Propaganda Department Research Articles

Publish to Perish: regime choices and propaganda impact in the Anti-Falungong Publications Campaign, July 1999–April 2000

This article analyses the operational choices and policy impact of the Anti-Falungong Publications Campaign in 1999–2000, in particular, the campaign strategy, publisher selection, propaganda themes, and public receptivity. It finds that the state-controlled publications industry still possesses formidable institutional capacity, producing three series of 120 titles in nine months, in a vintage year of major anniversaries and special events all requiring commemorative publications. But the campaign also reveals some basic institutional weaknesses of the propaganda system. The 120 anti-Falungong titles had only limited circulation. None of the 120 titles made it to the best publications or best-sellers list. The above findings suggest that the publications industry is more market-driven than regime driven, its operational choices informed more by best-selling trends and financial bottom-lines rather than dictates of the Propaganda Department.

Regimenting the Public Mind

Lecturer in Political Science, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. The research for this article was begun on a post-doctoral fellowship at the Centre for East and Southeast Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden, and completed with the help of a research grant from the University of Canterbury.CCP[Symbol Not Transcribed] [copyright]China in the 21st century is a post-communist society with a communist government. How does the Chinese Communist party (CCP) maintain its political acceptability as it goes about dismantling the socialist system? How can the government maintain popular support when the uniting force of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology is spent and discredited? And what has taken the place of communist ideology? Since the two major political watersheds of the last ten years of the Mao era and the dramatic events of 1989, the CCP has undergone a repackaging, similar to the re-invention of the British Labour party under Tony Blair.(1) The CCP would like to extend its rule over China indefinitely; to do so, it is attempting to move from a revolutionary party to a political party. In the post-1989 era the outward symbols and the all-important name brand CCP[Symbol Not Transcribed] [copyright] remain, but the content and meaning of the party's activities have changed significantly.Rather than the revolutionary romanticism of the Mao period, 'scientific guidance' is the new theme of CCP rule. Party strategists now acknowledge the collapse of faith in Marxist revolution and in the dictatorship of the proletariat and Marxist economics, but they have yet to find another means to justify the one-party state in China. The new economic and political goals of the post-Mao era are symbolized by the Four Cardinal Principles and the Four Modernizations of Deng Xiaoping. In practice this has meant adopting marketization and other capitalist style systems - but never calling them that - while maintaining the CCP dictatorship. Post-1989 and throughout the 1990s, Prime Minister Jiang Zemin attempted to forge a new consensus in China, a logic for continuing CCP rule indefinitely. The party leadership is determined that the CCP will avoid the fate of the Communist party of the Soviet Union and that it will learn from its mistakes.(2) Party thinktanks are also studying the fate of other long-term one-party states, such as Mexico, and trying to learn from their mistakes and successes. In 1999 Jiang Zemin announced the 'three represents,' which called for the party to represent the 'advanced social productive forces, the forward direction for China's cultural advancement, and the truest representative of the fundamental interests of China's vast population.'(3) Now party leaders are refining notions of turning the CCP into a 'party for all the people' (quanmin dang). At meetings for senior leaders at the resort of Beidaihe in September 2001, Jiang hinted that the CCP's long-standing goal of class struggle had been abandoned. He said that the party had to open its door to the 'new classes' of private business people and professionals and that in the current era business people and professionals had displaced workers and peasants as the 'vanguard' of society.(4)Propaganda is playing a central role in the repackaging of the CCP. Propaganda - publicizing the government's activities and educating the population - has always been an essential element of the CCP hold on power. The Central Propaganda Department (Zhongyang xuanchuanbu) of the CCP sets guidelines for the Chinese media, film, drama, art, news, literature, and education and disciplines those who break the rules on what can and cannot be presented in those media.(5) The propaganda system (xuanjiao xitong) remains one of the key groupings of bureaucracies within the Chinese political system.(6) This article surveys the modernization of the propaganda system in China and examines continuities and new developments in the system, particularly attempts to manufacture consent for the re-invention of the CCP. …

