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Why the Federal Government Cant End Illegal Immigration in the US Essay

Essays on Why the Federal Government Can't End Illegal Immigration in the US Essay The paper â€Å"Why the Federal Government Can't End Illegal Immigration in the US" is a fascinating example of an essay on social science. Illegal immigration into the US has been going on for decades, without any serious actions being taken by the government. There is resentment among people of a certain community who object to the presence of illegal immigrants living on their land, especially towards Mexicans, the fact that these immigrants end up being profitable for the U.S. government and power-hungry employers, is the reason why not much has been done about the situation. No matter how much opposition the poor immigrants face, at the end of the day, their desperation forces them to perform jobs that most Americans would not apply for. Plus, the undocumented immigrants end up being lucrative, as the government is able to extract more taxes, and the employers can hire these people at low salaries (Why the Federal Government Can't End Illegal Immigration).Now the question arise s whether Congress should take some major action against this practice of illegal immigration or it should let this matter slide. It is true that illegal immigrants are a slight burden on the U.S. economy, as they do not pay income tax, but do send their children to school and use other government services. Also, when employers hire these immigrants, they pay them less money, which leads to the wages of low or unskilled workers going down, thus, creating problems for the unskilled American labor. But even after these minor glitches, the American economy is believed to benefit from these undocumented immigrants, with the effect on the whole economy being a slight net positive (QA: Illegal Immigrants and the U.S. Economy, 2006).Therefore, illegal immigrants are not much of a burden on the American economy, but, instead, the economy benefits from the people who illegally cross the border, on a small scale. So the thought of stopping this influx of illegal immigrants sounds rather harsh because sending them back means forcing them to return to their painful life, a life from which they just want to escape. The highest number of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. is from Mexico. No one wants to leave their homeland until they are forced to by the existing tough situations. According to the World Bank, 53% of Mexico’s population is living under poverty and over 40% is unemployed, with no government unemployment benefits. Furthermore, there are no welfare benefits for the deprived and starving families (Why the Federal Government Can't End Illegal Immigration). Therefore, forcing such people to return to their miserable and anguished life from the one which offers them hope and sustenance seems very severe and vindictive.The fact that illegal immigrants make up roughly 4% of the U.S. population (Number of illegal immigrants in U.S. declining, 2010) shows that they should not be much of a burden on the society as a whole. Their inability to pay income tax ma kes up for the profit that the government and employers earn by hiring these people. Thus, sending them back to their miserable lives is not such a good idea. Though, a major influx of immigrants into America should definitely be prevented.

Jane Austen †Sense and Sensibility Free Essays

Class, society, and politics in the home, on an interpersonal level among the characters, are themes of outmost importance in the novel â€Å"Sense and Sensibility† by Jane Austen. In this short essay, we shall discuss these themes in relation to the characters, as presented in the novel. Austen presents these social conditions throughout the story, as they were dominant in the society of her time. We will write a custom essay sample on Jane Austen – Sense and Sensibility or any similar topic only for you Order Now Laws surrounding inheritance, and property, social etiquette, and money matters in a time were gender limitations were very apparent, signified a person’s position in the social scale. The Dashwood women, as they appear in â€Å"Sense and sensibility†, suddenly find themselves in a humiliating situation, when the mother, Mrs. Dashwood, becomes a widow. They were immediately cast into a dire situation. They were deprived of their estate and income when Mr. John Dashwood, became the legitimate heir of all of Mr. Dashwood’s fortune, and decided not to support the Dashwood women financially. Mrs. Dashwood and her three daughters, Marianne, Elinor and Margaret had no entitlement to any of Mr. Dashwood’s wealth. Having no income resources, they depended on John’s charity for support. This was a standard practice of the eighteenth century legal system. In Victorian times, women had, by law, no rights on property. They were seen as dependent on men not only to survive, but also in order to keep their status and respectability. Class divisions, social status and the struggle for its gaining and maintenance are important themes in the novel. All characters in the story come from wealthy, upper class backgrounds. They all belong to high society and their interests and occupations imply this. Sir John Middleton seems to symbolise the best of upper class society. Like the majority of upper class people, his occupation and marital status defined his high position within his social circle. His occupation is hunting, his wealth is inherited, and his wife’s only occupation is to raise children. Lady Middleton gathers all the characteristics of the ideal upper class woman: she stays in the home, marries, and is very formal and extremely polite, perhaps to the point of irritation. Characters constantly seem to compete for financial and social power. Inherited wealth is presented as the trademark of high social status. The Dashwood women become deprived of both. As a result they are driven into hardship when they have to give up their house in Norland and all its comforts and luxuries and move to smaller, less luxurious premises in Devonshire. By using this relocation theme, Jane Austen could imply their descent from a high social position to a lower one. It seems almost as if the Dashwoods were â€Å"expelled† from Norland’s â€Å"paradise† to Barton Cottage’s â€Å"hell† merely because of their female nature. In Austen’s world, being a woman in a man’s world is a harsh, cruel reality. Marriage for status is an issue of great importance in Sense and Sensibility†. It was seen as a common way in order to gain status. What is more, it was not seen as a choice, but a necessity. Men would seek status through inheritance and/or a wealthy marriage. Edward Ferrars is a typical example of this type of a man in the story. Women would not only opt for handsome and educated men, but mainly for wealthy ones, like Lucy Steele. Wealthier women were also more likely to be legitimate for marriage depending on the dowries they could offer. This put Marianne and Elinor in immediate disadvantage to other women in the novel (i.e. the Steele ladies), and subsequent pressure, in terms of their legitimacy. Their strife for successful marriages mainly stemmed from a desire for social settlement and a restoration of their loss of status. However, in Marianne’s case, the main motive for marriage seems to be love (sensibility) and not money (sense), unlike Elinor. Nevertheless, she seems to be almost pushed in a â€Å"proper† marriage with Colonel Brandon in the end. Men seem to have a lot more space for manoeuvering through suppressive social rules than women do in the novel. Society appears to allow them more freedom in marriage and age issues; Colonel Brandon makes a good example in this case. His advanced age did not eventually stop him from getting married to Marianne. In Jane Austen’s world as presented in the novel, social integration and acceptance depends on one’s status and his/her sensible, controlled behaviour. There seems to be very little room for individuality and deviance. Elinor, Edward Ferrars and the Middletons make fine examples of sensible, controlled characters. As Austen describes: â€Å"Elinor †¦possessed a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment†¦She had an excellent heart; her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong: but she knew how to govern them† (p4-5). Edward’s propriety and the Middletons’ formality also signify their extreme level of political correctness and adherence to strict codes of conduct in order to be accepted in society. Social etiquette, formal code of conduct, and discretion to the point of concealment of one’s feelings, are also important features in the novel. Desire for social advancement is also evident. Mrs. John Dashwood, for example, was fast to install herself â€Å"mistress of Norland†. In the struggle for financial and social power, women appear to act within their own sphere of action: the home. Women like Mrs. J. Dashwood and Mrs. Ferrars, use domestic and financial politics to ensure their control over situations, within and outside their home environment. Financial and domestic politics seem to be the only means women can use to have their own way in the world of the novel. Ironically enough, even though the story is set in a male-dominated society, the male characters possess little power over women like, for example, Mrs. J. Dashwood and Mrs. Smith and Ferrars. In terms of politics in the home environment, it almost seems as if under the surface of a male-dominated society, what is actually going on is beyond what eyes can see. Austen successfully conveys this idea. How to cite Jane Austen – Sense and Sensibility, Papers

