5
Crossing the Electronic Bridge

The people and the people's medium

Chinese mass communication researcher Wang Zhixing describes the official purpose of China's mass media this way:

The principle of open and reciprocal communication between government and the people has been advocated in China since the birth of the socialist nation. Hu Yaobang said as far back as 1956 that 'leading the masses to Communism ... requires constant back and forth communication between the masses and the party. The party must be flexible in its response to mass demands and adjust its policies according to mass needs' (Womack, 1986: 10). In theory, then, television is the people's medium — the most modern and efficient means for assuring dictatorship of the proletariat. The 'bridge' is much more than mass media hardware and software. It is a way of conceptualizing and putting into practice a relationship between government and the people in a context that explicitly relies on a mutual sense of purpose and consent.

Television in many ways seems well suited for these objectives. It certainly has become the face and voice of government. Television's reach is especially effective for communicating with those who live in the most remote and least desirable parts of China, regions where the people have never had much sense of national identity. Use of the simplified written Chinese characters as subtitles for news and other programs is meant, along with the spoken Mandarin, to help overcome regionalism kept in place in part by linguistic differences. In its role as the government's most sophisticated conveyor of information, television has also replaced the frequent small group meetings that traditionally were called to announce new government policies and discuss problems. Cadre sometimes use tele vision to communicate in work settings too. Near Xian, for instance, the managers of a high-achieving agricultural production unit subsidized workers' income for the specific purpose of buying television sets. The cadre claimed that they could not speak so eloquently as television for passing information along from the government to the workers. According to one of the managers, 'television is the best tool for thought education.'

In line with the proletarian vision of communication, the government should monitor the people's needs and interests, and these concerns should be reflected in programming of all types. Chinese broadcasters have developed special uses of television explicitly to function as an 'electronic bridge'.

Educational Programming: The Television University

One of the very first applications of television In China was a direct response to the people's demand for education. The Beijing Television College began over-the-air educational broadcasting in 1960, but the Cultural Revolution interrupted this aspect of media development. The current system — the Central Radio and Television University (often called the 'TVU') — began in 1979. Technical aspects of the TVU fall under the administrative umbrella of CCTV now, but programming is initiated by the Ministry of Education. Lectures are presented, usually during the daytime, on special television channels throughout China. The televised lectures are accompanied by local use of textbooks and meetings with teachers.

The Television University has become extremely popular, now enrolling about one million students, nearly twice as many as are enrolled in all of China's on-campus universities. TVU courses are designed to emphasize science and technology, with degree programs offered in electrical and mechanical engineering, physics, and mathematics. More recent offerings are in social science, economics, and other areas (McCormick, 1986), although the technical disciplines still dominate.

Work units often cooperate with the TVU by releasing certain workers to attend the televised lectures and participate in the related activities. The case of a 40-year-old woman in Shanghai is a good example of how this works. She is the financial manager for a clothing products company and is very hardworking and serious about learning. Her work unit recommended her for enrollment in the TVU. She attends TVU lectures and takes part in a study plan that will eventually qualify her for an accounting license, potentially increasing the quality of her contribution to the workplace. The work unit pays all costs associated with her taking the course. The woman was preparing for a midterm examination when we interviewed her. She claims that it is more difficult to pass the Television University course than regular university courses in her field because the central government makes up extremely challenging examinations. Accord ing to her, only about half the students enrolled in her specialty are able to pass the television course.

The Television University system reaches urban dwellers more than rural residents because of the higher literacy in the cities and the comparatively easy access to television, though this difference has lessened with satellite coverage. Despite advances in telecommunications, however, numerous difficulties beset the TVU. McCormick (1986) identifies four major problems that were also raised by our narrators: the perceived negative impact on workplace production caused by the release of workers to study; lack of sufficient local facilities and funds to support over-the-air transmission, especially in the rural areas; the fact that some cadre consider workers who want to enroll in the TVU as 'overly ambitious' (read 'threatening'), and complications that arise in job allocation following graduation.

