China Media: What You See Is Not What You Get
The start of a new year is always a great time to make resolutions or embark upon ambitious makeover projects and the Chinese Government thinks no differently.
Tired of its country being viewed in the outside world through a prism of sweat-shops, corruption and rigid party controls, China has now embarked upon a ‘spit and shine’ project to portray, in it’s view, the “good” side of China to the rest of the world through a 24 hour, Asia based all-news channel modeled after Arab news network Al-Jazeera.
In January this year, the South China Morning Post reported that China Central Television (CCTV), the Xinhua News Agency and the Communist party’s mouthpiece, The People’s Daily could each receive 15 billion Chinese Yuan (about $2.6 billion) for “worthwhile projects” extending and enhancing China’s international influence through the new channel. A move that prompted one blogger to snark “putting the PR back into PRC.”
However, intellectuals within China are sceptical of the new channel’s efficacy in managing China’s image abroad. Nailene Chou Weist, a professor at the Beijing Center said she was “not optimistic” about the new endeavour; observing what might have been laudable at any other point has now been rendered laughable in the aftermath of CCTV’s botched coverage of the February 9th fire in its own unoccupied 30-storey building in Beijing.
The huge fire that engulfed the Rem Koolhaas building in Beijing
The blaze sparked off by a huge fireworks display was clearly visible across the Beijing skyline- bellowing smoke into the sky and holding up traffic downtown. But a directive by China’s propaganda authorities, leaked online, instructed domestic media not to run photos, video or in-depth reports on the fire, and to carry only the version put out by Xinhua. As Chinese citizens sifted though scores of videos and pictures of the blaze that were available immediately online, they realised it wasn’t just the 5 billion yuan Rem Koolhaas building that went up in flames, but also the remaining vestiges of CCTV’s credibility.
Eager to present China as dynamic and self-sufficient, the Chinese state controlled media has gone to extraordinary lengths to airbrush events and catastrophes- from earthquakes to SARS to mining disasters- to present to the outside world and to it’s own citizens, an image of the Middle Kingdom that aspires to be squeaky clean and seemingly invincible. But as the country’s engagement- both economically and politically- with the rest of the world continues to grow and Chinese Citizens become increasingly Internet savvy, the time may have come for the state to re-think its heavy handed approach of critical issues facing the Chinese society.
SECRECY AND THE STATE:
Secrecy and the State have always gone hand in hand in Communist China. Although Article 35 of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China explicitly guarantees “Freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and demonstration,” China’s domestic media has been subject to strict govt. controls, which ensure reporting falls within the boundaries of the official propaganda line. The Chinese govt’s guidelines on taboo topics, which are officially deemed as “sensitive” or “min-gang” strictly determines editorial content. Therefore, some events, which can be viewed as politically threatening, can quickly be muzzled. In the early 1960′s Beijing hid news of the “Mao-made disaster” a widespread famine caused by ill-advised economic policies that left an estimated 30 million people dead in the countryside and in 2003, China’s lethargic reaction to releasing news of the respiratory disease SARS underscored the state’s nervousness about any issue that may be perceived in the outside world as uncomplimentary to business, tourism or expanding foreign investment. The SARS crisis came at a time when the country had just won the right to host both the Beijing 2008 Olympics and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.
DEALING WITH SARS:
Between November 2002 and July 2003, the world was struck by a pandemic – Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Within a matter of weeks, SARS spread from Guangdong Province in China to infect 8096 people across 37 countries. 774 deaths were reported in all. As the World Health Organisation issued its first global health alert in it’s 55-year history, Beijing’s secrecy handling the outbreak just made matters worse.
In an in-depth report in The Globe and Mail in Toronto, reporter Jan Wong chronicles how the Govt lingered in a state of denial about the disease, when news surfaced of 7 deaths in Foshan, in the Pearl River Delta, as early as November 2002. “We did not take it seriously at the beginning,” said an official from the Guangdong Provincial Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. As SARS took flight out of Foshan, the plunge into secrecy deepened. Dr.Stephen Cunnion, an infectious disease expert in China said “But they completely hid it. They hide everything, you can’t even find out how many people die due to earthquakes.”
