Information-poor environments: Asian tigers - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 263

NGOs and their campaigns have been treated favourably in the Chinese
newspapers from their emergence in the mid-1990s onwards. There are
close ties between the Chinese conventional media (newspapers, radio,
television) and environmental NGOs (Hu Kanping, 2001 ;HuKanping
and Yu Xiaogang, 2005 ; Xie and Mol, 2006 ; Xie, 2007 ), and more than
incidentally green NGOs are led by (former) professional journalists.
These close ties also come from the fact that environmental NGOs are a
source of news, and pollution victims and environmental NGOs need
the media to build up pressure. 49 Although this freedom has caused
larger uncertainty among journalists and media decision makers of
what is and what is not allowed, by the same token most journalists
and media are less and less willing to accept simple top-down Party
directions. Today, Chinese media serves two masters: the Party and the
market (Hong Lui, 1998 ; Latham, 2000 ). The media seem to constantly
experiment with the limits of what is allowed by the party (Li Junhui,
2005 ), whereas the limits prove to be a moving target. Especially since
the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic in 2003, the
room for revealing environmental information has expanded. 50 The
emerging 'investigative journalism' also focuses on scrutinising author-
ity, although journalists and media seldom touch on 'Chinese leaders
in action' or challenge the (local) state legitimacy, unless it is allowed
from above. In that sense, transparency has increased in environmental
governance, but governmental control is still felt and transparency in
environmental governance through these old media is far from routine
matter.
In Vietnam, the 'old' media also have been removed from their sub-
sidies but are still owned by the government (including TV, radio and
the five hundred to six hundred dailies and periodicals). Compared
to China, there is a stronger control by and work in service of the
Party and government. Aggressive editors and journalists who push
too hard at the boundaries of censorship have been removed and

49

Shang Hongbo ( 2004 ) studied how pollution victims in four cases of industrial
pollution in different parts of China used the media to build up pressure once
the (local and national) authorities did not prove to be receptive to their
complaints. Next to these strategies of informational governance, litigation,
protesting and mediation with the polluters are other strategies used by these
victims.

50

Interview, Tsinghua University professor, October 2005; interview, deputy
director EMC, November 2005; interview, Chinese Academy of Sciences
division head, November 2005.