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This humorous piece was written by the always witty Kaiser Kuo and first published in a recent edition of The Beijinger (also reposted on Ogilvy China's "Digital Watch" blog). It is published on Danwei with permission of author.
Forbidden Clichés: A Guide for Visiting Journalists
Welcome to Beijing, friends from the foreign press! I greet you on behalf of the many expatriates who’ve lived in Beijing for years. We’re all really eager to read the stories you file. We can’t wait to see what this city, which we know all too well, looks like from the perspective of visiting journalists — you, with your keenly honed observational abilities and your uncanny wordsmithery. (Is that a word?)
I thought that it might be helpful to you — and I don’t doubt your professionalism — if someone pointed out for you some of the more well-worn phrases that still, alas, tend to find their way into English-language media coverage of China. This will, I hope, save you from embarrassing realization that for your “color piece” on Beijing you’ve filed the same stupid, cliché-ridden drivel as 18 other hacks, and will save us, the frightfully cynical expatriates of Beijing, a lot of groaning, tearing out of hair, and unpleasant vomiting.
Let me just say that I completely understand the pressure you’ll be under to file, as your bureaus are spending good money to send you out here. And I know there will be considerable competitive pressure, what with 30,000 of you all descending on the city like so many curious locusts with reporters’ notebooks. Read the suggestions below and your stories will stand out, and everyone will be happy — you, your editors, your readers, the Pulitzer committee, and most importantly, me.
Topping the list of forbidden clichés is the phrase “coming out party.” As apt as it may have been when first used with reference to the Games shortly after they were awarded to Beijing back in 2001, after appearing in 75.4% of stories about the 2008 Olympics in the seven intervening years, it now incites English-speaking expats to an ugly, violent rage. Use it at your own peril; you have been warned. Please do not write “Beijing is a city of stark contrasts” and refrain from using any variation thereof — “a city of startling juxtapositions,” or (needless to say) “a city of yin and yang.” Not that it isn’t a city of, um, rather pronounced differences; it’s just too damned lazy an observation to make. A special enjoinder to photographers: please resist the temptation to position yourself in a hutong with a decrepit but charming tile-roofed courtyard home in the foreground and a shiny, hyper-modern steel-and-glass skyscraper rising behind. No using Blade Runner comparisons for Beijing. You’ll want to save those for Shanghai, believe me.
The bureaus of reputable western papers here in China have a rule against quoting taxi drivers. But since Beijing’s cabbies are so fabulously colorful, you will be permitted one exception. Make it a good one. Helpful hint: That story about efforts by our city’s cabbies to learn English phrases? That one’s been written several thousand times so please, anything but that one.
While we’re on the subject, the imperfect grasp of English evinced by your hosts — the ubiquitous “Chinglish” signage, that sort of thing — has also been done to death. To be fair, so has Chinese-language coverage of the moronic Chinese character tattoos so popular among some Westerners.
No writing “There is an ancient Chinese curse that says, “May you live in interesting times.’” There isn’t such a curse. No writing “the Chinese word for crisis includes the character for opportunity and the character for danger.” That it may be true doesn’t reduce my aggravation each time I see it in print. In fact, just to be safe, avoid anything involving “an ancient Chinese saying.” This will save you, anyhow, from having to Google for choice quotes from Sun Tzu or Confucius’s Analects.
Try your best to avoid phrases like “China’s rising middle class,” “the Little Emperors” and “ideological (or moral) vacuum.” Find a descriptive for security personnel other than “stone-faced.” And only use “Great Leap Forward” if you’re covering events like the triple jump or pole-vaulting.
You’re not really surprised to see how many Starbucks, KFCs, and McDonalds there are here, are you? Your readers won’t be either. If you have any sense, you’ll take full advantage of your time in Beijing and try out lots of the city’s excellent restaurants. There will be plenty to write about your culinary adventures without resort to “those exotic Chinese – they’ll eat anything” clichés. Yes, there are restaurants here that specialize in donkey meat and in pig faces, and even – gasp! – dog. Whoop-de-do.
For you mousse-coiffed, Mr. Gravitas TV anchor types and you sotto voce public radio types: Please oh please stop saying “Bay-zheeng.” The pronunciation of the city’s name couldn’t be easier. It’s just Bay-jing.” Jing as in “jingle bells.” It’s really that easy. Jesus Christ.
No making fun of the Fuwa, the pronouncedly Nipponic mascots of the Beijing Olympic Games. Let’s face it: they’re way too easy a target, and during this season in which the world gathers in celebration of good sportsmanship, taking cheap shots at the Fuwa is just too unsportsmanlike. Besides, my four- and two-year-olds both like them a lot. Especially Jing Jing. That’s pronounced “Jing Jing,” not “Zheeng Zheeng.”
Pronunciation is important. Remember that before you pun, you should make sure the Chinese word you’re hoping to pun on actually does sound like the English word you’re trying to evoke. You don’t know how many times I’ve sat scratching my head before realizing that the pun only works with a really twisted mispronunciation of the Chinese.
While we’re on puns, some common ones to avoid include pander/panda and the always irksome Peking/peeking. And no using “your average Zhou” or “Zhou Sixpack.” There will be absolutely no punning on the interrogatives “who” or “when” and the family names of the Chinese president and premier, respectively. I know you’re thinking, “Hu knows Wen I’ll get another chance like this?” and I feel for you, but just resist it, okay? This article is from Danwei.org
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Below is an excerpt from Danwei's timeline of media and visual culture in China since 1978. The portion of the timeline that appears below chronicles only the last two years. You can see the full thing here: China Media Timeline.
