For China's Journalism Students, Censorship Is a Core Concept

"Some experts, many of them chief editors at newspapers, make a speech, telling their experiences and how to report news in different circumstances," said a first-year graduate student, Li Ming. "So far, I have not felt any influence on me from the class. But you know, this class must exert a gradual and imperceptible influence on students. Marxist theory will be reflected in the cases we discuss, so I will unconsciously follow the Marxist approach this class is trying to teach when I cover stories in the future."

Xu Shujian, another first-year graduate student, said the class is a good idea because, when it comes time to get a job after graduation, China's mainstream media will be more likely to hire aspiring journalists "with a good sense of Marxism."

But an academic with close knowledge of the center and its courses, speaking on condition of anonymity, said most professors focus on the practical world of journalists doing their jobs under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, not Marxist doctrine on journalism. "They teach journalism under Marxism more than Marxist journalism," he explained.

The center's name, implying a mission to keep journalism students on the straight and narrow path of Marxism, was chosen in part to attract support, and perhaps funding, from party officials, he said. "That is important," he added, smiling. "Can you imagine what would happen if you started an institute of capitalist journalism?"

Visiting editors talk freely of tactics for skirting party censorship, he said, and students can get an idea of "the problems of the society, how to negotiate with the authorities." Most professors urge their students to deal with the censors and try to push the envelope rather than revolt against the whole censorship system, he added.

One guest lecturer, Yang Zhengquan, former head of China Radio International and of the government news office, told students of delicate and protracted official deliberations in 1976 over how to present the news that Mao Zedong had died. He did not question the government's power to control such news.

In one of his own lectures, reproduced in the textbook he edited with Li Bin, Fan told students that one of the main tasks of their work in journalism would be to "spread Marxism, to report how Marxist guidance works in different fields and battlefronts."

"If you want to be a qualified and good journalist, you must understand politics, must know Marxism and must master some of the basic disciplines of Marxist journalism," he went on.

"We need to use the Marxist position, the Marxist point of view and the Marxist method to observe and deal with things," he told his class. "What is the position? It is the party's position and the people's position. What is the point of view? Dialectical materialism and historical materialism. What is the method? It is how to deal with conflicts correctly."

Addressing censorship, Fan told students that the government must "guide public opinion" because many Chinese are not well educated and cannot understand current events well. "The situation of our country decided we need to guide public opinion," he said. "We should consider the social effects of every report, thinking if it is good or bad for our country, society and people, especially for the stability and development of the country."

Li Qiang, a graduate student in Tsinghua's journalism department, has been spotlighted on campus as an example of what Marxist journalists should do. In 2005, while an undergraduate, Li spent his Spring Festival holiday in some small, impoverished Shanxi province villages and then produced a 40,000-word report on the difficulties villagers faced, partly because local officials failed to help them. "Eight stories," he called it.

Impressed, Fan sent the report to government officials. A copy found its way to the desk of Premier Wen Jiabao, who wrote back saying that this was the kind of Marxist journalism China needed, probing the needs of the people. The report was widely discussed. Parts of it were disseminated on the Internet. But it was never published -- because Tsinghua professors found it too sensitive.