China's Listing Social Structure He Qinglian

As a result of the corrupt accumulation of wealth by the top few, China's society has regressed to a worse state than anything Mao fought against; the allure of the World Trade Organisation is a golden fantasy that will exacerbate the divisive trends of the drive to free markets; crimes committed by peasants and workers on the scrap heap of socialism have gone from random acts of opportunism to organised attacks on wealth; many of those in power have the cash and the will to leave this sinking ship and should do so before they're locked in the hold. So says the author of the most controversial book to be published in China in recent years. The essay from which this excerpt is taken appeared in the March 2000 issue of the journal Shuwu (House of Books). It sold out within ten days, only to be denounced by the propaganda department of the Central Committee of the CCP as a 'liberal' document guilty of 'inciting antagonism between the different strata of Chinese society'. He Qinglian was demoted from her editorial position at the Shenzhen Legal Daily and placed under domestic surveillance . She is believed to have left the country since. Her article continues to provoke intense unofficial discussion and has been compared to Mao's 1920s Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society as a gripping class analysis of contemporary China.

Slovakia: A Playground for Nationalism and National Identity. Manifestations of the National Identity of Slovaks 1918-1920 by Ismo s> Nurmi (review)

354 SEER, 8o, 2, 2002 the historiography of Imperial Russia and this essay provides an important corrective to the standardcliches of the Church and the clergy as unthinking supportersof the regime. What ismissingfromthe book, however, is any attemptto locate the diverse essaysin a widercontext. A specialistwillhave no troublefittingthe individual essays into such a context, but this is not the audience for whom the work is primarily intended. An introduction giving a broader background to the institutions, personalities and events would surely have been helpful in this respect.As it is, it is hard to see how someone lackingthe specialistknowledge could 'develop their own informed opinions on controversial topics' (p. 2). The choice of essaysand the divisionof the book appearssomewhat arbitrary. Partsone and three dealingwith the revolutionaryand constitutionalpolitical partiesarefinein the breadthand coherence of theirscope. Parttwo, however, labelled 'The Other Adversaries'consistsof two essays,one on the anarchists and one on national minorities. Both essaysare importantin themselves,but they make rather uneasy bedfellows. The final section of the book, 'The Establishment' has essays on the security police, the church and the State Council. The firsttwo are obviouslyimportantsubjects,but is a knowledge of the arcaneworkingsof the StateCouncil reallynecessaryforan undergraduate audience seekinga broadunderstandingof the politicsof late ImperialRussia? In conclusion this book is a useful guide to recent research, but its sum is ratherless than itsparts. Department ofHistory SHANE O'ROURKE University ofYork Nurmi, Ismo. Slovakia.A Playground for Nationalismand National Identity. Manifestations of theNational Identity of Slovaks I9I8-I920. Bibliotheca Historica, 42. Suomen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki, I999. 202 pp. Notes. Price unknown. IN a thoughtfulstudyIsmoNurmi seeksto show that a Slovaknationalidentity already existed among the common ranks of Slovaks in i 9I8, before the consolidationof an inter-warSlovakintelligentsia:Czechoslovakismremained a formal idea to Slovaks at this time, particularlyfor the masses but also for the educated, who subscribedto the Martin declaration of October I9I8 in recognition of the international situation. The exposition is based mainly on records of the short-lived local councils set up on the model of the Slovak National Council and of the Czechoslovak Propaganda Department from March I9 I9 which among other things organized lecturesby soldiers(mainly officers)in nearlya thousandplaces. Issuescovered concern the looting in the immediate aftermath of war, which Nurmi is reluctant to give an ethnic motivation but whose exclusive direction at Magyars and Jews he notes, the work of the 344 national councils as civic organs, the Slovak rejection of Hungarian irredentism, Czechoslovak propaganda and growing rifts in Czech-Slovak relations, the role of the clergy and the Polish propaganda in Spis and Orava. The Slovak identity is presented as an existing fact rather than a dynamic one, which was helped to furtherdefinition by the rivalryof REVIEWS 355 others for its allegiance. Its relative weakness plainly helped spur Czechsponsored Czechoslovak propaganda, but Czechs failed to understand that phenomena like the speakingof Magyar could denote Slovakidentityvis-a-vis themselvesratherthan treasonto the new state. Czech insensitivityat a crucial moment in Slovak national evolution was thus to have significant consequences . Nurmi inclines to a sharp view of 'Czechoslovak' motives, operating not so much to bolster a Slovak identity seen as weak but as exploiting this purported weakness in the interests of the new state's internationalposition, which requiredthe incorporationof Slovakia. The judgement on the Czechs may be a little harsh, given the logic of the international situation. The theme of Slovak national consciousness and the Slovak-Magyar relationship might benefit from a fuller picture of the demographic and sociological inheritance from Dualist Hungary, given the large literature on magyarization in that state. A more rounded study might add a section on attitudesof the smalleducated classof I9 I8, including its Protestant and Catholic wings. Ismo Nurmi concerns himself explicitly, however, with the theme of popular consciousness and on this topic he has provided an interestingand helpfulmonograph. History Department ROBIN OKEY University of Wanwick Liulevicius,VejasGabriel. WarLandontheEastern Front.Culture, National Identity andGerman Occupation in World WarOne.Studiesin the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare,9. CambridgeUniversityPress,Cambridge, 2000. viii + 309 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. $59.95: ?37.50. DR LIULEVICIUS's readable volume evaluates the experience of ordinary German soldiersfightingon the EasternFrontduringthe FirstWorldWar.He is correct to underline that the frenzy of...