The first version of this timeline was commissioned and edited by Christine de Baan for the 'China Contemporary' exhibition at Nederlands Foto Museum in Rotterdam in 2006.
The original timeline was created by Joel Martinsen and Jeremy Goldkorn. This updated version was compiled and designed by Lydia Wallace and edited by Goldkorn and Martinsen.
Instead of being all-inclusive or comprehensive, our timeline aims to portray the flavor of each year and to allow readers unfamiliar with recent Chinese media history to have an all-round feeling of what it has been like to live through the changes of the last 30 years.
We welcome readers' comments and suggestions and will continue to edit and update the timeline on a monthly basis.
Media and Visual Culture in the People's Republic of China
An excerpt: 2007-2008
2007
January
- At the two-day Fourth Annual Forum on Chinese Cultural Industries held at Peking University, General Administration of Press and Publicaiton vice-director Liu Binjie laments the race toward the bottom in contemporary culture. He said the standard for judging whether a cultural work or action is or is not cultural garbage lies in whether it will cause harm to society and posterity. The statements at the conference express a new resolve in the administration to pass regulations aimed at reversing the trend toward “cultural garbage” manufactured under the auspices of the cultural industries.
February
- According to statistics from China's telecoms regulator MII (Ministry of Information Industry), there are over 426 million mobile phone users in China, the biggest user group in the whole world.
 UNICEF’s goodwill ambassador Mia Farrow March
- Mia Farrow, UNICEF’s goodwill ambassador, calls the 2008 Beijing Olympics the “Genocide Olympics” because of China’s sale of weapons to Sudan while the Sudanese government supported soldiers carrying out genocide in the Darfur region. When Beijing reverses it stance later in the year and urges Sudan to accept U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur, The New York Times credits Farrow with the reversal.
- Sina.com opens a special minisite about a fan of pop star Andy Lau whose father committed suicide. The attitude is reminiscent of a British tabloid newspaper: condemning an event while enjoying all the salacious details of the story, and the traffic it brings to their website.
 ’Nail house’ in Chongqing April
- The term 'nail house' refers to a house whose owners refuse to move out to make way for redevelopment. One ‘nail house’ in Chongqing rises rapidly to national fame largely because dramatic pictures spread over the internet. In April, the residents succumbed to the developers and the iconic ‘nail house’ is finally torn down.
 Virginia Tech shooter Seung-*** Cho - In the wake of the Virginia Tech Shootings, the largest incident of mass murder in the history of the US, rumors that the killer is Chinese cause wide spread anxiety that the incident might spark anti-Chinese sentiment. Two threads on Netease, a popular web forum in China, garner over 10,000 comments apiece within the first 24 hour.
May
- A Shanghainese man sues his Internet connection provider China Telecom because his U.S. hosted website was blocked, and China Telecom will not or cannot explain to him why. He does not win the case in court, but his website is unblocked.
 Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution July
- Beijing TV airs a story about a restaurant that served steamed buns (baozi) made with cardboard instead of pork to save money. Soon after, Beijing TV issued a retraction and apology — the report had apparently been staged. But many people in Beijing believed that that the news about the cardboard buns story being fake was itself fake. The controversy continues as people question the authenticity of an apology reportedly written by the journalist himself. The whole incident reveals a severe crisis of trust in China as people struggle to decide what sources of information can be trusted to tell the truth.
November
- Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is censored for the mainland market, with thirteen minutes of explicit footage deleted. Dong Yanbin, a PhD student at the China University of Politics and Law, sues UME International Cineplex and SARFT over their choice to edit Lust, Caution. This is the first attempt at a lawsuit of this kind.
2008
 Cartoon Spoof of “Very Violent, Very Yellow” girl January
- The catch-phrase "Very yellow, very violent" (很黄很暴力) circulates throughout the web and is dubbed the China first online meme of 2008. The meme originated in a CCTV broadcast featuring an interview with a middle-school student about the dangers of online pornography; she said she went online to look for information and found a website that was "very yellow, very violent." The phrase draws ridicule and becomes the subject of spoofs targeted at CCTV and the national anti-pornography campaign.
- Steven Spielberg, who had been invited to be the artistic director of the Beijing Olympics and was working on the video to be shown at the closing ceremony, resigns from his position in protest of China’s economic involvement in Sudan. China reacts by refusing to release his subsequent movies in theaters, and netizens encourage a boycott on buying even bootlegged copy of his earlier movies.
 Chinese angry with perceived western media bias - A peaceful protest by dissatisfied Tibetan monks in Lhasa devolves into a riot of Tibetan citizens; rioters target Han Chinese and their property. Riot police are sent in to quell the violence. Western media covers the incident as yet more evidence of Chinese “cultural genocide” of ethnic Tibets; Chinese media depicts the incident as evidence of the Dalai Lama’s “clique” seditious attempts to thwart Chinese authority. These two interpretations – that of the western and Chinese media – are so far apart that the controversy ignites an international online propaganda war. Angry Chinese citizens condemn western media, beginning “anti-CNN” campaigns and websites, and propose boycotts. Meanwhile, as the Olympic torch makes it was through Paris, London, and San Francisco it becomes a focal point for the controversy. Supporters of Tibetans hold “Free Tibet!” signs along the torch route soon attracting droves of Chinese sympathizers to hold “Go China!” posters.