Meanwhile, the infection continued to spread- affecting 5 more cities in Guangdong Province and affecting 7 hospital staff in Heyuan. Instead of sharing information with the province’s 80 million people, the Heyaun paper printed this statement on January 3rd from the local health bureau: “No epidemic disease is being spread in Heyuan… Symptoms like cough and fever appear due to relatively colder weather.” After this, fearful of “social instability” the govt. issued a gag order. A reporter at a Shenzhen newspaper said the ban came even as his manager passed out Chinese herbal medicine, supposedly to fight the disease.
In early February, the Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party directs that reports of SARS should emphasize the situation was under control. It cracks down on outspoken local media. Time magazine reports that when local military doctor Jiang Yanyong told State TV channel CCTV4 of several cases of SARS, he received no response. According to Jiang’s account to Time magazine, health authorities called a meeting after two patients died in a military hospital, but instead of instructing doctors on how to contain the disease through pubic education campaigns, Jiang said medical officers told physicians they were “forbidden to publicize” the SARS deaths “in order to ensure stability.” The New Republic wrote of Jiang’s attempts to draw attention to the viral pneumonia in China, stating when he received no response from the Govt, he sent emails to his friends, who relayed them onto the foreign press. Soon, the world knew of China’s SARS epidemic. (Jiang was subsequently placed in house arrest and later released) The Chinese state media then sprung into action, with the China People’s Daily running a front-page story on SARS, assuring readers that the disease was under control. The illness had now spread as far off as Canada, where hundreds were infected and 5 people died.
In the absence of any concrete numbers on the pandemic from Beijing, the Western media was spinning into paranoia about the “mysterious respiratory illness.” ABC’s Diane Sawyer speculates if this was a case of Bio-terrorism; Alex Salkever writes in an op-ed “On the eve of a war with Iraq, the only news shocking enough to knock Baghdad out of Internet chat-rooms is a terrifying modern day plague.” Businessweek.com veers away from the terrorism angle and calls for a way to “defend against Walking Germ Bombs”
Faced with condemnation abroad and growing skepticism at home, the new president and party leader Hu Jintao, decided the cover-up was no longer tenable and reversed the gag order on the crisis. In a space of 4 months, there were 50 stories on peoplesdaily.com.cn. There were also special sections in The People’s Daily just devoted to SARS coverage, that almost became a rallying point of nationalism – with banners on the site reading “Fighting SARS together. We salute healthcare personnel.” But the damage to China’s credibility as being able to handle a crisis with global repercussions had already been done.
SICHUAN EARTHQUAKE – AN OLYMPIC EFFORT
With just 90 days to go for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Southwestern Sichuan Province was rocked by a massive 8.0 magnitude earthquake, killing atleast 69,000 including 19,000 schoolchildren. After the protests over Tibet and the Olympic Torch’s rocky journey across the world, China decided to seize the moment to “repair it’s image” -embarking upon a hitherto unseen openness in the quake coverage.
Within 20 minutes of the quake, Xinhua released a flash confirming the earthquake and about ten minutes later, CCTV started an unprecedented non-stop coverage on the disaster and relief work. Local reporters ignored the Propaganda Department’s first order directing media not to send reporters to the disaster zone and swarmed the quake-hit areas. More than 550 journos, including 300 from overseas news outlets reported on the massive rescue efforts. In a report, Agnes Gaudu, who worked with French magazine Courrier International, wrote that for the first time, Chinese and foreign journalists could work on the same ground and produce comparable articles. She notes that in a matter of days, the weekly Zhongguo Xinwen Zhoukan wondered whether the earthquake could have been forecasted. The Beijing daily Xinjingbao asserted the need to accept foreign assistance in rescue operations and the economy magazine Caijing published reports on heath concerns, on the damage to the environment as well as the rebuilding of the economy. She describes that almost a month after the earthquake, the Chinese press was still full of investigative material.
Joseph Kahn, a New York Times Correspondent in China in an online Q& A noted “the coverage of the Chinese press appears to have addressed the major issues the foreign press has reported, including tales of suffering, the struggles of rescue workers to reach victims, the role of the Communist party leadership in co-ordinating the response and the controversy over Poor construction standards.” On the Internet, official news agencies released details of missing children and the English version of Wikipedia was unblocked.
