2014-08-15
Recently, the National Office of Online Information promulgated ten regulations concerning WeChat (“WeChat 10 Regulations”). There have already been many discussions about it. Among them, Hu Yong’s “Ten Points on ‘WeChat 10 Regulations’” is the most insightful. In short, the regulation that received the most attention is No. 7: “The public accounts of news agencies and news websites can release and repost political news. The public accounts that have acquired online news information service status but are not accounts of news agencies and news websites can only repost political news. All other public accounts cannot release or repost political news without pre-approval.” The political news mentioned here also includes political commentaries and economic news. Therefore, we can say that the government has made a clean sweep.
Hu Yong also points out that the core of the new regulations is to make online content to be pre-approved. To think that the purpose of the No. 7 regulation is solely for pre-approval, Hu Yong may have misunderstood or neglected some key information. According to the No. 7 regulation, only “those public accounts of news agencies and news websites can release political news.” The public accounts of non-news agencies and news websites can only repost political news. The difference between “news agencies” and “non-news agencies” here are not of their contents, but of their status. “News agencies and news websites” mentioned in the No. 7 regulations refer to those that have the status recognized by the government in the context of the current “zhuban/zhuguan system.” This kind of official status cannot be acquired only by rent seeking.
The “zhuban/zhuguan system” is the basic system of Chinese cultural affairs management. Basically, it means that for a cultural organization to be established, it has to have a governmental organization that operates it (zhuban unit) and a higher governmental authority that oversees it (zhuguan unit). For example, Section II of Article 11 of the Regulations on Publication Management stipulates that, to establish a publishing house, it is required that the publishing house have a zhuban unit and a zhuguan unit that are recognized by the State Council. Similarly, film production companies, TV stations, newspapers, magazines, even theaters and performances companies, all of them need to have a zhuban unit and a zhuguan unit so that they can be established. The “news agencies and news websites” mentioned in the No. 7 regulation refers to the kind of government controlled organizations that have a zhuban and zhuguan. Under the zhuban/zhuguan system, the right to establish a cultural organization is monopolized. Non-government controlled entities do not have a zhuban and a zhuguan, therefore, they cannot establish any cultural organization.
Because of the zhuguan/zhuban system, China does not have what we normally call “freedom of publication” and “freedom of press.” However, not all publications and news businesses are run by government controlled organizations. A lot of them, especially in the publishing industry, are privately owned companies. A large amount of bestsellers are produced and marketed by those private companies. It is just that under the current system, every book that is produced by private companies needs to acquire a book number from a publishing house so it can be legally sold on the market. Similarly, in the newspaper industry, a private company can “rent” such a periodical number to operate its business.
The phenomenon mentioned above is just one aspect of the neo-totalitarian system. On the one hand, with consideration for ideological propaganda, the government has to maintain direct control of the nation’s cultural affairs. On the other hand, along with economic reform, people’s demand for cultural consumption has risen. This leads to two kinds of phenomenon. One is government controlled organizations utilizing its monopolistic status and advantages in resources to introduce market-oriented mechanism into its operation. Those so-called market-oriented media entities belong to this category (Translator’s Note: e.g. Southern Weekly, Caixin). The monopolistic status and advantages in resources of these government controlled organizations guarantee high profits. The other phenomenon is government controlled organizations utilizing its monopolistic status to provide a certain kind of entry qualification. “Book number” is one of these. In either situation, the government is able to maintain its direct control of the content of the publication. And these government controlled organizations play a role of watchdogs.
The emergence of the Internet significantly crushed this operating model. Different from newspapers and books, the content on the Internet does not require a production process. Applications like bulletin board system, blogs and more recently Weibo and Weichat enable the direct publication of millions of people’s writings. Due to the increased demand for cultural consumption by the emerging middle class, this so-called “self-media” seems promising. The vast information on the Internet certainly contains a lot of things the government does not like. Thus, besides removing posts, shutting down accounts and periodically cracking down on well-known users (“big Vs”), the government tries to control information from its origin. The emergence of self-media also threatens the status and interests of those existing watchdog news agencies. In order to maintain the direct control of cultural affairs, the government cannot but maintain and protect the current system. For the purpose of controlling content and protecting existing news agencies, introducing the zhuguan/zhuban system into the online realm becomes an imperative.
