Chang Ping, Yaxue Cao, February 24, 2021 (continued from Part One and Part Two) The 20th anniversary of Reform and Opening up I encountered a big event soon after I arrived at Southern Weekend, that is, the 20th anniversary of China’s reform and opening up, December 18, 1998. Twenty years ago, on December 18, 1978, the Communist Party opened the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee in Beijing’s Jingxi Guesthouse (十一届三中全会). It was considered to have made important decisions and set the tone for reform and opening up. It became a historic day that is considered to be the anniversary of the reform and opening up. So every 10 years is a very important anniversary, and Chinese media would commemorate it. Of course, […]

December 15, 2016 Yaxue Cao spoke with Chang Ping in Toronto on December 2, 2016.     YC: You used to be the director of the news department of the famed Southern Weekly and a columnist there, and you belong to a community of journalists who distinguished themselves in the 25 years of “market-oriented” media that coincided with the period of soaring economic development from early 1990s until recently. I’ve been wanting to hear your story, because I sensed that your trajectory as a journalist has also been the trajectory of China’s “market-oriented media.” So I’m very happy to see you. First of all, congratulations on receiving the CJFE International Press Freedom Award. They made a great choice. Chang Ping: Thank you. YC: I knew […]

By Mo Zhixu Mo Zhixu (莫之许), pen name of Zhao Hui (赵晖), is a Beijing-based Chinese dissident intellectual and a frequent contributor of Chinese-language publications known for his incisive views of Chinese politics and opposition. He is the co-author of “China at the Tipping Point? Authoritarianism and Contestation” in the January issue of Journal of Democracy. With permission, we edited his piece, originally published in iSunAffair Weekend on Thursday, to reflect later developments. A more detailed account of the event itself can be found in this Foreign Policy article by Annie Zhang that I translated. –Yaxue The predicament of Party-owned but commercialized media outlets in China China does not have private media. Most of China’s media groups are subordinates of CCP Committees on different levels. The […]

I assume you are a China watcher and already know the Southern Weekend (also translated as the Southern Weekly) incident that’s been raging on for the last couple of days. If you are not, you’ll find out here. Either way, I want to place the incident in the larger picture. China doesn’t have an independent press – we all know that. The Southern Weekend is a part of the  Southern Media Group (南方报业传媒集团), a Guangdong provincial-level state-owned media enterprise. Like any state-owned enterprises, whether they manufacture sewage pipes or produce newspapers, its top leader is the Party secretary (党委书记) and, in NMG’s case, the position is concurrently held by the Deputy Chief of the Propaganda Department of Guangdong province. The Group operates like a corporation, […]