Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
In China a sharp distinction is drawn between open
(gongkai)
and closed
(neibu)
publications. Closed publications are intended to inform cadre and party
members, and are circulated via carefully restricted channels. Closed
publications are distributed through special non-public channels, and
administrative and legal means are used to ensure they are available only to
authorized audiences. Closed publications are intended to inform politically
relevant audiences about current affairs. Their content is factual, and often quite
frank and even critical of government policies. The purpose of closed,
neibu,
publications is to convey the unvarnished truth to those whose political
responsibilities give them a need to know that truth.
Openly disseminated,
gongkai,
sources play a different function. These
sources are intended to inform people about Party and government policies once
those policies have been decided upon. The key purpose of open publications is
to mobilize public support for the implementation of official policies, to explain
the wisdom of those policies and encourage people to assist their implementation.
With open publications there is almost always a clear line to be followed.
22
A
powerful administrative system is in place to ensure that open publications hew
to the guidelines laid out by the central Propaganda Small Group and/or the
Foreign Affairs Small Group.
23
The 'line' regarding India followed by all the open source publications
reviewed earlier was that 'the China threat' was clearly bogus and a pretext used
for ulterior purposes—for purposes other than dealing with real threats from
China. Several unstated conclusions followed from this premise. First, it
followed that India need not align with the United States to deal with some
perceived threat to Indian security. It also followed that there are no legitimate
grounds for India to be concerned with, to oppose, or seek to block, the
expansion of Chinese ties with the countries of South Asia. Such ties in no way
threatened India and were fully in accord with the Five Principles of Peaceful
Coexistence, to which India has agreed.
Since the key justification for Indian efforts to restrict Chinese military-
security ties with the South Asian countries was a threat to India's security, it
followed that open Chinese publications should carry nothing legitimizing Indian
security concerns. Discussions of Indian threats to China were apparently not
prohibited as long as the article made clear that such 'threats' were merely Indian
perceptions,
that those perceptions were inaccurate, and that there was no
substance to 'the China threat'. All articles were apparently expected to
explicitly reject 'the China threat theory'. In such a context, it is necessary that
Indian threats to China be downplayed—in open source publications. It is quite
possible, however, that internal publications convey more realistic, more
pessimistic, more conflict-oriented analyses.
The parent organizations of both Chinese journals surveyed earlier,
Guoji
wenti yanjiu
and
Xiandai guoji guanxi,
are organs of the Chinese state (the