The Problem of the Intelligentsia and Radicalism in Higher Education Under Stalin and Mao

(2000). The Problem of the Intelligentsia and Radicalism in Higher Education Under Stalin and Mao. Europe-Asia Studies: Vol. 52, No. 8, pp. 1489-1513.

Slovakia -- A Playground for Nationalism and National Identity: Manifestations of the National Identity of the Slovaks, 1918-1920

Early prerequisites for the national identity of the Slovaks Slovak national awakening Spontaneous civic activity the moment of Slovak national unity the loyalty of Slovaks to the state of Hungary the establishment of the Czechoslovak propaganda department short-term repercussions in the Slovak national identity (Part contents).

New Perspectives on State Socialism in China (review)

Reviews 393 certainly remain an indispensable too] for the study ofthe Northern Song's Learning ofthe Right Way for years to come. Even for those who do not read German, the translators' identification ofmore than a diousand allusions to classical texts hidden in the Zhengmengwill be ofgreat usefulness. Their new translations ofmany philosophical terms will be a challenge to everyone working in the vast field ofthe Learning ofthe Right Way. Hans van Ess University of Heidelberg Hans van Ess is an assistantprofessor ofChinese studies specializing in Han and Song thought and literature. Timothy Cheek and Tony Saich, editors. New Perspectives on State Socialism in China. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. xiii, 422 pp. Hardcover $62.95, isbn 0-7656-0041-2. As its title suggests, this anthology—the product of a conference held at Colorado College in June 1993—was conceived as a piece ofrevisionist history addressed to China's pre-Cultural Revolution period, focusing specifically on the 1950s. In their search for new perspectives, the editors field a mix ofestablished and younger scholars, whose articles have in common an exceedingly rigorous exploitation ofnew scholarly resources. This self-consciousness in the exploitation of sources is demonstrated by an unusually voluminous use of footnotes and by a separate section devoted to "Sources and Methods." This gives the collection a value as a reference work transcending its contribution to historical scholarship. In terms of content, the editors' approach, in their wide-ranging and illuminating introduction and conclusion, is that of the fox in the Aesop's fable who sees many little things, rather than that of the hedgehog who sees one big thing (e.g., an argument to the effect that the socialization ofthe means ofproduction was ill advised and ill conceived). Nonetheless, it does not require an enormous inferential leap to generalize from their comments and from the chapters themselves that despite its impressive economic achievements, the decade was not all it was chalked© 1998 by University up tQ be The chapters were selected to provide a fairly comprehensive thematic as well as chronological coverage ofthe decade. The opening chapter by Cheng and Seiden relates the story ofthe founding ofthe household registration or hukou ofHawai'i Press 394 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 1998 system and the organization ofbasic units (danwei) in the early 1950s, making clear that these institutional expedients were not only intended to keep the peasantry out ofthe cities but also to suppress their living standards to the benefit of the urban workforce. Indeed, the Great Famine subsequently described by DaIi Yang may have differed only in degree from the deprivation previously endured. Mazur's chapter aims to redress the previous preoccupation with Chairman Mao by looking at the United Front via the exemplar ofWu Han, a distinguished intellectual who served as vice mayor of Beijing until becoming Mao's first target in the Cultural Revolution. Julian Chang's chapter on the founding and operation of the Central Propaganda Department provides an unusually thorough survey of both Chinese and Soviet source materials, amplifying our previous knowledge of this slice of CCP history in detail (if not in essence). David Shambaugh's attempt to "bring the soldier back in," that is, to integrate more successfully the study of the military into "civilian" political science, reminds us that the regime relied at least as much on its monopoly ofviolence as on revolutionary charisma even during the period when its radical reforms were most welcome. Reinforcing some established inferences (such as Whitson's Field Army thesis), Shambaugh nevertheless punctures our picture of Mao as a detached theorist (he evidently micromanaged the Korean War and Taiwan Straits confrontations), Peng Dehuai as a military modernizer, or Lin Biao as a radical opposed to modernization. Whereas the first section, on "mechanisms of control," is addressed to the early 1950s, the second canvasses the mid- to late 1950s. The long chapter by Teiwes and Sun covers the period in 1956 and 1957 when Mao acquiesced and apparently even supported a period of CCP consolidation and "opposing rash advance ." This is interesting not only because it belies our conception of Mao as a restless radical, but because Mao himselflater renounced the...

