Carine by Civic Exchange

Carine Lai Tufts University July-August 2002

Watching China A major Hong Kong newspaper’s contrasting views of China (1991 and 2001) Introduction During the run-up to and since the handover in 1997, some politicians and members of the journalistic profession have expressed concern that Hong Kong’s press might not remain as free as it was during the final years of British rule. The Hong Kong Journalists’ Association’s annual report on Freedom of Expression for 2002 has quoted various newspapermen and women as saying that there is a growing attitude that certain angles on certain topics sensitive to Beijing are off limits. Such sensitive topics include the publication of “viewpoints advocating the independence of Taiwan, the Falun Gong, separatist activities in Tibet and Xinjiang, the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party and state leadership, and comments on the performance of mainland leaders.”1 There is also the sense that newspaper coverage in Hong Kong is becoming more apolitical, sticking to more politically neutral subjects, such as the economy. One news executive was reported to have said that she looked to mainland newspapers to see what sorts of stories were safe to publish, namely crime, consumer, and mid to low -level corruption stories.2 The South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s leading English language newspaper, has not been immune to such criticisms. Three high profile sackings from its editorial staff during the last three years prompted speculation over whether they were motivated by self-censorship. In 2000, China editor Willy Wo-lap Lam, known for his columns analyzing the inner workings of the Chinese government, was removed from his editorial post. He subsequently resigned from the SCMP altogether. In October 2001, editorial pages editor Danny Gittings was fired during cutbacks, and in 2002, Beijing bureau chief Jasper Becker was fired for insubordination. 3 The SCMP has also undergone wider changes in personnel during the last few years. The Taipei Times Online (Dec 11, 2001) reported that the SCMP had fired a number of senior editors to cut costs. There have also been four Editors-in-Chief since the ownership change in 1993. 4 The SCMP was bought by Malaysian businessman Robert Kuok in 1993, who is said to have substantial business interests in China. Johnathan Fenby, an SCMP editor between 1995 and 1999, is quoted in the HKJA report as saying that the owners pressured him to avoid offending Beijing. He claimed that he was regularly in conflict with management, resisting instructions to fire journalists disliked by management, to avoid calling the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown a “massacre”, and to drop pro-democracy activist Emily Lau as a columnist. Jasper Becker alleged that his sacking was politically motivated, and that pressure on the SCMP increased when the Beijing bureau was transferred from under the jurisdiction of the Chinese Foreign Ministry to the

HKJA, p.5 ibid, p.27 3 HKJA, p8 4 David Armstrong – left in 1995, Jonathan Fenby 1995-99, Robert Keatley 1999-2001, Thomas Abraham 2001-2002, Thaddeus Beczak 2002 (now the most senior management figure, but holds the title of Publisher, not Editor) 2

Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office in September 2001, as Hong Kong newspapers are no longer considered foreign publications. 5 The SCMP’s then-Editor, Thomas Abraham, strongly denied that the paper has been told not to report certain issues, or that the recent sackings were politically motivated. In a May 2002 memo, he wrote that Jasper Becker was fired for his refusal to work under China editor Wang Xiangwei. 6 In 2001, then-Editor Robert Keatley stated that Willy Lam was relieved of his managerial duties in an organizational reshuffle aimed at better coordinating and diversifying the paper’s China coverage.7 It is diff icult to know whose picture is more correct, or to what extent it is. On one hand, there are the editors and managers who would be keen to protect the SCMP’s reputation. On the other, there are disgruntled former employees who might wish to portray themselves in a positive or even heroic light. The allegations and counter allegations also do not tell you whether or how much the newspaper’s China coverage has changed. Therefore, it would be interesting to look at the SCMP’s actual China coverage to try to observe real changes. That will be the goal of this preliminary study. This study is not solely about self-censorship, although the issue does loom large in the background. To paraphrase the University of Hong Kong Journalism and Media Studies Cente r director Ying Chan in a recent interview with the SCMP, self-censorship must not be confused with the exercising of editorial judgment in the face of competing pressures and interests. Editors and journalists “are either under political or commercial pressure whether in the United States or here,” she said. 8 Indeed, some American journalists have recently become very concerned with the consolidation of media outlet ownership under just a few huge companies, which they believe is linked to the phenomenon of “infotainment” displacing traditional hard news on TV networks. The Washington based Committee of Concerned Journalists conducts research on exactly these issues. 9 If Hong Kong’s editors are focusing less on Chinese political news because of the owners’ business interests in China, or because political news is regarded as less interesting, it is not the quite the same thing as if they are avoiding certain issues for fear of getting in trouble with the authorities. Moreover, much has changed during the last ten years in China, Hong Kong, and the rest of the world. The same issues do not necessarily remain salient over a decade. The way journalists perceive China can not have remained the same. The problem is to try to identify which changes in news coverage occurred because of changes in the wider world, and which were the result of changes in the SCMP’s editorial decision making. This would be an extremely complicated undertaking, which can not be fully addressed here. However, if the SCMP has moved significantly away from political coverage, for whatever reason, there would still be cause for concern. It would mean the loss of a major source of information on Chinese politics. Background The South China Morning Post was founded in 1903 and has long been Hong Kong’s dominant English language newspaper. As such, it is an important source of political news about mainland

HKJA, p.2 Hilton, Ronald. Posting in World Association for International Studies online discussion forum. Quotes memo in full. 7 http://www.fcchk.org/media/pressfreedom-rkeatley.htm 8 Schloss, Glen. SCMP, July 6 2002. 9 Committee of Concerned Journalists, Project for Excellence in Journalism 6

