On May 4, 2009, Hauser Center invited Zhang Jiang, Professor and Dean, News & Communication Department, China Youth University for Political Sciences to give a talk on Media as a Venue for Civil Participation in China. Jia Xijin, Associate Professor of Tsinghua University of China and Visiting Fellow at Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations was invited to make comments.

Professor Zhan used five examples of how media created public events that eventually led to policy change to make the case of media’s role as the venue for public participation in China.

Below are notes of the talk and discussions:

Under the current policy environment in China, when citizens cannot easily register nonprofit organizations to convene people with the same interest to pursue the same agenda, today’s civil society in China do not typically feature nonprofit entities, but rather, “media + public intellectuals”.  Since 1990s, there are a number of incidents highlighting media’s role as creating public event, and setting public agenda.   Media has been playing an important role in today’s China in initiating, heating up, or leading civic movement in China.

Media has become an important venue for civil participation in policy change or public agenda setting.  The media driven civil participation follows the following formats:
1.    Court case driven
2.    Issue or agenda driven

Zhan then gave a number of examples under each category.

Court case driven

First the Sun Zhigang incident in 2003. Sun Zhigang, a college gradate was arrested as a vagrant for not carrying ID and was later beaten to death under police custody.  China Daily’s reported: “Sun’s case has triggered a major debate on the validity of the holding system and the two-decade-old Measures for Internment and Deportation of Urban Vagrants and Beggars.  The holding measures, an administrative regulation issued by the State Council in 1982, are currently the legal basis for internment and deportation by public security authorities.  The measures require urban vagrants and beggars to be housed and deported to their hometown and urge the local governments to make proper arrangements for them.  Stirred up by Sun’s case, three candidates for doctorate of laws have written to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s top legislature, appealing for an investigation of Sun’s case and a review of the constitutionality of the measures.  The Law on Legislative Procedure stipulates that any provisions concerning deprivation of the human rights and democratic rights of citizens must be made in the form of laws by the NPC or its standing committee. In other words, the State Council does not have the power to deprive such rights with administrative regulations. Later, five prominent legal scholars backed up the three students by calling for the launch of special investigation into the case and the status quo of the holding system itself and its enforcement. ”

This incident has demonstrated how “public intellectuals” and media worked together to mobilize public participation that led to public change.

Media typically adopts the two methods in participating public affairs: investigative reporting, and commentary.  Since investigative reporting tends to bring risks to the reporter and the newspaper, as the aftermath of the Sun Zhigang incident has shown (It is said that the Police revenged the newspaper and two top leaders were brought down as a result.), newspapers began to use more of commentary as the channel to participate in and lead civil participation.   News commentary enjoys more freedom, and less susceptible to censorship as local authorities tend not to care about the commentary on incidents happening outside of their jurisdictions.  Internet forums and blogs, as well as media commentary columns played an important role in stirring up public awareness, and creating public voice and public pressure for policy changes.

A second incident is the PX chemical facility construction plan in Xiamen. When citizens used internet and cell phone messages to coordinate a mass public “walk” that eventually aborted the construction plan in Xiamen.

Issue Driven

The example is promulgation of Government Information Transparency Regulation (the Regulation).

China’s national Regulation was promulgated in April 2007. Before that since 2003, some regions such as Shanghai and Guangzhou City began to pilot it.

On June 2, 2006, China Youth Daily covered the story of an journalist suing the Shanghai Municipal Government on violating the Shanghai Regulation on Government Information Transparency. That report initiated a wave of discussions in the media on the people’s rights to know, that the government’s obligation to share information. Eventually, the national government promulgated a nation wide regulation on government information transparency.

Comments by Jia Xijin

While in today’s China, there are a lot of restrictions on civil participation through association, media initiated and magnified  participation by diverse individual citizens plays a major role in current society in China. I would like to refer  this force as NGP (nongovernmental persons).

Such bottom up government/policy transformation has the following features: transitional, hot-topic focused, explosive, easy to shift a way, temporary, and mainly about issue on public-sphere (individual interests and private rights are missing on this arena).   How to form a rational, sustainable and strategic civil participation campaign that helps shape a healthy political and governmental environment is the key.

Discussions and Commentaries from the Audience
1.    Though there is no empirical study that has established that media coverage will eventually lead to policy change or government behavior change, coverage has a long-term public awareness impact.
2.    The essence of media’s role in the above examples, are media’s role in “social mobilization”.   When organizations are missing, media is playing such a role.
3.    Small victory in civil participation means a lot: though media these days are not so much about campaigning for democracy or political reform, progresses like these examples helps the citizen gain more freedom and civil rights. This seems to be a more practical path.