'Focus' (Jiaodian Fangtan) and the Changes in the Chinese ...

LI XIAOPING
Henan and Anhui a year before. The ‘Focus’ reports had given him a strong
impression as to what the government should do about it. Later, the government
decided to appropriate over 100 billion yuan (RMB) to rebuild the electricity
network in the countrysid e and to equalize the cost of electricity in rural areas with
the price that people were charged in the cities.
The changing role of the media
Social changes
Cases abound that the media has functioned as an effective watchdog against
corruption, sometimes called China’s Number One problem. There is a Chinese
saying that ‘13 minutes of television broadcast redresses 10 years of grievance’,
referring to the impact of the daily ‘Focus’ in helping to deal with problems
unresolved for decades. It helps galvanize more public debate and subsequently
pressure on government to tackle the problem after it is made public. People
criticized similar wrongdoings and vented their resentment about corruption.
As a result of more public debate, people have a greater and clearer sense of their
rights, obligations and responsibilitie s as well as common values of society.
However, compared to people in Europe and the United States, the education level
of ordinary people in China is relatively low. According to a recent of� cial census,
the illiteracy rate among those over 15 years old in the total population is now
6.72%, representing 87 million people. For example, one of the most successful
Chinese enterprises ‘the Haier Group Company’, had an instructive experience
when educating and training its workers who came from rural areas. When they
� rst came to be trained, there was a slogan on the wall of their workplace—‘No
excretion in open space’. This vividly re� ected the workers’ civilization level at
that time but it was precisely those workers who produced very high quality goods
after being well educated and trained; their products gained a positive reputation
and the company had ‘$5 billion sales worldwide and a stranglehold on the China
market’. This demonstrates that the Chinese people need time to be educated
gradually to achieve more socially acceptable habits and to heighten their civilization
level. As Chinese Canadian scholar Zhao Yuezhi points out,
Watchdog journalism presupposes and helps to constitute basic ideological assumptions
about the emerging social order—what are its rules, what is acceptable behavior,
and who are the good guys and bad guys. 10
In addition to its news gathering and reporting function, media plays the role of
a campaigner for social justice. There is a saying among ‘Focus’ fans that ‘Focus
is our courtroom to argue against bully of� cials’. This very statement reveals the
serious problems endemic in China and how the media is increasingly a factor in
the resolution of those problems. As Chen Xiaowei, the former CCTV anchorwoman
on ‘Sunday Topics’ points out:
10. Zhao Yuezhi, ‘Watchdogs on party leashes? Contexts and implications of investigative journalism in post-Deng
China’, Journalism Studies 1, (November 2000), pp. 577–597.
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