Marketing Dictatorship

"Anne Marie Brady has done a lot to advance the notion that, contrary to what some people felt in the 1990s, China’s efforts at propaganda and thought-work have actually intensified since 1989, not weakened. Some people argue that the effectiveness of China’s propaganda system has become weaker over that time – as China’s media has become more commercialized, as society has become more pluralized, including because of the internet. But what she shows is that that has not deterred Chinese leaders from an aggressive and ongoing effort to instil a certain fundamental logic of control into the system. That logic is very much reflected in the internet: “You can have this set of freedoms, including economic freedom, and some freedom to criticize. We maintain one-party rule. You don’t challenge that directly. You support what we do, because we’re all interested in social stability.” All of that is embedded in Chinese management of the internet. From Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao, to now Xi Jinping, the importance of using the internet as a tool in their propaganda strategy has become increasingly clear over time. They’ve made it explicit. In the case of anti-Japanese protests, it’s a little bit more complex than that. In some sense, that is allowing an existing online sentiment to express itself. Now China’s nationalist, patriotic education has helped feed into those sentiments, as has mass media: there are anti-Japan television shows and movies and even cartoons for kids. All of this feeds into anti-Japan sentiment. As far as online activism is concerned, it’s a matter of allowing it to happen or not. When it gets to a point where the Party is concerned, they’ll shut it down. This has happened again and again over the years. In fact, the earliest examples of censorship of the internet and of exercising authoritarian control, relate to the organizing of pro-government rallies: nationalist rallies responding to some foreign event, like the anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia. They’re concerned about collective action. When it comes to nationalist activism what they’re trying to do is to allow it to some extent but shut it down if they perceive it to be a threat. In terms of day-to-day examples they have these “50-cent Party” or leading commentators that they encourage to comment on issues either to guide the public conversation or, in some cases, to stay out of it. If there’s an incident in some locality in China where they decide to trigger this process, the local internet publicity department will send out either texts or emails to these 50-cent Party workers or volunteers, asking them to post to microblogs, bulletin boards, what have you, to try and steer the conversation in a more acceptable direction. It can be like that. They can also try to divert attention by making some outrageous comment about something else. It might not be so overt as just being pro-government."