China's Beijing whistleblowers' secret reports and the consequences of censorship

The Communist Party of China seems to have unlimited power. However, she is severely lacking in knowledge about her own nation, including accurate population and economic statistics.

Why is it that despite China's size, some of its lower-level officials seem uninterested in disseminating unfavorable information?. Additionally, there is not much discussion of what is actually happening in the public.

In order to make an impact, news is frequently published only when it is extremely political or morally charged. Due to this, a second information cycle—known as the "internal reference media," or "neican" in Chinese—has developed. Through this cycle, secret reports on significant political developments—including the general mood of the populace—are provided to the leadership.

Although there are various channels for information in every bureaucracy, the gap between the general public and actual developments is much wider in dictatorships. For instance, there were internal "reports from the Reich" in the Third Reich.

But even in comparison to East Germany or the Soviet Union, China has created a system of internal reference bulletins that is much more extensive. How did it start? It all started in the 1930s when the party established its first news agency and decided not to release all the information for fear of inspiring defeatism or a decline in morale.

Journalists received reasonably clear instructions as to which channels belonged to which types of information starting in the late 1940s. This is how the two parts of the cycle were created.

Some journalists only wrote for one publication, while others wrote for both. On Mao Zedong's orders, however, internal data was also compiled in significant authorities starting in 1953, and it was frequently sent to the leadership on a daily basis and filtered by their secretaries.

The most significant internal bulletin from the propaganda sector was evaluated, and they recently published a study on this. The issues covered the years 1954 through 1966. You learned a number of things, including the fact that the party leadership in the middle of the 1950s was fairly knowledgeable about world events, particularly those in Eastern Europe.

Each significant development underwent a thorough analysis. The leadership was then able to respond quickly because many of the important issues that later surfaced, like the issue of the personality cult, had already been planned out in advance.

We are aware of the controversy surrounding the question of whether or not authoritarian systems can actually learn anything new, as opposed to simply acting in echo chambers. The study illustrates the various grayscales.

The system functioned reasonably well at times. When not, it was extremely risky for editors and bulletin feeders to present opposing viewpoints, even within the party, once the party leadership had settled on a political stance.

The party leadership only received feedback in this manner that suited its needs. However, how can you determine what has been withheld from publication and censored? Are there any sources for this information? Of course, we have no access to the files of the central propaganda department, for example, where editing was done - and that is not something that can be anticipated in the near future either.

I did, however, examine the changes in the internal reports. Throughout the campaign period, the thematic breadth was significantly reduced.

Sometimes, it was just a matter of fending off adversaries, i. e.

identifying who voiced criticism of the party as opposed to representing all views. Another illustration: in late 1958, during the Great Leap Campaign, the secret bulletin I examined was the first to alert the leadership to mass fatalities.

In the province of Yunnan, about 40,000 people perished in three months as a result of malnutrition and overwork. When discoveries like these appeared on Mao's desk, he was appalled.

Management was aware of issues as soon as they arose when the system was functioning properly. However, when Mao subsequently allowed the campaign to continue, no evidence of the starvation dead was discovered internally.

The internal and public circuits disintegrated and ceased to function. Many Chinese institutions cleaned out their archives a good 20 years ago, which is why editions of several secret bulletins came into circulation, some of which were even sold, and how good is the source situation for the actually secret documents.

One university in Hong Kong, for instance, allowed students to view the internal reports of the Xinhua news agency. Ironically, it was a copy produced by the Ministry of State Security.

The entire collection of the most significant internal bulletin produced by the propaganda division, including correspondence from the Central Committee office, was examined. Mao could process reports with up to 50,000 characters per day, which is a significant amount of information, and these, along with personal secretaries to the leadership, played a crucial role.

He started to get suspicious if he got less. On the other hand, following the "Great Leap," he lamented that he had too many reports and was unable to make wise choices.

Therefore, the secretaries worked in a hazardous environment. Typically, provincial archives are where you found the reports you are currently writing about.

There was always the possibility of gaining understanding in the past. No, formally, the Chinese archiving system is thriving. It wasn't because archivists were negligent.

It appears that many people at the time believed the documents were no longer significant, but under Xi Jinping, the past has become extremely politicized. Without regard to historical details, he wants to make the interpretation for himself.

There was also a secret bulletin article featuring an interview with cyberneticist Norbert Wiener. How did that happen? That was in 1961 when the "Great Leap" died down and cybernetics began to play a bigger part in Eastern Europe as a means of social control.