China for both Hong Kong’s English speaking community, and for China watchers elsewhere in the world, particularly during the last five years since the paper has been available online. These are the main reasons why I have chosen the South China Morning Post as the subject of this study. Although I would have liked to include other news outlets, I was unable to due to heavy time constraints, and the fact that I am unable to read Chinese. While examining a single newspaper can not possibly be representative of Hong Kong’s media as a whole, I believe that it is still of some significance. The SCMP is by a wide margin the large st English newspaper in the territory. In the latter half of 2001, it had a circulation of 108,375 and a readership of 311,000 in the same year.10 Its nearest competitor, The Standard (previously iMail and the Hong Kong Standard), claims a circulation of 65,000, but has been struggling financially, particularly during the last few years.11 It was beset by scandal during 1999, in which several executives were charged with artificially inflating circulation figures. In May 2000, it was re -launched as a tabloid, but suffered massive layoffs in September 2001, and now focuses almost entirely sports and business news. 12 Its recent fluctuations make it difficult to use as an object of comparison. Several regional and international newspapers are also published in Hong Kong, but their readership is very small, and they do not carry regular daily coverage of Chinese politics, having different or broader areas of focus. The Asian Wall Street Journal does report on Asian politics, but focuses mainly on finance and economics, and had an average net circulation of 85,460 for the whole Asia Pacific Region in the final half of 2001. 13 The International Herald Tribune carries global news stories gleaned from major news organizations such as the New York Times, the London Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press etc. Its circulation in 2001 was 74,221 for the whole Asia Pacific Region. 14 USA Today International had an Asian circulation of 14,370 in the same period. 15 The SCMP on the other hand, covers Chinese politics on a daily basis. While certain news services such as the BBC do translate stories from the Chinese language press, they usually only carry the biggest stories of the day. By accident of history and geography, Hong Kong has historically been a major gateway of information about China to the rest of the world. Hong Kong’s media has long been one of the freest in Asia, operating free from overt censorship (although subject to more subtle pressures from the colonial administration) for a century. Writes the Hong Kong Journalists Association 2002 report on press freedom: “For all of their faults [sic], the Hong Kong media through the 1980s and much of the 1990s were a mine of information about China and its Communist leadership. Rich with rumors and insight about policy debates and political infighting, local newspapers were essential reading for China watchers in the West.” 16 The SCMP, having the advantage of being an old, well-established newspaper, and requiring no English language translation, was well placed to disseminate information about Chinese politics 10

Hong Kong Audit Bureau of Circulation The WorldPaper Online 12 p19, Hong Kong Journalists Association 13 Hong Kong Audit Bureau of Circulation 14 The World Press Group 15 Hong Kong Audit Bureau of Circulation 16 HKJA p.27 11

to China watchers in the West. Communications and Journalism experts talk about media organizations playing a “gatekeeping” role, being in a position to decide what information is newsworthy enough to be reported to the public.17 While this idea has somewhat fallen out of fashion recently with the proliferation of news outlets, I believe that for the reasons stated above, for the non-Chinese reading population at least, the SCMP still is in a position to play a significant gatekeeping role. This study and its limitations The goal of this small, preliminary study is to compare the SCMP’s China coverage in 1991 with that in 2001 in terms of the issues the paper devotes its attention to, in order to see if there indeed has been a change in focus. Are there fewer reports on “sensitive” political issues? Has the overall proportion of political news shrunk? Has its interest in one area grown while another area has waned? What this study will not attempt, however, is to make judgments on more subtle, and ultimately more subjective changes in journalistic content such as tone, balance, depth of analysis, or quality of writing. To objectively quantify such changes would require sophisticated forms of content analysis beyond my reach. As this study will rely on a small sampling of newspaper issues (56 issues for each year, 112 in total), not all the data it produces will be suitable for statistical analysis. It will be difficult to say whether all but the most dramatic changes are statistically significant or not. Therefore, findings and conclusions will be tentative, and will also rely on more qualitative assessments and observations as well as on the figures gathered. Future studies will be required to test the validity of these conclusions. Furthermore, this study only looks at two years, 1991, and 2001. I had originally also intended to look at a midpoint, 1995, but was unable to do so because of time constraints. Although steps were taken to reduce the impact of extraordinary events on the sample (see below), more years will need to be examined in order to determine definitively whether observed changes are part of an ongoing trend, or whether they were quirks of those particular years. Methodology 1991 is squarely in the period that the HKJA says that Hong Kong newspapers devoted substantial attention to mainland politics. At the SCMP, Willy Lam would have been in his third year of employment, just having started his post as China editor. In 1991, the SCMP was still owned by Rupert Murdoch, and it would be another three years before the paper changed ownership. In 2001, four years after the handover, the HKJA expressed concern that many of Hong Kong’s newspapers were shifting away from political news towards more sensationalist reporting. At the SCMP, Johnathan Fenby and Willy Lam had already left in 1999 and 2000. Danny Gittings, the editorial pages editor, was fired during cutbacks in October 2001. The SCMP’s China bureaus had been moved under the jurisdiction of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs office a month previously. Jasper Becker would remain until April 2002, but I chose to examine 2001 in order to have a full year for study. Sampling: 56 issues (8 constructed weeks) were selected for each year.18 Newspaper issues were sampled in a semi-systematic manner described as follows: First, a day during the first week of the year was randomly selected. Every 13 th day after that was selected, yielding an initial 28 days 17 18

White, David Manning. p383 All stories were taken from the microfilm archives of the Hong Kong Central Library

(4 constructed weeks). Then, that initial sample was doubled by selecting an issue that fell somewhere within each 13-day interval. This was done by choosing a day of the week randomly without replacement from a stack of 28 cards. If, for example, a Wednesday was drawn, then the Wednesday issue that fell the closest to the middle of the 13-day interval was taken into the sample. This method ensured that equal numbers of each day of the week were chosen, and that the issues were spaced out fairly evenly throughout the year (every 3-10 days or so). The partial randomization was included to help reduce the bias that may result from a purely systematic sample, such as having two weekend papers (typically thin news days) falling one after the other. Omissions: As this study’s focus is on news about mainland China, stories about Hong Kong and Taiwan’s domestic affairs were excluded. Stories about Taiwan’s relations with other countries were also excluded, unless they also substantially involved mainland China. Stories about Hong Kong’s relationship with China were also excluded, as it was often difficult to tell where a China story ended and a Hong Kong story began. Also excluded were stories found in special pages or sections devoted to extraordinary events. For example, I excluded stories found on a special pages devoted to the Gulf Crisis and the fall of Gorbachev in 1991, and special sections appearing on the day China won its Olympic bid, and the day it entered the WTO. I did not exclude stories found in special pages devoted to annual events, such as anniversaries and international conferences, if the event occurred both in 1991 and 2001. This was done in order to reduce the influence of extraordinary events. As this study is primarily interested in the paper’s routine coverage, the presence of large groups of articles devoted to one particular event in a small sample might distort it too much. Due to problems in sampling, I was unable to include stories from 1991’s weekly Asia Magazine. In order to compensate, I did not include stories from the closest 2001 equivalent in terms of content, the Sunday Post Magazine. News briefs, news bytes, and stories of 3 paragraphs and under also excluded. All stories that were initially sampled, but later excluded, can be found separately listed in Appendix 3. Coding: The date, day of the week, and what section of the newspaper that stories appeared in were noted. Then, stories were put into the subject categories described below. I also took brief notes consisting of a few words to a sentence to summarize the main point of articles appearing in the main newspaper, editorial, and features pages. Political News - Government, policy, politics: This included the factional politics of the Chinese Communist Party, top and provincial level government, personnel reshuffles, policy discussions, debates, agendas, budget (not specific government actions on specific subjects, such as new laws on industrial safety, or a crackdown on crime), and relations between the Central government and the regions. - Protesters, dissidents, and political prisoners: Stories about the activities or treatment of dissidents (defined as people who strongly oppose the authorities – I included the Falun Gong), people imprisoned for political reasons, and acts of dissent or protest against the authorities (for any reason). - Political control, suppression, and propaganda: Efforts by the government to control people’s lives, suppression of political out-groups, and the Government’s official position on different issues (usually expressed through the State media).