This coverage of the earthquake was a far cry from the botched SARS coverage and the 1976 coverage of the 7.8 magnitude Tangshan earthquake that killed 240,000 and left millions more injured or homeless. While the Cultural Revolution occupied a bulk of the media’s consciousness, state news agency Xinhua, only mentioned a quake in the west of Beijing.
So why was China so open with the earthquake coverage?
China had a huge incentive, and a big opportunity, to repair some of its damaged international prestige as it prepared to host the Olympics. The Tibet crackdown, Beijing’s support for Sudan in the Darfur crisis, protests surrounding the Olympic torch relay, the xenophobia whipped up in response to foreign criticism and human rights campaigns by overseas activists had damaged China’s international reputation. In the last few weeks before the Sichuan quake, the Chinese leadership watched its ally, Myanmar; battered by cyclone Nargis turn a natural catastrophe into a public relations disaster. The military regime’s refusal to let in international aid created the impression that the Southeast Asian country’s rulers cared more for their jobs than for the lives of tens of thousands of cyclone victims. China was determined not to get caught in that trap. Moreover, the destruction caused by natural disasters, for which the government bears limited responsibility, is far easier to address and respond to openly than political unrest, environmental devastation fueled by badly administered factories, corruption and other crises, situations in which Beijing tends to revert to its old ways.
In the first weeks after the quake, writes The L.A. Times, the main narrative was the heroic efforts of rescue workers, the plight of trapped victims and the shock to a nation. The positive story line helped unify the people and helped humanize China’s image abroad. The disaster then entered a more politically complex stage as national and foreign criticism mounted over issues of corruption, embezzlement and the government’s response to the large number of schools that collapsed. China immediate response was classic -the propaganda ministry and the State Council immediately issued directives to state-run news media outlining forbidden topics. Among them: questions about school construction, whether government rescue efforts lagged and whether Beijing knew in advance that the earthquake would happen but failed to warn people.
But despite the clampdown on the media, the Chinese population was pleasantly surprised by the media coverage. “What’s happened is historic,” said Ying Chan, journalism school dean at Shantou University in Guangdong. “Life has been transformed…. It’s like the Vietnam War, which for the first time brought battle live into people’s living rooms. They’ll rein it in, but you can never go completely back.”
MILK SCANDAL: PRESS FREEDOM TURNS SOUR
In early July 2008, as China edged closer to the start of the Olympics, it began to get increasingly nervous as news of a milk scandal began to bubble under the surface. Many Chinese reporters had heard stories of infants in Gansu province being afflicted with kidney stones after drinking the same brand of milk powder. The milk, produced by local dairies, was being mixed with melamine, a product used in making plastics, to artificially boost its protein standards to meet company requirements. Melamine can cause renal failure, especially in the young, when consumed regularly.
But the central govt. had ordered the media, the previous year, not to report on anything negative during the run up to the Olympics – so the media wouldn’t touch this story.
Southern Weekend news editor Fu Jianfeng wrote on his blog “As a news editor, I was deeply concerned because I sensed that this was going to be a huge public health disaster, but I could not send any reporters out to investigate. Therefore, I harbored a deep sense of guilt and defeat at the time.” This entry, like many other journalist’s work on the emerging scandal, was removed by censors, prompting a statement later by Reporters Sans Frontieres: “Several Chinese journalists have said that it is becoming more and more obvious that the authorities in July prevented an investigation into the toxic milk coming out so as not to tarnish China’s image before the Olympics.”
In the first week of August – Sanlu, the Chinese company in the heart of the scandal finally revealed the news of the melamine-tainted milk to its foreign partner Fonterra, a New Zealand company.
A source revealed to The US News and World Report that Fonterra came under immense pressure from Sanlu and also the local city govt., which owned the remaining shares of the venture, to keep quiet. But as weeks passed and the Chinese partner pulled the product off the shelves – the Chinese Govt still refused to come clean on the extent of the problem. Meanwhile thousands of little babies across China continued to get sick after consuming the tainted milk.
