“Watchdog” is not a word one usually associates with the Chinese media. For the uninitiated, journalists in China serve the propaganda interests of the state; they avoid any politically sensitive subjects; and if they are not facing censorship from the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party, journalists routinely engage in self-censorship and search for “safe” stories to cover.
David Bandurski and Martin Hala have edited a stunning book which challenges the stereotyped image of journalism in China and demonstrates that despite the pressures they face, some journalists—working as “loners without institutional support” (p. 6)—are committed to a style of reporting that confronts political authority, often at incredible personal risk. Journalists are still paid piece rates for the number of words published, so they are deterred from pursuing stories that may be censored or perhaps may not be printed at all by the financial consequences of doing so. At the same time, news organizations exist and work within an intricate machinery and are subject to myriad laws, regulations, bureaucratic interests, overlapping ownership structures—not to mention extra-legal pressures such as threats, coercion, and physical violence—which equally limit the parameters of their work. In this context where black and white do not exist, but rather where the media survive in an ambiguous grey landscape of unspoken taboos, it is admirable that a number of journalists, many of whom represent major and even Party news organizations (such as Zhongguo qingnian bao [China Youth Daily] and CCTV), are still prepared to defy the political system and risk their livelihood. Other journalists work for newspapers that have growing reputations for testing the political boundaries of acceptability, especially Guangzhou's Nanfang zhoumo (Southern Weekend), which is described here as “China's feistiest weekly” (p. 3). While the role of Caijing (Finance Magazine) in releasing news about the SARS epidemic in 2003 has been well documented, in this volume we finally see the story from the journalists' perspective. In short, this book tells the story of China's political and economic transformation from the point of view of its victims and the people on whom they depend for a voice—the journalists—many of whom are enthusiastic about realizing the ideals and values of their chosen profession. As Ying Chan says in the introduction, the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan witnessed “an eruption of the suppressed passion of Chinese journalists, who had long aspired for an opportunity to practice real journalism” (p. 1, emphasis added). The problem here is the rather vague understanding of “real journalism”; who decides what this means and by what criteria is real journalism defined?
Bandurski and Hala have assembled eight impressive and inspirational stories that are narrated from the perspective of the journalists themselves. All of their reports focus on local issues and personalities, reflecting how tolerance for investigative journalism does not yet extend to the national level. Nevertheless, it is at the local level that the journalists feel they can make the biggest difference and where their work intersects with the lives and interests of the people. Moreover, the local perspective reinforces our understanding of the political reality of modern China where policies and instructions issued in Beijing often compete with the power of local cadres who can mobilize their connections (or guanxi) within their fiefdoms: “Entrenched local power…poses one of the biggest challenges to the central government's efforts to reform and enforce the laws” (p. 5). When the central government relaxed restrictions on the movement of foreign journalists in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, many correspondents still found that their ability to function was blocked by the determination of local cadres, nervous about the stories foreign journalists might pursue, to cling on to their last vestiges of power. The case-studies documented in Investigative Journalism in China reveal not only how local power can constrain Chinese journalists who have no recourse to national level authorities, but also that with determination and an innovative approach to journalism, local issues can attract national and even international attention.
Each chapter maps the process of the investigation, from the initial discovery of the story (of political or corporate corruption and malfeasance) through court-cases, personal intimidation, and (all too infrequently) resolution. The narrative is then followed by a postscript, written by the editors, which reflects on the significance of the case for journalism in modern China. In one such postscript on the Henan AIDS epidemic, Bandurski and Hala provide what stands as a neat summary of their remarkable book:
These colorful characterizations illustrate well how Chinese journalists attempt to define their role in society and strike a balance between duty, professionalism, and self-preservation. A handful of Chinese reporters regard themselves as solo fliers more willing to stick out their necks. The majority of journalists in China, however, approach their work carefully, taking calculated risks (p. 57).
As a study of journalism and journalists in modern China, how they intersect with the political and economic forces transforming the country, and as a rejoinder to the more pedestrian descriptions of suppressed media, this book is highly recommended.
