Censorship and Narrative: The Chinese Strategy

Every nation has an historical narrative that they use to educate a domestic audience and persuade an international audience.  In contrast to history, an historical narrative includes interpretations and generalizations of the national past and teaches these generalizations as part of the facts of history.  In broad terms, the United States narrative goes like this: 

The United States is the most powerful country in the world, but unlike superpowers of the past, the U.S. is a benign superpower seeking only to spread the morally pure agenda of freedom, democracy, and opportunity.  This plays well to a domestic and foreign audience.  Some aspects of U.S. policy are difficult to fit into this narrative, such as occupying Iraq but not the equally (if not more) strategically dangerous Iran.  Bush tried to argue that he would set an example of functioning democracy in the region, then spread the goodness to everybody else.  Unfortunately for the U.S narrative this argument does not pass the laugh test, and not just because the given reason for attacking Iraq was WMD, but also because most of the U.S.'s closest allies in the region (as further proven by wikileaks), are not democracies and are not interested in welcoming democracy into their closed dictatorial fiefdoms.  If the U.S. goal was really to spread democracy, leaning on dependent allies such as Egypt and Jordan to liberalize their own systems is probably more likely to succeed without major upheaval, and is certainly less costly than the new 'clear, hold, build' strategy that we all hope (but do not believe) is working in Af-Pak and Iraq.  A sophisticated observer will note that the U.S. (like every nation on earth) cynically uses its narrative to leverage realpolitik objectives.

Despite its flaws, the U.S. narrative is nonetheless appealing.  Opportunity is available in the U.S. for those who can get here, and there are many real life stories that anecdotal support the acceptance and success of poor immigrants who are willing to work hard and risk everything to have a go in America.

To an outsider, the Chinese narrative is much less appealing.  The basic tenants are not particularly repulsive, rather it is what those arguments are used to justify that renders the Chinese narrative somewhat unpalatable to foreigners.  This might be because of a less well-run international narrative, or it might be because of a narrative that is tailored to a domestic rather than an international audience.  Let's take a look.

The Chinese patriotic education campaign started in 1992 and has been wildly successful in reversing the  pro-western worldview that was quite prevalent in China during the late 1980's.  Successful patriotic education in the modern world has three essential components and one optional component. 

1. Denial of Access to Information:  If something is only sporadically available in foreign media, only tangentially related to China, or simply not a large story, total denial of access to information can succeed behind the Great Firewall and the State Run Media.  As long as the strategy is implemented consistently and competently, censorship can work.  (U.S. take note, your response to wikileaks-Inconsistent and Incompetent). 
2. Timely and Detailed Particularized Responses to Important Events:  These responses must expand and utilize the overarching narrative of No.3 below.  These responses can also be coupled with an aggressive implementation of censorship to keep out particularly damaging details.  The key to this step is using every potentially damaging incident to feed your narrative.
3. Careful Construction of a Domestically Attractive Narrative:  The overarching CCP narrative is a tale of persistent Western and particularly Japanese victimization of an ancient culture, the tale of the CCP bringing Chinese people back to power over foreign aggressors, the tale of a rise from ashes into an economic powerhouse and a respected leader of the world, and perhaps most importantly the threat of collapse upon loss of the CCP.  This narrative has two particularly attractive aspects to a domestic audience:
1. It is the tale of the inherent superiority of an ancient continuous culture unmatched in the world.  Everybody loves to culturally identify with superiority because it's an easy way to replace personal accomplishment.  This continuity is a myth of course, because the Chinese culture is a history of division, rising and falling dynasties, conquering, expansion, contraction, and repeated dominance by foreigners.  Any continuity that persisted was destroyed by Mao during the Cultural Revolution.
2. Everything China has gained in the last 30 years; wealth, prestige, and self-confidence is totally dependent upon the party in power.  No Chinese person wants to sacrifice the progress they've made.  The CCP has every incentive to continue the progress, and the people know it.
4. Construction of an International Narrative:  This is the optional component, the one that is completely underdeveloped for China.  The U.S. international narrative is above, and it is well-developed and carefully considered.  The Chinese international narrative, to the extent they have one, is Deng XiaoPing's concept of organization of the developing world and general opposition to U.S. and Soviet hegemony hinted at here: “China is not a superpower, nor will she ever seek to be one. If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialism, expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it.”  Thus China positions itself as the anti-imperialist, the champion of the underdeveloped, a peaceful player in the continuing integration and advancement of the developing world.  This narrative was beginning to enjoy some success before the recent expansion of core interests to cover the entire South China Sea, continuing support for a parasitic N.Korea, and bullying of Japan over the boat collision incident.  This narrative now needs to be revisited.

Let's look at an interesting case study for the Chinese narrative, the Liu XiaoBo incident.  The NYT has a very good analysis of the approach China has taken to the Nobel Prize awarded to Liu. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/world/asia/11china.html?_r=2
You'll find that the Chinese government quickly developed a containment strategy for the damage caused by the Nobel Prize awarded to a jailed dissident.  They follow the exact pattern I described above.  First, they scrubbed the Chinese Internet for all references of the Award Ceremony, or even the Nobel itself.  This decreases public awareness of the Nobel generally and Liu in particular.  Knowing that this is only a partial strategy, the the state media denounced the award as a "Western plot to hold back a rising China and branding the award’s supporters as “clowns.” Global Times, a populist tabloid affiliated with the party-owned People’s Daily, called the event a “political farce” and Oslo a “cult center.”(NYT).

Domestically, the narrative hits all the right notes.  It's got suspicion of foreign imperialism, an insult to China's dignity, glorifying a known criminal tried and convicted under Chinese law, and selective quotation of Liu to make him fit the role of imperialist tool who has committed treason against his own people.  Struggling, succeeding China is victimized again.

Internationally, the narrative plays very poorly.  China strong-armed 19 countries into skipping the Nobel ceremony, appeared bellicose and intolerant, highlighted their opposition to democratic reformers, and generally appeared to violate their own rules about imperialist tendencies.  This failure to appeal to an international audience does not condemn the Chinese narrative to failure.  The primary purpose of a narrative is to win the domestic audience, and at this the narrative has been wildly successful.  The challenge for China in the future is to produce a narrative that appeals to both domestic and international audiences, otherwise they will not develop the sort of soft power enjoyed by the U.S. and to some extent the E.U.  They will not have waves of talented immigrants, they will not get the benefit of the doubt in their global intentions (a situation with great relevance in the South China Sea), and they will not be recognized as a true great world  power...something they want more than anything. 

It will be interesting to see how the Chinese wiggle out the nationalistic trap they have set for themselves.  They must have a reason for the continued dominance of the CCP, but they cannot stoke nationalism to dangerous and nativist levels.  This balancing act will grow more difficult with each new international incident.  I wish them luck.  It will be interesting to watch their narrative evolve as their interests become more and more clearly aligned with the nations whose social and economic imperialism they once denounced.  Without a change, the Chinese will not be able to leverage any concessions, benefits of the doubt, or soft power out of its historical narrative.