The primary time 27-year-old Ong Mei Ching* got here throughout the Chinese language on-line journal, Sixth Tone, it instantly caught her consideration.
For years, Ong had been keen on Chinese language present affairs and had stayed up to date about information from China, however she discovered that a lot of the protection revolved round related matters.
Sixth Tone, which is revealed in English, was completely different.
“I discovered it refreshing as a result of it was not about Chinese language enterprise or economics or politics – it was about individuals,” Ong advised Al Jazeera.
She was captivated by the best way the publication’s journalists ventured past the standard areas into lesser-known cities and provinces to report about social dilemmas such because the nation’s ageing inhabitants or its marginalised teams like single dad and mom and kids left with their grandparents by dad and mom who had left for work in faraway cities.
“I felt they had been doing one thing fairly significant, that they had been altering the narrative of how a global viewers noticed China,” she mentioned.
Ong wished to be part of it. So, when she bought the chance to work at Sixth Tone in 2019, she jumped on the likelihood and moved her life to Shanghai the place the journal has its headquarters.
She grew to become part of an editorial crew that she described as upholding excessive journalistic requirements and whose members had been obsessed with their work.
Nonetheless, the work may usually result in clashes with Chinese language censors who objected to sure subject decisions and story angles, which typically resulted in items getting killed earlier than they had been ever revealed or taken down just some hours after they went on-line.
“We had been testing the waters with many tales to see whether or not they would pop the censors,” she mentioned.
Whatever the scrutiny, Ong discovered that Sixth Tone, which was geared in direction of a Western and internationally-minded viewers, usually had extra leeway than media for extra native audiences.
However its room for manoeuvre now seems to have shrunk.
Former and present staff at Sixth Tone have not too long ago given accounts of how articles have been eliminated and phrases censored on a large scale throughout the outlet’s archives. Editors have additionally been required to test in with censors each few hours and sure terminology has been modified to align with the popular narrative of the Chinese language Communist Occasion (CCP) together with referring to Tibet as “Xizang”.
Al Jazeera reached out to Sixth Tone for remark however didn’t obtain a reply.
Ong isn’t stunned that the grip seems to be tightening round Sixth Tone.
“As Sixth Tone has grown, it has attracted a much bigger viewers making the federal government need to improve its management over the content material this viewers is getting,” she mentioned.
“On the identical time, there may be a number of stress on Chinese language media as we speak to painting China in a solely optimistic method.”
A managed experiment
Underneath President Xi Jinping, the Chinese language authorities has referred to as for “telling China’s story nicely” and spreading “optimistic power”.
Such mantras haven’t at all times been mirrored in Sixth Tone’s many articles in regards to the socioeconomic points dealing with widespread individuals in China.
The irony is that whereas Sixth Tone’s reporting has drawn the eye of Chinese language censors, the outlet can also be thought of state media as a result of it’s a part of the state-controlled Shanghai United Media Group.
In line with Shaoyu Yuan, a scholar of Chinese language research at Rutger’s College within the US, state media in China function a mouthpiece of the ruling Chinese language Communist Occasion (CCP) with much less emphasis on editorial independence and extra concentrate on aligning content material with get together ideology and authorities insurance policies.
“Which means that state media function underneath the auspices of the CCP and contribute to the promotion of presidency aims, enhancing nationwide unity and supporting China’s picture domestically and internationally,” he advised Al Jazeera.
However though Sixth Tone needed to steadiness credible reporting for a global viewers with CCP ideology, Yuan isn’t satisfied the journal was doomed to lose its edge.
As an alternative, he argues that permitting Sixth Tone to pursue its personal journalistic type was akin to a managed experiment by the CCP.
“Chinese language residents keen on such reporting most certainly already knew methods to bypass censorship and entry overseas information shops that already cowl a few of the identical points,” he mentioned.
“The Chinese language authorities’s assist for Sixth Tone allowed for a delicate management over the tone and framing of such points.”
