As China's Communist Party prepares for its all-important 16th Congress this November, Ding Guangen, head of the party's propaganda department, has a thankless task: making sure China's increasingly freewheeling state news media are docile and on message.
To that end, the department sent out a thick memo to editors this summer detailing the dos and don'ts of this highly political season. There was to be no independent reporting on this year's leadership changes, of course. But then it went on, for pages.
Problems with rural tax reform, major industrial accidents and the fact that Chinese sometimes eat foreign breeds of dogs were labeled off limits, for example. Stories about grisly crimes like multiple stabbings were discouraged as "bad for social stability," as was talk of the growing divide here between rich and poor.
Although last year the Communist Party was trumpeting its decision to admit entrepreneurs, this year editors have been told not to publicize the fact that private business owners are party members, even serving as Congress delegates.
Not so long ago, China's propaganda czars and journalists were players in the same band. But as state subsidies have dropped sharply in the last 10 years, much of the Chinese media have found another master -- the market -- and have gained a new sense of professionalism. Now the relationship between the camps has turned dissonant if not, at times, downright hostile.
Dozens of aggressive small newspapers and magazines, as well as regional and satellite television stations, have emerged in the last decade. Many are inclined to hew more to readers' tastes than to the government's demands.
Although they are at least nominally state-owned, and dare not venture into critical reporting of the central government, for example, the more adventurous are nonetheless peppered with tales of financial scandals, sex, natural disasters, corruption, even lawsuits against the government.
"Some media take too much pleasure in the government's miseries," the propaganda department's memo complained.
It added: "The party Congress is fast approaching, so we need to prevent problems. For those newspapers that frequently have problems, we'll discuss whether to let them keep running."
The warning has dampened the press -- but not entirely. Within the last month, the China Economic Times reported on a bridge collapse in central China, concluding that government casualty numbers were faked.
China News Weekly examined sexual abuse of students by teachers, focusing on recent cases in Beijing. Workers Daily reported that nearly half of important government coal mines had dangerously high levels of gas and almost the same number had no safety monitoring.
Some major newspapers, like the People's Daily, fall directly under the Communist Party and meticulously toe its line, but few people confess to reading them. Many more newspapers are sponsored by a range of government offshoots, from the Communist Youth League to the Disabled Persons Federation. While none of the newspapers are privately owned or completely independent, many are managed with the primary goal of being profitable.
"These days, there are government papers and government papers," said Hu Shuli, the flamboyant American-trained editor of Caijing, far and away China's most daring business magazine, which since 1998 has criticized practices at China's state banks and published exposes of well-connected companies, including one involving a relative of Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平).
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