Nature of the sales environment free essay sample

The purpose of this essay is to analyse the key aspects of sale environment, including the international sale and legal and ethical issues. Based on the above this essay will first look at the importance of selling environment in the UK economy, it then discus and analyse the techniques of sales control and measurements for evaluation, supported with practical examples. Every business in the world has some certain unique features, which has to be learnt and practiced a lot in order to be successful in an enterprise. For example, a swimmer has to do practice regularly for hours in order to keep them fit for competitions. Even though the swimmer has succeeded in number of competition he has to work out regularly, everyday in order to defend his position at the highest level. During his training swimmer should focus on the mistakes which had made in the past competitions, also should train and prepare himself in such a way that shouldn’t repeat the same mistakes in future. There is an analogy between the competitive sports and salesmanship. As like in sports salesperson has to master the art of selling the products of the enterprise to the customers. The sales person himself should learn the fundamentals of selling and master them in order to get best results. The nature of sales personality depends on certain extent on heredity and environment. An intelligent salesman would combine the study and actual practice of the fundamentals by analysis. (Management-hub, 2012) Many studies have been conducted on understanding the customer and uncovering why some sales seem so easy and others seem almost impossible, even when the salesperson is using the same technique. In fact, the correct environment for customers to purchase and have business dealings with companies is a science. There are many rules and verifiable factors that can either increase or decrease the likelihood of making a sale. To understand the findings of these studies, everyone need to examine the common points listed below. (Sale Creators, 2007) 1. Leave the customer in their comfort zone. 2. Let the customer see you want to help and serve. 3. Do not feel hurried or pressured. 4. Do not hurry or pressure your customer. 5. Have effective human relations communications skills. 6. Have the sales environment maintained, clean and uncluttered. To increase a buyer’s receptiveness, a business has to take the findings of the points above and replace or correct any area that might be a concern for their customer. Every customer has anxieties when they meet a new person for the first time, or when they are in a new environment like a shop or store. This anxiety comes from the always present ‘unknowns’ with a new encounter. A lot of people have similar thought of or expressed these statements at one time in their lives. This is what defines their comfort zones. When comfort zones are challenged to expand humans often fight the process. Many times nobody do not want to change from what is comfortable. The removal of any of these buying anxieties creates a more positive sales environment. (Sale Creators, 2007) Pete Keon says: that generally in the business, it is necessary to find efficient methods of changing the sales environment. This might be necessary while the company evaluates it profitability during a sales year and finds they have experienced a loss. Transforming the sales environment will be no easy job for a company, however management can achieve this through utilizing the five major factors of sales success. It is essential that every sales staff, including the managers, are trained in 5 features of sales strategies; defining the sales campaign, sales motivation, sales presentation, sales methodologies, and sales leadership skills. These five vital elements of sales techniques will arm your company with a successful sales team, the backbone of a companys overall profitability and long-term viability. (Sales Success, 2012) The first sale success will need in changing the sales environment is defining the sales operation. This begins with knowing targets of client including demo graphic factors like age, educational background, earnings level, geographic location, and ethnicity. By knowing whom to go after with a product or service, available efficiently develop the companys sales presentation. A sales team needs the proper amount of time to prepare an effective sales technique when making the presentation. This consists of correct training in the next part of the five major elements of sales success, sales methodologies. Provide the workers proper training including online programs and in-house training so people would be ready to stay updated with modern sales presentation trends. Giving  the sales team the required training would assist to stay motivated to do the best possible job in their sales efforts for any company. When the success of the company relies upon changing the sales environment, equip your sales team with the very best tools offered by training them sales techniques. (Sales Success, 2012) As was discussed, role of selling plays an important thing for any business, but for example, international selling for economic survival of every cou ntry, because it permits to have the balance between their export earnings and import expenditure also known as the balance of payments. (Jobber and Lancaster, 1997) Economy Watch news wrote out: that the UK is the 7th leading importer and the 11th leading exporter in the world. Accordingly, the UK holds a massive trade deficit with the rest of the world, second only to the US. In 2010, UK imports were worth US 546.5 billion dollar with exports valued at only US405.6 billion dollar. Despite recent attempts by the government to reduce the trade deficit, the latest data from UK’s Office of National Statistics points to an ever-widening trade gap. Since the beginning of 2011, UK’s monthly trade deficit has hit record levels of more than  £4 billion per month. The monthly deficit in the UK for 2011 is also exceeding the previous record level of  £3.5 billion per month reached in 2007. The increase in UK’s budget deficit has also affected UK’s trade deficit. Therefore, the UK’s austerity plan to cut down public spending is necessary in order to reduce the trade deficit as well. So here is seen how necessarily international sales for UK in a whole. (Economy Watch, 2012) Importing is when an individual or business brings goods or services into the UK from another country. Careful consideration as to the practicalities needs to be given if intend to imports goods; this may include how to get the goods into the country, as well as the legal requirements.Under UK law, a number of legal responsibilities are imposed on a company, if wish to import goods in the UK. One of the first and probably most important duties being that will have to check if the Department for Business, Innovation Skills (BIS) requires business to have a licence. (Inbrief, 2012) By the way selling overseas is different compared to the domestic market, it however, provides individual firms with a number of benefits. As access to international markets becomes easier and more companies enter those markets, the competition between companies becomes harder, no matter which industry they operate in. Donaldson (2006) notes that even if the company does not do business abroad it is more likely to face competition from foreign firms in their home market, therefore by deciding to sell abroad it becomes more competitive and less vulnerable to economic crises. Other benefits are the opportunity for companies to achieve cost savings through increased economies of scale, as well as greater sales and faster growth due to demand in other markets which in turn can compensate the loss in the domestic market. All these is now possible due to technology which allows firms to control and coordinate operations globally because through the invention of internet and telecommunication the interaction with external customers and suppliers became much quicker and easier. Another important factor is Language because the first challenge when dealing with international markets is to overcome the language barrier. It is especially crucial in direct selling. Good knowledge of the another language will make sales easier and can make a dramatic difference because the salesperson has greater access to a local society and no interpreter is required. Companies usually translating theirs product advertising in local language, for example, Umbro the UK sports manufacturer had to withdraw a whole range of trainers called Zyklon, after a number of complains from individuals and other organisations regarding its name. This is because Zyklon was the name of the gas used to murder millions of Jews in concentration camps. This problem exists in any foreign company not only for UK firms; Chevrolet Nova also suffered poor sales in Latin America because No va in Spanish translated as does not go . Honda introduced their new car Fitta into Nordic countries in 2001. If they had taken the time to undertake some cross cultural marketing research they may have discovered that fitt was an old word used in vulgar language in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. In the end they renamed it Honda Jazz. The Swedish furniture giant IKEA somehow agreed upon the name ‘fartfull’ for one of its new desks. All these examples show that the companies were not fully aware of the translation and meaning of their brand names implied in the native languages of the markets they were dealing with, which proves and study of the language would have saved them a lot of money. (Kwintessential, 2010) This proves that differences in culture creates some ethical dilemmas or misbehaviour and in order to overcome potential pitfalls the companies should refer to the help of specialists such as a cross cultural consultant,  who would examine words, images, pictures, and colours to ensure that they fit w ell with the targeted market. Also companies must do cross cultural training to equip their representatives with the knowledge of two or three cultures that are likely to be at the table during a negotiation, as well as pay more attention to marketing and advertising requirements in overseas markets. (Kwintessential, 2010) Also possible to add that, any material intended for import is sourced consistently with the legal and ethical review requirements in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. When an individual, establishment or organisation imports material for research, it is good practice for approval to be obtained from a research ethics authority or the local equivalent in the source country beforehand. Many countries have research ethics arrangements which operate to agreed standards. The ethical review in the source country may, in some cases, be considered to provide suitable assurances for the importing of material into UK market. (Human Tissue Authority, 2012) For example, tobacco manufactures use different pricing depending on the country they import to, in the UK cigarettes are more expensive than in Russia or some European countries, because of the high import tariffs and taxes imposed by the UK government. Political factors can also affect methods of selling that companies choose to distribute their products, Opway Corporation that used direct selling techniques failed to enter Japan market because this form of selling is considered by the government as a base for criminal activity. In order to comply with Japans regulations Opway should have changed its business plan to selling its products in retail stores. (Inbrief, 2012) Other difficult area of management is Sales forecasting. Most managers believe they are good at forecasting. However, forecasts made usually turn out to be wrong. Marketers argue about whether sales forecasting is a science or an art. The short answer is that it is a bit of both. Businesses are forced to look well ahead in order to plan their investments, launch new products, decide when to close or withdraw products and so on. The sales forecasting process is a critical one for most businesses. Key decisions that are derived from a sales forecast include: Employment levels required Promotional mix Investment in production capacity For example, accurately forecasting sales and building a sales plan can help to manage production, staff and financing needs more effectively and possibly avoid unforeseen cash flow problems. While its always wise to expect the unexpected, a well-constructed sales plan, combined with accurate sales forecasting, can allow to spend more time developing business rather than responding to day-to-day developments in sales and marketing.(Tutor to you, 2012) In conclusion, it is definitely possible to state: that on nature of selling in general affects a lot of important aspects, because with the development of the UK and global market individual companies have been affected in different ways. To avoid any negative impacts, companies should include and underline all arguments which was stated above. The main responsibility of the Sales managers is to meet and interact with a variety of customers including their own employees so as to understand the real needs of customers and devise qualitative and effective plans to meet the requirements of the customers. Some companies were waited success, they discovered new opportunities for expansion and growth, while others faced fierce competition and struggled to overcome the external pressure caused by cultural, ethical, economic, legal and political and other differences. Therefore, operating in nature of sale market it is important for firms always to be aware of what customers need and want, afterwards any business will be successful. Words: 2450

Wendy the Builder free essay sample

When I was little, I was obsessed with the TV show Bob the Builder. Don’t get me wrong, I liked princesses as much as the next girl, but Bob had my heart. Maybe it was my genetics, with every person on my moms side being an engineer, or maybe it was my practical mindset that drew me to the show. Whatever the reason, I was fascinated by how he helped people by designing and constructing everything they needed. It was all I would watch. Every day while going to preschool I would look for the construction vehicles I learned about from the show, my favorite being the cement truck. I aspired to be like Bob, and I absolutely needed to know everything about his job and life. However, as I got a little older and understood the show more, I realized that Bob wasn’t actually that good at fixing things. We will write a custom essay sample on Wendy the Builder or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Every episode he would botch simple tasks—ones that I was sure I would have easily been able to complete myself. And every episode Wendy, Bob’s co-worker, was the one to fix Bob’s mistakes. My obsession with Bob turned into an infatuation with Wendy. Bob would be nothing without her charisma and smarts. Every day I became more and more obsessed with Wendy, and more and more frustrated with Bob. I sensed an injustice: If Wendy was really doing all the work, then why was Bob getting all the credit? Why didn’t Wendy have her own show? Everyone still loved Bob best, but I decided that Wendy was my new idol, and I would do anything it took to be like her when I grew up. Now, I’m a senior in high school taking three science courses, including engineering. Not much has changed—I still think Bob is overrated, and I still aspire to be like Wendy. The more I analyze Wendy, the more I see myself in her. Despite facing tough situations, she remains calm and collected. She rarely asks for help and often solves problems on her own. She truly believes in herself until the end. Some may call it stubbornness, I call it confidence. I have a strong sense of conviction. I take opinions very seriously, which is why I love to do research before taking a stand on a situation or deciding my viewpoint. Because I put so much careful consideration into my views, I stand by them. I was, and still am, never afraid to go against the grain, which is why I was so insistent on Wendy’s superiority to Bob. The best part of Wendy’s job is that she meets and talks to the people she is working for. She builds relationships and makes an impact on the lives of those she is helping. My interest in helping others led to my decision to pursue engineering. I want to make a difference. It doesn’t have to be the whole world, but one day I want someone to say that I was the one who helped them. Engineering is just the start. It combines my love of math and science with my love of working with and helping others. Recently, I was talking to my parents about my childhood and they brought up Bob the Builder. I thought that I should give Bob a second chance to win back my heart, so I watched an episode. I will admit Bob might be a little nicer than I remembered, but I stand by my opinion that Wendy deserves significantly more credit. I will always think of her as the star of Bob the Builder. I’m not going to credit Wendy with my interest in math and science, but I will say that she served as an inspiration and confidence booster for both my younger and older self, and has made me feel more than ready to be a female on a construction site of males.

Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a scientific approach to the study of society.

Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a scientific approach to the study of society. Scientific approach can be defined as the involvement of standards and procedures for demonstrating the empirical warrant of its findings, showing the match or fit between its statements and what is happening or has happened in the world. Scientific approaches to understanding the world can be distinguished from other approaches in two fundamental and irrelevant ways, firstly, an approach that claim to be scientific irrespective of whether or not it originates in the field of natural or human science must demonstrably have empirical relevance to the world. Empirical relevance involves showing that any statements, descriptions and explanations used or derived from this approach can be verified or checked out in the world and secondly, an approach which necessitates the deliberate use of clear procedures which does not only show results were achieved but are also clear enough for other workers in the field to attempt to repeat them, that is, to check them out with the same or other mat erials and thereby test the results.English: Karl Popper in the 1980's.These two criteria, empirical relevance and clear procedures are bedrock assumptions built into any scientific approach.August Comte, a positivist held the view that the study of sociology should be based on principles and procedures similar to those applied to the study of natural sciences. He argued that taking this approach shows that the behaviour of human beings, like the behaviour of matter was governed by invariable laws of cause and effect. Therefore it can be stated that the approach takes as its point that the behaviour of human beings, like the behaviour of matter can be observed and objectively measured; just as the behaviour of matter can be quantified by measures such as weight, temperature and pressure, methods of objective measurement can be devised for human behaviour; such measurement is essential to explain...

