1. Create a favorable public opinion climate for the two holidays [including Spring Festival] and “two meetings” (NPC and CPPCC). Do a conscientious job of channeling [public opinion] on such hot topics as income distribution, the stock market and property market, employment and social security, education and public health and sanitation, and safe manufacturing, explaining the issues and dissolving tensions.
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3. Reports on demolition and removal [of residents to make way for development projects] must be “grasped safely and reliably”, and [media] “must not cast doubt on” normal demolitions and removals done according to laws and regulations. No public opinion support must be given to exorbitant [property] prices, and not reports must be made of “suicides, self-immolations or public incidents” occurring in the course of violent demolitions and removals. Extreme isolated cases must not be built up [with reporting and editorial treatment], and concentrated or serial reporting cannot be done [for such cases].
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7. A fully adequate job must be done of carrying out public opinion channeling concerning the property market. Questionnaires on high property prices and online surveys must not be done. [Media] must not make assessments about property price trends on the basis of changes in “any given time and place” (一时一地), and they must not build up extreme examples.
We’re indebted to the translations by China Digital Times and David Bandurski of China Media Project for the above: a purported General Notice from the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department, effective January 4, 2011 — and leaked by Chinese journalists, Radio France International (Chinese) reported.
The contents of the notice (which extends to 10 separate directives) indicates 2011 will be a tough year for Chinese media, Bandurski says.
Based on the difficult liquidity crunch coming to the country’s markets this year — that might not be all that 2011 will be remembered for in China, we’d suggest.
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An inflation postscript
On a related note — and given those market fears about the central bank’s move to tighten interest rates and control inflation — Diana Choyleva of Lombard Street Research had some important points to make about the data used to analyse Chinese price changes, in a note published on Monday.
It’s better to use gauges of the consumer spending deflator rather than official CPI figures, Choyleva says, because the former’s based on actual spending changes — whereas the latter is based on static weighting of a basket of prices. There’s not much wrong with that for a CPI measure, you might argue, but in China the prices of goods that are vulnerable to inflation — food, say — are still controlled. There aren’t official deflator figures, but Choyleva notes that it is possible to read off a GDP deflator between those CPI numbers and data on (nominal/real) GDP growth.
If you’re not convinced, Choyleva adds:
Another important reason why the GDP deflator is likely to be a more realistic gauge, or certainly one to always take into account, is that China’s National Bureau of Statistics changes the CPI weights every five years, well behind even structural changes in spending patterns let alone cyclical. Moreover, it also introduces ad-hoc changes that it does not necessarily announce to the market as the CPI is the “politically correct”, or probably corrected, measure. A change in the CPI weights was supposed to happen last year, but rumour has it that it was postponed because it would have entailed higher inflation, which was out of line with the authorities 3% 2010 target.
In short, be wary of future falls in headline inflation in China.
Curiously enough, the General Notice contains no strictures on media coverage of inflation. In fact — state outlets seem to be reporting on it rather freely.
Either the propaganda department is confident that the People’s Bank of China will succeed in its tightening work this year, or they’ve decided that no amount of lipstick is going to make this pig look prettier.
Hard to tell.
Related links:
Command journalism? – FT Tilt
Property stocks weigh on China and Hong Kong – FT
When PBOC officials disagree – FT Alphaville