Beijing Times and Beijing News to be seized by the Government?

There have been some fascinating events over the last few days. Notably, the Beijing Times and the Beijing News may soon be put under the control of the Government Propaganda Department.

Bear in mind that a lot of this is based on rumor and it’s a complex situation to begin with, but there’s definitely a story here.

Firstly, it’s important to not confuse the two newspapers. The Beijing Times was founded by the People’s Daily Group. It’s a working class rag, supports the government though it makes the odd criticism when it feels things are unreasonable, and has become quite popular.

The Beijing News has had a turbulent history. These recent events have echoes of a 2005 incident, where the Guangming Daily Group wrested total control of the paper from the Nanfang media group (having previously been partners). Since then, the Guangming media group and the Southern Media Group have shared control. Essentially, if these rumors are accurate, the Guangming Media Group will jettison yet another partner.

Both of these partners were considerably more, shall we say, resistant to Beijing’s overtures than the Guangming Media Group have been. The Nanfang Media Group was once the poster child for independence in Chinese media but suffered greatly from repeated jabs from the government. The Southern Media Group occupy that position now and they’ve paid dearly for it. There have been a number of  crackdowns as well as fears that the Southern Media Group were influencing newspapers such as the Beijing News.

So basically, the gist of it is, that one newspaper, already pretty sympathetic to the government, would be wrapped even more tightly under the government’s wing. The other, a newspaper tainted by outside influences, would be put under more direct control. Essentially, both would become much more accessible to the propaganda department.

But, they were nothing more than rumours. That was until searches for either of those newpapers were blocked on Weibo. In my view, this is nothing short of a smoking gun – for a few reasons.

Firstly, there haven’t been any particularly controversial stories in either of those papers in the last few days, that would warrant such a blackout.

Secondly, this isn’t a single event being censored. This is the name of a newspaper – that is several orders of magnitude above a particular topic or event. Imagine for a moment, an American Government Department had the power to block twitter. Imagine them trying to cover up a single event. It would be tough, but plausible. Now imagine them trying to block all information relating to say, the New York Times.

OK, so it’s obvious why they would want to have more direct control over the Beijing News. How about the Beijing Times?

Well, this headline, which came to the fore just a few days ago, certainly sets off some sirens. The headline isn’t translated particularly well, but you get the jist:

Beijing Times were among the most investment value of the media

So just a few days before all of this, 200 of the movers and shakers of Chinese media got together and using eight criteria (social credibility, the core management team, market mechanisms, policies to monopolize the resources, brand recognition, financial health, the target audience, market, investor relations and management team) they judged the Beijing Times as being the most valuable. That’s one hell of a coincidence.

Maybe nobody knew what the prize really was. In any case, it’s just one hypothesis. The government doesn’t really need many reasons to want firmer control of the media industry.

As usual, things are opaque at the top. But there are some pretty suggestive signs coming to the fore.