Virtual Learning Environments Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Virtual Learning Environments - Essay Example However, while such facilities provide significant advantages to both learners and teachers, they also bring difficulties. One of the main problems is about the lack of discrimination by the students to the materials available for research in the Internet and so the solution can be provided through the setting up of a walled garden. This protects the learner of an institution from the outside users and allows the teacher to upload chosen materials which are available exclusively for their student. However, while this solves one problem, it creates the potential to limit students’ research capability and need for them to learn to be discerning in assessing the usefulness of learning materials. Key Words: Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), ICT, Electronic, Learning, Walled Garden, Web 2.0. Contents Abstract 2 Contents 2 1.0.Introduction 3 2.0.Basic Information about VLEs 4 E-Learning provides a number of unique features such as collaborative activities, peer commenting, and onl ine assessment of coursework within a VLE. Common online course models include: 8 1)The content and support model – provides a separate tutorial support and standard course content; 8 2)The wrap around model – adopts the resource-based learning by combining the provision of classroom and online learning activities. Thus, giving more autonomy and accountability to the students; and 8 3)The integrated model – does not provide distinction between online tutorial support and course content (Mason, 1998). 8 Regardless of the type of online course model, a college or a university is using; there will always be some teaching and learning benefits, that can be gained by establishing a strong and reliable VLE (Nagi, 2011; Zhu and Bu, 2009; Fisher, Cox and Gray, 2008; Kroski, 2007; Nian-Shing and Yi-Hung, 2005). 8 3.0.Ways on How the Provision of â€Å"Walled Garden† could protect the Online Learners from Outside Forces and How It can impede the Students’ Le arning 12 4.0.Conclusion and Recommendations 15 5.0.References 16 1.0. Introduction VLE is an electronic system that can make online interactions of various kinds available, taking place among learners and tutors, as well as online learning (Comas-Quinn et al., 2012). The use of ICT and other related technologies significantly change the way educational activities are being conducted today. Though the history of VLE style tools can probably be traced back to the earliest days of educational computing, increased availability of technology is quite recent it is critical to state that much of the recent use has been motivated by technological advancement rather than the need for education progress (Becta, 2004). Every year, colleges and universities, are investing in the development of web based classes. Owing to significant development in Internet-based technology, educational organisations have restructured their course curricula to fit the course requirements of a virtual classroom and have started offering online distance learning courses. The control and direction regarding the use of the VLEs has been critical with respect to the learning institution. This is in regard to protecting the students from unwanted sources of information. This has led to the formation of walled gardened VLEs that take into consideration the

Hezbollah Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Hezbollah - Term Paper Example ah has continued to engage in terrorist activities throughout the Middle East and currently has a militant wing of the organization that is understood as larger than that of the standing national army of Lebanon. Yet, Hezbollah cannot be understood as a native insurgency that developed within Lebanon. Instead, it was initially begun as a response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Seeing this as an opportunity to further its influence throughout the globe, Iran developed and funded this group as a means of taking the battle directly to the Jewish state. With Iranian backing and financing, the group developed rapidly and came to serve as a fundamental voice within Lebanon and throughout the region. Hezbollah has been linked to over 36 suicide attacks and terrorist bombings since 1982 (Hamdar, 2014). Moreover, the number of targeted assassinations that Hezbollah is responsible for is something that is up for much debate; estimated to be within the hundreds or thousands. Whereas enemies for Hezbollah have come and gone (for instance the American, French, and British interests have been listed at one time or another as targets for the group), its animosity and hatred for Israel has been the one mainstay that has helped to continue to define the gropu throughout the years. As such, at each and every point in which Israel has come in direct conflict with Lebanon, Hezbollah has used this as an opportunity to drastically swell its ranks and engage in pitched and indirect warfare with Israeli forces or target Israeli interests throughout Lebanon and the greater Middle East. More recently, the tug of war between Russia, Iran, Israel, and others over Syria has meant that Hezbollah has come to serve as a powerful supporter of Bashar al Assad. As a function of this and subsequent indirect support from both Russia and Iran, Hezbollah has been one of the primary foreign forces that have served to bolster to strength of the Syrian regime; as it lies virtually

Techniques for data analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Techniques for data analysis - Essay Example Investment bank regulation differs in different nations. World trade is conducted within the balance of exchange rates. â€Å"Exchange rates play a vital role in a country's trade, which is critical to most free market economies in the world (Investopedia, 2010). The higher the value of Figure 1 Investment Banking the currency, the higher the cost of a country’s exports and the lower the cost of imports (Investopedia, 2010). Conversely, as a country’s currency decreases in value, the asking price for its exports also decreases. 1.1 Kingdom Holding Company; Saudi Arabia The financial history of Saudi Arabia is an interesting topic. Historians agree that the currency of the Mecca was adopted by Saudi Arabia by 1935. In 1926, the Saudi Hollandi Bank was formed as a part of the Netherlands Trading Company and acted as the money center for Saudi Arabia. In 1952, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency was formed and became the ‘treasury’ for Saudi Arabia. The halala appeared in in the late 1960s and developed as a denomination in ghirsh or riyal. The ABN is the holder for many Middle Eastern financial agencies including Riyadh, Jubail, Makkah, and Hofuf. In 1980, The Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) was created to obtain profits through investments in several different financial sectors. Headquartered in the Kingdom Centre of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, KHC is owned and managed by Prince Al-Waleed bin Tala. KHC is a publicly traded investment company listed on the Tadawul Stock Exchange. This paper is a study of four recent events of the Kingdom Holding Company as well as an analysis of the company’s financial data. According to the company website, the Kingdom Holding Company has a primary interest in ‘high performance global brands and strategic regional interests’ (KHC, 2013). The many financial investments of KHC include 360buy, Twitter, and Four Seasons. The four investment events to be analyzed in this study are: a) January 08, 2011 - The Signing of a contract that initiates the construction of the Jeddah Tower Project with Bin Laden Group for 4.6 billion Saudi Arabian Riyals b) September 29, 2011 - After several negotiations to acquire a part of Zain Groups with telecommunications company Batelco, the Kingdom Batelco Consortium announced that it will not proceed with making a binding offer to acquire Zain Groups 25% stake in Zain KSA. c) December 19, 2011 - HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, and Kingdom Holding Company announced a combined investment of $300 Million in Twitter for more than 3% share of the company. d) February 29, 2012 - Kingdom Holding Company announced the purchase of ‘Kingdom Oasis’ The purpose of the study is to find relationship between the events and abnormalities in the rates. Exchange rate values are a reflection of the mentality of the government, the investors, and the commonwealth of a country. Any indicators, variables or determinants of exchange rate movements can be linked to at least one, if not all three of these groups. Exchange rate volatility is expensive because fluctuations suggest instability. It suggests impending inflation or a rise in interest rates. Whether either of the events will actually happen does not matter. Just thinking they will is sufficient to stop investors from investing and consumers to stop spending. Inflation, interest rates

