[LINK] "Is this China’s Chernobyl moment?"

[rfmcdonald]

Open Democracy's Maria Repnikova describes how the contemporary Chinese response to the Tianjin explosion demonstrates the flexibility of the Chinese system, contrasted to the late Soviet respons eto Chernobyl.

[T]he Chinese authorities, while sometimes still treating information as a “ virus on the verge of infecting the masses,” now often treat crisis coverage as a potent tool to be deployed. For the past decade, Chinese authorities have refined a ‘contained transparency’ approach, focusing on guiding public opinion via selective censorship mixed with the selective dissemination of information and responsiveness to public grievances. Some media coverage is allowed, but reporting is restricted as much as possible to the official version of the Xinhua News Agency. Central officials make appearances at disaster sites and hold news conferences, albeit sometimes after a short delay, and the official press carries hopeful messages regarding disaster relief and top-level investigations. This was the approach to Tianjin.

Although censorship was pervasive after the blast, it was carefully targeted. Many critical posts were swept from the web, but many survived, even if only temporarily. Moreover, a number of traditional media platforms launched impressive investigations of the disaster, pushing the envelope of the official directive of Xinhua-only coverage. Topics they covered included the ownership structure of Ruihai, the high death toll among fire-fighters, and the links between Ruihai and the state-owned company Sinopec. These reports called, in different ways, for greater official accountability. The state’s willingness to allow these reports to circulate points to the intentionally incomplete nature of control, a sense that bounded bottom-up feedback can be helpful rather than harmful even in a state that prizes top-down control.

Finally, we are now seeing a burst of official responsiveness to public questioning and discontent. Top executives of the offending company have been detained, and the mayor of Tianjin publicly admitted responsibility for the scandal. This official responsiveness to the disaster, however, is being carefully managed to ensure that the central state can still be seen as a benevolent guardian, while the blame is placed squarely on local officials.