 A building in Dujiangyang, a city near Chengdu, destroyed by the earthquake. - On May 12th, a massive and devastating earthquake hits Sichuan claiming 70,000 lives and leaving 5 million homeless. The government initially directs journalists not to travel to Sichuan, but the directive is universally ignored. In the first two weeks after the quake, journalists travel freely through the area with government permission. Earthquake coverage dominates every form of media in China. Sympathy for China and admiration of the government’s quick response almost entirely subsumes the Tibetan controversy in domestic and international media. About a week and a half after the earthquake, disproportionate numbers of school children killed in the collapse of poorly constructed schools in some areas spark questions of local government corruption and cause some grieving parents to stage protests. As these concerns begin to surface, the government once again begins to assert control over earthquake coverage and access to affected areas becomes increasingly difficult. Still, Chinese anger is generally directed at local government officials, rather than the central government.
 Weng’an riots June
- A possible connection between the suicide of a young girl and local police sparks a riot in Weng’an including over 30,000 people; cars are burned, police attacked, government buildings sacked. The government promptly holds a press conference, mainstream Chinese media reports the riots, and fairly open discussion is allowed to remain on government run news sites like Xinhua. On the other hand, discussion of the riots on popular public forums is tightly censored. This censorship angers many netizens and they begin to refer to “push-ups” to indicate the Weng’an riots (one of the suicidal girl’s friends was doing push-ups when she jumped off a bridge.) When the word "push-up" begins to draw online censorship, whole websites are set up devoted to push-ups, and netizens fill forums with references to push-ups in protest.
This article is from Danwei.org
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In the last few months, Gady Epstein, China correspondent for Forbes magazine, has been covering the parts that newspapers don't reach:
Dark Journalism
This article looks at not about censorship or government repression, but at extortion, blackmail and other shady practices that are common in the Chinese news media.
Pump and Dump
An exposé of some of the shadier practices in the Chinese art world:
China's frenzied art market has artists paying critics for hype, mass-producing work and bidding up their own paintings. Then they sell into the rally. Clever, no?
One Tired Dragon
A rather scathing review of Jack Perkowski's new book Managing the Dragon: How I'm Building a Billion-Dollar Business in China. This article is from Danwei.org
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Su Fei in video and audio America's National Public Radio has recently featured some voices familiar to the Beijing media crowd.
Sexy's Beijing's Su Fei was featured in a Sexy Beijing radio series on NPR, with accompanying videos (to the left and at Sexy Beijing).
Several people who have previously been featured in articles and videos on Danwei are interviewed in an excellent multi-part introduction to the Chinese media by On The Media, an NPR show produced by New York's WNYC radio station. The episodes are all available online (streaming and download). Below are links to the episodes together with summaries from WNYC:
Brand China
With the Olympics just weeks away, China is making the final preparations for the PR push of the century, pitching brand China to the world. Meanwhile, young urban Chinese are sorting out new identities and advertisers everywhere are revving their engines, preparing to sell to the fastest growing consumer market in the world.
They Live By Night
Still at the forefront of China’s economic boom, Shenzhen is the city that started it all. Created as the country’s first capitalist economic empowerment zone in 1979, Shenzhen attracted countless factories and countless migrants drawn by the promise of work. And for 15 years it’s most popular radio program has been ‘At Night You’re Not Lonely,’ a call-in advice show hosted by Hu Xiao Mei. Once a factory girl herself, Xiao Mei dispenses hard-won wisdom to a city in flux.
Journalism With Chinese Characteristics
There is real investigative reporting in China, it’s just not done under a free press flag. Instead, practitioners mind an unstated set of rules, keeping themselves safe by employing tactics like using excessive jargon and exploiting government rivalries. It's an evolving dance requiring ingenuity, subtlety, courage and a willingness to be fired every day.
China Vision
How the world sees China, and how China thinks it is seen by the world may make all the difference as time marches on. The West cannot afford to hold on to kung fu, Confucius, and chopsticks as our big ideas about China. Modern art, fashion, and the young urban elite have a new story to tell; if anyone’s listening.
Raised By Wolves
After Mao’s Little Red Book of Quotations the second best-selling book in Chinese history is, we’re told, Wolf Totem. Admired, bootlegged, criticized as social Darwinism, translated into English, soon to be made into a film, and a Japanese manga series – the novel about resisting and revering Mongolian wolves during the Cultural Revolution has become a Chinese conversation piece. Brooke speaks with author Jiang Rong about coming of age in exile and what those lessons mean for China now. This article is from Danwei.org
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Wang Xiaoshan writes a newspaper column in which he uses the classic novel Dream of the Red Mansions as a jumping-off point for discussing current events.
In today's column, which ran in the Southern Metropolis Daily, Wang asks whether it's acceptable yet to joke about the 12 May Wenchuan earthquake.
It was too early on the 19th, when New Travel Weekly ran a photo shoot that placed models in ruined buildings, and likewise on the 22nd, when Netease ran a poll that linked football to disaster victims.
As we approach the one-month mark, and as the death toll continues to inch its way upward, is it still too soon?
