This article is a transcript of a chat conversation.
The chat took place in a student group on TG at our school, and it all started with this image:
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 things not managed by the Party Committee's Propaganda Department?"
By the way, I used to work at the radio station of *** University because the program was more sensitive (alternate history). Every script had to be reviewed by three people: the program group leader, the director of the broadcasting department, and the advisor of the student organization (representing the Youth League Committee and the Party Committee's Propaganda Department). Anything related to China couldn't be mentioned. When I wrote about Zheng He, it was rejected, and when someone else wrote about Cao Cao, it was also rejected. (Later, our entire program group was disbanded, and I quit directly and ran away.)
(Replying to "What? There are still things not managed by the Party Committee's Propaganda Department?"): For traditional media, this process was completed no later than 2015, and for student organizations, it was no later than 2020. When I was a freshman (note: starting in September 2020), the people at the radio station still held the idea of "it would have been better if it hadn't been under the Party Committee's Propaganda Department when it was established," which shows that they completely didn't understand these things. 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 abolished in 2018).
The propaganda aspect must be taken down and tightly controlled. China is the worst in terms of discourse, and many places are not necessarily better than others, except for culture and press freedom, where China has always been at the bottom. Netflix can enter countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, these Islamic countries. Even Venezuela and Cuba can do it, but China and North Korea cannot. This shows that even if Netflix kneels down, it still can't enter.
All three are due to US sanctions (of course, North Korea doesn't even have the internet), and China is the only country that actively prohibits Netflix from entering.
Even in the most open and free 1989, the press and publication sector was still directly controlled 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's leaders. This can be confirmed from the biographies of Jiang Zemin and Deng Xiaoping.
Nowadays, many people 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 achieved through government concessions and the continuous efforts of investigative journalists. Sometimes, these concessions were even black gloves, allowing private media to bear the blame and promote their own policies.
For example, the cancellation of the custody and repatriation system in the Sun Zhigang case 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, even this was considered 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, and 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 (originally wanted to say "full of bad intentions," but considering the general public's view of Hu, I softened my words), their political tactics were more clever and sophisticated. They had that kind of "ancient Eastern wisdom" feeling of maneuvering and scheming.
(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's 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 win even in a comparison of who is worse.