Despite the difficulties, television is generally regarded by both the government and the people as an effective and convenient educational medium. In addition to college degree and vocational training programs, television has become an attractive alternative to the in-person adult education classes that were popular before. Beyond this, even the non-educational television channels carry much informal educational pro gramming, including self-help and practical advice programs and foreign language training. Mass education has had a high priority in decisions that are made about how television is to be used in China.

12 A model worker display window in Shanghai.

13 'Marry late, give birth late, don't have too many children, have high-quality children.'

14 The government communicates to the people in a Shanghai neighborhood.

Model Citizen and Model Worker Programs

A striking feature of the urban Chinese landscape is the presence of billboards, posters, signs, and blackboards that promote government campaigns. These media prescribe everything from the most general goals ('Help build a better spiritual and material civilization'; 'Unite through the party and the four modernizations') to very specific tasks ('Marry late, have one child, have the child later'; 'Don't spit on the sidewalk').

Within this variety of public communication are model citizen and model worker campaigns where individuals are praised for improving themselves and society through dedication to socialist principles and hard work. Model

15 Even Chinese money is loaded with ideological significance.

citizen campaigns have been conducted for decades in China. The campaigns become particularly feverish during periods of national crisis — most recently in the aftermath of Tiananmen Square. Bigger-than-life historical role models like Lei Feng, a People's Liberation Army soldier known throughout China for his self-sacrificing, servile personality, are promoted as national heroes by repeated media attention given to their deeds. Chinese people are asked to emulate these government-sanctioned personages. Their very appearance through the media is promoted by the government as evidence of the people's participation in their political governance; that is, socialist ideals can best be represented by displaying the actual achievements of the people.

Model citizen and model worker campaigns are waged on television too. According to our narrators, however, these programs are among the least watched and least appreciated programs on the air. While some viewers allow that there is a place for these expostulative shows, and a few claim that the programs help motivate them in their work, the vast majority of the audience believes that these programs are irrelevant, uninteresting, and patronizing. Many viewers criticize the programs harshly. Typical complaints are that the shows are 'phony,' 'exaggerated,' 'unbelievable,' 'too positive,' and 'ineffective.' Audience members are suspicious of how the model workers are selected in the first place, claiming that special relationships and blatant self-promotion often influence the decisions. People frequently laugh at what they consider to be the government's naive attempt to get them to unquestioningly follow the conspicuously didactic examples presented in these programs. One man, a 53-year-old male worker in a Shanghai boat factory, for instance, said: 'The model citizen programs are too strong, but then again we don't expect anything else. We're used to it. Before they tell us what they want us to do, we already know it.'

Television News

Just like many societies all over the world, Chinese people rely on television more than any other media source for news. Television news in China, however, is much different from that in most Western nations. For the most part, news is not meant to be objective and the people do not labor under any belief that it tries to be. The term 'propaganda' is used without apology in China. Journalism students are trained to write stories that prømote the goals of the government. So, news should be selective and instructional more than objective and reportorial. Journalists should find facts to support official positions.

Journalism in China was originally used to establish the legitimacy of the Communist Party, promote the party's policies, and combat illiteracy. Journalistic practice has been irregular since 1949 (Womack, 1986). During the Hundred Flowers Movement of 1956, for instance, citizens were encouraged to voice their opinions on national issues and, caught up in the fresh spirit of openness, many journalists began writing more objectively and critically. But the Anti-Rightist suppression of the following year ended the brief period of permissiveness. Of course, objectivity was out of the question during the Cultural Revolution. Following the death of Mao Zedong and the fall of the Gang of Four, however, the trend has been toward unprecedented journalistic freedom and an implicit redefinition of 'news.'