Sympathy in Disaster
by Wang Xiaoshan / SMD
No one who has not personally experienced disaster can truly identify with what it is like. For example, when the Yellow River bursts its banks in Dream of the Red Mansions, Jia Zheng is busy every day with affairs at the yamen, but Jia Baoyu, who is completely uninvolved, casually asks for a holiday from his teacher Jia Dairu and doesn't attend class [Chapter 89].
Things are the same even today. A few days ago I received a news item from the Mobile Paper (手机报) which reported the number of deaths in the Wenchuan Earthquake. But that issue of the paper also included the following test quiz and answers:
An earthquake predicts how you will behave when you're in love: when an earthquake hits, what is your first reaction?
A: Hide under a table;
B: Open the window;
C: Drop everything and run outside;
D: Immobilized with fright.
Analysis: A individuals are guarded; if their love is exposed, they immediately become skittish. They are also particularly nervous about their partner's infidelity. If they don't relax, they'll surely wear themselves out. B individuals are stable lovers. After falling in love, they become even more steadfast, and they are fully convinced of their own attractiveness. C: After falling in love, they're full of energy, as if all of their mental complications have been untangled. D: Falling in love is like diving head first into a river. Apart from him (or her), they think of nothing else. Their grades and their work crash, and everything else is an absolute mess.
I'm not criticizing the editors of Mobile Paper; in fact, I have a mind to plead their case, because ever since the earthquake, lots of people around me have been grieving day after day. The lighter topics in the Mobile Paper could help to ease people's emotions. But really, there are lots of different ways to be lighthearted, and to design a quiz around the earthquake at this point in time is a little stupid, to put it mildly.
This calls to mind the Beslan school hostage crisis, when a certain editor at CCTV put up a crawl that read: "How many people died in the Beslan crisis? A: x people; B: y people. China Mobile, China Unicom, and Xiaolingtong users send a message to..."
Later, that editor was reportedly sacked. I personally believe that a sacking was too harsh a punishment, because I figure that he didn't really mean to mock anyone's pain. He was just a little more heartless than the Mobile Paper editor, is all.
Links and Sources
This article is from Danwei.org
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China's online portals aren't permitted to do much news-gathering themselves, so they fill their news pages with reposts of articles from the mainstream media. They add their own touches, of course, such as sensational headlines and photographs that are only tangentially related to the contents of the article they illustrate.
Here's a short anecdote from this week's Oriental Outlook magazine that relates one writer's experience with the the online hype machine:
This is how I became an "expert"
by Mu Shan
The stock market's dropped tragically, and in their despair, investors are all whispers. My friends who bought high into stocks that fell are a case in point: every day they discuss how low the market will fall—will it stop at 3,000, or 2,200?
I'm not sure whether the words of authoritative individuals and experts are to be trusted. But, coming to the subject of experts, I remember my one experience being one.
At the time, I wrote around 2,000 words on Japan and had the piece published in a certain newspaper. Although I didn't know much about Japan, I still wrote up an analysis of Sino-Japanese relations, out of my depth but propelled by feeling.
Who knew that after it was published, it got picked up by the major portals and put up in an eye-catching location. Those masterful web editors wrote their own headlines for my article; in some I was able to catch a vague glimpse of my writing, while others I couldn't recognize at all. One portal's headline had me astonished: "Expert on Japan: Sino-Japanese...." For research purposes I clicked through to read the piece, which turned out to be my article. Evidently I had become an expert.
I felt all pins and needles. The several hundred comments from netizens were even animated. Naturally there were people who supported my opinion, but the people who opposed me were hurling streams of abuse my way.
One netizen berated me, "This ____ is a bullshit expert. The tragedy of China is that there are too many bullshit experts like this."
I respectfully quoted this comment and said that I was the author of the piece, but defended myself by saying that I was no expert. Then I expressed my apologies.
Later, I made a solemn inquiry of the editor of that web site, requesting that he not call me an expert. The web editor, who knew the ways of the world, first said that they had the right to choose headlines, but then he consoled me saying that the article was written to the level of an expert. Ashamed, I had nothing to say.
Links and Sources
- Oriental Outlook, 2008.05.01 (#233-234), p10. (穆杉，《我是这样当上“专家”的》)
- Image from Seal creator
This article is from Danwei.org
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 A reporter tries to peek behind the curtain At Sunday's press conference ahead of the opening of the CPPCC session, a reporter with MASTV asked the spokesman Wu Jianmin whether there were "unwritten rules" governing the press conference, rules that gave mainstream state media organizations the ability to control the tone of the proceedings.
Wu responded that all reporters are treated equally.
Liao Weihua, a reporter from the Chengdu Business News who did not get the opportunity to ask a question at the press conference, nevertheless agreed with the spokesperson's explanation. Liao notes that it's entirely normal for the big state media organizations to be given special consideration at such functions, and this is something that all journalists are aware of. Here's his assessment of the way the slots were handed out:
At yesterday's press conference, twelve reporters had the opportunity to ask questions. These reporters were from Xinhua, China News, CNN, MASTV, China Daily, People's Daily Overseas Edition, China County Times, CCTV, Ta Kung Pao, Chongqing CPPCC Report, Beijing Youth Daily, and China Radio International. We can see from this list that apart from Xinhua, CCTV, CRI, and China Daily, which belong to the "mainstream media" that the Macao reporter mentioned, the other eight organizations were chosen at the scene. After the conference, the reporter from China County Times told me that she had raised her hand a number of times before she was finally called on, and at that time her original questions, about the snow-related catastrophe in the south and the appointment of non-party members to official positions, had already been asked, so she hastily threw together a question about economic development in northern Guangxi. But according to her experience, "there'll be opportunities to ask questions, but it depends on luck and your own persistence."
