2014-08-15
Recently, the National Office of Online Information promulgated ten regulations concerning WeChat (“WeChat 10 Regulations”). There have already been many discussions about it. Among them, Hu Yong’s “Ten Points on ‘WeChat 10 Regulations’” is the most insightful. In short, the regulation that received the most attention is No. 7: “The public accounts of news agencies and news websites can release and repost political news. The public accounts that have acquired online news information service status but are not accounts of news agencies and news websites can only repost political news. All other public accounts cannot release or repost political news without pre-approval.” The political news mentioned here also includes political commentaries and economic news. Therefore, we can say that the government has made a clean sweep.
Hu Yong also points out that the core of the new regulations is to make online content to be pre-approved. To think that the purpose of the No. 7 regulation is solely for pre-approval, Hu Yong may have misunderstood or neglected some key information. According to the No. 7 regulation, only “those public accounts of news agencies and news websites can release political news.” The public accounts of non-news agencies and news websites can only repost political news. The difference between “news agencies” and “non-news agencies” here are not of their contents, but of their status. “News agencies and news websites” mentioned in the No. 7 regulations refer to those that have the status recognized by the government in the context of the current “zhuban/zhuguan system.” This kind of official status cannot be acquired only by rent seeking.
The “zhuban/zhuguan system” is the basic system of Chinese cultural affairs management. Basically, it means that for a cultural organization to be established, it has to have a governmental organization that operates it (zhuban unit) and a higher governmental authority that oversees it (zhuguan unit). For example, Section II of Article 11 of the Regulations on Publication Management stipulates that, to establish a publishing house, it is required that the publishing house have a zhuban unit and a zhuguan unit that are recognized by the State Council. Similarly, film production companies, TV stations, newspapers, magazines, even theaters and performances companies, all of them need to have a zhuban unit and a zhuguan unit so that they can be established. The “news agencies and news websites” mentioned in the No. 7 regulation refers to the kind of government controlled organizations that have a zhuban and zhuguan. Under the zhuban/zhuguan system, the right to establish a cultural organization is monopolized. Non-government controlled entities do not have a zhuban and a zhuguan, therefore, they cannot establish any cultural organization.
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