The Thirteenth Communist Party Congress in October 1987 was attended by domestic and foreign reporters and the opening ceremony was telecast live for the first time on CCTV. This was a significant moment in Chinese political history, because a fundamental form of political control in China is accomplished not by the manipulative rhetoric of government authorities on television and the other mass media, but by their absence. By putting distance between themselves and the people, Chinese government officials over the years have been able to wield tremendous political power by elevating and mystifying their actions. Until recent breakthroughs on television, Chinese people have never had the opportunity to follow the actual process of their governance. Since television, politicians have had to become more accountable to the people. The most extreme cases involve Li Peng. In response to foreign and domestic journalists in April 1989, Li agreed to respond directly to questions about his political positions and personal history at a press conference, a situation that proved to be very uncomfortable for him. Li also faced up to striking students later that spring in a televised debate, a crucial turn of events in the midst of the political turmoil. I will take up these matters again in Chapter 9.

Today, of course, China is still rebounding from the shock of 1989. Journalism suffered a drastic setback. The widespread desire within the ranks of practicing journalists to continue the liberalizing trend crescendoed during the last few weeks of the resistance activities in Beijing, but the subsequent military-backed political repression has cut to the heart of press freedom.

China's news coverage of the last days of Tiananmen Square and the trials and executions of the alleged counterrevolutionaries — subjects which I also take up again in Chapter 9 — are but the most recent examples of how the Communist Party still ultimately determines what the people will learn through the public channels. This iron fist control is less apparent when things are going well for the government. But when China faces a crisis, reactionary forces once again assert their power, as Wang has shown in Chinese media coverage of natural disasters: 'Disaster coverage is like a thermometer of the Chinese media through which we can see clearly the media policy, the trend in media practice, [and] the conflicts between the mass media and other social groups' (Wang, 1988a: 21).

In a very interesting case study, Wang analyzed journalistic coverage of a 25-day fire that raged in northeast China in 1987. An advocate of journalistic reform, Wang was encouraged by the fact that journalists were allowed to give more details about the disaster than ever before. Even Li Peng, who was then Vice Premier, stated publicly that the incident should be reported more openly. But Wang also uncovered some troubling aspects of the coverage. People who were allowed to be interviewed were mainly government authorities and local citizens who praised the government for putting out the fire. Journalists were kept out of many areas and their reports had to be approved by a local authority. When one journalist was caught taking pictures of local leaders 'gluttonizing' at a dinner, he was beaten and accused of 'acting like a Western journalist' (Wang, 1988a: 20).

Invariably, CCTV and other television news outlets are late with their stories in crisis situations. Details of the Tiananmen Square incident were not reported for several days after the massacre and, of course, coverage was blatantly distorted. Similarly, an earthquake in Yunnan Province that took place in November 1988, was not reported by CCTV in a timely way and the eventual coverage was extremely brief. The overarching policy of the party becomes clear in cases like this: responsible journalism should not alarm the people. It is better to cover stories late, or not at all, than to confuse the people by not sufficiently explaining unsettling developments. Bad news is to be kept largely within confidential government channels (the 'internal channels') while the mass media (the 'public channels') are to be filled with positive reports. This stratified approach means that audiences for news in China occupy different informational 'classes.'

CCTV's 'international' news

Viewers watch the network news on their local CCTV affiliates and many also watch local or regional newscasts on other channels. Television news, especially the CCTV evening telecast, is one of China's most popular programs. Our narrators repeatedly said that television news is the most effective way for the government to communicate with the people.

Though viewers frequently refer to the evening CCTV broadcast as 'international news,' in reality the program is dominated by national 'news.' Domestic news occupies more than 80 percent of the international news program. When the big stories were breaking in Eastern Europe in 1989, for instance, CCTV focused its attention on domestic information. The lead story of one newscast I watched during that time was the announcement of a new bicycle tire that had been invented in China. The second story showed Taiwanese swimmers visiting China. The increasing production rate of a fishery was featured for more than five minutes. But it is the 'meeting story' — where hundreds of men are pictured taking notes as they sit in government meetings — that is most characteristic of Chinese television news.¹ The international stories are safe too — the San Francisco earthquake, a successful United States spacecraft launch, a bus accident in Australia, Laurence Olivier's funeral. Furthermore, there is nothing 'live' about the news. The entire program, including the segments where the anchorpersons are featured, is videotaped and edited hours before it is transmitted.