China County Times (中国县域经济报) is published by the Economic Daily, a national paper under the joint supervision of the State Council and the party's Publicity Department, and was that paper's rural edition until January 2007.
One could quibble with Liao's short list of just four agencies that receive special attention—media blogger aside had a slightly different impression of the proceedings:
Unwritten Rules
This afternoon at the Great Hall of the People, was the first press conference of the First Session of the 11th National Committee of the CPPCC.
Around 5:00pm. The fourth question, from a reporter with MASTV: This year's Two Sessions are the most open they've ever been to the media. My question is, with the way that you call on questioners, are there unwritten rules governing which media organizations you call on in any given situation? Is it a case where a minority of mainstream media organizations gets to call the shots?
Spokesman Wu Jianmin: I don't know what you mean by "unwritten rules." From the perspective of the press center, there are indeed rules for conducting a press conference, and under these rules all reporters are equal. The Session's press center will provide as much information as possible to each reporter.
About fifty minutes later, the last opportunity to ask a question. Before she asked her question, the woman who was called on said emotionally: for me to be picked is full proof that the press conference has no unwritten rules. I've been raising my hand the last ten times!
The spokesman asked her which media organization she belonged to.
She said, People's Daily, Overseas Edition.
Links and Sources
This article is from Danwei.org
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That's the headline of a Xinhua article published today about Party cadres learning to deal with "vexatious questions" from the media:
"Skills to deal with the media are part of political competence," said Gao Xinmin, a veteran professor on Party construction and the course instructor.
"Tactics are needed, like politeness and quick but skilful responses, in dealing with the media, but one of the most important things in this regard is to be candid," she added.
"Candidness not only woos media, but also the people, and it is needed because the public are not to be fooled," she said. "The media are our friends, and not enemy. We should respect them because their mission is to seek and report truth."
However, some media are more friendly than others. A particularly friendly media organization is the People's Daily, which was lauded by Xinhua today for something that strains credibility:
CPC mouthpiece gains record high popularity among Chinese readers
This article is from Danwei.org
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 Marchers from Fushun Although the immediate online storm of protest over the rumored bankruptcy of Yilishen has subsided (or has been effectively quashed), the situation continues to develop. A post from earlier today on the Guangzhou Bang blog reproduced a letter the website received from one of Yilishen's ant farmers. Here's an excerpt:
I am an ant farmer in Shenyang. Regarding the Yilishen incident: it involves many political figures. So many, in fact, that they have joined together to suppress us common folk....The central government leaders still don't know the truth. The Liaoning region has blocked ant farmers from going to petition. Just going in and out has become extremely difficult for us. Some ant farmers have been beaten. Some have received terrifying threatening phone calls. Some are being followed and are under surveillance. The internet has also been placed under surveillance. We now have no freedom of person whatsoever. Nothing is being reported on the television now, because there are too many political figures implicated in this. Liaoning officials took Yilishen's money, and those officials took that money to go bribe other officials. This is how it spread like fire. We now have our own chat rooms, our own QQ groups. We will never give up defending our rights.
The Guangzhou Bang post contains the full email and a photo gallery from the streets of Shenyang (from which the above image was taken).
There's not been much in the mainstream media about the affair, and what has been reported is difficult to find because Yilishen is no longer a searchable keyword. One bright spot is an op-ed that ran in today's Beijing Evening News. Commentator Su Wenyang indicts the press for abandoning its responsibilities to good journalism:
The debate over the veracity of the South China Tiger photos has been a hot topic in the media of late. Report after report and full-page spread after full-page spread have been devoted to the tiger. Major national public welfare issues and practical problems that are relevant to the public's daily lives seem no match in the eyeball economy for the sudden appearance of a nonexistent South China Tiger.
There was once a newspaper that professed to "responsibly report everything"; actually, the media cannot report on everything. "News, old news, no news" is one of the principles of statesmen publishing newspapers. At any given time, what to report and how to report it is a choice between news, old news, and no news. Judging the South China Tiger reports against this standard, the scale is at the very least inappropriate—excess is as bad as omission, like today's excessive exploitation of resources. This is irresponsible to readers and to the practice of journalism.
When relatively minor events like the South China Tiger photographs are hyped up into major news stories, turning stories that ought to have received attention into old news or no news, it is a problem with the press management system, and stems to a large degree from a sense of helplessness. To fill pages and capture eyeballs, mountains are made out of molehills and ants are turned into elephants. Such obvious errors in judgment, such indiscriminate reporting of everything, certainly has many causes.
The majority of the media has failed to report on tons of important news stories recently. The arrest of Golden Key CEO Liu Yiliang by Beijing police—this individual was named an outstanding Beijing property entrepreneur in 2004, a national property agent of the year, and one of the ten most influential property agents in the country in 2005. He is on the board of the Beijing Real Estate Association and the China Real Estate Association. He has more than 3000 employees, represents more than ten property developments, and controls more than 200 chain outlets covering Beijing and extending into Hebei, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shanxi, and Jilin. Connect this to how the president of Zhongtian Real Estate in Shenzhen absconded with company funds, and imagine the sort of things that could be reported.