Official corruption and misconduct: Corruption, illegal activity, abuse of power, or negligence on the part of government officials. Human rights: International criticism of China’s human rights record, activities of human rights activists, and actual human rights abuses occurring in China. Tax, legal system, and civil service: Problems with and efforts to reform the legal, tax, and administrative systems. International Relations: diplomacy, foreign policy, and power relationships between China and other states. Cross-Strait Relations: China’s relations with Taiwan and the Taiwanese independence issue. Tibet and Xinjiang: Separatist activities, political repression, government policies. General and speculative analysis: Comment and analysis about China’s political situation and political future. Other political

Apolitical (Social) news - Social issues: social problems, social welfare, population issues - Crime: Accounts of crime and punishment - Accidents and disasters: natural and man-made, weather - Environment, health, science: environmental problems and protection, personal health, public health and safety, scientific endeavors. - Education: the education system, creation of skills - Illegal immigration: self-explanatory - Human interest: stories whose primary focus is on (usually ordinary) individuals. Pegged human interest stories revolve around individuals who are used to illustrate some news event or trend. Unpegged human interest stories are those that are printed because they are simply interesting. - Lifestyles and social trends: Social trend stories are about changes in people’s way of life, lifestyles stories deal with ordinary life. They also include consumer-oriented articles such as travel, cuisine, and recreation. - Arts and entertainment: Stories about the arts or the entertainment industry, including reviews of films, performances and books. - Other: Apolitical, non-economic news that can not otherwise be categorized. Economic news: Business, finance, economics, trade, state-owned enterprises, economic development, and all stories appearing in the business and economic sections of the newspaper. Note: due to my unfamiliarity with finance and economics, and because of time constraints, I did not sub-categorize or write summaries of stories appearing in the Business, Markets, Property, Shipping and Technology sections, but have simply counted the number of China stories appearing in each. I included “Technology” in the economic news section because virtually all of the China stories appearing here were about the activities of high-tech companies on the mainland, rather than about technology itself. This handling of business section stories turned out to be problematic, as I discovered that was not safe to assume that every single story appearing in the business sections was purely about business and economics. Most were, but there were sometimes stories strongly related to political and social issues, such as the welfare system, labor issues, and corruption. That is a weakness of this study – the number of business section stories can only be treated as an approximation of the number of stories actually devoted to pure economic issues. If I had the time to repeat the study, I would need to collect more detailed data on the business sections.

Ambiguity: Sometimes it was ambiguous what category a story fitted into. In those cases, I followed the method used in a study done by the Project for Excellence in Journalism: if over half the paragraphs in an article dealt with any one category, it was placed in that category. If the article still could not be classified in this way, it was categorized as either “other – political” or “other – apolitical”. Findings and Analysis More China coverage overall: In the last ten years, the SCMP’s coverage of China has grown considerably. In the 56 issues examined for 1991, a total of 631 stories were found. In 56 issues for 2001, the number of stories found was 1002 – a 159% increase. The 2001 figure would have been even higher had the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States not occurred, because for the last three months of that year, the China pages in the main newspaper were reduced from the usual two pages to one, as the newspaper shifted resources to covering the attacks and the ensuing war in Afghanistan. Whether this expansion means that China news now makes up a greater proportion of the SCMP’s total coverage, or whether it occurred as part of a general expansion is uncertain, but certain changes in the editorial layout, particularly in the Business sections, suggest the former. In 1991, the SCMP did not have a China page in its main news section on Sundays, which is typically a slow news day. Any China stories ran on the Asia page, mixed in with articles covering the rest of the Asia -Pacific region. Its Business section ran China stories sporadically, with the number of China stories fluctuating day to day from none at all, to around ten. It seems that the SCMP saw fit to only give China economic news a whole page to itself once a week on Mondays, which ran under the heading of “China Trade”. In 2001, the main news section usually contained two China pages every day of the week. (However, this does not mean that there were twice as many stories, as the SCMP was by then using a larger typeface and running fewer stories per page.) The Business section was by then printing China economic news more regularly, and had a China page or a split Hong Kong/China page every day, except for Sundays. A shift in focus: While China coverage increased dramatically, most of this increase was concentrated in the Business section. For 1991, only 193 China -related stories were found in the Business sections of the South China Morning Post (this includes the Business, Markets and Sunday Money sections). For 2001, 418 stories stories were found. Although there were some stories on topics other than economics in the Business sections, the fact that the paper is choosing to report them in the Business section rather than the main newspaper probably means that the story angles will tend to focus on the economic, rather than political significance of these events and trends. China coverage in the rest of the newspaper grew more modestly, from 438 stories in 1991 to 584 stories in 2001. Apolitical news also showed a fairly big increase – doubling from 115 stories in 1991 to 237 stories in 2001. However, the number of political news stories stayed almost exactly the same, with 286 stories for 1991 as opposed to 281 stories for 2001. (Note: both the figures for apolitical and political news in 2001 would have been larger, had the September 11th attacks not happened.) As a result of this unevenly distributed expansion, the SCMP has shifte d away from a concentration in Chinese political news (the number of political stories outnumbering both apolitical and economic stories in 1991), towards a concentration in economic news in 2001.