Moreover, when Sixth Tone was based in 2016, China was nonetheless transitioning from the much less assertive governing type of Hu Jintao, who was China’s president from 2003 till 2013.
“In comparison with eight years in the past, it will be extra uncommon to see a media like Sixth Tone be based as we speak,” Yuan mentioned.
Shrinking house
Since Xi got here to energy in 2013, the media setting has tightened. Web freedom has additionally declined.
In Freedom Home’s 2023 report on web freedom all over the world, China was rated “not free: with a rating of solely 9 factors out of 100, one level lower than the yr earlier than.
In RSF’s World Press Freedom Index, in the meantime, China fell 4 spots in contrast with 2022, rating second to backside and simply above North Korea. Extra journalists are at present in jail in China than anyplace else on the earth.
“There was a really clear improvement in direction of higher state management over the media in China lately leaving little or no house for media,” Alfred Wu, a scholar of public governance in China on the Nationwide College of Singapore, advised Al Jazeera.
This improvement has additionally affected state media, in response to Yuan at Rutger’s College.
“Underneath the rule of President Xi Jinping, state media in China have been consolidated and aligned nearer with the ideology of the CCP,” he mentioned.
“This includes common ideological schooling and coaching, aiming to be sure that reporting reinforces Xi Jinping Thought [Xi’s ideology] and the aims of socialism with Chinese language traits, and that is why we’re witnessing overseas employees members resigning from media shops like Sixth Tone.”
A kind of employees members is former editor Bibek Bhandari who allegedly landed himself and several other different staff at Sixth Tone in “scorching water” final yr after publishing a media mission that criticised Beijing’s zero-COVID coverage.
On X, Bhandari wrote a protracted thread explaining how the listing of prohibited matters was rising and had come to incorporate migrant relocation, the Shanghai lockdown, LGBTQ-related tales, girls’s points and the zero-COVID protests.
Bhandari attended the most important of the zero-COVID protests in November 2023 together with different members of the editorial crew.
By Could 2023, none of them had been left at Sixth Tone, he wrote in a collection of posts.
“I resigned. Demand for ‘optimistic tales’ was rising. Censorship getting worse. And the place has been completely mismanaged. Area for tales that we beforehand revealed with none hiccups is shrinking. It’s not the identical place I joined.”
Strolling a tightrope
However it isn’t solely journalists in additional outspoken media similar to Sixth Tone who’ve come underneath stress.
When a reporting crew from Chinese language state tv CCTV started a stay interview near the scene of a fuel leak explosion that had claimed the lives of 27 individuals in a metropolis outdoors Beijing in the course of March, members of the native authorities reportedly blocked the digicam whereas others engaged in pushing and shoving to bodily take away the journalists.
Even this yr’s annual information convention on the finish of the annual political gathering of the Two Classes was cancelled.
Yuan warns that the incident close to the fuel leak explosion, the cancelled press occasion and the tightening controls over media shops like Sixth Tone counsel extra difficulties forward for journalists in China.
“These developments underscore the precarious nature of media freedoms and the tightrope that journalists should stroll inside the regulatory and political panorama of the nation,” he mentioned.
Regardless of current crackdowns and restrictions, former staffer Ong believes that Sixth Tone nonetheless has a job to play in China’s media panorama.
“I don’t suppose they are going to be shut down utterly as a result of I feel they’re nonetheless helpful as a software to advertise China to a Western viewers,” she defined.
“And even when it isn’t the identical as earlier than, a number of it’s nonetheless actual tales, actual individuals and actual points.”
Yuan famous that the way forward for shops like Sixth Tone isn’t set in stone.
“I take into account Sixth Tone’s journey to be reflective of the evolving methods inside China’s media ecosystem,” he mentioned.
“Ought to there be a shift in direction of a extra open governance strategy, there’s the likelihood that Sixth Tone may as soon as once more rise to prominence.”
*The supply’s title was altered to respect a want for anonymity given the sensitivity of the subject.