The chief of Liaoning's Yilishen Group was taken into police custody. Zhao Benshan has had a business relationship with them. For years, Yilishen has expanded its breeders network model: its members paid a 10,000 yuan membership fee and purchased larvae and food, while the Group made payments on the 14th and 21st of every month, with a guarantee of 13,250 yuan in annual returns. From the beginning of this month, payments stopped, and large numbers of members came after them. How great of an influence this affair will have is hard to determine, for the truth has yet to come out.
A similar business model was used Gong Yinwen, head of the Shandong Jizheng Healthcare Products Company, illegally amassed billions of yuan over the course of eleven years, and recently fled the country with those billions. He left behind large numbers of common people in Shandong, Beijing, and Shanghai who are now completely ruined. This individual was once the head of the Zaozhuang City sports committee, a party secretary, and had spent more than a decade in official circles. His company had won a slew of "halos": it had a China Quality Service AAA reputation, it was a top-ten selling national health products brand, Gong was one of ten outstanding national brand-building entrepreneurs, it was awarded the Long March to China model work unit certification, and it was a member of the Long March to China anti-fraud alliance. When Oriental Outlook reported on this case, it declared that it was "collective aphasia on the part of the media."
Is not one of these news stories, which involve the personal interests of countless common people, a bigger deal than the South China Tiger? Each of those bosses is worse than a tiger: they are tigers among men. Leave aside the tiger without reporting on it. Don't report on the tiger's henchmen. Isn't it an enormously poor choice to wrestling back and forth over a photograph? Where is the social responsibility of a journalist today?
Whether the South China Tiger photo is genuine, and whether it will be discovered, is a question of protection. But if you do not search for the tigers among us, people will get eaten; untold numbers of households will be ruined and countless people will die. How to evaluate, how to determine the value of news, and how to use news resources are issues that deserve careful consideration.
Links and Sources
This article is from Danwei.org
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 Transfixed by the spectacle. It's Party Congress fever in this city! The front-page article in today's Southern Weekly provides a snapshot of the various ways in which the congress has touched the lives of Beijing's inhabitants this week. The pull-quote:
This morning, Beijing residents Han Xiuying and Han Xiuchun were riding on a public bus and watching the live broadcast of the 17th Party Congress. They forgot to get off, and as a result, they had to ride another circuit around the traffic-clogged Third Ring Road.
Writing in The Observer last weekend, Will Hutton made the case that the Party Congress is the most important political event of the season, justifying all the hubbub surrounding it. The Telegraph's Richard Spencer replied in a blog post that the furor over a carefully scripted show is more than a little ridiculous.
John Kennedy at Global Voices Online collected the views of the cynical side of China's blogger community in a post earlier this week:
From this we can see, the news spokesperson is quite possibly a failed bit actor who with The Party's caress, finally found his motivation.
They're all actors! Just watch which ones win the awards!
And Beijing Newspeak surveyed a few western news reports, and then went off on a hunt for Beijingers around Qianmen who were interested in the goings on:
First up was a souvenir seller with cheeky dimples and a winning initial sales pitch. "Hey, Mr Handsome, you like Mahjong?" After we steered the conversation to the "shi qi da" (the big 17th), she replied, "It doesn't matter to people like me, I am not important enough. All I care about is making money, enough so I have food and clothes. Your mother like scarf?" (Last bit in English).
Beyond the buzz are the buzzwords. Xinhua noted that "democracy" showed up 60 times in Hu's speech (though The Economist duly noted that Jiang used it about as often). The China Media Project calls the buzzword race for "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics":
"Socialism with Chinese characteristics" (中国特色社会主义) logged the most number of uses, appearing 52 times in Hu Jintao's political report to the 17th National Congress. A distance second, "scientific development" (科学发展) racked up 38 appearances. Used a total of 34 times, "opening and reform" (改革开放) finished third, just edging out "harmony" (和谐) at 33.
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The sharp rise in "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" and "opening and reform" reflects the party’s basic direction for the next five years. It is, first and foremost, a reaffirmation of the path of reform and opening in response to the left's opposition and call for a turn back. Secondly, it is the striking of a middle path between the socialism of the Mao era on the one hand and clamors from the right for "democratic socialism" (民主社会主义) on the other.
With these two major preconditions in place, Hu Jintao formally ushers out his own banners, "scientific outlook on development" and "harmonious society." Both of these phrases are about making moderate corrections to the GDP-focused economic reforms of the Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin eras in order to address economic disparities.
The second-place keyword, Hu's "scientific outlook on development," is the focus of an article in the latest issue of the Xinhua newsweekly Oriental Outlook:
After the Scientific Outlook on Development was proposed, it quickly became a keyword in all major party papers, magazines, and news agencies. The People's Daily was no exception. A systematic investigation of People's Daily reports clearly reveals the development of Scientific Development.
The article goes on to list some of the major milestones in the development of the theory. Here's a rundown:
- 14 October, 2003: A report from the Third Plenary Session of the 16th Party Congress contains the first clear statement of the Scientific Outlook on Development: People-first; comprehensive, balanced, sustainable development; the overall development of the economy, society, and the individual."
- 5 November: People's Daily runs an opinion piece titled "Establishing and actualizing a Scientific Concept of Development."
- 30 November: Hu Jintao emphasizes Scientific Development in remarks to the Central Economic Working Conference. People's Daily follows up with relevant articles, including a long essay by Xiao Zhuoji that calls Hu's concept "important guiding thought."