While the SCMP is not reporting significantly fewer political stories than before, political news made up 17% less of total coverage in 2001 than it did in 1991. Apolitical news showed a 6% increase as a proportion of total coverage, while economic news grew by 11%.19 (See figures 1 and 2)

Breakdown of News Categories, 1991

115, 18%

286, 46%

Political Business Apolitical

230, 36%

Figure 1

Breakdown of News Categories, 2001

237, 24%

281, 28% Political Business Apolitical

484, 48%

Figure 2 Does this mean that the SCMP is depoliticizing its coverage? An increase in economic news does not equate the avoidance of political issues. The South China Morning Post has historically placed much importance on economic news. Its target readership has long consisted welleducated elites â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Hong Kong based business people and professionals who would have had a substantial interest in business news about Hong Kong, China and Asia.20 The large increase in the number of China business and economic stories may simply be because Hong Kong is 19 20

These percentage changes are significant at the 1% level. z criterion > 2.58 SCMP Group annual report, 2001

becoming increasingly economically integrated with the mainland, and the SCMP, traditionally tuned in to economic events and trends, would want to report it. To better answer the question of whether or not the SCMP is depoliticizing its China coverage, it is necessary to analyze its coverage of specific political and social issues in greater detail. An increase in apolitical news is not necessarily a negative thing. It can enhance the traditional political news subjects, giving readers a broader and more nuanced picture of China. If on the other hand, apolitical news acts as a substitute for, and not a complement to political news, there is reason to be concerned because readers would be missing an important part of the picture. How did the SCMP portray China a decade ago? How does it portray China now? The next section will examine first apolitical, then political news to find out what has changed and how. More diverse coverage overall: The SCMP’s China coverage (not counting the business sections) in 1991 placed heavy emphasis on a few political issues and economics. Figure 3, which graphs the number of stories in each category in order of frequency, shows many stories in a few categories and a comparatively small number of stories in many categories. Many issues, particularly apolitical ones, were under-reported. In 2001, coverage was more diverse. While there were still a few categories of heavy concentration, Figure 4 shows stories spread out more evenly over many categories. One also notices that the categories with the highest frequencies no longer consist entirely of political issues. Many apolitical issues are now reported at levels similar to that of many political issues, and one notices that the top five most popular categories no longer consist (almost) entirely of political issues. New categories appear: The table below (figure 5) shows that while all apolitical issues either grew or stayed roughly similar in absolute terms, only three categories registered statistically significant growth as a percentage of the total. Two of these were education, and the combined areas of health, science and the environment. The nature of statistics is that it is easier to have more certainty when dealing with extreme percentages – you can have more certainty about a 99%-1% split than a 50%-50% split. 21 The education and health/science/environment categories fit the description. They went from virtually non-existent to receiving a small but fairly regular amount of coverage. There were only two environment stories in the 1991 sample. One concerned a hunting ban in Yunnan province, and the other was a panda giving birth in a nature reserve. Stories about plans for the Three Gorges Dam concentrated on the project’s significance for economic development. During the course of my investigation, I encountered only one story about environmentalists’ objections to the dam project, but it was only three paragraphs long, and thus excluded from the study. There were also only five health stories – too few to reveal any themes. The 2001 sample contained 14 environment stories about topics such as air pollution, water supply problems (it was a drought year) and desertification. There was also mention of environmental policy. The 12 health stories may show a pattern – half of them were about food contamination/sanitation scares, in some cases caused by unscrupulous business practices. It is not really possible to draw conclusions about science coverage, since three of the four 2001

Creative Systems Research website

Categories of stories in 1991 in order of frequency number of stories 0

Government, politics and policy

47 43

protest, dissidents, political prisoners political control and propaganda

China-Taiwan relations

Economic (main newspaper)

human rights

crime

category name

sport

Tibet and Xinjiang

arts and entertainment

social issues

other political

accidents and disasters

14 11

human interest

lifestyles and social trends

environment, health, science other apolitical

official corruption and misconduct

5 5

official corruption and misconduct tax, legal, administrative, electoral systems

speculative analysis

shipping

4 3

illegal immigration

Figure 3

international relations

technology

property

education

Categories of stories in 2001 in order of frequency number of stories 0

international relations

China-Taiwan relations

protest, dissidents, political prisoners

environment, health, science

political control and propaganda

technology

human rights

other apolitical

official corruption and misconduct

category name

accidents and disasters

social issues

lifestyles and social trends

Economic (main newspaper)

