By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 23, 2007
XIALU, China -- Wei Yi, a Beijing-based reporter for China Central Television's main news program, stood with his microphone in front of a little stone monument at the entrance to Xialu village. Against a backdrop of orange trees, he told millions of Chinese viewers how a government initiative had recently improved farmers' lives here with construction of new roads.
"Convenient transportation was made possible by this stretch of road that was just finished this year in the village," he intoned. "Outside merchants can now quickly ship out freshly harvested fruit." Later, viewers were presented with images of several dozen peasants, shovels in hand, working in unison on a new road.
Wei's Dec. 23 report from southern Guangxi province was hardly an accurate one -- the road he touted, farmers here said, had no connection to the new government initiative. But the broadcast probably pleased propaganda officials. They had helped organize it.
In the face of radical economic and social changes over the past two decades, the choreography of news has helped China retain its monopoly on power. All television stations and newspapers remain government-controlled; news reports are routinely organized by propaganda officials and bolstered by interviews with local Communist Party secretaries.
The Internet has created some openings for disseminating uncensored news. But on the opposite end of the spectrum is the official 7 p.m. "Network News Broadcast," the government's flagship program. It has long occupied a status all its own, confined to old-style Communist orthodoxy with a tenacity that has its anchors looking like holdouts from the 1970s and its reports on public affairs like a party bulletin board.
"Network News Broadcast" has become one of the world's most watched news programs. CSM Media Research, sponsored by CCTV, said its surveys show the 7 p.m. news has an average viewing rate of 11.5 percent. According to official statistics, that means as many as 135 million people tune in any evening.
Leadership appearances on the program have followed the same script for years: The party chief, currently President Hu Jintao, is invariably shown first; followed by Wu Bangguo, head of the National People's Congress and the party's second-ranking member; followed by Wen Jiabao, premier and third-ranking member; and so on down the hierarchy. Each leader is allocated a certain number of seconds in front of the camera, Chinese media experts say, with the time for each one carefully regulated by the party propaganda department.
The main anchors -- Xing Zhibin and Luo Jing -- sit stiffly and stare straight ahead into the teleprompter, as they have for years. Alternating for each news item, they read carefully from a text vetted at midafternoon by senior CCTV and party propaganda officials, their colleagues said.
Luo, whose hairline has receded over the years, decided at one point he wanted to change his perennial pompadour but was denied permission by his superiors, according to the Southern Weekend newspaper. Apparently aware of their reputation as stodgy, some of the program's employees reportedly sang a self-mocking song at last month's CCTV Spring Festival party. "No programs are not excellent. No audiences are not loyal. No interviews are not comprehensive," the lyrics went.
Despite the party's strict censorship, some provincial television stations and even other news programs at CCTV have slicked up their presentations, making "Network News Broadcast" look increasingly dowdy by comparison. Nevertheless, it goes out at 7 every night across the country unchanged, relayed by stations in a nationwide hookup that presents a daily picture of life according to the Communist Party of China.
Zhan Jiang, dean of the Journalism and Communication Department at Beijing's China Youth University for Political Sciences, said the 7 p.m. broadcast seems to have been reserved as a last stand by conservative party propaganda authorities reluctant to see the old ways disappear. "We have already provided you with a lot of opportunities," he said he imagines them pleading. "Why can't we save the 'Network News Broadcast' as the last one of our programs?"
When Hu took over as party leader in 2002, academic researchers said, he urged more reporting from the field and more direct broadcasting of people's words, rather than the voice-overs that are standard practice. But he has done little to update the 7 p.m. program's appearance or rigid adherence to party themes, they said, leaving responsibility to mandarins under the leadership of Li Changchun, the party Standing Committee member in charge of propaganda.
Zhou Xiaopu, a professor at the Renmin University School of Journalism who has done research on the program, said the main viewers are China's legions of government and party officials, particularly in the provinces, and businessmen who want to keep up with the policies and attitudes that will affect their ability to make money.
"The bigger businessman you are, the more you watch the 7 p.m. news," she said, recalling conversations with her business friends.
Wei Shilin, 53, a fruit-growing farmer who doubles as a barefoot doctor, was one of those interviewed in Wei Yi's report from Xialu, a village 20 miles north of Nanning, the provincial capital of Guangxi. He pointed out to viewers that, before the road was built, farmers here had a rough time getting their produce to market, so much so that some villagers stopped planting fruit trees. Things have changed dramatically since then, he said.
But he and his brother, Wei Shining, the village party secretary -- no relation to the reporter who visited from Beijing -- had an explanation for the road's origins that differed from the glowing TV report. Villagers collected money, family by family, for part of it, they recalled, and the village council provided the rest through a bank loan and local budget funds. Moreover, they said, the 1.8-mile stretch of road that connected Xialu to the main county road leading toward local markets was finished in 1998 and had no connection to the Agriculture Support Fund, the new government initiative.
Wei Shilin said he personally donated 150 yuan. His name and those of dozens of other donors were chiseled onto a slate plaque affixed to the local community center and dated April 8, 1998.
Xie Guilin, an official in the county transportation department, said he knew the road was eight years old but led the CCTV crew there anyway because he felt it was representative of the kind of progress made possible by the Agriculture Support Fund. He and the TV team spent an entire afternoon filming, Xie said.
Wei Yi, the CCTV reporter sent to Xialu, said the scene of villagers working on a road was file footage supplied by Wuming county, the surrounding jurisdiction that administers Xialu. He said he did not know when it was shot. In any case, he added, his report was intended to inform viewers of how the Agriculture Support Fund had helped Wuming county as a whole, not just Xialu.
The publicity was welcome in Wuming. Su Shaorong, the county party secretary, broke away from a meeting in Nanning to be on hand to be interviewed for the television report, according to Wei Shining. On air, Su praised the Agriculture Support Fund, saying that for every yuan the government has invested, it would get 50 back in increased production by the farmers.
Wuming county officials had been involved in the report from its inception. Liang Zuoyin, a senior official in the county propaganda department, said he got a call to help organize it a few days before the CCTV crew was scheduled to arrive. After consultations with his colleagues, Liang said, he was ready with three suggestions for a showcase. The final pick was Xialu.
Much of the credit for the county's sudden recognition went to Shi Jian, a CCTV executive who last year was assigned by the central government's propaganda department to temporary duty in Wuming. "I wanted to do something for the publicity of the county," he said.
"As you may know, Wuming county is one of the model counties in the construction of the new socialist countryside in Guangxi," he added, referring to a broad government policy to help farmers.
"I used to work in the CCTV news department," he went on, saying everyone thought the time was ripe for such a report because of a government meeting on agriculture underway in Beijing. "We recommended this model to them, because we wanted to talk about the Agriculture Support Fund helping with the development of the countryside. As far as I know, Xialu is an example, so we asked the CCTV reporter to come, and he joined in a discussion meeting held by local government departments."
Xialu farmers said that, more recently, they did get help from the Agriculture Support Fund, as well as from a new Wuming county agency called Building a New Socialist Countryside. In September, when they built a 100-yard spur to connect more orange groves, they said, the agency provided 125 tons of cement worth about $4,000.
Wei Renyun, 46, said he spent five days working on the new road. Wherever the funding came from, he explained, it is a good thing because he can now ride his motorcycle up the hillside more easily.
"These roads used to be made of mud," said Wei Fengjiao, 45, a friend who stood beside the home she and her husband are constructing alongside the new spur. "It was very hard to use them in the bad weather. The new road is great."
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