This article is a chat record compilation.
The chat took place in a TG student group at my school, and it all started with this picture:
The following are all my own remarks, without anyone else's. After all, my output ability is relatively high (laughs).
Anonymity: It means that phone number registration has been required for a long time. As for taking over the school's media platform, guess what a classmate of mine majoring in communication said, "What? There are still ones not managed by the Party Committee Propaganda Department?"
By the way, I used to work at the radio station of ***(school name) because the programs were more sensitive (fictional history). Each script had to be reviewed by three people: the program group leader, the director department minister, and the club's guidance teacher (representing the Youth League Committee and the Party Committee Propaganda Department). Anything related to China couldn't be mentioned, I wrote about Zheng He and it got rejected, someone else wrote about Cao Cao and it got rejected too. (Later, our entire program group was disbanded, I quit directly and ran away.)
(Replying to "What? There are still ones not managed by the Party Committee Propaganda Department?"): For traditional media, this process was completed no later than 2015, and for student clubs, it was no later than 2020. When I was a freshman (note: starting from September 2020), the people at the radio station still held the concept of "it would have been better if it hadn't been registered under the Party Committee Propaganda Department when it was established," and it seemed like they didn't understand these things at all. In my sophomore year, the school established the "Integrated Media Center," and the radio station became one of its subordinate departments. What does the Integrated Media Center mean? Let me give you an example, it's like the integration of the General Administration of Press and Publication and the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television into the "General Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television" in 2013. (Of course, it was revoked in 2018).
The propaganda aspect must be taken down, it must be tightly controlled. China's discourse is the worst, and in many aspects, it may not be better than others, but in terms of cultural and press freedom, it has always been ranked last. What about Saudi Arabia, Iran, these Islamic countries, Netflix can enter. Venezuela, Cuba, they can enter too, only China and North Korea can't. This shows that even if Netflix kneels down, it still can't enter.
All three are due to U.S. sanctions (of course, North Korea doesn't even have the internet), and China is the only country that actively does not allow Netflix to enter. Even in the most open and free 1989, the press and publication sector was still directly governed by the Party. At that time (before June 4th, of course), there were indeed newspapers supporting the students, but they could only be published without the knowledge of the Party leaders. This can be confirmed from the biographies of Jiang Zemin and Deng Xiaoping.
Many people now yearn for the Southern Media Group ten years ago, but they don't know that the largest shareholder of the Southern Newspaper Group is the Guangdong Provincial People's Government. Even the little bit of freedom during the Hu Jintao era was just a government handout combined with the continuous efforts of investigative journalists. Sometimes, this handout was even a black glove, allowing private media to bear the blame and promote their own policies.
For example, the cancellation of the custody and repatriation system in the case of Sun Zhigang was essentially because urban factories needed more labor, and this system no longer met economic needs. But the government didn't directly change the policy because this system was considered ancestral law.
So they let the media and human rights lawyers take risks, and in the end, all the risks and blame fell on the media and lawyers, while the government reaped the benefits. In the Xi era, they even felt that this was too uncontrollable, so the media was completely finished. Those human rights lawyers involved in the Sun Zhigang case didn't have a good ending either. Xu Zhiyong was basically arrested as soon as Xi Jinping came to power. At that time, the media was still in a transitional period and needed to pretend to say, "Each matter should be treated separately, Xu Zhiyong's arrest reflects the progress of the rule of law society."
(Replying to "In the end, all the risks and blame fell on the media and lawyers, while the government reaped the benefits"): Yes, they can even use this to play cards and say, "We have press freedom" and "Unconstitutional laws will be revoked." It can only be said that regardless of Jiang or Hu's essence (originally wanted to say "a belly full of bad water," but considering that the general public's view of Hu is still okay, I held back), their political methods were more clever and sophisticated, giving a sense of "ancient Eastern wisdom" in their maneuvering.
(These two screenshots are from "He Changed China - Biography of Jiang Zemin")
(Replying to "At that time (before June 4th, of course), there were indeed newspapers supporting the students, but they could only be published without the knowledge of the Party leaders"): In fact, I even forgot that even these newspapers were just tools for internal Party struggles.
Press freedom and cultural freedom are projects in which China can even win in the worst comparison.