sport

Government, politics and policy

arts and entertainment

human interest

tax, legal, administrative, electoral systems

other political

education

Tibet and Xinjiang

property

shipping

illegal immigration

Figure 3

crime

speculative analysis

6 4

science stories were related to a Chinese space mission, and there was no comparable mission in 1991. However, it is interesting to note that one of the space stories was a substantial sized article about the animal research conducted in space, even as one of the other stories commented that the mission’s political significance was that it was prestige-geared, and thus took few scientific risks. The education category grew from only one story to eleven, mainly because in 2001, the weekly Education section appeared to make a point of including one China story per issue. One new political news category also appeared - official corruption and misconduct, which increased from 5 to 25 stories, a statistically significant 1.7% increase as a proportion of total coverage. This will be discussed in greater detail later. More about the ordinary : One somewhat surprising discovery is that the remaining apolitical category to show statistically significant growth was the “other” group, which simply contained stories that did not quite belong anywhere else. Six out of the twenty-eight of these in 2001 were about the Beijing Olympic bid, an event too broad to be classified as political, economic, social or sport. However, ma ny of the other stories were about prosaic events that did not fit well into any issue area, such as a story about a group of Chinese passengers suing Japan Airlines for discriminatory treatment, or one about railway officials bracing for the Lunar New Year holiday rush in Guangdong. What one notices about these stories is that they resemble a typical newspaper’s coverage of local events more than they do coverage of international events. They are more ordinary, and less themed, maybe interesting or significant in themselves, but not strongly attached to broader concepts or issues. This seems to indicate a growing interest in the ordinary, and less of a tendency to see China through a lens as something distant, alien, and requiring explanation. Another sign that there is a greater interest in ordinary life is the increase in the number of lifestyle and social trend stories, from nine in 1991 to twenty-one in 2001. Although lifestyle/social trend stories do not make up a statistically significantly larger proportion of overall coverage, they appeared with greater frequency in the same number of sampled days. The few lifestyle/social trend stories in 1991 were mainly consumer-oriented, such as stories about travel, cuisine, and art collecting. A greater proportion of stories in 2001 were about the habits and leisure of ordinary people in mainland China. Take for example, stories about the growing popularity of skiing among the rich, the wild lifestyles of young Shanghainese women, or mainland Chinese traveling abroad in record numbers. On the other hand, there were still a fair number of travel, recreation and consumer-oriented stories. Eight travel articles were actually excluded from the final sample because they appeared in the Sunday Post Magazine, which ran a travel column profiling Chinese cities. There was no similar “China travel” column in 1991’s Asia Magazine. A deeper understanding of society : The number of stories about social issues grew only modestly, from 15 stories in 1991 to 22 in 2002. The social issues category stayed almost exactly the same as a percentage of total coverage, declining very slightly by 0.2% (or growing very slightly by 0.4% if you choose to include the human interest stories pegged to social issues.) However, judging tentatively from the small number of social issues stories and from the China coverage in general, it appears that in 2001, the SCMP showed a better understanding of social phenomena and the social structure in China. In 1991, just two years afte r the Tiananmen crackdown, China’s leaders were watching the Soviet Union fall apart and were deeply split over what to do next: press ahead with economic reform, or retreat back into their traditional Marxist shell. Many stories at this time revolved around these

high-level power struggles and policy debates, and on political control and suppression. Government control of the media, of academics, and the arts were recurring themes, and so were its attempts to shut foreign influences out. The image one received was that of a highly restrictive state where the government exercised tight, though waning control over people’s lives. Even some of the stories about society were highly politicized and framed terms of dissent and suppression, freedom and control. Take, for example, a lifestyle story about the private pastime of singing ballads critical of the government. 22 Or a story about alienated youth buying t-shirts with rebellious slogans disapproved of by the authorities23 More research is needed, but 1991’s coverage of Chinese society leaves the general impression of being narrow and limited. Four out of the fifteen social issues stories concerned population control and the one-child policy. This small number of stories makes it impossible to tell whether the SCMP actually did devote a lot of its social news coverage to the one-child policy, but if it did, that would be consistent with its overall interest in political and social control. Other social issues stories included two on drug abuse, two on la bor conditions, one each on the brain drain, the social safety net, mental illness, the “sexual revolution”, the persistence of superstition and the slave trade, and a juvenile welfare law. Another example of how an issue the SCMP was generally interested in at the time influenced its China coverage is the special attention it gave to narcotics. Two of the 15 social issues stories and 7 out of 18 of the crime stories were about the drug trade and drug abuse. In 1991, the SCMP periodically printed stories in various parts of the newspaper under the heading of “Drug Watch”. It seems that for some reason, 1991 was a year of high awareness about the drug problem in Hong Kong, and this colored the way the SCMP covered China. There seemed to be little reporting, in 1991, about the huge social changes China going through as a result of over a decade of economic reforms. I saw no stories, for example, about villagers drifting, semi-unofficially, into towns and cities as temporary cheap labor. (There was one story that mentioned the “transient workers”, but only in relation to a new regulation to make them comply with the one-child policy). I saw no stories about how China’s new private entrepreneurs were faring. There was only one story related to wealth disparity, one about the privileges Li Peng’s son enjoyed at a luxury spa while ordinary people had to tighten belts. 24 This was despite the fact the wealth gap, though much smaller ten years ago than it is now, was a major factor of the discontent that erupted into the 1989 pro-democracy protests. The protesters felt that those who had “gotten rich first” had done so unfairly because of their political connections and privileges.25 The 2001 coverage seems to indicate a broader understanding of social issues. There were now reports about the plight of migrant workers - those with rural hukous (residence permits) unofficially working and living in cities. There were stories about wealth disparity, the overtaxation of peasants, problems with the social services, and unemployment. The Business section also periodically reported on socially and politically relevant economic issues such as the failing State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), legal reform (necessary to uphold business contracts), and problems with the financial system and with taxation. One also found that more of the SCMP’s human interest stories are pegged to social issues (one or two out of eleven from 1991, compared to six out of fourteen from 2001), where the lives of ordinary people are used to illustrate larger 22

SCMP, Life/style section, June 4th 1991 SCMP, Life/style section, July 18th 1991 24 SCMP, front page, April 9th 1991 25 Hinton, Carma. The Gate of Heavenly Peace. http://www.tsquare.tv/film/transcript.html 23

issues. Some social issues were also quite controversial. For example, the SCMP printed several stories about the AIDS problem, and the role of government blood donation vans in spreading the disease in the countryside. It must be remembered, however, that the number of stories about social issues did not increase very dramatically. The general impression one received of China from the 2001 coverage was markedly different. No longer was it primarily a picture of the repressive state, but one of an increasingly chaotic country where public order and the ability of the government to govern was slowly breaking down. Stories about violent crime, threats to public safety, fraud, official corruption, government negligence, and the inability of the center to control the regions all contributed to this image. One wonders how accurate this picture is. Was the image of the chaotic state was being overplayed in 2001, in a similar way the image of the repressive state was overplayed in 1991? Unfortunately, this is a question that is impossible for me to answer. Crime in the spotlight, by design or by default: One of the most noticeable things about Figure 4 is that in the 2001 sample, crime stories are the second largest category. Crime stories were outnumbered only by international relations stories, and came just slightly ahead of Cross-Strait relations. Though crime was the biggest apolitical category in 1991, it was quite a bit further down the list in the overall scheme of things. The odd thing is that even though the number of crime stories jumped from 18 to 45, it only grew by 1.6% as a proportion of total news coverage, which was not statistically significant. What appears to have happened is that while the number of crime stories increased, keeping pace with the overall growth in the number of stories (particularly in the Business sections), the number of stories about various political issues has dropped, leaving crime with substantially more coverage than they. In particular, crime in 2001 was the subject of over twice as many stories as internal politics, policy and center-regional relations. The opposite relationship was true in 1991. One other noticeable thing is that crime and social issues started out with similar numbers of stories in 1991 (18 crime versus 15 social issues), but by 2001, the gap had widened considerably. There were 22 social issues stories in the 2001 sample (28 if you count the pegged human interest stories), compared to 45 crime stories. It seems that coverage of social issues did not grow nearly as much as coverage of crime. The small sample size means that the numbers found here are only roughly representative of the numbers in the whole population, so some of these categories are likely to switch pla ces in ranking if one did a census of all SCMP issues from 1991 and 2001. However, I have reason to believe that further research will generally support what was found here. In 1991, the SCMP usually gave China only one page in the main newspaper. Polit ical “hard news” stories were usually placed prominently at the top of the page, and crime stories, usually quite short, filled space towards the bottom. In 2001, the SCMP usually allotted two pages to China in the main news section. One page often concentrated more on political news, while the other concentrated mainly on apolitical news. There was more space for crime stories. It was not uncommon for two or three crime stories to appear on the same day. Sometimes crime stories featured prominently at the top of the page, such as the January 11th story: “Husband and wife team executed”26 which went on to detail the misdoings of ten people who were executed for violent crime. Crime was a major category in 2001, whereas in 1991, it was not. Politics – same amount, different priorities: The number of political stories in both years was surprisingly similar – 286 in 1991, and 281 in 2001. Therefore, it might be useful to look at the 26