According to a study commissioned by the News Broadcasting Department of the CCTV Editor-in-Chiefs office, television had become the preferred news medium of urban residents, at least in Beijing, by 1986. About two-thirds of the people surveyed said they watch CCTV news every day and 84 percent claimed to watch at least three times per week. Just two years earlier, Beijing residents said they relied on newspapers and radio more than television for news. By 1986 viewers described television as the most 'impressive, comprehensive, authentic, and convenient' of the mass media. In our interviews, many people praised television's immediacy, visual appeal, and ability to reach the rural areas.

Despite the popularity of television news, audience members are very critical of it. While some people said that TV news gives them a chance

16 The 'meeting story' on CCTV news.

to learn what the government is doing, far more said that news is propaganda, nothing more. One man, who is himself a news film editor in Beijing, defended this policy by saying that the instructional style of news is appropriate in China since the country 'still has so many illiterate people who don't have the ability to analyze ... so, in this way we need leadership from the government.' But the majority of audience members are sharply critical, and many of them quite cynical, about television news in China. They are fully willing and prepared to analyze news events for themselves and simply do not accept the news as it is framed by the government. Instead, they pay close attention to the most subtle details of stories about what the Communist Party Central Committee is doing, for instance, so they can render their own alternative interpretations of what is really going on in China. It's a challenge for viewers to do so, a bit like trying to solve an ongoing political puzzle where new pieces are given out each night. The most common criticism, which recurred in the interviews we held in all four cities, is that the government promotes itself too much and that the emphasis is almost always on good news. Others complain that news comes late:

Audience Involvement Programs

Many television stations give their audiences opportunities to participate in locally-produced programs. The Beijing station, for instance, answers letters on the air from its viewers. Variety shows all over the country feature local talent and have local studio audiences. One program pits families against each other — a kind of Chinese Family Feud. Shanghai viewers are asked to nominate local talent to be featured on a variety show.

The audience may also become involved through national appeals made by CCTV or individual stations. Funds were raised to help feed the starving people in Ethiopia, for instance. One of our female narrators, a neighborhood monitor in Beijing, said this is a particularly effective use of the electronic bridge, permitting instantaneous, widespread information to help solve a problem: 'We have to be thrifty because we are poor. But if a little money is collected from a lot of people, it could help.'

The innovative Shanghai station has a weekly program it calls From the Audience. The program begins with a request: 'Tell us what your problems are!' Viewers are asked to write letters to the station. Of course, if a viewer responded by saying that communism has outlived its usefulness or to complain about a national leader, the input would be quickly ignored. Still, viewers respond by the thousands. Problems that are mentioned reflect Shanghai's troubles - housing, traffic, garbage collection, pollution, crime, and health. The station staff sorts through the letters to select certain ones to be featured on the program. Sometimes the station responds directly to the problem. In one case, for example, a viewer complained about the service and cleanliness of a local restaurant. The station sent a camera crew there to investigate. Officials at the TV station claim that conditions at the restaurant improved greatly after the program was aired.

Programs such as this one resemble shows telecast in the United States and elsewhere. But in China the context in which these programs are produced and received is very different. The programs are meant to reinforce the fundamental idea that the people have a right to participate in the people's medium, that television should be their advocate. But common complaints among viewers of From the Audience type programs are that only a few viewers can participate, that only a small number of issues are raised, that sensitive issues are not touched, and, in many cases, that nothing constructive happens as a result of the program anyway.

Can the People Cross the Electronic Bridge?