THE RISE AND FALL OF BRITANSKY SOYUZNIK: A CASE STUDY IN SOVIET RESPONSE TO BRITISH PROPAGANDA OF THE MID-1940s

The newly available documentation from the Russian archives sheds new light upon many aspects of Soviet-British relationship during World War II and the early Cold War. One such relatively unexplored facet of this relationship is propaganda interaction between the two countries. While the organization and technique of both Soviet and British propaganda machines have been studied rather extensively, there has been very little documented analysis of an actual impact of British propaganda on the Soviet regime and society in the mid-1940s (although some internal estimates within the British government must have been made at the time). Now, with the opening of Agitprop (department of agitation and propaganda of the central committee of the CPSU) records it becomes possible to measure this impact, including Soviet steps to manage it. A good case study in this regard can be made out of Soviet internal reaction to the main mouthpieces of the British printed propaganda targeted on the Soviet audience in 1942–8 – a journal, Britansky Soyuznik (The British Ally) and its digest companion Britanskaia Khronika (The British Chronicle).

Confronting the Cominform: George Orwell and the Cold War Offensive of the Information Research Department, 1948-50

In the voluminous records of the Information Research Department (IRD), there is one slim file that attracts immediate attention. The IRD was the top secret propaganda department of the British Foreign Office created in early 1948.1 It soon became a crucial instrument in Britain's covert ideological offensive against the Soviet Union during Cold War. The files of the IRD are currently being released by the Public Record Office in London, and their diversity exemplifies the wide front on which the Cold War was fought: bundles of documents cover Soviet labour camps, support for anti-communist activity behind the Iron Curtain', encouragement of Red Army defectors, the establishment of a Singapore office to counter communist activity in Malaya, the sponsorship of an anti-communist trade union paper, Freedom First, and the compilation of confidential lists of politicians and BBC employees to whom 'non-attributable' IRD propaganda could be sent for use in speeches and broadcasts. Although the IRD will not fully emerge from the shadows until the bulk of its files are released (as yet, only the first two years of its operations, 1948 and 1949, are open to the public), few of the aforementioned activities, which in part mirrored those of the Soviet-backed Cominform, should surprise historians of the Cold War. But one file, FO1110/189, has the capacity to surprise, even shock, those who open it, for it concerns the relationship between the IRD and, arguably, one of this century's most prolific political journalists and influential novelists, George Orwell. In March 1949, the sister-in-law of Arthur Koestler, Celia Kirwan, visited a sick friend in the Cotswold hills. She spent the day discussing communism with George Orwell, then terminally ill with tuberculosis in Cranham, a Gloucestershire sanatorium. Celia first met Orwell at Koestler's home in late 1945, and they had remained close friends until Orwell's death in January 1950.2 But her visit also had a political purpose. She informed Orwell that she worked for the Information Research Department. So their conversation turned to the IRD: T discussed some aspects of our work with him in great confidence, and he was delighted to learn of them, and expressed his wholehearted and enthusiastic approval of our aims'.3 Orwell was too ill to do any further writing himself he had just completed the final draft of Nineteen Eighty-Four but suggested various writers and one publisher, who could be 'trusted' and whom he thought would support the work of the IRD. The writers Orwell named included Darcy Gillie, the Paris correspondent for The Guardian, Franz Borkenau, who wrote for The Observer and the critic Gleb Struve.4 The publisher was Victor Gollancz who had rejected Orwell's Homage to Catalonia in 1937 and (along with 22 other publishers) Animal Farm in 1944. In 1949 Gollancz was, it appeared, still preoccupied with the question of Palestinian dispossession in the wake of the creation of the state of Israel, so Orwell suggested that 'it might be a good plan to allow him to get these Arab refugees out of his system before trying to interest him in our plan'. However, according to Orwell, because his books 'always