SCMP, China page of main news, January 11th 2001

political categories stories in isolation, in addition to as a proportion of overall coverage. In both years, international relations and Cross-Strait relations were the largest political categories. There were slightly more international relations stories in 2001, probably because of the major diplomatic row between China and the US that resulted from the spy-plane crash. The Taiwan issue continues to be very prominently reported. As a proportion of total coverage, four categories showed statistically significant decline. The category of internal politics, policy and center-regional relations (from now on referred to as “government”) took the biggest fall, from 47 stories in 1991 to only 19 in 2001, representing a 5.6% drop as a proportion of overall coverage. This was followed by the category of “protest, dissidents and political prisoners” (henceforth called dissent), falling from 43 to 33 stories, a 3.5% drop. Then came “political control, suppression and propaganda” (henceforth called political control), dropping from 38 to 29 stories, a 3.1% drop; and finally, stories about Tibet and Xinjiang fell from 15 to 9 stories, a 1.5% drop. The only political category to show a statistically significant growth as a percentage of total stories was, as mentioned above, official corruption and misconduct. It rose from alm ost non-existent (5 stories), to moderately reported (25 stories), a 1.7% increase as a percentage of the total. These changes reflect both a change in priorities within political reporting, and the overall decline in the proportion of political news. When looking at the political stories in isolation from the other two major groupings, one can see better the shift in priorities. Suppression of the masses still going strong: Looking at just the political stories, the proportion of dissent and political control stories diminish slightly, both remain among the larger political categories. Twelve years after Tiananmen, the SCMP still reports on political pariahs and government attempts to control society and suppress potential opposition. The compositio n of these categories has shifted with the times. Old school pro-democracy activists, who once dominated the dissidents category received the attention of only five stories in 2001. The rest were about the persecution of Falun Gong members and the detention of Chinese-American US scholars on spying charges. The political control category still covered topics such as censorship of the press and restriction of access to information, but focused more on crackdowns on politically undesirable groups (mainly ht e Falun Gong), and no longer dwelt on government attempts to control thought and culture – quite likely because the government has to a large extent stopped trying to do so. Systems and corruption appear: Corruption and misconduct has risen quite dramatically, from 1.7% to 8.9% of total political news. Political corruption in China is not a very new problem, though it has been worsening and receiving more attention lately. Another area of growth, which did not show up well when all stories were taken into account, are stories about problems with and attempts to reform China’s systems – the tax system, the legal system, and the administration (civil service). They collectively made up 4 stories in 1991, and 13 in 2001. This is not a dramatic increase, but my tally did not catch all of them. Stories about taxation and the legal system that are more relevant to the business community but still politically significant appeared in the Business Post, which I did not subcategorize. The government opa que: Government stories showed the steepest decline, falling from 16.4% to just 6.7% of political stories. Of the 19 government stories from 2001, only 7 focused on the internal politics of the Chinese Communist Party and government, whereas 33 out of 47 did in 1991. It seems as if in 2001, the CCP’s internal politics had simply dropped off the SCMP’s radar screen, receiving only sporadic coverage.

On July 1 2001, Jiang Zemin made a proposal that, had it been approved, would have redefined the Chinese Communist Party and possibly the definition of Communism itself. Under his “Three Representatives Theory” by which the CCP was supposed to represent the three main forces of production in the country, Jiang proposed to allow private businessmen to join the Party. In the course of my regular sampling, I found only two articles that dealt primarily with the Three Representatives Theory. By contrast, my regular sampling of that year found ten articles related to the spy plane incident, and another ten articles about a far less dramatic issue – steps towards direct links between Taiwan and the mainland. A search of the SCMP’s online archives for articles containing the words “Communist Party” or “Three Representatives Theory”, manually excluding those not directly relating to the “Three Representatives” issue turned up only fourteen articles between July 1 and December 31, 2001. By contrast, a search for “spy plane” during a comparable six -month period after the spy plane incident (1 April to 31 September), excluding articles that were actually not about the spy plane incident and its aftermath, revealed 42 stories. Yet it is arguable that the September 11 attacks, coming two months after Jiang’s speech, distracted attention away from China and contributed to the low amount of reporting issue received. However, government stories still showed a steep decline overall, steeper than that of any other political news category, indicating that government stories were less of a priority for the SCMP in 2001 than in 1991. The Chinese government, in 2001’s newspapers, seemed distant and opaque. The stories found gave little insight into the positions of individual political leaders, or into their power plays or strategies. It even seems that there were more stories analyzing US policy towards China than China’s policy towards the US. The SCMP lost its leading China political analyst, Willy Wo Lap Lam in the year 2000. The low number of government stories during 2001 might be explained by there being no-one as qualified to write them on staff. It would be interesting to see in the future, whether the number of government stories recover to their former levels, or whether the SCMP stops treating them as a big priority. Columns reveal clues: Much of the above analysis was done on the basis of numbers obtained from a relatively small sample, and therefore, findings must be treated as preliminary and tentative, requiring further testing. However, the number and composition of regular columns on China in 1991 and 2001 send signals that its editors have decided not to focus heavily on political matters if not actually cutting back on them. Columns differ from regular news articles in that they printed on a regular instead of a haphazard basis. They are very much put there by conscious editorial choice. When editors agree to print a column on a particular subject, it means that a) they have agreed to devote an allotted amount of space to that subject on a regular basis, and b) they are employing a person or people qualified to write about that subject. In 1991, the SCMP had 3 regular weekly analysis columns on China, two of which were political (Willy Lam’s Wednesday column and David Chen’s Sunday column), and one of which was economic (China Briefing), appearing in the Business Post. There was also half a page to one page of in-depth news features focusing mainly on political and social issues, which appeared every week in the Saturday Review under the heading of “China Focus”. (The Saturday Review was a separate section that contained news-magazine type feature articles, which has since been discontinued.) Now in 2002, there are eight regular columns on China. The “China Briefing” column in the Business section has branched out into three: a “Beijing Briefing”, a “Shanghai Briefing” and a Guangdong Briefing”, each appearing once weekly. Also in the business field, there is now a “Legal Update” which focuses on legal matters affecting businesses on the mainland, and a “Beijing Byte” column about the mainland internet industry (accounting for a