- 2004: Throughout the year, People's Daily applies the concept to various sectors, including public finance, labor unions, party building, environmental protection, public security, and army building.
- October 2005: The Fifth Plenary Session of the 16th Party Congress elevates the concept to "guiding principle for the socialist modernization drive."
- 18 November: People's Daily publishes a related commentary by Zheng Xinli, deputy director of the Central Committee's Policy Research Office.
- December: The Central Economic Working Conference indicates that the concept will be applied to various sectors in the coming year. The key phrase to come out of this meeting is "good and fast," which prioritizes quality over speed.
- September 2007: People's Daily launches a front-page series on Scientific Development and the Harmonious Society in the runup to the 17th Party Congress. It features reports on Liaoning Province (3 September), Tianjin (12 September), Shanghai (21 September), and Changsha (5 October) which extoll the achievements those areas have made in following the scientific concept of development to build a harmonious society.
Not to mention the substantial presence of Scientific Development in this week's flood of 17th Party Congress coverage. And of course we can expect a whole series of related articles in the coming year, tapering off only when the next generation of leaders have to push their own trademark ideology.
Links and Sources
This article is from Danwei.org
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This article by Li Datong was originally published in the independent online magazine Open Democracy is republished with their kind permission. The piece originally appeared on this page.
China’s media change: talking with Angela Merkel
by Li Datong
A dialogue with Germany's leader is an opportunity for Li Datong to share his assessment and hopes about the future of media in China.
One day towards the end of August, I received a surprise call from the German embassy in Beijing telling me that Chancellor Angela Merkel would be visiting China, and that one item on her agenda would be a meeting with people who worked in the Chinese news media. The chancellor wanted to find out about the current state of - and recent changes in - Chinese journalism. "Would you be interested in attending the meeting?", asked the embassy official. "Of course", I replied. After all, who would turn down such an opportunity?
On the morning of 28 August, I met with three colleagues at the entrance to Merkel's hotel. Before we had arrived, we had been speculating that security at the hotel would surely be extremely tight, and wondered how many security checks we would have to go through. We would at least be scanned with a metal detector, like at an airport, and perhaps even our cameras would be taken apart and inspected, we mused. To our surprise, when we arrived at the hotel, we found the lobby was alive with hustle and bustle. People were to-ing and fro-ing as usual, and there did not seem to be any extra security at all. We even had time for a leisurely coffee.
At the appointed time, we were led by two embassy officials to the lift, and went straight up to the chancellor's presidential suite without any security checks whatsoever. The meeting was to take place, not in a conference room as we had supposed, but in the living area of the suite, where eight or nine chairs were arranged around a circular table. It impressed us all greatly that the arrangements for meeting the German chancellor were just the same as for meeting any 'normal' person.
A generational shift
However, we were not there just to make idle chat, and knew that we had one precious hour in which to brief the chancellor fully and honestly on the state of the Chinese media. Chancellor Merkel is different from other western leaders in that she lived in the former East Germany for thirty-five years, and has personal experience of the politics of Soviet-style communism in the cold-war era. This meant we did not need to waste any time talking about the special characteristics of this system of government.
China is special, however, in that it is similar neither to the stultified regimes of North Korea and Cuba, nor to the Soviet Union and east-central European countries, which underwent such huge overnight transformations. China is still changing step-by-step - at times almost imperceptibly. My colleagues and I have been here all this time, and in the last thirty years have participated in, and pushed forward these changes.
These transformations are both representative of the era in which we live, and unstoppable. We briefly told Chancellor Merkel about the following six changes:
* A vital prerequisite regarding information-control no longer exists in China. This is that effective control of the media is only possible under the condition that those being controlled come to agree with the propaganda of the controllers, because they have no access to any other sources of information.
After they came to power in 1949, the authorities fostered a group of 'theoretical experts' and writers, the most famous of which were Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Hu Qiaomu. There were also numerous others of varying levels of recognition. Their function was to write 'commentaries' on political changes, whether spontaneously or under orders. Since there were no other sources of information with which to compare these commentaries, they were highly effective in misleading and cheating people.
It would be extremely difficult for such a situation to arise in China today. The public derides anything containing outdated, rigid dogma. In reality, brute power is now the only tool left with which the government can control the media. It has to issue their directives at face-to-face meetings, or over the phone, because they are afraid of leaving behind written records of instructions. The only real function of this kind of control is self-comfort for the authorities. The public is laughing in their faces.
* Media workers have lost their credulity. A precondition for control of the media in China has been that news workers should believe in the principles that (as a matter of value as well as fact) 'news is propaganda' and 'news is the voice of the party'. These days, virtually no one in the media believes this. News workers of my generation have, since their first days on the job, been reflecting on the history of the Chinese media after 1949. We have seen how throughout all the political campaigns that have ravaged China - from the anti-rightist movement, to the great leap forward, to the cultural revolution - the media was always a willing accomplice at the forefront of events. The more perceptive among the older generation of news workers learnt painful lessons from these experiences, and urged that 'we should no longer tell lies'
After much independent reading, Chinese news workers had by the mid-1980s freed themselves from the imprisonment of traditional ideas of what news should be. We started to firmly reject hollow propaganda and strove to work by the principles of true journalism. Since then, four or five generations of young journalists have entered the profession, and these youngsters have been steeped from an early age in these globally accepted principles.
