August 18, 2016
BEIJING — For most of its 25 years, the Chinese history magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu has been loved by moderate liberals and detested with equal passion by devotees of Mao Zedong, who reviled it as a refuge for heretical criticisms of the Chinese leader and the Communist Party.
But in a sign of how sharply ideological winds have turned under President Xi Jinping, officials who recently took control of the magazine have wooed Maoist and nationalist writers who long scorned the magazine. Several well-known hard-line polemicists attended a meeting with the new managers on Monday.
The new masters of Yanhuang Chunqiu, which had been one of the few remaining outlets for liberal political opinion in China, appear likely to remake it into an avidly loyal defender of party orthodoxy, said Wu Wei, who has remained in place as executive editor of the magazine but is among those fighting to save its independence.
“The meeting showed that they want to bring in contributors who have been completely opposed to what Yanhuang Chunqiu stood for,” Mr. Wu said in an interview. “They want Yanhuang Chunqiu to turn into a publication that only sings praise, discusses the positive and doesn’t touch the negative.”
Chinese magazines must have a government-approved sponsor, and the journal is overseen by the state-run Chinese National Academy of Arts, which took over in 2014 from an association more sympathetic to the liberal aims of the publication. In July, the academy announced that it would install a new editorial lineup, a move the journal’s editors said violated a contract that left personnel decisions in the control of the editorial staff.
One of the hard-line writers invited to the meeting on Monday, Guo Songmin, celebrated the change of ideological guard at the magazine by referring to Mao.
“Attending this writers’ round table feels a little extraordinary, and I suddenly thought of a line from Chairman Mao, ‘Today the autumn wind still sighs, but the world has changed!’ ” Mr. Guo wrote on Weibo, a popular microblog site, quoting a poem that Mao wrote in 1954.
Sima Nan, another well-known defender of Mao and Communist Party rule, said he was invited to the meeting but did not attend because he assumed the offer was a joke.
“I received the notice very late and didn’t know the person who contacted me,” Mr. Sima said in an interview. “I thought it was a joke. I’ve never written for Yanhuang Chunqiu. How could they invite me? Impossible.”
Other writers at the meeting included Dai Xu, a former People’s Liberation Army air force officer who has urged China to be willing to resort to war to assert its territorial claims in the South China Sea and elsewhere. Another, Li Beifang, said retired officials who have protected the magazine should be punished, including the recently ousted founding publisher, Du Daozheng, and Mao’s former secretary, Li Rui, who became an advocate of democratization.
“Political problems require a political solution,” Mr. Li wrote on Weibo. “Expel those who violated discipline, like Du Daozheng and Li Rui, from the party and cancel their retirement benefits.”
“Yanhuang Chunqiu” is a poetic phrase that roughly means “China Annals,” and the monthly magazine has often tested censorship by publishing memoirs and studies of misdeeds under Mao and by urging political liberalization.
But the meeting between the new editors and the hard-liners signified that Yanhuang Chunqiu may become a platform for a fiery mix of nationalism and Maoist speech that has won new popularity and influence under Mr. Xi, said Hong Zhenkuai, a former editor at the magazine.
“That’s a real possibility,” Mr. Hong said in an interview. On Monday, a court in Beijing upheld a ruling ordering Mr. Hong to issue a public apology for questioning the veracity of a celebrated story of heroism during China’s war against Japanese occupation.
“Inviting these people to a meeting would be to ask them to contribute,” Mr. Hong said. “Their attitude is clear.”
Whether the new editors of Yanhuang Chunqiu go that far ideologically remains to be seen. They are still locked in a battle with the liberal editors and publishers, who have either been removed or who have disassociated themselves from the new lineup, which they say took over illegally.
These liberal editors have tried to have their complaints heard by a court, but so far no judge has agreed to formally hear their claims. They tried to file a new complaint on Tuesday, but court officials said they would have to wait a week before learning whether the court would accept it, Mr. Wu said.
Censorship in China can be dizzyingly swift and absolute. But it can sometimes be steady and inexorable, like the step-by-step subjugation of Yanhuang Chunqiu, which could set an example for other publications that question the party’s official line.
In 2002, Perry Link, a professor of Chinese now at the University of California, Riverside, likened Chinese censorship to an “anaconda in the chandelier,” which works through implicit threats that encourage self-censorship.
Professor Link said by email that it seemed that “the principles are the same as in 2002 and that the biggest difference is only that self-censorship is more entrenched and now viewed as ‘normal.’ ”
He added, “In that sense I think things are worse than in 2002. Now a whole younger generation accepts that forbidden zones are normal.”
Yanhuang Chunqiu had long served as a journal for retired Communist Party officials who hoped that China would edge toward political liberalization.
But this month, the August issue of Yanhuang Chunqiu appeared, the first under the control of the new editors. It was a tepid product, shorn of the pointed arguments that previously drew readers.
“They don’t want to shut it down, but instead they want to transform its nature,” said Mr. Wu, the embattled executive editor. “We can only appeal to the law to defend our rights, but you know that in China the chances of us prevailing through the courts are very low. But we will try.”
Although the Chinese government has not publicly commented on the strife over control of Yanhuang Chunqiu, Mr. Dai, the former military officer, had no doubt that the changes were proceeding under official orders.
“The relevant departments have purged this magazine root and branch,” Mr. Dai wrote approvingly on Weibo. “Although this has come a bit late, it’s still worth applauding.”