large fraction of the technology stories found in the 2001 sample). Although the Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong Briefing columns were not always about economic issues, - sometimes there were stories about politics, corruption, and population issues, - their primary focus was economic. There are now also two columns that carry lifestyle and human interest stories (sometimes pegged to social issues) – “China Life” and “Around China”. Meanwhile, only one weekly colu mn remains on politics – Frank Ching’s “Focus on China”, which appears on Sundays. This column often seemed to read less like news analysis, which tries to explain events and generally offers some new information; and more like opinion, which takes a position on events that were reported during the week. For example, one column argued that the United States’ post September 11 curtailment of civil liberties would make it less easy for the US to justify pressuring China on legal reform. 27 Conclusion Has the SCMP, in the final analysis, depoliticized its China coverage? If it has, to what extent has it done so? And is it necessarily a bad thing? If by that question you mean “Is the SCMP placing less of a priority on political news?” then the answer is “ye s”. Political news made up 17% less of total news coverage in 2001 as it did in 1991. The SCMP dramatically expanded its coverage of economic and apolitical issues, but not that of political issues. It has introduced numerous regular columns on business, economic, lifestyle and human interest, but failed to replace Willy Lam’s political analysis column after his 2001 departure. If, however, by that question you mean “Has the SCMP significantly reduced its coverage of political issues?” then the answer, broadly speaking, is “no.” In 2001, the SCMP was by no means abandoning political news, nor was it steering clear of any and all issues that China’s government might regard as controversial or sensitive. It continued to print stories on many of the “sensitive” political issues that occupied its attention in 1991, such as political suppression, human rights, and political prisoners. It is highly unlikely that the SCMP, with the stated goal of providing readers with analysis of the Greater China Region, would jettison all of its political reporting in the near future. Arguably, the paper has broadened its coverage to give readers a fuller picture of China. In 2001, it was reporting more on previously neglected topics such as social problems, population issues, and the environment. However, this picture is not without a couple of caveats. The SCMP 2001 coverage was showing some signs of trends that might give Hong Kong’s advocates of press freedom cause for concern. The most worrying change was the sharp fall in the number of stories about the central government’s internal politics and policies. The number fell from 47 stories in 1991 to only 19 in 2001 – a 10% drop as a proportion of political coverage. Jiang’s proposal to bring private entrepreneurs into the Communist Party, of enormous ideological and political significance, apparently failed to generate major coverage. Perhaps 2001, the first year after Willy Lam’s departure, was odd year out – maybe Chinese politics were eclipsed by the two majo r international crises that year, the Spy Plane incident and September 11th terrorist attacks on the US. Future research would be needed to see whether this change is genuine and persistent. Either way, in the year 2001, the SCMP did not seem to be, as the HKJA would put it, a “mine of information” about China’s Communist leadership. The decline in attention paid to politicking seems to have been matched by an increase in attention paid to official wrongdoing. Corruption and official misconduct stories became a staple of China political news, though they came nowhere near to dominating it.

Ching, Frank. SCMP, Analysis section, Sunday November 25, 2001

Another somewhat worrying phenomenon is the very large number of crime stories that appeared in the 2001 sample. The number of crime stories was double that of almost every other apolitical category, save three (two, had I not lumped together the categories of the environment, science and health). Crime stories also outnumbered all except one political category – international relations. Why did crime, a category of news considered by journalists to be fairly sensationalist, receive so much attention in 2001? What issues could the SCMP have been covering more thoroughly had it not been giving so much space to crime? These questions are legitimate, albeit difficult to answer. Does this mean there is self-censorship? This question can not be definitively answered on the basis of this study. In the first place, this is a small, basic study. It did not try to detect subtle changes in tone, story angle, and editorial position. In the second place content analysis is limited in its ability to explain causes. It can reveal things about a news organization’s priorities – content analysis is only done on the premise that what is printed in publications is printed as a result of choices, some calculated, some less so, on the part of journalists and editors. (Newspapers do not simply reflect the world around them. If they did, publications would all be the same.) However, trying to answer the question of whether ther e is self-censorship requires us to go a step further – it requires us to get inside the reporters’ and editors’ heads and guess why their priorities have changed. Trying to infer the reasons for a news organization’s choices would be difficult enough ni a simple case. This case is very complex. In the last decade, China, Hong Kong, and the SCMP itself have undergone major changes. In this context, there could be dozens of different reasons for why the SCMP’s coverage of China has changed the way it did, of which only one might be the journalists’/editors’/owner’s desire not to offend the leadership in Beijing. In this case, it is better to let readers judge and interpret this study’s tentative findings for themselves. For further study It is useful, in the post-handover debate over Hong Kong’s media, to have some documented evidence of what changes actually have occurred in the press. It would inform the debate, and provide some sort of anchor point to the accusations, counter-accusations and denials currently flying around the territory. I hope that this project can be a small step in the right direction. I am aware of this projects many limitations. In the eight weeks I had to complete the project, I was only able to take two brief snapshots of one single publication ten years apart, and try to compare them in some meaningful way. More research is needed. Below are some of the things that deserve further attention: Study more years: I would have gained a much fuller picture had I examined newspapers from the years in between 1991 and 2001. That would have given an idea the way in which changes occurred. Looking at only two years, spaced ten years apart might give the false impression that changes occurred incrementally and linearly with each passing year. Perhaps coverage of some subjects peaked and fell, or dipped and rose again in the time between. Perhaps it remained steady for most of the time, and then suddenly rose or dropped. You need to look at the in between years to tell. Looking at more years also would have helped reduce the chances that your findings are due to one or both of the years you examined being anomalous or unusual. Study more publications: Looking at one major publication can be of some significance, but in the end, that publication is only representative of itself. To gain an understanding of Hong Kong’s media in general would require an examination of a range of local media outlets.