Impact of Immigration in America

Impact of Immigration in America Brach Hadean Immigration in America The most vital and maybe special historic components adding to the personality for the US system is the range of backgrounds from where the nation’s resident come. Immigrants from nearly every spot associated within the globe have actually been determined enough to leave their particular ancestral houses and work out a brand new life in the US. Except for the American Indian, Eskimos and local Hawaiians, every American is both an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants. The circulation of individuals to what is today the United States Of America started in the the sixteenth century. Information technology proceeded mostly unrestricted until 1921, till congress enacted legislation establishing quotas for the wide range of the individuals that could enter the United States Of America. Most importantly, this continuing immigration made a great and remarkable jump in populace in the United States Of America. However, the influence of immigration and the growth of the United States Of America goes far beyond its influence on the dimensions of the population. The wave of immigrants that started to enlarge within the 1840s and crested at the conclusion of nineteenth century made feasible the impressive commercial and industrial development of the United States Of America, as well as territorial development. Another influence function of US immigration happens to be the ethic, financial and spiritual range associated with immigrants. Various other countries can track their particular development to size influxes of immigrants. Circumstances overseas as well as in the United States Of America triggered these individuals to show up here in great waves. Nearly all African immigrants arrived prior the Civil War, but unlike most various other immigrants, they didn’t come by their own accord. Chinese workers, recruited to aid creation of the railroads, set roots in huge numbers in the western Coast within the 1850s and 1860s. A lot of men and women from north and west Europe emerged before 1880. At the conclusion of the nineteenth and start of the 20th century, various others from Southern, Eastern and Central Europe came in bigger quantities for a number of years. Hungarians and Cubans have actually fled their particular homelands to escape communist regimes. Politics and Immigration The cultural range made possible by immigration in the United States Of America has enriched US songs, literary works, art, etc. This has additionally had an apparent influence on the United States political system. The most significant facets for the US for many immigrants happens to be a practically endless chances to take part in the American community despite their particular novice standing. After five year’s of good standing residence together with the passing of a number of exams in the concepts of federal government and legislation in the US, any person may become a US resident. The needs and requirements of the naturalized residents have actually supplied inputs for the United states political system. Once the wide range of possible immigrant voters increased, politicians started looking for techniques to win their particular electoral assistance. One particularly efficient means would be to spend even more effort looking into the happenings in nations from where huge figures of immigrants had come. In an effort to charm brand new voters throughout the nineteenth century, the nations government started to support issues associated with certain circumstances in various other nations. The Emergence of Ethnic Politics Much more essential, had been the influence of immigrant groups in the United states governmental system as they became involved in the government procedure. Many of these immigrants were indeed peasant farmers from their particular country of origin . They had little to no formal training education in crafts, investments or careers. The very first immigrants attracted from many nations had been in most cases apathetic and highly dubious of politics, and they regarded this a regulating device. It was in the nations hubs of towns and cities that the immigrants initially became linked with politics. Sooner or later they became linked, mastering all that politics could offer their particular passion by assisting to supply them with tasks and neighborhood solutions. They discovered furthermore that politics supplied networks of development for the highly motivated people in the immigrant group, which discovered their particular place in the government it self, either becoming a frontrunn ers or serving frontrunners on their own. Numerous immigrants shortly discovered that, when they ran for a particular office, they could bring in a considerable wide range of ballots from member of votes from people in their particular immigrant collective. As immigrants made up bigger and bigger levels of voters within the metropolitan areas, they became more and more effective in electing their particular people to general public positions. The immigrant politician tried to discover tasks for people in their own cultural group. Just as crucial, he aided them withe guidelines, legislation and obligations of citizenship in positions where in the vocabulary ended up being unknown and hard to learn. In return for these favors, the immigrant voters added to continued governmental help. This design, which appeared in the last half of the nineteenth century, profoundly affected the nature associated with the US governmental system. The design ended up being private and individual instead of focused toward wide problems of general public plan. Certainly, it had been focused toward getting the financial protection of immigrants in a realm of uncertainly. No matter what appeal might be presented to immigrants to become part of the modern or maj or governmental movements, the device that opened the doors to immigrants ensured their loyalty because of the opportunity originally given. Immigrants thus never ever became an essential power in reform politics. The very early individualistic and personal direction of immigrant politics ended up being changed with 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants. Politics based on favors started steadily to minimize as second-generation immigrants at the conclusion of the nineteenth century reacted to the increasing failure of urban area employers to provide all their particular requirements. Second generation immigrants had additionally an even more extended consciousness of this opportunities of politics than their particular forebears. The cultural groups within the urban centers started to join modern and liberal governmental motions and by the time the New Deal contract came into existence in the 1930s they constituted a crucial base of help for the democratic party. Cultural Politics and American Pluralism Possibly, one of the most essential results of immigration in American governmental life happens to be the extension of ethic identification in American politics. This respect to nationwide beginnings is of good relevance whenever a possible prospect is selected for public office. Additionally, it influences the casting of ballots, the framing of problems, the filling of community tasks and a lot of other issues in the government. The continuation of ethic identification is particularly significant because it reinforces the pluralistic personality associated with the United states political system. It adds to the complexity of causes affecting the tasks of federal government and it will help to make sure that governmental aid is going to be extensively provided. Since there are incredibly numerous ethic distinctions, no one group is in a position to obtain control of the equipment necessary for control of the US federal government. In spite of the perseverance in maintaining ethic identification, many ethic groups have grown to be adequately assimilated into American culture to subordinate this identification for their identification as US citizens. This is because of the capacity regarding the governmental portions of this culture to take the newcomers into the governmental and social procedure. The Ebony in the American Situation Unlike various other ethic groups, black American, whove been here prior to the creation associated with the republic, havent been in a position to take part completely in the government. Despite their expertise aided by the vocabulary or their typical values with bulk of People in America, they are held outside the framework of the United states culture. Rules, statutes and customs had been piled against them, preventing them from voting, from equal education and the right to live in an area of their choosing if affordable. Even after reformation, numerous blacks continue to be annoyed at their particular incapacity to play a role in the inputs of governmental system. They think there are no particular officials through who they may be able channel their needs or who can express their issues adequately. Some black colored individuals believe that aggression and violence may be their only way to counteract this ineffectiveness within the governmental system. Cultural variety can be both a benifit and a hindrance. In a lot of instances, it has a tendency to deteriorate and prevent a person or group from obtaining control, therefore permitting most of the groups to take part in the democratic processes. Conversely, like in the scenario of black colored United states, whenever any solitary group is not incorporated into the procedure, the democratic beliefs are not satisfied. Altering Patterns of Immigration In the past years remarkable modifications have actually taken hold within the diverse populace of immigrants who are assimilating into America. Whereas within the past, many immigrants arrived from Northern Europe, nowadays practically one 3rd of all of the immigrants come from Asia. This development reflects an improvement in the immigration legislation in 1965, that Eastern Hemisphere and Europeans nations are placed on equivalent ground; not more than 20,000 immigrants per 12 months from each nation are permitted to enter the United States Of America. Of certain importance would be the fact that immigrants these days are attracted through the elites of the local nations, instead of through the lower classes. It has triggered a mind drain who has badly crippled a lot of Asian nations. The issue of Illegal Aliens By the conclusion of the 1970s the United States Of America had been confronted using the uncommon issue of coping with millions of unlawful aliens. Its impossible to acquire a precise count of illegal immigrants, the Immigration and Naturalization division places the cumulative figure at 6 to 8 million. The issue is especially in the Southwest, in which happens to be an apparent intrusion of Mexicans, looking to escape the extensive impoverishment in their own personal nation. It was projected that huge numbers of unlawful Mexicans cross the country’s borders looking for employment, that a few of the United states companies provide due to the lower wages. The issue of illegal aliens reflect change in the immigration plan that today significantly restrict immigration. Whereas previous immigrants established the anchor for the current work force and the literal feeling they created a great deal of America, the descendants regarding the initial immigrants today start to see the increase of individuals from overseas as a risk for their jobs in a nation of lower than filled national employment. Sources http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_immigration_to_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States http://www.history.com/topics/u-s-immigration-before-1965 http://www.inmotionaame.org/home.cfm;jsessionid=f8302211001397524805099?bhcp=1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_American) http://www.sparknotes.com/us-government-and-politics/american-government/american-political-culture/section2.rhtml

Hitler Youth :: essays research papers

I thought the most interesting aspect of the Hitler Youth movement was the beginning of it all, when the numbers were small to when the organization held a lot of power. The years 1933-1938 were the most influential of the youth movement. These years determined what the organization would become and how much power they would hold.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When Hitler came into power as the German Chancellor in 1933, the Hitler youth was not nearly close to an idea of what it was to become. Around this time, The Hitler Youth Organization numbered around one hundred thousand. Until two months later when Hitler was given dictatorial powers, which meant the state, was behind the Hitler Youth now. Immediately Hitler ordered that either organizations join the Nazi’s or disband. If the organizations chose to join the Hitler Youth Movement were under the power of Baldur Von Schirach who Hitler appointed to be the head of The Youth organization, with only Hitler to answer to.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Schirach began quickly by sending the fifty boys into The Reich’s Committee of German Youth Association, and taking the six million members under the authority of the Hitler youth. So most of the recruitment for the Youth Movement was forced. Some groups did join willing though, but groups like The Catholic Youth Organization held out for as long as three years.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Schirach soon organized Hitler’s Youth Movement into a precise running machine. He set up age brackets as well as a Hitlers youth for girls called the BDM(Bund Deutcher Madel{League of German Girls}). The age brackets for boys started at ten to fourteen were the boys were in the jungvolk, and the boys from fourteen to eighteen were in the HJ(Hitler Jugend{Youth}). The girls had their age brackets as well the young girls from ten to fourteen were in the Jungmadel, and the girls from fourteen to eighteen were in the actual BDM.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The youth organization was based on competition on what ever they did boys or girls. The boys and girls did not participate together though, they did do very much of the same things. The boys played War games, and often started brawls, which was not discouraged because the Nazi’s believed it was toughing up the youth.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The only problem Schirach was running into was that he could not find enough qualified people to be Youth leaders. Schirach could not fill the positions because the youth movement was growing so fast.