Editor's Introduction

This is the third selection from the CCP Central Propaganda Department's Propaganda Trends to be translated by M. E. Sharpe.1 This time, the common theme of the translated texts is that of superstition and philosophical heresy; or, to be precise, the elimination of such residual impurities in the Spirit of New China by propagandists who—were they to favor ethereal metaphors—no doubt would describe themselves as 175 degrees Marxist. Here is the absolutely correct line! Ideological problems are monitored for clarity in black and white and their final solution is spelled out in quite uncompromising terms.

"Religious Activities" in Shanxi and Heilongjiang

The publication Propaganda Work, put out by the Propaganda Department of the Shanxi Provincial Party Committee, points out the following: "According to reports, some grass-roots cadres in districts where there are relatively high concentrations of Catholics and Protestants in this province do not dare publicize the Party's policies on religion because they know nothing about these policies and are unable to draw the line between proper and improper religious activities; they dare neither to publicize religious freedom and the fact that the state and government protect proper religious activities, nor to regulate improper religious activities.

The Opinion of the Propaganda Department of the CCP Central Committee and the Research Office of the Secretariat of the CCP Central Committee on Strengthening Education and Patriotism

In the process of the construction of socialist modernization in our country, to consistently carry out and strengthen the propaganda and education of patriotism, and to cultivate a spirit of patriotism among the people as a whole and especially among the young people of our country, is a mission of tremendous significance toward the construction of a socialist spiritual civilization that has as its core communist thought; it is a basic element of the work of propaganda and education and of ideological and political work….

The Central Propaganda Department's Report to the Central Committee

The Central Propaganda Department's Report to the Central Committee

Commemorating the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Writing of Inscriptions in Honor of Lei Feng by Veteran Revolutionaries of an Older Generation Xinhua News Agency, January 13, Beijing

Abstract In recent days the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the Office of the State Council have jointly issued a notice calling on all localities to launch activities commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the writing of inscriptions in honor of Lei Feng by veteran proletarian revolutionaries of an older generation.

Controlling the field of academic economics in Hungary, 1953?1976

On the basis of these findings, I suggest that the structure and organisation of the field of Hungarian economics under state socialism should be described as a case of “partitioned bureaucracy”.9 The compromise between research economists and the political elite in the New Course era between 1953 and 195510 survived the post-1956 reaction in so far as political economy, with its predominantly legitimatory and ideological functions, remained partitioned from the other sectors in the field through the remainder of the state-socialist period. This secured considerable protection both for Marxist-Leninist political economy—which faced the destabilising effects of exposure to the findings of serious empirical research—and for the other sectors, which were professionally oriented and earnestly interested in the pursuit of unbiased empirical research, free from stifling agitprop interference. Our data concerning the reputational control of the field reflects only one, although very important, aspect of this partitioning. Another and much plainer aspect is that, from the early 1960s, the Agitation and Propaganda Department of the Central Committee no longer exercised control over the field, except in the political economy sector.