It seems that one editor thought that thinking about information management was helpful in light of the Great Leap disaster. Systemic factors, however, were less significant at the time for Mao.

Prior to the Cultural Revolution, especially, he began to place more and more trust in the reliability of other people and lost faith in reports produced by bureaucracies. Already in the "Big Leap," it became clear that the party could not actually afford to forgo education; the situation was so dire that the previously high level of trust in the party was largely lost, forcing it to rely more on propaganda from outside enemies and repression.

The system was in large part overthrown during the Cultural Revolution. Senior party officials who traveled abroad for the first time at the end of the 1970s and saw the level of development in Romania or the GDR were incredibly shocked due to a lack of information.

In the 1950s, they would have been more knowledgeable. The internal reporting structure is still in place right now.

What is currently known about this? A journalist from the "Volkszeitung" recently boasted that in the first 38 days following the Corona outbreak, this organ alone provided around 550 reports internally for the party leadership and commented on almost 460 of them - which shows the superiority over Western systems. This cycle can also be recognized historically: If she is put under pressure, there is a risk that she will only accept information that she will confirm. The question is, however, whether the leadership has the capacity to deal with the unfavorable effects of their decisions.

Recently, journalists who preferred to remain anonymous claimed that criticism was no longer effective. In spite of great personal risk, some of them later made them public, proving that they had indeed ascended to the top of the party.

We are interested in both the systemic aspect, such as the internal incentive structures for journalists to report critically, and the concrete content, on the one hand. What else are you interested in looking into?. There used to be political incentives - now there are bonuses.

The reports had a ludicrous amount of power in the beginning. Even the provincial governors were required to address complaints.

In other words, a self-correcting system without direct intervention by management. Political opposition and the fortification of party structures resulted as a result.

Anyone who attempted to meddle with the regional government now had to be extremely well-prepared. Nevertheless, there were occasional cases in which Chinese journalists smuggled themselves into institutions undercover in Günter-Wallraff-style and reported on grievances.

If the party headquarters protected them, they could exert a lot of influence. If not, it got dangerous.

In 1959, an editor dared to include a letter about the catastrophic situation in an internal journal, but Mao didn't want to hear it anymore, and the man was sent to a labor camp for ten years. They write that the reports also discussed how best to design propaganda.

Mao experimented a lot and wanted to prevent the party's power structures from becoming encrusted and the cadres separating from the masses. In 1956 he implemented this in the Hundred Flowers Movement: He assumed the party was so secure in the saddle that it could afford a much more critical socialist public.

This was stopped again in the early summer of 1957 because many party cadres could not deal with pluralistic expressions of opinion and feared for the stability of the system. Mao subsequently justified his approach by saying that he wanted to unmask hidden enemies.

More than half a million people have been sent to the countryside for re-education, some for 20 years. Do the editors of the internal reports also form something like a think tank? At times yes - especially from 1961 onwards, background material was collected for the major debates about the general line of the international communist movement.

Literary pieces were also reproduced in the reports, such as Karl Jasper's writing The Atomic Bomb and the Future of Man. Excerpts yes, that's exciting.

There were also film reviews or book reviews. When Doctor Zhivago was published, the party leadership was interested in the content but had no time to read the book.

In times when the political horizon was widening, the choice of topics was more open. It was often about publications on political economy, the situation in the Soviet Union or the USA.

I would like to ask you something about your teaching experience: How free are Chinese students in Germany, what problems do they face? In my courses, some of them are among the most critical - but they often don't know whether their statements will be passed on. There are also internal channels for this.

There is a climate of fear. Some students therefore do not comment at all or at most on methodological questions.

We have to create shelters for them. Universities should also prepare for the fact that employees of German institutions, especially those with Chinese passports, could be put under pressure or even arrested.

There are great risks and an urgent need for action. The interview appeared in the print edition of January 26, 2023 in a slightly abridged version.

There are great risks and an urgent need for action. The interview appeared in the print edition of January 26, 2023 in a slightly abridged version.

There are great risks and an urgent need for action. The interview appeared in the print edition of January 26, 2023 in a slightly abridged version.

Already in the "Big Leap," it became clear that the party could not actually afford to forgo education; the situation was so dire that the previously high level of trust in the party was largely lost, forcing it to rely more on propaganda from outside enemies and repression.