Changing Media, Changing China

changing media, changing china This page intentionally left blank CHANGING MEDIA, CHANGING CHINA Edited by Susan L. Shirk 2011 Oxford University Press, Inc. , publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine VietnamCopyright  © 2011 by Susan L. Shirk Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www. oup. com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Changing media, changing China / edited by Susan L. Shirk. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-19-975198-3; 978-0-19-975197-6 (pbk. ) 1. Mass media—China. 2. Mass media and culture—China. I. Shirk, Susan L. P92. C5C511 2010 302. 230951—dc22 2010012025 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Contents 1. Changing Media, Changing China 1 Susan L. Shirk 2. China’s Emerging Public Sphere: The Impact of Media Commercialization, Professionalism, and the Internet in an Era of Transition 38 Qian Gang and David Bandurski 3. The Rise of the Business Media in China Hu Shuli 4. Between Propaganda and Commercials: Chinese Television Today 91 Miao Di 5.Environmental Journalism in China Zhan Jiang 115 77 6. Engineering Human Souls: The Development of Chinese Military Journali sm and the Emerging Defense Media Market 128 Tai Ming Cheung 7. Changing Media, Changing Courts 150 Benjamin L. Liebman 8. What Kind of Information Does the Public Demand? Getting the News during the 2005 Anti-Japanese Protests 175 Daniela Stockmann 9. The Rise of Online Public Opinion and Its Political Impact 202 Xiao Qiang 10. Changing Media, Changing Foreign Policy Susan L. Shirk Acknowledgments 253 Contributors 255 Index 259 225 vi Content 1 Changing Media, Changing China Susan L.Shirk ver the past thirty years, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have relinquished their monopoly over the information reaching the public. Beginning in 1979, they allowed newspapers, magazines, and television and radio stations to support themselves by selling advertisements and competing in the marketplace. Then in 1993, they funded the construction of an Internet network. The economic logic of these decisions was obvious: requiring mass media organizations to ? nance their operations through commercial activities would reduce the government’s burden and help modernize China’s economy.And the Internet would help catapult the country into the ranks of technologically advanced nations. But less clear is whether China’s leaders anticipated the profound political repercussions that would follow. This collection of essays explores how transformations in the information environment—stimulated by the potent combination of commercial media and Internet—are changing China. The essays are written by Western China experts, as well as by pioneering journalists and experts from China, who write from personal experience about how television, newspapers, magazines, and Web-based news sites navigate the sometimes treacherous crosscurrentsO between the market and CCP controls. Although they involve different types of media, the essays share common themes and subjects: the explosion of information made available to the public through market-orie nted and Internet-based news sources; how people seek credible information; how the population—better informed than ever before—is making new demands on government; how officials react to these demands; the ambivalence of the leadership as to the bene? s and risks of the free ? ow of information, as well as their instinctive and strenuous efforts to shape public opinion by controlling content; and the ways in which journalists and Netizens are evading and resisting these controls. Following a brief retrenchment after the Tiananmen crackdown on student demonstrators in June 1989, the commercialization of the mass media picked up steam in the 1990s. 1 Today, newspapers, magazines, television stations, and news Web sites compete ? rcely for audiences and advertising revenue. After half a century of being force-fed CCP propaganda and starved of real information about domestic and international events, the Chinese public has a voracious appetite for news. This appetite is m ost apparent in the growth of Internet access and the Web,2 which have multiplied the amount of information available, the variety of sources, the timeliness of the news, and the national and international reach of the news.China has more than 384 million Internet users, more than any other country, and an astounding 145 million bloggers. 3 The most dramatic effect of the Internet is how fast it can spread information, which in turn helps skirt official censorship. Because of its speed, the Internet is the ? rst place news appears; it sets the agenda for other media. Chinese Internet users learn almost instantaneously about events happening overseas and throughout China.Thanks to the major news Web sites that compile articles from thousands of sources, including television, newspapers and magazines, and online publications like blogs, and disseminate them widely, a toxic waste site or corruption scandal in any Chinese city or a politician’s speech in Tokyo or Washington becom es headline news across the country. Other complementary technologies, such as cell phones, amplify the impact of the Internet. Millions of people get news bulletins text messaged automatically to their cell phones. China is nonetheless still a long way from having a free press.As of 2008, China stood close to the bottom of world rankings of freedom of the press— 181 out of 195 countries—as assessed by the international nongovernmental organization (NGO) Freedom House. 4 Freedom House also gives a low 2 Changing Media, Changing China score to China’s Internet freedom—78 on a scale from 1 to 100, with 100 being the worst. 5 The CCP continues to monitor, censor, and manufacture the content of the mass media—including the Web—although at a much higher cost and less thoroughly than before the proliferation of news sources.During President Hu Jintao’s second term, which began in 2007, the party ramped up its efforts to manage this new info rmation environment. What at ? rst looked like temporary measures to prevent destabilizing protests in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics and during the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown and other political anniversaries in 2009 now seem to have become a permanent strategy. Apparently the CCP will do whatever it takes to make sure that the information reaching the public through the commercial media and the Internet does not inspire people to challenge party rule.Information management has become a source of serious friction in China’s relations with the United States and other Western countries. In 2010, Google, reacting to cyber attacks originating in China and the Chinese government’s intensi? ed controls over free speech on the Internet, threatened to pull out of the country unless it was allowed to operate an un? ltered Chinese language search engine. 6 (Beijing had required Google to ? lter out material the Chinese government considers politically se nsitive as a condition of doing business in China. Nine days later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a speech about the Internet and freedom of speech that had been planned before Google’s announcement and that did not focus on China or the Google controversy, articulated Internet freedom as an explicit goal of American foreign policy. 7 The Chinese government was stunned and alarmed by the Google announcement. Google’s challenge did not just sully China’s international reputation; it also threatened to mobilize a dangerous domestic backlash. A senior propaganda official I interviewed expressed dismay that Google executives had made a high-pro? e threat instead of using the â€Å"good relationship† the Propaganda Department had established with company executives. A Beijing academic heard a senior official say that the government was treating the Google crisis as â€Å"the digital version of June 4,† referring to the Tiananmen crisis, which a lmost brought down Communist Party rule in 1989. In the ? rst twenty-four hours after Google’s dramatic statement, angry and excited Netizens crowded into chat rooms to applaud Google’s defense Changing Media, Changing China 3 of free information.Google has only a 25–30 percent share of the search engine business in China—the Chinese-owned Baidu has been favored by the government and most consumers—but Google is strongly preferred by the members of the highly educated urban elite. 8 To prevent the controversy from stirring up opposition from this in? uential group, the Propaganda Department went to work. Overnight, the dominant opinion appearing on the Internet turned 180 degrees against Google and the United States. 9 The pro-Google messages disappeared and were replaced by accusations against the U.S. government for colluding with Google to subvert Chinese sovereignty through its â€Å"information imperialism,† thereby creating suspicions that many of the new postings were bogus. The Propaganda Department asked respected Chinese academics to submit supportive newspaper essays, and provided ghostwriters. Online news portals were required to devote space on their front pages to the government’s counterattacks. To defend itself against the threat of a large-scale movement of Google devotees, the CCP fell back on anti-American nationalism.In March 2010 Google followed through on its threat and moved its search engine to Hong Kong; as a result, the Chinese government and not Google now does the ? ltering. Despite the unique features of the Google case, international as well as domestic con? icts over censorship are likely to be repeated as the party struggles to shape an increasingly pluralistic information environment. In her book Media Control in China, originally published in 2004 by the international NGO Human Rights in China, journalist He Qinglian lambasts the CCP for its limits on press freedom. She describe s Chinese journalists as â€Å"dancing in shackles. Yet she also credits commercialization with â€Å"opening a gap in the Chinese government’s control of the news media. †10 Indeed, the competition for audiences provides a strong motivation for the press to break a news story before the propaganda authorities can implement a ban on reporting it—and it has provided an unprecedented space for protest, as was seen in the initial wave of pro-Google commentary. Caught between commercialization and control, journalists play a cat and mouse game with the censors, a dynamic that is vividly depicted in the case studies in this book.Even partially relinquishing control of the mass media transforms the strategic interaction between rulers and the public in authoritarian political systems like China. Foreigners tend to dwell on the way the Chinese propaganda cops are continuing to censor the media, but an equally important 4 Changing Media, Changing China part of the stor y is the exponential expansion of the amount of information available to the public and how this is changing the political game within China. That change is the subject of this book.OFFICIAL AMBIVALENCE As journalist Qian Gang and his coauthor David Bandurski argue in chapter 2, Chinese leaders have a â€Å"deep ambivalence† toward the commercial media and the Internet: they recognize its potential bene? ts as well as its risks. Xiao Qiang, in chapter 9, uses the same term to describe the attitude of Chinese authorities toward the Internet. By choosing to give up some degree of control over the media, the rulers of authoritarian countries like China make a trade-off. Most obviously, they gain the bene? t of economic development; the market operates more efficiently when people have better information.But they also are gambling that they will reap political bene? ts; that relinquishing control of the media will set off a dynamic that will result in the improvement of the gover nment’s performance and ultimately, they hope, in strengthening its popular support. The media improve governance by providing more accurate information regarding the preferences of the public to policymakers. National leaders also use media as a watchdog to monitor the actions of subordinate officials, particularly at the local level, so they can identify and try to ? x problems before they provoke popular unrest.Competition from the commercial media further drives the official media and the government itself to become more transparent; to preserve its credibility, the government must release more information than it ever did before. In all these ways, the transformed media environment improves the responsiveness and transparency of governance. Additionally, a freer press can help earn international approval. On the other hand, surrendering control over information creates severe political risks. It puts new demands on the government that it may not be able to satisfy, and i t could reveal to the public the divisions behind the facade of party unity.Diminished control also provides an opening for political opposition to emerge. What most worries CCP leaders—and what motivates them to continue investing heavily in mechanisms to control media content—is the potential that a free information environment provides for organizing a challenge to their rule. The Chinese leaders’ fear of Changing Media, Changing China 5 free-? owing information is not mere paranoia; some comparative social science research indicates that allowing â€Å"coordination goods† like press freedom and civil liberties signi? antly reduces the odds for authoritarian regimes to survive in power. 11 What is the connection between information and antigovernment collective action? The more repressive a regime, the more dangerous it is to coordinate and engage in collective action to change that regime. Each individual dares to participate only if the risk of parti cipating is outweighed by the potential bene? ts. One way to minimize the risk is the anonymity afforded by large numbers. Standing on Tiananmen Square carrying an antiregime sign is an act of political suicide if you are alone.It only makes sense to demonstrate if you know that a crowd will turn out. Even before the Internet was created, news stories could create focal points for mobilizing mass protests. Cell phones and the Internet are even more useful for coordinating group action as they provide anonymity to the organizers and facilitate two-way communication of many to many. In April 1999, approximately ten thousand devotees of the Falun Gong spiritual sect used cell phones and the Internet to secretly organize a sit-in that surrounded the CCP and government leadership compound in Beijing.A decade before, the fax machine was the communication technology that made it possible for students to organize pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and more than 130 other cities. As the chapters in this book detail, in recent years a combination of newspaper reports, Internet communication tools, and cell phones has enabled student protests against Japan, demonstrations against rural land seizures, and protests against environmentally damaging industrial projects.The political possibilities of the latest social networking technologies like Twitter (a homegrown Chinese version is FanFou), Facebook (a Chinese version is Xiaonei), or the videosharing program YouTube (a Chinese version is Youku) have yet to be fully tested in China. 