MCLC: Yu Hua on censorship pendulum

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: paul mooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: Yu Hua on censorship pendulum
*******************************************************

Source: NYT (2/4/14):
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/opinion/yu-hua-chinas-censorship-pendulum
.html?emc=edit_tnt_20140204&tntemail0=y&_r=0

China’s Censorship Pendulum
By Yu Hua

BEIJING — If you want to understand the current state of self-expression
in China, the best indicator must be the line, “Sorry, the text has been
deleted.”

Last year began as a relatively permissive period for expression of
opinion. Following the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party, in
November 2012, officials both in Beijing and in the provinces acknowledged
the need to heed criticisms coming from the people.

Such criticism was not to be found in the official media, of course, so
one had to go looking for it in the world of Weibo, the microblogging
site. But often you wouldn’t find the criticisms there either, because
Weibo was chock-full of the message, “Sorry, the text has been deleted.”

The contrast between official welcoming of criticism and actual resistance
to it is both contradictory and completely normal. For many party
officials, the more sharply they are criticized, the more embarrassingly
their lack of administrative acumen is exposed. So they only welcome
criticism (if at all) when delivered in private.

Material posted on Weibo has been deleted ever since the service began in
2009, but the more the service grew — it now claims more than 500 million
users — the more pervasive these deletions became. Censorship is initiated
in part by the government, but the managers of Weibo and other social
media sites do much of the deleting.

Why? It all has to do with profits. China’s Internet companies, unlike
other sectors, are mainly privately run. They don’t dare offend the
government: If the government suppresses them, the money they’ve raked in
so quickly will just as quickly be flushed away. So they take the lead in
deleting blunt criticisms, which has earned them the unflattering label of
“eunuchs responsible for their own castration.”

But these private companies also quietly allow critical voices on Weibo.
Even as posts are deleted and accounts are canceled, new ones spring up.
My own microblog often gets tips like this: So-and-so’s account has come
to a bad end, but now it’s been resurrected, so take a look at the
repackaged version.

People like to hear voices critical of the government, so the companies
can’t silence them entirely. Instead, they track the ever shifting line of
acceptable criticism. They know that government officials will put up with
some bland sniping, but see to it that the criticism falls within limits
that officials can tolerate. It’s a bit like a wolf saying to a flock of
sheep, “I’m going to let you bleat, on condition that you don’t bleat loud
enough to attract attention.”

But as voices criticizing the government become more and more numerous,
pointed and strident, our officials get hot under the collar.

Someone once asked me: “When will China ever have real freedom of speech?”
I responded optimistically: “When ‘Sorry, the text has been deleted’
disappears from the world of Weibo.”

But I was wrong: Events moved in precisely the opposite direction. Last
August, the government began a large-scale clampdown on Internet “rumors.”
More than 100,000 Weibo accounts were permanently shut.

Many of these accounts may indeed have peddled rumors, but many had also
served as platforms for widely read criticisms of the government.

By October, I found that the line “Sorry, the text has been deleted” had
nearly disappeared from Weibo. By then there were no real critical voices
to be heard — or if there were, they were simply criticisms too anodyne to
call for deletion.

For more than three years, I’d been disgusted with this refrain. But when
it finally went away, it wasn’t because freedom of expression had arrived,
but because even harsher controls had been imposed.

Then, in December, all of a sudden “Sorry, the text has been deleted”
reappeared on Weibo. It was just in isolated pockets, here and there, but
it came as a relief. I felt as if I could stick my head above water and
catch my breath. I even hoped this message would flood Weibo once again.

In the 30-odd years since China embarked on reforms, it has alternated
politically between repression and moderation. I’m quite inured to these
pendulum swings.

As part of the latest crackdown on corruption, officials will probably
again declare, “The party and the government must accept the people’s
supervision and criticism,” as they’ve said so many times since the
People’s Republic was founded in 1949. But I have a feeling that the more
they say this, the more “Sorry, the text has been deleted” will appear
online.

This reminds me of an old story from ancient times. A man was crossing a
river by boat when he accidentally dropped his sword into the water.

He made a mark on the side of the boat, indicating, “This is where I
dropped my sword.” When the boat got to the other bank, the man dived into
the spot in the river where the mark on the boat was. Of course, the sword
wasn’t there.

Our officials’ superficial attitude of welcoming criticism is like carving
a mark on the boat where the sword falls into the river, but then letting
the boat proceed to the opposite bank, where the sword can never be found:
a place that says, “Sorry, the text has been deleted.”

Yu Hua is the author of the novels “To Live,” “Chronicle of a Blood
Merchant” and “Brothers,” the essay collection “China in Ten Words,” the
story collection “Boy in the Twilight” and other books. This article was
translated by Allan H. Barr from the Chinese.