Interview the journalists : Conducting interviews with and editors would allow you, to some extent, to “get inside their heads” and find out the some of the motivations behind changes in news organizations’ priorities. Figure 5: Composition of China News, 1991 and 2001 1991 2001 Number Number of % of of CATEGORY stories total stories Protest, dissidents, political prisoners 43 6.8 33 Political control, suppression and propaganda 38 6.0 29 Internal politics, policy and center-local 47 7.4 19 Corruption and misconduct 5 0.8 25 General/Speculative analysis 4 0.6 4 Human rights 16 2.5 23 International relations 62 9.8 72 Tax, legal, civil service, electoral systems 4 0.6 13 Tibet and Xinjiang 15 2.4 9 Cross-Strait relations 38 6.0 41 Other political 14 2.2 13 TOTAL POLITICAL: 286 45.3 281 Arts and entertainment 15 2.4 17 Lifestyles and trends 9 1.4 21 Environment, health, science 7 1.1 30 Accidents and disasters 14 2.2 23 Crime 18 2.9 45 Illegal immigration 3 0.5 6 Education 1 0.2 11 Human interest 11 1.7 14 Social issues 15 2.4 22 Sport 17 2.7 20 Other 5 0.8 28 TOTAL APOLITICAL: 115 18.2 237 Economic (main newspaper) 30 4.8 21 Business, Markets, and Money sections 193 30.6 418 Property section 1 0.2 8 Shipping section 4 0.6 8 Technology section 2 0.3 29 TOTAL ECONOMIC: 230 36.5 484

% of % total change

% change significance: z criterion

3.3

-3.5

3.29**

2.9

-3.1

3.10**

1.9 2.5

-5.6 +1.7

5.55** 2.49*

0.4 2.3 7.2

-0.2 -0.2 -2.6

0.66 0.31 1.89

1.3 0.9 4.1 1.3 28.0 1.7 2.1

+0.7 -1.5 -1.9 -0.9 -17.3 -0.7 +0.7

1.29 2.42* 1.77 1.42

3.0 2.3 4.5 0.6 1.1 1.4 2.2 2.0 2.8 23.7

+1.9 +0.1 +1.6 +0.1 +0.9 -0.3 -0.2 -0.7 +2.0 +5.4

2.49* 0.10 1.67 0.33 2.16* 0.55 0.24 0.92 2.80**

2.1

-2.7

3.01**

41.7 0.8 0.8 2.9 48.3

+11.1 +0.6 +0.2 +2.6 +11.9

4.53** 1.70 0.38 3.72**

0.97 0.98

TOTAL ALL: 631 * Significant at the 5% level. z > 1.96 ** Significant at the 1% level. z > 2.58

1002

Figure 6: Composition of China political news, 1991, 2001 1991 2001 Number of % of Number stories total stories 43 protest, dissidents, political prisoners apolitical protests, 38 dissent, dissidents and control internal politics, policy and 47 center-local corruption and misconduct 5 general analysis 4 human rights 16 international relations 62 tax, legal, civil service, 4 electoral systems Tibet and Xinjiang 15 Cross-Strait Relations 38 Other 14 TOTAL: 286 * significant at 0.05%. z > 1.96 **significant at 0.01% z > 2.58

of % of % change % change total significance: z criterion 11.7 -3.3 1.15

15.0

13.3

10.3

-3.0

-1.09

16.4

6.8

-9.7

3.59**

1.7 1.4 5.6 21.7 1.4

25 4 23 72 13

8.9 1.4 8.2 25.6 4.6

7.1 0.0 2.6 3.9 3.2

3.80** 0.03 1.22 1.11 2.25*

5.2 13.3 4.9 100

9 41 13 281

3.2 14.6 4.6 100

-2.0 1.3 -0.3

1.21 0.45 -0.15

Bibliography Cited Sources White, David Manning

The “Gate Keeper”: A case study in the selection of news. Journalism Quarterly, 27, p383-90 (1950)

Abraham, Thomas

Memo, May 2001. Taken from WAIS discussion board posting by Ronald Hilton. http://www.stanford.edu/group/wais/media_freedomofpresschinahongkong55 02.html Schloss, Glen. Pressing Times for the Media. SCMP, July 6 2002. SCMP annual report, 2001 http://ar.scmp.com/ar01/f103.pdf

Schloss, Glen SCMP Group

Creative Systems Research Hong Kong Audit Bureau of Circulation The WorldPaper Online The World Press Group

http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm#terminology http://www.hkabc.com.hk/ http://www.worldpaper.com/HostPubs/hongkong.html http://www.worldpressgroup.com/iht.html

Other Resources Fink, Arlene How to Analyze Survey Data, Sage Publications, California 1995 Hague, Paul and Sampling and Statistics, Kogan Page, London 1993 Harris, Paul. Lynch, David C. After the propaganda state: media politics and “thought work” in reformed China Stanford 1999 Kovach, Bill and The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Rosensteil, Tom Public Should Expect, Three Rivers Press, 2001 McIntyre, Bryce T. Mass Media in the Asian Pacific, Short Run Press, UK 1998 Ran Wei Press Developments in Taiwan and the Changing Coverage of the Taiwan-China Relationship. So, Clement Y.K. Press and Politics in Hong Kong: case studies from 1967 to 1997. and Chan, Joseph Chinese University, Hong Kong, 1999 Man. Committee Concerned Journalists

of Changing Definitions of News, March 6 1998 http://www.journalism.org/ccj/resources/chdefonews.html