Document Number Nine

Document Number Nine (or Document No. 9), more properly the Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere^[1] (also translated as the Briefing on the Current Situation in the Ideological Realm^[2]) is a confidential internal document widely circulated within the Communist Party of China in 2013 by the General Office of the Communist Party of China.^[3][4] The document was first published in July 2012.^[5] The document warns of seven dangerous Western values, allegedly including media freedom and judicial independence. With respect to education coverage of the topics is forbidden.^[6] There is an emphasis on controlling and preventing communication using the internet of ideas subversive to one party rule. The document was issued in the context of planned economic reforms and increased calls for political reform.^[7] It has been described as a critique of the "liberal ways of thinking".^[8]

The document was not made available to public by the Chinese government, but in July 2013 was allegedly leaked by Chinese dissident journalist Gao Yu, who was in turn sentenced to a seven-year imprisonment for "leaking state secrets."^[9][10]

Name

The document has been described as a communiqué^[1] or circular^[2] The name of the document (Document Number Nine), as it came to be commonly referred in Western English-language press,^[2][11] comes from the fact that it was the ninth such document issued that year in China.^[1]

Contents

The document is highly critical of what can be broadly described as "Western values" (the document itself uses terms such as "Western values", "Western principles", "Western standards", "Western ideas", and more precisely, "Western constitutional democracy" and "Western-style theories of governance," as well as making references to "Western anti-China forces").^[1] The document is critical of "extremely malicious" ideals spreading in the Chinese society, such as ideas of (Western) constitutional democracy, civil society, universal values (freedom, democracy, and human rights), neo-liberalism, and freedom of the press (described as the "Western news values").^[1][2][11] The document warns that such subjects undermine the Chinese Communist Party's control over the Chinese society.^[2]

Leak

The contents of the memo became known when accounts of presenting it to cadre in the Liaoyuan municipal government were published in the local paper.^[12][13] In May 2013 cadre at the Chongqing Party Committee for Urban and Rural Construction studied the material,^[14] as did cadre in Anyang.^[15] However, there were no explicit mentions of the seven Western values above.

In April 2015, the Wall Street Journal's Josh Chin^[16] reported a 71-year-old Chinese journalist was convicted for releasing Document 9. Journalist, Gao Yu, was sentenced to seven years in prison by Beijing’s Third Intermediate People’s Court after being found guilty in a closed trial of leaking state secrets to foreign media, Ms. Gao was accused by the court of leaking an internal Communist Party directive to an overseas Chinese news site in 2013, according to her lawyer, Mo Shaoping. Known as Document No. 9. Historically, it is rare for Chinese authorities to detain or jail elderly critics, who were traditionally given quiet warnings when they crossed political red lines. The article suggests that charge is a pretext for aggressive action against political dissent and cites other examples of elderly publishers / journalist being prosecuted.

Analysis

According to news analysis by a reporter at The New York Times, the emphasis on political discipline is intended to forestall leftist, or Maoist, opposition to needed economic reforms avoiding the split which resulted in the Soviet Union during Gorbachev's reform efforts when media freedom resulted in publishing of a great deal of critical historical material and alienation of the mass of party workers.^[7]

References

External links

• "The political economy of Document Number Nine". Foreign Policy. 20 August 2013. Retrieved 6 May 2015.