12 As Michael Suk-Young Chwe points out in his book Rational Ritual, media communication and other elements of culture make coordination possible by creating â€Å"common knowledge† that gives each person the knowledge that others have received the same message. 3 When all news was communicated through official media, it was used to mobilize support for CCP policies: hence, the CCP had few worries about popular o pposition. Thomas Schelling made this point with a characteristically apt analogy: â€Å"The participants of a square dance may all be thoroughly dissatis? ed with 6 Changing Media, Changing China the particular dances being called, but as long as the caller has the microphone, nobody can dance anything else. †14 As the number and variety of microphones have increased, so have the force of public opinion and the risk of bottom-up mass action.The CCP propaganda authorities may have been reading Schelling: A June 2009 People’s Daily commentary titled â€Å"The Microphone Era† says, â€Å"In this Internet era, everyone can be an information channel and a principal of opinion expression. A ? gurative comparison is that everybody now has a microphone in front of him. †15 Examples like the 2009 antigovernment protests in Iran and the so-called color revolutions in former Soviet states, as well as their own experiences, make Chinese politicians afraid that the f ree ? ow of information through the new media could threaten their rule.But it is worth considering the other possibility, namely, that the Internet might actually impede a successful revolutionary movement because venting online is a safer option than taking to the streets; and the decentralized nature of online communication splinters movements instead of integrating them into effective revolutionary organizations. 16 Nevertheless, China’s leaders are too nervous to risk completely ceding control of information. MASS MEDIA IN TOTALITARIAN CHINA In the prereform era, China had no journalism as we know it, only propaganda.Highly conscious of public opinion, the CCP devoted a huge amount of resources to managing popular views of all issues. 17 In CCP lingo, the media were called the â€Å"throat and tongue† of the party; their sole purpose was to mobilize public support by acting as loudspeakers for CCP policies. 18 The Chinese public received all of its highly homogeno us information from a small number of officially controlled sources. As of 1979, there were only sixty-nine newspapers in the entire country, all run by the party and government. 9 The standard template consisted of photos and headlines glorifying local and national leaders on the front page, and invariably positive reports written in formulaic, ideological prose inside. Local news stories of interest such as ? res or crimes were almost never reported. What little foreign news was provided had to be based on the dispatches of the government’s Xinhua News Agency. People read the People’s Daily and other official newspapers in the morning at work— offices and factories were required to have subscriptions.The 7 p. m. news on Changing Media, Changing China 7 China Central Television (CCTV) simply rehashed what had been in the People’s Daily. 20 Newspaper editorials and commentaries were read aloud by strident voices over ubiquitous radio loudspeakers and then used as materials for obligatory political study sessions in the workplace. A steady diet of propaganda depoliticized the public. As political scientist Ithiel de Sola Pool observed, â€Å"When regimes impose daily propaganda in large doses, people stop listening. 21 CCP members, government officials, and politically sophisticated intellectuals, however, had to remain attentive. To get the information they needed to do their jobs—and to survive during the campaigns to criticize individuals who had made ideological mistakes that periodically swept through the bureaucracies—the elite deciphered the coded language of the official media by reading between the lines. Sometimes this esoteric communication was intended as a signal from the top CCP leaders to subordinates about an impending change in the official line. 2 Kremlinology and Pekinology developed into a high art not only in foreign intelligence agencies, but also within Soviet and Chinese government circles thems elves. In chapter 8, Daniela Stockmann describes survey research that she completed which shows that government officials and people who work with the government continue to read the official press to track policy trends. A diet consisting solely of official propaganda left people craving trustworthy sources of information. 23 As in all totalitarian states, a wide information gap divided the top leaders from the public.Senior officials enjoyed ample access to the international media and an extensive system of internal intelligence gathered by news organizations and other bureaucracies (called neican in Chinese). But the vast majority of the public was left to rely on rumors picked up at the teahouse and personal observations of their neighborhoods and workplaces. (In modern democracies, the information gap between officialdom and the public has disappeared almost entirely: U. S. government officials keep television sets on in their offices and learn about international events ? st f rom CNN, not from internal sources. ) MEDIA REFORM Beginning in the early 1980s, the structure of Chinese media changed. Newspapers, magazines, and television stations received cuts in their government subsidies and were driven to enter the market and to earn revenue. 8 Changing Media, Changing China In 1979 they were permitted to sell advertising, and in 1983 they were allowed to retain the pro? ts from the sale of ads. Because people were eager for information and businesses wanted to advertise their products, pro? ts were good and the number of publications grew rapidly.As Qian Gang and David Bandurski note in chapter 2, the commercialization of the media accelerated after 2000 as the government sought to strengthen Chinese media organizations to withstand competition from foreign media companies. By 2005, China published more than two thousand newspapers and nine thousand magazines. 24 In 2003, the CCP eliminated mandatory subscriptions to official newspapers and ended subsidies to all but a few such papers in every province. Even nationally circulated, official papers like People’s Daily, Guangming Daily, and Economics Daily are now sold at retail stalls and compete for audiences.According to their editors, Guangming Daily sells itself as â€Å"a spiritual homeland for intellectuals†; Economics Daily markets its timely economic reports; and the People’s Daily promotes its authoritativeness. 25 About a dozen commercial newspapers with national circulations of over 1 million readers are printed in multiple locations throughout the country. The southern province of Guangdong is the headquarters of the cutting-edge commercial media, with three newspaper groups ? ercely competing for audiences. Nanjing now has ? e newspapers competing for the evening readership. People buy the new tabloids and magazines on the newsstands and read them at home in the evening. Though almost all of these commercial publications are part of media groups led by party or government newspapers, they look and sound completely different. In contrast to the stilted and formulaic language of official publications, the language of the commercial press is lively and colloquial. Because of this difference in style, people are more apt to believe that the content of commercial media is true.Daniela Stockmann’s research shows that consumers seek out commercial publications because they consider them more credible than their counterparts from the official media. According to her research, even in Beijing, which has a particularly large proportion of government employees, only about 36 percent of residents read official papers such as the People’s Daily; the rest read only semiofficial or commercialized papers. Advertisers and many of the commercial media groups target young and middle-aged urbanites who are well-educated, affluent consumers.But publications also seek to differentiate themselves and appeal to speci? c Changing Media, Cha nging China 9 audiences. The Guangdong-based publications use domestic muckraking to attract a business-oriented, cosmopolitan audience. Because they push the limits on domestic political reporting—their editors are ? red and replaced frequently—they have built an audience of liberal-minded readers outside Guangdong Province. According to its editors, Southern Weekend (Nanfang Zhoumo), published by the Nanfang Daily group under the Guangdong Communist Party Committee, considered one of the most critical and politically in? ential commercial newspapers, has a larger news bureau and greater circulation in politically charged Beijing than it does in southern China. 26 The Communist Youth League’s popular national newspaper, China Youth Journal, has been a commercial success because it appeals to China’s yuppies, the style-conscious younger generation with money to spend. The national foreign affairs newspaper, Global Times, tries to attract the same demograp hic by its often sensational nationalistic reporting of international affairs, as I discuss in chapter 10.Media based out of Shanghai, the journalistic capital of China before the communist victory in 1949, are comparatively â€Å"very dull and quiet,† according to Chinese media critics. The cause they cite is that the city’s government has been slow to relinquish control. 27 Shanghai audiences prefer Southern Weekend, Global Times, and Nanjing’s Yangtze Evening News to Shanghai-based papers, and Hunan television to their local stations. 28 Journalists now think of themselves as professionals instead of as agents of the government.Along with all the other changes referred to above, this role change began in the late 1970s. Chinese journalists started to travel, study abroad, and encounter â€Å"real† journalists. The crusading former editor in chief of the magazine Caijing (Finance and Economy) and author of chapter 3, Hu Shuli, recalls that before commer cialization, â€Å"the news media were regarded as a government organization rather than a watchdog, and those who worked with news organizations sounded more like officials than professional journalists. But] our teachers . . . encouraged us to pursue careers as professional journalists. †29 Media organizations now compete for the best young talent, and outstanding journalists have been able to bid up their salaries by changing jobs frequently. Newspapers and magazines are also recruiting and offering high salaries to bloggers who have attracted large followings. Yet most journalists still receive low base salaries and are paid by the article, which makes them susceptible to corruption.Corruption ranges from small transportation subsidies and â€Å"honoraria† provided to reporters for coverage of government and corporate news conferences to outright 10 Changing Media, Changing China corporate bribery for positive reporting and extortion of corporations by journalists threatening to write damaging exposes (see chapter 3). Establishing professional journalistic ethics is as difficult in China’s Wild West version of early capitalism as it was in other countries at a similar stage of development. Some journalists also have crossed over to political advocacy.In one unprecedented collective act, the national Economic Observer and twelve regional newspapers in March 2010 published a sharply worded joint editorial calling on China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, to abolish the system of household residential permits (hukou) that forces migrants from the countryside to live as second-class citizens in the cities. 30 The authorities banned dissemination and discussion of the editorial but only after it had received wide distribution. At the legislative session, government leaders proposed some reforms of the hukou system, but not its abolition as demanded by the editorial.MEDIA FREEDOM AND GOVERNMENT CONTROL All authori tarian governments face hard choices about how much effort and resources to invest in controlling various forms of media. In China, as in many other nondemocracies, television is the most tightly controlled. As Chinese television expert Miao Di explains in chapter 4, â€Å"because of television’s great in? uence on the public today—it is the most important source of information for the majority of the population, reaching widely into rural as well as urban areas—it remains the most tightly controlled type of medium in China by propaganda departments at all administrative levels. All television stations are owned by national, provincial, municipal or county governments and used for propaganda purposes. Yet television producers must pay attention to ratings and audiences if they want to earn advertising revenue. As Miao Di puts it, â€Å"television today is like a doublegendered rooster: propaganda departments want it to crow while ? nance departments want it to lay eggs. † The way most television producers reconcile these competing objectives is to â€Å"produce leisurely and ‘harmless’ entertainment programs,† not hard news or commentary programs.Yet exceptions exist; Hunan television has found a niche with a lively nightly news show that eliminates the anchor and is reported directly by no-necktie journalists. Changing Media, Changing China 11 In the print realm, the government controls entry to the media market by requiring every publication (including news Web sites with original content) to have a license and by limiting the number of licenses. Only a handful of newspapers, magazines, and news Web sites are completely independent and privately ? nanced. The rest may have some private ? ancing but remain as part of media groups headed by an official publication and subordinate to a government or CCP entity that is responsible for the news content and appoints the chief editors. The chief editor of Global Time s, appointed by the editors and CCP committee of People’s Daily, acknowledged this in my interview with him: â€Å"If we veer too far away from the general direction of the upper level, I will get ? red. I know that. † However, there is a degree of variation. For example, magazines are somewhat more loosely controlled than newspapers, presumably because they appear less frequently and have smaller readerships.Additionally, newspapers focusing on economics and business appear to be allowed wider latitude in what they can safely report. The publication that set a new standard for bold muckraking journalism is Caijing (Finance and Economics), a privately ? nanced independent biweekly business magazine with a relatively small, elite readership. In chapter 3, former Caijing editor in chief Hu Shuli explains that â€Å"the Chinese government’s control of the economic news arena, both in terms of licensing and supervision, has been relatively loose when compared with control over other news . . [so much so that] even in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square event of 1989, economic news was little affected by censorship, while all other kinds of news were strictly monitored