FEB. 13, 2015
Wang Qinglei, a former producer who worked at China Central Television, or CCTV, from 2003 until he was fired in 2013 for publicly denouncing propaganda on the network, at his new office in Beijing. Credit The New York Times
BEIJING — As President Xi Jinping accelerated his sweeping campaign against government corruption, political enemies and Western influences in China, he deployed the Communist Party’s most powerful propaganda tool, the state television network, like a hammer.
News programs on the network, China Central Television, showed confessions by prominent businessmen before they had even been put on trial. Foreign companies like Apple were smeared by so-called investigations programs. Heavily edited excerpts from the trial of a fallen party leader were broadcast in prime time to hundreds of millions of viewers.
But now the wrath of the party has turned on the network itself. An inquiry into corruption at CCTV, as the network is known, has shaken up the nation’s most influential news and propaganda organization, riveting the country with reports involving a seamy mix of celebrities, sex and bribery.
At least 15 senior network employees have disappeared into the maw of party and state detention, according to official news reports and people who have been tracking the investigations. The most famous, Rui Chenggang, 37, a smooth-talking financial news anchor who wore Italian suits and drove a Jaguar, was noticeably absent last month from the annual conference of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, where he had been a fixture for years.
The network’s more than 10,000 employees are on edge. The practice of trading positive coverage for cash is so prevalent, many say, that everyone lives in fear that employees who have been detained will reveal details about their colleagues. Like others for this article, they spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the authorities for talking about the continuing investigations.
Managers hesitate to make big decisions. The move into the new landmark CCTV headquarters, which has been mostly empty since its facade was completed in 2008, has stalled, and some high-budget documentary projects have been frozen.
Executives and producers, afraid of making themselves conspicuous targets, are leaving their luxury cars in their garages. Among the top ranks, figuring out how to stop journalists from taking bribes from the people they interview has become a priority, CCTV employees said.
The turmoil at the network comes at a time when it has become both the spearhead of China’s propaganda efforts in foreign countries and a more expansive global news conduit for an estimated 700 million Chinese viewers.
“A nation’s TV station is the face for the entire nation,” said Wang Qinglei, a former producer who worked at CCTV from 2003 until he was fired in 2013 for publicly denouncing propaganda on the network. “Now this face is dirty and full of mud. There should be a cleansing process to wash it, so the entire nation can be proud again.”
The party’s investigations of the network follow two main strands that overlap. One is corrupt business practices, particularly at CCTV 2, the financial news channel where Mr. Rui worked. The other involves the relationships, sometimes intimate, that some party leaders had with anchors and executives at the network, many of whom are also at CCTV 2.
The widespread gossip about sex between network employees and government officials could not be independently confirmed, but some personal ties are well known. Mr. Rui, for example, hosted events for Gu Liping, who is now detained on suspicion of corruption and illicit financial dealings and is the wife of Ling Jihua, an aide to former President Hu Jintao. The couple has been placed under investigation.
At least one current and one former female CCTV anchor who have been detained are being scrutinized for close ties to Zhou Yongkang, the former security chief and the most senior party official to be arrested in decades for corruption, according to executives and journalists working for CCTV and other news institutions. Mr. Zhou’s second wife, who is a former CCTV journalist and is 28 years his junior, has also been detained.
Li Dongsheng, a close associate of Mr. Zhou and a 22-year employee of CCTV, is suspected by investigators of having introduced young women at the network to Mr. Zhou and other officials for sexual encounters in violation of party rules, the journalists and executives said. When Mr. Zhou was expelled from the party last December, Xinhua, the official state news agency, said he had “committed adultery with a number of women and traded his power for money and sex.”
Mr. Li, who rose to become deputy director of the propaganda department and then vice minister of public security, has been detained since December 2013.
The investigations are casting a long shadow over a vast propaganda apparatus with global ambitions. CCTV began a big international push around 2008 and now has 70 news bureaus overseas, including a flagship in Washington. CCTV channels broadcast programming around the world in Arabic, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