A report on China Media Censorship by Reporters Sans Frontieres noted that the police closed the Chinese website Zhongguo Nonchanpin Shichang Zhoukan in September, because of its articles on the contaminated milk powder. It was only after Fonterra, sought help from the New Zealand Govt’s diplomatic channels and Wellington informed senior Central Govt officials of the problem, that China publicly acknowledged the extent of the milk scandal. By then it was already 2 weeks after the Olympics ended and a little over 5 weeks after Sanlu had first notified its foreign partners. The Ministry of Health admitted the contamination likely caused the deaths of at least six babies. Another 296,000 infants suffered from urinary problems, such as kidney stones.
As China finally acknowledged the scale of the scandal, Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post, revealed how China snapped into damage control mode by clamping down on the media. The report states that:
- Mainland media were asked to tone down overage of the milk scandal
- Major print media such as China Youth Daily limited their coverage by running flashes from Xinhua
- One news editor with CCTV said they had been ordered to stick to Xinhua copy in reporting the scandal, although first hand reporting would still be allowed as long as they stuck to official line
- Media organizations in Hebei were silent over the scandal after provincial propaganda authorities reportedly issued a gag order for local media to stop ” cooking up ” stories. Sanlu is based in provincial capital of Shijiazhuang
Apart from remaining largely silent on the tainted milk, the media in China were also complicit in extending the scale of the crisis by agreeing to cooperate with Sanlu group in hushing up the scandal. The Southern Metropolis News (Nanfang Dushi Bao) reported that Sina and Sohu, two of the country’s major web portals, had promised, “not to run any negative reports about Sanlu unless they involve circulars from state authorised agencies.” Citing a leaked document, mainland media had earlier reported that Baidu, the biggest Chinese language search engine, was approached by Sanlu through a PR firm to help the scandal stricken firm manage the crisis for 3m yuan. Baidu admiitted later it had been approached by the milk firm but denied any wrongdoing.
In January this year, Chinese courts sentenced two men to death and three other defendants, including a top dairy company executive, to life in prison for their role in the milk scandal. But while the Chinese Govt cracks the whip on these players for their role in the deaths of 6 children, there is no word on the accountability of the Chinese media, who could have reported this health issue earlier and prevented the loss of so many tiny lives.
CCTV FIRE:
But the greatest blow to the Chinese govt’s credibility came from its recent attempts to clamp down on the coverage of the fire in the Rem Koolhaas building.
Danwei.org had breaking news on the fire, reporting, “The broadcaster has apologized: CCTV is deeply distressed over the great loss of state assets this fire as caused.” But CCTV’s apology did nothing to quell the mocking responses posted on the Internet, presumably by Chinese citizens. On Chinasmack.com, which had pictures of the Rem Koolhaas bulding engulfed in flames, a user writes “No big deal. Tomorrow CCAV [a nickname for "CCTV"] will PS [Photoshop] some pictures to clear up the rumors. The picture will only have a few performers simply smoking on the roof.” Another user writes, “Still, there are no television channels broadcasting live. Can fireworks actually cause this big of a fire? I am looking forward to the truth. Of course, I know there will not be the truth. I hope there is no one inside.”
Conclusion:
Looking at the way China has handled the coverage of some of the major events in its homeland over the last decade, one can discern a yo-yo attitude towards press freedom. In it’s attempts to maintain absolute control over the country, the Chinese govt’s stranglehold over the media will always be a cause for concern. In a country where there can no viable open discussion of Tiananmen, Taiwan or Tibet, and where the govt. goes to extreme lengths to quell emerging signs of crisis, one can only hope that the message that is being broadcast over TV sets and in the papers are somewhere close to the truth. So far the govt. has managed to tailor its messages in ways that suits them – but the emergence of the Internet will make that task even more difficult.
As far as the setting up of a new Al-Jazeera like channel goes, as long as the Chinese govt. tries to manipulate the news and control the medium, the West will continue to view any report emerging from China with a fair amount of cynicism.
In journalism, no amount of money can buy credibility- not even $2.6 billion!