and controlled. † Her analysis of the emergence of ? nancial journalism in China recognizes the pathbreaking role of private entrepreneurs and professional journalists, but also credits the â€Å"reform-minded economic officials† who appreciate the importance of a free ? w of information for the effective functioning of a market economy. She notes that these economic officials didn’t call out the CCP Propaganda Department even when Caijing broke an embarrassing scandal about the Bank of China’s IPO in Hong Kong at the very time when the National People’s Congress was holding its annual meeting; this is considered a politically sensitive period during which the propaganda authorities usually ban all bad news. Evan Osnos, in his New Yorker pro? e of Hu Shuli, observes that the differences among senior officials on media policy may protect Caijing; the magazine â€Å"had gone so far already that conservative branches of the government could no longer be sure which other officials supported it. †31 12 Changing Media, Changing China In 2010, Hu Shuli and most of the staff of Caijing resigned in a con? ict with the magazine’s owners over editorial control and established Caixin Media, which publishes a weekly news magazine (Century Weekly), a monthly economic review (China Reform), and a Web site (Caing. com). Caixin is the ? st media organization in China to establish a Board of Trustees to safeguard its journalistic integrity. Caijing, its reputation damaged by the mass exodus of its journalists, is seeking to recoup by publishing exciting stories such as one that urged that Hubei governor Li Hongzhong be ? red if he failed to apologize for ripping a journalist’s tape recorder out of her hand when she ch allenged him at a press conference with a question he didn’t like. 32 The heated competition between the two media groups is likely to drive them to venture beyond business journalism with taboo-breaking stories that test the tolerance of the government.Although China’s leaders have embraced the Internet as a necessary element of the information infrastructure for a modern economy, as the size of the online public has grown, they have invested more and more heavily in controlling online content and containing its powerful potential to mobilize political opposition. The Internet offers individuals the means to learn about fast-breaking events inside and outside China, to write and disseminate their own commentaries, and to coordinate collective action like petitions, boycotts, and protests.The concept of the Netizen (wangmin) is laden with political meaning in a system lacking other forms of democratic participation. 33 As Xiao Qiang, the UC Berkeley–based editor of China Digital Times, observes in chapter 9, â€Å"The role of the Internet as a communications tool is especially meaningful in China where citizens previously had little to no opportunity for unconstrained public self-expression or access to free and uncensored information.Furthermore, these newfound freedoms have developed in spite of stringent government efforts to control the medium. † From the standpoint of the CCP leaders, the Internet is the most potent media threat. Young and well-educated city dwellers, whose loyalty is crucial for the survival of CCP rule, ? ock to the Internet for information, including information from abroad. 34 That is why the CCP reacted so defensively to the Google showdown and ? rmly refuses to permit un? ltered searches.Additionally, the Internet’s capability for many-to-many two-way communication facilitates the coordination of collective action around the common knowledge of online information. There is no way for CCP leaders to predict whether virtual activism will serve as a harmless outlet for venting or a means to mobilize antigovernment protests in the street. Changing Media, Changing China 13 Government controls include the â€Å"Great Firewall,† which can block entire sites located abroad and inside China and ingenious technological methods to ? ter and inhibit searches for keywords considered subversive. But as Xiao Qiang notes in chapter 9, â€Å"the government’s primary strategy is to hold Internet service providers and access providers responsible for the behavior of their customers, so business operators have little choice but to proactively censor content on their sites. † In addition, human monitors are paid to manually censor content. Ever since the Mao Zedong era, the methods used by CCP leaders to inculcate political loyalty and ideological conformity have re? cted an acute awareness that peer groups have a more powerful impact on individual attitudes than authority ? gures. It is for this reason that every Chinese citizen was required to undergo regular criticism and self-criticism in small groups of classmates or coworkers. Today’s propaganda officials are applying this insight to their management of the information environment created on the Internet. To augment its censorship methods and neutralize online critics, the CCP has introduced a system of paid Internet commentators called the Fifty-Cent Army (wu mao dang).Individuals are paid approximately ? fty cents in Chinese currency for each anonymous message they post that endorses the government’s position on controversial issues. Local propaganda and Youth League officials are particularly keen to adopt this technique. 35 These messages create the impression that the tide of social opinion supports the government, put social and psychological pressure to conform on people with critical views, and thereby presumably reduce the possibility of antigovernment collective action.The July 2009 regulation that bans news Web sites from conducting online polls on current events and requires Netizens to use their real names when posting reactions on these sites appears to have the same aim of disrupting antigovernment common knowledge from forming on the Internet. 36 The large commercial news Web sites Sina. com, Sohu. com, and Netease. com are probably the second most widely used source of information in China after television, and the ? rst place better-educated people go for their news.These sites have agreements with almost every publication in China (including some blogs) and many overseas news organizations that allow them to compile and reproduce their content and make it available to millions of readers. They are privately owned and listed on NASDAQ , but they are politically compliant, behaving more or less like arms of the government. To keep their privileged monopoly status, they cooperate closely with the State Council Information Office, which sends the managers of the 14 Changing Media, Changing China Web sites SMS text messages several times a day with â€Å"guidance† on which topics to avoid.The Information Office also provides a list of particularly independent publications that are not supposed to be featured on the front page. The news sites have opted to reduce their political risks by posting only hard news material that has ? rst been published elsewhere in China. Although they produce original content about such topics as entertainment, sports, and technology, they never do so with respect to news events. Furthermore, with very rare exceptions, such as the 9/11 attacks, they never publish international media accounts of news events directly on the site.Despite the CCP hovering over it, the Internet constitutes the most freewheeling media space in China because the speed and decentralized structure of online communication present an insuperable obstacle to the censors. In Xiao Qiang’s words from chapter 9, à ¢â‚¬Å"When one deals with the blogosphere and the whole Internet with its redundant connections, millions of overlapping clusters, self-organized communities, and new nodes growing in an explosive fashion, total control is nearly impossible. † In the short time before a posting can be deleted by a monitor, Netizens circulate it far and wide so it becomes widely known.For example, speeches from foreign leaders, like President Obama’s inaugural address, are carefully excerpted on television and in newspapers to cast China in the most positive light. Yet on the Internet you can ? nd the full, unedited version if you are motivated to search for it. There is no longer any hope for authorities to prevent the possibly objectionable statements about China by politicians in Washington, Tokyo, or Taipei, or the cell phone videos and photographs of violent protests in Lhasa or Urumqi, from reaching and arousing reactions from the online public.Once news attracts attention on the I nternet, the audienceseeking commercial media are likely to pick it up as well. Xiao Qiang argues that â€Å"the rise of online public opinion shows that the CCP and government can no longer maintain absolute control of the mass media and information,† and that the result is a â€Å"power shift in Chinese society. † HOW ARE THE COMMERCIAL MEDIA AND INTERNET CHANGING CHINESE POLITICS? Like all politicians, Chinese leaders are concerned ? rst and foremost about their own survival. A rival leader could try to oust them.A mass protest movement could rise up and overthrow them, especially if a rival leader Changing Media, Changing China 15 reaches out beyond the inner circle to lead such a movement. If leaders lose the support of the military, the combination of an elite split and an opposition movement could defeat them. The trauma of 1989 came close to doing just that. Thousands of Chinese students demonstrated in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and over 130 other citie s, and CCP leaders disagreed on how to handle the demonstrations.The CCP’s rule might have ended had the military refused to obey leader Deng Xiaoping’s order to use lethal force to disperse the demonstrators. In that same year, democracy activists brought down the Berlin Wall, and communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe began to crumble. No wonder that since 1989, China’s leaders have worried that their own days in power are numbered. Because commercial journalism was still in its infancy and the Internet had not yet been built, the mass media played a more minor role in the 1989 crisis than it has since then.During the crisis, students, frustrated by what they considered the biased slant of the official press, spread the word about their movement by giving interviews to the foreign press and sending faxes abroad. One market-oriented publication, the World Economic Herald, based in Shanghai, faced down Jiang Zemin, then the party secretary of t he city, and published uncensored reports. The restive journalists at the People’s Daily and other official papers, with the blessing of some liberal-minded officials in the Propaganda Department, reported freely on the student movement for a few days in May.The Communist Party leaders were almost as worried about the journalists’ rebellion as they were about the students’ one. 37 After the crackdown, party conservatives closed down several liberal newspapers including the World Economic Herald and blamed the crisis in part on the loosening controls over the press that had been introduced by former leaders Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang. 38 Since Tiananmen, Chinese leaders have paid close attention to the destabilizing potential of the media.The formula for political survival that they adopted, based on their 1989 experience, focuses on three key tasks:39 †¢ Prevent large-scale social unrest †¢ Avoid public leadership splits †¢ Keep the military loyal to the CCP The three dicta are interconnected: if the leadership group remains cohesive despite the competition that inevitably arises within it, then the CCP and the security police can keep social unrest from spreading out of control 16 Changing Media, Changing China and the government will survive.Unless people receive some signal of permission from the top, protests will be suppressed or ? zzle out before they grow politically threatening. But if the divisions among the top leaders come into the open as they did in 1989, people will take to the streets with little fear of punishment. Moreover, were the military leadership to split or abandon the CCP, the entire regime could collapse. Though commercialization of the media and growth of the Internet have consequences across all three dimensions, today their effects are felt primarily in the efforts to prevent large-scale social unrest.As the chapters in this book describe, the media and Internet are changing the strategic interac tions between leaders and the public as the leaders struggle to head off unrest and maintain popular support. WATCHDOG JOURNALISM: HOW TO REACT WHEN THE DOG BARKS As noted earlier, the politicians at the top of the CCP are of two minds about whether the media and Internet prevent or encourage large-scale social unrest. On the positive side, the media and Internet provide information on problems so that national leaders can address them before they cause crises.But on the negative side, the market-oriented media and Internet have the subversive effect of facilitating collective action that could turn against CCP rule. The elite’s extreme nervousness about potential protests makes them highly responsive when the media report on a problem. The pressure to react is much greater than it was in the prereform era when the elite relied entirely on con? dential internal reporting within the bureaucracy to learn about problems on the ground. Once the media publicize an issue and the is sue becomes common knowledge, then the government does not dare ignore it.Chinese journalists take particular pride in exposes that actually lead to improved governance and changes in policy. One of the earliest and best examples was the reporting about the 2003 death in detention of Sun Zhigang, a young college graduate who had migrated to Guangdong from his native Hubei Province. Qian Gang and David Bandurski, as well as Benjamin Liebman, describe in chapters 2 and 7 how the initial newspaper story published by the Southern Metropolis Daily, a bold Guangdong commercial newspaper, circulated Changing Media, Changing China 7 throughout the country on the major news Web sites and transformed Sun’s death into a cause celebre that sparked an emotional outpouring online. This emotional outpouring in turn inspired a group of law students to take the issue of the detention and repatriation of migrants directly to the National People’s Congress. Only two months after the ? rs t article, Premier Wen Jiabao signed a State Council order abolishing the practice of detaining migrants who did not carry a special identi? ation card and shipping them back to their homes. Although such instances of actual change in policy are rare, public apologies by high-level officials in response to media criticism are becoming more common. In 2001, Premier Zhu Rongji became the ? rst PRC leader to apologize to the public for a cover-up when he took responsibility for an explosion that killed forty-seven children and staff in a rural school where the students were manufacturing ? reworks.Premier Zhu initially had endorsed the far-fetched explanation offered by the local officials of a deranged suicide bomber. But when, despite a blackout of the Chinese media, the accounts of Hong Kong and foreign journalists who had interviewed villagers by telephone spread in China over the Internet, Premier Zhu offered his apology in a televised press conference. 