You wouldn’t have heard it from her, but Hu Shuli resigned
from her post as editor of Caijing
magazine on Monday. The battle over political coverage and finances at Caijing (cai is “finance” and jing is “economics”) had been reported
for about three months, but the missing component in the coverage was Hu
herself—she has never made a public statement about what was going on at what
was most likely China’s most provocative yet mainstream magazine (it’s a biweekly.)
Wang Shuo, Caijing’s managing editor,
posted his resignation on his Twitter page. Wang said almost all the other top
editors who hadn’t already left are leaving too.
Caijing put the
spotlight on corruption and took on political issues. I always saw it as a
prime example of just how good journalism in China could be if a publication has
good reporters and editors and enough political protection—not that it always
stayed out of trouble. When I searched CPJ’s Web site,
I found we had made 21 references to the magazine, the first in 2002—and they
were usually in the context of some sort of reaction from the government over
critical coverage. The magazine’s journalism was good enough for the Asian Wall Street Journal’s high editorial
standards, and the two had an agreement to reprint each other’s articles at
times.
The problem has been brewing for a long time, but reached
something of a crisis point in mid-October. The Associated Press reported from Beijing that Caijing announced that Executive
Director Daphne Wu Chuanhui
and 60 to 70 employees who worked for her in the business department have
resigned, but she declined to comment on the reasons for the exodus. Throughout
the entire ordeal, Hu has never been quoted and has maintained media silence.
There
was a swirl of e-mail messages in late September and October among China media
watchers, but it was never clear what was happening at the magazine. The
question seems to boil down to, “So why has so much of the editorial staff
walked out—was it politics or finances?” Running after the story back then, I
asked a friend in Hong Kong who asked not to be identified, and got this
answer: “The decision is both, almost equal parts, but I can’t divulge anything
without Shuli’s permission.” Other friends told me that trying to contact Hu
with a CPJ e-mail address might make matters more complicated for her—access to
CPJ.org
is still blocked in China—so
I backed off.
But
some people are starting to talk, and from friends in Hong Kong and Beijing, one of whom
worked at the magazine for a few years and has maintained contact with
colleagues on the staff, here’s what I can piece together:
There are no “independent” media outlets of any sort in China. All news
organizations have to be tied to a state entity in one way or another, and
except for a few flagship organizations like Xinhua and China Daily, all are expected to be self-sustaining—basically, they
have to make money. Caijing’s
official link came through the Stock Exchange Executive Council (SEEC), an
economic think tank with loose government ties. The SEEC Media Group Ltd., its
publishing business, is registered as a company in Hong Kong. It first focused on
straightforward economic reporting with titles like Securities Market Weekly.
But
SEEC’s roots were in the south of China,
in Shanghai and the special economic zone of Shenzhen,
which abuts Hong Kong—areas aimed at exporting
and international trade. They have been the financial centers for China’s
economic growth for the last several decades. Shenzhen and Guangzhou,
the capital of Guangdong province, less so Shanghai, became centers
for aggressive reporting. The Southern Media Group—particularly
its Guangzhou-based Nanfang Dushi Bao (Southern Metropolis Daily)—is another example of an aggressive news group which
aims its publications at the more globally connected audiences in the south.
The
general consensus, at least in the English-language media coverage, is that
SEEC’s profit taking from Caijing,
which took away cash from the budget for news coverage, coupled with the
owners’ aims to dial back the magazine’s coverage of corruption and malfeasance
that made the government unhappy at times, proved to be a fatal combination for
Hu and her staff. SEEC’s worried about the plans to cover the ethnic
riots in Xinjiang in July—a hot-button issue for the government—most likely
accelerated what had already become a downward spiral of internal dissent.
Not
surprisingly, it was Hong Kong’s South
China Morning Post that broke the
news, in English, at least, that “The founder and
editor of Caijing, the mainland’s
most influential business magazine, has resigned to launch a new multimedia
business venture, after she failed to patch up differences with the publisher
over the direction of the magazine, according to staff members.” The SCMP also reported
that Hu will head Sun Yat-sen University’s
School of Communication
and Design—in Guangzhou,
not surprisingly. The paper quoted an anonymous university employee as saying that
“Hu had visited the university on Wednesday and signed a contract on Friday.”
The SCMP also said Hu’s team has already leased space in Beijing’s central
business district, and “some of the business staff have already moved in,
indicating that she has already received some initial investment” from
undisclosed financial backers.
Caijing looks like it will stay alive
for now, if only in a milder version of its feisty former self. But it won’t be
able to rest on its laurels: “Hu said she was in discussions with a number of
potential investors about forming a new multimedia platform that could cover
the publication of business magazines, provide business news online and be involved
with new media ventures,” according to the South
China Morning Post.
And,
just for the record, there is no mention of Hu and her staff’s departure on
either the English or Chinese version of the magazine’s Web
site.
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