In the journalism departments of Chinese universities, the values and techniques as well as the principles of journalism are being taught. Outstanding examples of foreign journalism are held up as models, and there is a widespread attitude of professionalism. When dealing with information from government departments, the media no longer looks at it in terms of its effect on the public, but in terms of which social groups benefit. Investigative journalism aiming to reveal truths from behind the scenes has also taken off, and several pieces which compare favourably with the work of the best journalists in other countries have been produced. It can be said that Chinese journalists now share common professional values with their colleagues from across the world. This is an important development.
* There have been fundamental changes in the levels of influence wielded by different sections of the press. Party newspapers no longer dominate. In the mid-1980, in the big cities, local papers emerged whose focus was decided by the market. These were the first papers aimed at specific audiences in specific cities. The most important characteristic of these papers was that the content was decided by what the audience wanted to read. Lacking government funding, these papers'; survival, and the pay and social welfare of their staff, depended on their market popularity.
Twenty years on, China's city newspapers are full of vitality. They are far in advance of the traditional, established newspapers both in terms of circulation and advertising revenue. They also report on issues far outside their own geographical region, and have become the Chinese public's main source of information. In contrast to this, the circulations of the traditional centrally-published party newspapers are falling every year, and their influence is waning. They cannot cover there own costs, and make losses year after year. If it were not for compulsory subscriptions and government funding, they would probably have closed down by now. The current situation can be summed up in the phrase: 'mainstream media has become marginalised, and marginal media has become the mainstream'.
* The influence of the internet. Since the middle of the 1990s, the internet has expanded explosively in China. In only ten years, 130 million users have come online, which places China second only to the US in numbers of users. There are also 20 million individual blogs, with about a million relatively active. In theory, every blog has the potential to become a news outlet. For the traditional media, the internet has the potential to make any tiny local story into a national sensation overnight. Small, bitty stories can be seized upon by the professional media and turned into important news stories.
An example of this is the story of the Chongqing nail house which started out as just a few photos on a personal blog, and ended up as global news. Stories or essays that cannot be published in the professional media can almost all be posted on the internet. When stories appear on the internet, they often attract tens of thousands of comments from those online, rapidly forming public opinion - an intangible force that the authorities cannot ignore. The internet has already caused massive changes in the Chinese media, and in society at large, and its influence will continue to grow.
* The Chinese media is beginning to become an outlet for public opinion. The media has two functions, as everyone knows: to publish news, and to publish opinion. Between 1949 and the mid-1990s, the Chinese media published no opinion pieces. The editorials and commentaries that were published were basically outlining government ideas and policies - the opinion was the opinion of the party. However, since the mid-1990s, the Chinese media has begun to break free of this model. The national media no longer just repeat the ideas expressed in People's Daily editorials, and have begun to publish comparatively independent opinion columns.
This has developed to the point where there are now special opinion pages, which are often the most important parts of the paper, with the largest readerships. There are usually timely responses to national events, trends, policies and speeches from government leaders. These include pieces from columnists at the newspapers, along with offerings from academic experts and vox- pops. Usually, a variety of opinions are expressed, some of which even oppose the authorities. It is precisely the interactions of these different opinions which gives rise to public opinion, educates the public, and enables people to have more respect for differing viewpoints.
* National leaders and some officials are beginning to change their views on the media. In an article published in People's Daily on 27 February 2007, China's premier Wen Jiabao said: "democracy, the rule of law, freedom, human rights, equality, and mutual respect are not exclusively capitalist values. They have come about as the result of the gradual advance of history. They are common human values." This means that China is no exception. Ten years ago this would still have been considered 'bourgeois liberalism'.
A spokesman for the ministry of public security recently published an article entitled "Allowing the Media to Speak Will not Cause the Sky to Fall in". In it he wrote: "Whether you like it or not, and whether you agree with it or not, accountability to public opinion as expressed by the media, is a tool that complies with the spirit of the constitution. It is vital in allowing the public to express its wishes, and in promoting the strategy of governance according to the law." This represents the opinion of a considerable number of modern officials. In building on it, steps such as removing limits on foreign reporters, and the passing of laws on freedom of information, will have lasting positive effects on the environment in which the media work.
A humane authority
In the process of moving away from a totalitarian system, these changes are inevitable. There will be successes, and there will be setbacks, and many games of cat-and-mouse between the media and the authorities. Sometimes these conflicts will be fierce and will bubble to the surface, as was the case when Freezing Point was closed down in 2006, attracting the attention of the global media (see "The story of Freezing Point, 12 September 2006). But if we choose only to take notice of the setbacks, then we will lose hope for the future of the Chinese media. In fact, the ice is slowing thawing and beginning to crack, and the demands of the Chinese people for democracy and freedom will be increasingly exposed.
During our 28 August meeting, Chancellor Merkel constantly asked questions. She even asked us whether she could pass on some of our comments to Wu Bangguo, head of the National People' s Congress. That evening on the news I saw Merkel had urged Wu to establish laws for the Chinese media as soon as possible. This is what Chinese journalists really need - a legal basis on which to carry out their work.
The German leader - who has been for two years running declared by Forbes magazine the most powerful woman in the world - was extremely approachable, and happily had her photograph taken with us at the end of the meeting. It really was an unforgettable occasion. This article is from Danwei.org
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