Adhering to the Criterion of Practice, Regaining an Understanding of Socialism

Hu Fuming was born in Wuxi county, Jiangsu Province. In 1958 he graduated from the Journalism Department at Beida and in 1961 received a graduate degree in philosophy from People's University. Later he became an associate dean and associate professor in the Department of Politics and Philosophy. Afterwards, he worked in the Propaganda Department of the Jiangsu provincial Party committee. He's currently a member of the Standing Committee of the Jiangsu Party Committee, and president and professor at the Jiangsu Provincial Party School. He also helped draft the editorial, under the title of special commentator, "Practice is the sole criterion of truth," published on May 11, 1978, in Enlightenment Daily.

A Comprehensive Analysis of the Survey of Radio and Television Audiences in the Rural Areas

The survey was conducted between September and November 1987 by a survey team formed by the Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, the Ministry of Radio, Television, and Film, scholars and students from the Beijing Broadcasting Institute and the Journalism Department of the People's University of China, and the Rural Area Survey Team of the State Bureau of Statistics. The report investigated the current status, issues, and trends of radio and television broadcasting in the underdeveloped rural areas in China. In investigating the current status of radio and television broadcasting and the impact of propaganda, the team conducted a large-scale sampling survey of radio and television audiences in the rural areas. The survey's sampling frame included 846 counties with net household income between 150 yuan (U.S. $40.6) and 400 yuan (U.S. $108.3) in 1986.1 Twelve counties were selected as random samples by strata and 1, 200 households were included. For comparison sake, a sampl...

Vadim Andreevich Medvedev and the Transformation of Party Ideology, 1988-1990

M ikhail S. Gorbachev consistently served as his own chief ideologist ever since his selection as general secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU in March 1985. His concerted assault on Stalinist theory and practice, his efforts to undermine party officials' traditional dominance within the CPSU, his support for a mixed economy, for the democratization of moribund representative institutions, and his election as the powerful President of the USSR clearly transformed both the definition of and the entire political system in the USSR. But his assault on ideological orthodoxy and the political-economic reforms introduced under his leadership produced immense ideological confusion within the CPSU. Despite his personal dominance of the leadership, both his support for glasnost and widespread resistance to his formulations within the party made it impossible for him to impose his views on the party as a whole. Although he set the framework for political discourse, other party officials were able to publish alternative ideological orientations in the party's press. This ideological discord was intensified by an increasingly bitter struggle during the first years of perestroika between Yegor Ligachev and Aleksandr N. Yakovlev, Gorbachev's most influential lieutenants in the Politburo, over the nature of reform and the control of the Central Committee's ideological apparatus. Ligachev, who served as a secretary of the Central Committee and a member of the Politburo (who at one point also claimed to be the chairman of the Secretariat) clearly regarded himself as an authoritative spokesman on many ideological and political issues. While he periodically endorsed perestroika in general terms and vigorously denounced rumors of division within the top leadership, he also consistently endorsed more orthodox definitions of socialism and challenged Gorbachev's various formulations with varying degrees of explicitness. In the process he clashed increasingly with Yakovlev, the director of the Central Committee's department of propaganda in 1985-1986 who was named a secretary of the Central Committee in 1986 and a member of the Politburo in 1987. Yakovlev was a sophisticated and articulate

Editor's Introduction

Following the proclamation of martial law and forceful suppression of Chinas pro-democracy movement in June 1989, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda apparatus set about the painstaking and protracted process of ideological remolding, described above by Chairman Mao. What can be learned about the functioning of the propaganda system in China from the official interpretation of the June 4 incident? Principally, how did Chinese Communist Party leaders and the Propaganda Department define the event and disseminate this interpretation inside and outside of China? The documents contained in this volume shed considerable light on these questions.

Summary of Comrade Wang Renzhi's Speech at the National Conference of Heads of Propaganda Departments (July 1989)

Summary of Comrade Wang Renzhi's Speech at the National Conference of Heads of Propaganda Departments (July 1989)