, Guobin 7–8, 43, 47, 50, 51, 56, 103 Zhao, Yuezhi 11, 12, 35, 46, 51, 154–7