40 Premier Wen Jiabao has f ollowed the example of his predecessor. He apologized for the melamine-tainted milk and infant formula that killed six and sickened hundreds of thousands of babies.The massive food safety story was originally suppressed by propaganda authorities in the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics, but the scandal was broken by the local press in Gansu Province and the official Xinhua News Service following the games. Premier Wen also apologized for the crippling snowstorms in January 2008 that stranded millions of Chinese eager to get home for the Spring Festival break. To de? ect blame and show how responsive it is to media revelations of official negligence or malfeasance, the central government also has sacked the senior officials implicated in such scandals.The number of such highpro? le ? rings or resignations has increased over the past decade with the growth of investigative journalism. Several good examples are described in this book. Increasingly, officials at all levels are making a consp icuous show of their receptiveness to online public opinion. They publicize their chats with Netizens. Government agencies have opened up Web sites for citizens’ petitions. Law enforcement officers have starting inviting Netizens to provide infor18 Changing Media, Changing China mation for their criminal investigations.In one case, a creative local propaganda official who was a former Xinhua reporter invited a number of bloggers to join a commission investigating the suspicious death of a prisoner. The bloggers had ridiculed as implausible the police’s explanation that the prisoner had walked into the cell wall during a blindman’s bluff game among the prisoners; they thought police brutality must be the explanation. The debate died down after the commission released a report that said they knew too little to conclude what had happened and the provincial prosecutors announced the prisoner had not died during a game but had been beaten by another prisoner.The offi cial proudly explained that he had defused the issue by showing that â€Å"public opinion on the Internet must be solved by means of the Internet. †41 MONITORING LOCAL OFFICIALS Every government needs information about how its officials are performing their jobs in order to effectively implement its policies. The top officials of China’s thirty-three provinces are appointed by the CCP central leaders in Beijing. Yet the central leaders are continually frustrated by their inability to get regional officials to follow their orders.In a rapidly growing market economy, the old top-down bureaucratic methods of monitoring local officials are no longer working. Local officials bene? t more by colluding with local businesses to promote economic growth by spending on big development projects than by providing such social goods as environmental protection, health care, education, and quality food and medicine that are mandated but not fully funded by the central government. Corr uption at the local level is rampant.Yet the poor provision of social goods by corrupt local officials could heighten public resentment against the government and threaten CCP rule on the national level. Theoretically, there are several ways that Beijing could resolve the dilemma of how to oversee the performance of local officials. It could allow citizens to elect their own local leaders. It also could permit independent NGOs to monitor the performance of local leaders. A fully autonomous court system in which prosecutors put corrupt officials on trial and citizens sue for the bene? s being denied them also would help. But CCP leaders have been too afraid of losing control to undertake such fundamental institutional reforms. They have chosen instead to rely on the mass media to serve as a ? re alarm to alert Changing Media, Changing China 19 the center to problems at lower levels. 42 From their perspective, using the media looks like a less dangerous approach because they still lic ense media outlets and appoint most of their top editors, thereby retaining some power to rein in errant outlets. Media revelations of local malfeasance also bene? t the center by de? cting blame for problems away from themselves and onto local officials. The publicity appears to be working; surveys indicate that Chinese people are more critical of the performance of local officials than of central ones, in contrast to the pattern in American politics. The center’s interest in using the media to monitor local officials has been evident since the mid-1990s. CCTV, with the encouragement of the powerful propaganda czar Ding Guangen (see chapter 2), created a daily program called Focus (Jiaodian Fantan) to investigate issues at lower levels in 1994.Miao Di, in chapter 4, discusses Focus in some detail. The program was blessed with high-level political support, having been visited by three Chinese premiers and praised by China’s cabinet, the State Council. The show attracte d a wide viewership and strengthened the credibility of television news overall. However, because local officials intervened so frequently to block exposes of their misdeeds, the show now has become much less hard-hitting.The central authorities tolerate greater press openness on the type of problems that, if left unreported and unsolved, might stir up serious popular dissatisfaction—in particular, problems with water and air pollution as well as food and medicine quality. Some national-level environmental officials have become adept at using media events such as, televised hearings on the environmental impact of important projects to mobilize public pressure on lower-level officials to comply with centrally adopted policies that are environmentally conscious.Veteran journalist Zhan Jiang describes the pattern in chapter 5, on environmental reporting: â€Å"as a general rule the center has an interest in receiving information that reduces the information gap between the cent er and localities regarding potentially volatile problems resulting from negligence by local officials. † However, as he illustrates with the case of the Songhua River chemical spill once journalists pull the ? re alarm and alert Beijing and the public to a crisis, then the center tries to reassert control over the media to cool off ublic emotions and convey an image of a competent government that is solving the problem. Recently, the central official media have been given the green light to pull the alarm on abuses by local officials. For years, reports have been circulating in the foreign human rights community and the international press about provincial and municipal governments that detain local citizens who have 20 Changing Media, Changing China come to Beijing to petition central officials about their grievances with local officials.They lock up the petitioners in illegal detention centers (â€Å"black jails†) on the outskirts of Beijing, ostensibly for â€Å"le gal education,† and then ship them back home. In November 2009, the official magazine Outlook (Liaowang) broke the story of these illegal jails and the report appeared on the Xinhua Web site. 43 Not surprisingly, local officials are wary of media watchdogs and do what they can to fence them out. As Tsinghua University journalism professor Li Xiguang has noted, â€Å"The central government, in the ? ght against the widespread corruption of the local government, encourages journalists to write exposes of the corruption.But the local governments are very much protective of themselves and of their power, so there is a con? ict between the central government and the local government in dealing with journalists. †44 Censorship by provincial and local branches of the CCP Propaganda Department and the State Council Information Office is viewed by journalists as tighter than that at the national level. The essays in this book offer numerous examples of local governments’ blackouts of critical news stories and the strategies journalists and activists use to evade them.Ever since the 1990s, regional commercial newspapers have been doing investigative reporting of corruption and other abuses on the part of local officials, but only outside their own home provinces. This practice is called cross-regional reporting (yidi jiandu). Since all local newspapers are part of media groups belonging to the local government and CCP establishment, editors naturally are inhibited from biting the hand that feeds them. Exciting stories about the sins of other people’s officials may be second best but are better than nothing.Reporters are willing to brave police harassment or violent attacks by paid thugs to get the goods on bad governance by officials in other places. Often they don’t have to go to the scene to report the story. As Ben Liebman describes in chapter 7, journalists blocked by local bans from writing about local malfeasance can simply e-mail the information to colleagues from other regions who then write the expose. Complaints from provincial and municipal officials about nosy reporters pushed the CCP Propaganda Department to ban the practice of crossregional reporting in 2004.Because the order was largely ignored, a year later provincial leaders raised the issue again, this time at the level of the Politburo. 45 Provincial leaders are a powerful group within the CCP, constituting the largest bloc in the Central Committee and one-quarter of the Politburo. Changing Media, Changing China 21 The interests of these leaders incline them to favor tighter restrictions on investigative journalism. As a result of their complaints, cross-regional reporting has been restricted to stories about officials at the county level or below.Only national-level media dare to publish exposes of provincial and municipal officials, and even then they usually wait until they get wind of an official investigation before reporting on the case. M eanwhile, local officials are learning the art of spin; they hold press conferences and online chats with Netizens to present an appearance of openness and candor—for example, Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai invited television cameras to broadcast live his negotiations with striking taxi drivers in 2009.The expansion of Internet access and the growth of the Web also make it increasingly difficult for local officials to enforce media blackouts on sensitive issues. Several chapters in this book discuss the 2007 case of the Xiamen PX chemical plant, a project ultimately defeated by the mobilization of environmentally conscious public opinion that breached a local media blockade. As Xiao Qiang tells the story (chapter 9), the outcome resulted from the â€Å"gap in control between local authorities as well as between local and central authorities [that] can provide a space for Netizens to transmit information. . . One of the most vocal advocates for the issue was the blogger L ian Yue, whose Weblog was not hosted within Fujian Province. Because officials outside Fujian, including the central government, did not share the local government’s interest in censoring news about the PX plant, Lian Yue was able to continue his Weblog and even get coverage in newspapers published outside Fujian. † MEDIA CREDIBILITY AND GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY Competition from the commercial media and the Web-based media has created what Qian Gang and David Bandurski call a credibility gap problem for the official media.In chapter 2, they compare the ways stories are covered in various kinds of newspapers, vividly illustrating that commercial newspapers’ reporting is far more informative and reliable than that found in official newspapers. Readers are abandoning the official media, and their preference is heightened during crises that arouse their interest and motivate them to search for reliable information. 22 Changing Media, Changing China Daniela Stockmann, in chapter 8, provides new data about how people in China choose between different types of news sources.They use the official press to get information on the government’s current policy position, but turn to the commercial media and the Internet for credible â€Å"real news. † As she explains, it is â€Å"the perceived disassociation from the government that lends credibility to the nonofficial media. † Stockmann happened to be doing a survey on media usage in Beijing in spring 2005 when student protests against Japan erupted. This serendipity gave her the rare opportunity to compare the way people use the media during normal times and during a crisis.What she discovered was that during a crisis, people have a particularly keen nose for where to ? nd credible information. Even when the propaganda authorities ban reporting of protests and try to homogenize coverage in all types of media, people are more likely to abandon official sources and turn to the commerci al press and the Internet than during normal times. The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in China in 2003 is referred to by several authors as a turning point in the relations between the government, the media, and the public.By ordering the media to play down early reports of people falling ill with a mysterious disease, a cover-up that allowed the virus to spread and kill more people, Beijing deepened public skepticism about the reliability of the official media and of the government itself. More important, the cover-up taught the public to look to new sources for the true facts. The searing SARS experience also spurred the determination of journalists to meet people’s need for accurate information during a crisis. The ? ght from official sources creates a serious problem for Chinese leaders, who need to prevent panic and antigovernment reactions during crises. Leaders plausibly worry that a widespread environmental or food safety catastrophe that angers la rge numbers of people about the same issue at the same time could snowball into a revolt against the CCP. Competition from the commercial media and the Web and the narrowing of the information gap between officials and the public forces the government to be more transparent to maintain its credibility.The State Council Information Office and Tsinghua University have trained hundreds of official spokespeople for central, provincial, and municipal government agencies to give press brie? ngs. The central government launched an E-government initiative, and almost every government agency (including very sensitive ones like the Ministry of State Security) now posts information on its Web site. Changing Media, Changing China 23 The trend toward government transparency got a major boost from the Regulations on Open Government Information that went into effect in 2008.The regulations require officials to release information during disasters and emergencies and permit citizens to request the release of government information. An activist took advantage of the opening to request budgets from government agencies. When in October 2009 Guangzhou released departmental budgets and Shanghai refused to do so on the grounds that this information constituted state secrets, the media and online public went wild criticizing Shanghai’s excuse. 6 Xinhua piled on by reprinting many of the critiques, in