In early 1988, a study was undertaken by the Public Opinion Research Institute of the People's University of China to investigate citizens' attitudes toward Chinese mass media as political instruments. The results point to a high demand for media reform. Some 62 percent of 200 people interviewed said that mass media performance in China is 'unsatisfactory' or 'not very satisfactory.' Viewers identified three major problems: the media are unable to check or criticize the government; government authorities are featured too much; and the 'voice of the people' is not heard on Chinese media. This official study — which probably underestimates the true extent of the negative perceptions held by citizens — resonates clearly with the comments of our narrators. Chinese people do not consider the electronic bridge to be a two-way medium.

Although the government itself originated and still advocates the official version of reform, many viewers believe that television programming does not realistically reflect the problems that must be addressed in reform or suggest effective alternatives to the status quo. The overall sense is that China has long been on the brink of reform, but that the government, in part protecting itself through television rhetoric, has refused to take the necessary next steps to advance the country. The critical sentiment of the people — as best it can be characterized in such general terms — is rarely present on Chinese television, a known-to-all fact that violates the most basic principle of the electronic bridge.

The exceptions have great symbolic value. New Star (Xin Xing) and River Elegy (He Shang), two astounding domestic drama series that were aired on CCTV, will be discussed at length later. 'Crosstalk' ('xiang sheng') exchanges, which usually appear as part of variety programs, also reflect the thinking of reform-minded and otherwise politically-engaged viewers. Crosstalk is a unique form of Chinese television entertainment where two interlocutors hurl rapid-fire verbal jabs at each other. It is an animated, comical debate. Each speaker tries to outperform the other through clever insults, puns, and jokes. During crosstalk debates participants attack their adversaries with biting criticisms that viewers recognize are actually indirectly meant to insult government officials, policies, or events. To use a simple example, if an interlocutor were to say, 'you are too old, you have no wisdom, it is way past time for you to retire from your job!' the remark would be widely interpreted by the audience as advice given to Deng Xiaoping, not to the debate opponent.

Another possible way for the people to cross the electronic bridge is through direct feedback to the image makers. But China's electronic media, especially CCTV, are very distant from the people. Criticism of all aspects of life in China, including media performance, is best given through letters to the editor of various newspapers, a common practice in recent years. Work unit and neighborhood meetings are also intended to be forums wherein the people can contribute directly to discussions of public issues. But this arena has changed since television arrived too. Before television, government policy proposals would be announced at meetings where discussions would follow. Now there are far fewer meetings and they serve mainly as a place to respond to policy that is first announced through television and the other media.

The diminished frequency and importance of group meetings has had a broad impact on the way the people view their own involvement in the workings of the government and society. Now they are rarely required to attend long meetings in order to talk over points of policy, discussions they feel would probably have little or no impact anyway. In that sense, tele vision liberates viewers by greatly reducing a dreaded requirement. Accord ing to one Beijing woman, 'Since television came, they don't try to gather us up for meetings. Less people try to catch us and personally control us.' In certain ways, then, the government's plan to use television as a unifying force actually works to the opposite end. Home television viewing, unlike group meetings, cannot be required or supervised.

In most Western capitalist societies, television viewers are accustomed to the one-way tendency of the medium. Except for ratings research, which only measures viewership of shows that already exist, we don't expect to influence the development of television programs or policies. But in China, where the mass media are supposed to reflect the concerns of the people, much television programming has only reinforced widespread disdain for the heavy-handed, pedagogical manner in which information is generally given. The original concept of using television for 'constant back and forth communication between the masses and the party' has become hopelessly lost and abused. One effect of the bureaucratic and technological coldness of television in China is to remind the people of their nation's longstanding tradition of autocracy and the styles of communication that accompany it — from the imperial edicts of the feudalist era to the policy directives of the Communist Party today. Television technology and programming theory —transmitters that send, but don't receive; programs that are strategically developed to gain compliance for the objectives of an unresponsive government — mirror the worst of China's political past and present. Even today, high-level officials in Beijing are unlikely to realize all this, accustomed as they are to theorizing communication along the lines of a transportation model wherein information given out is thought to be information received, properly interpreted, and acted upon.