Pressure on the foreign media

With the Summer Olympics coming next year, China is striving to give a softer, more benign image of itself to the world. On Jan. 1, it relaxed restrictions on the foreign media. That means we don’t have to ask permission of the Foreign Ministry every time we conduct an interview.

The reality, however, is that things are not so relaxed. In fact, they are quite the contrary.

The Foreign Ministry has been working overtime to haul foreign reporters in for reprimands and complaints. Nothing like this has happened before in my nearly four years in China.

My colleague Jose Reinoso of Spain’s premier daily, El Pais, gave me a call this morning. He’d just come back from the Foreign Ministry, where he’d been summoned to hear complaints about this interview (in Spanish) of Zeng Jinyan, a blogger and wife of AIDS activist Hu Jia.

Zeng, by the way, tried to leave China for Europe on Monday but had her passport yanked at the last minute. Zeng was recently picked as one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.

A few weeks ago, my colleagues over at Sky News were formally summoned over a story about China’s zoos, of all things. The story was titled “China’s Zoos: ‘Asylums for Animals’” and is available here. The video includes gruesome images of an animal park in Harbin that regularly feeds live cattle to captive tigers while tourists watch from buses with protective windows.

Tourists can also pay for live chickens and slip them through a slot to feed the tigers.

At another park, the Sky crew shot images of a bear put in a dress and forced to pull a car twice a day for the entertainment of tourists.

This is pretty embarrassing stuff for China. But that’s what you have to put up with when you agree to have a freer foreign press and agree to host the Olympics Games.

As readers of this blog know, I and a German colleague were called in separately to the Foreign Ministry in early May for strongly worded complaints about reporting we did on a trip to Tibet.

So that’s four foreign correspondents, that I know of, summoned in the past month alone for reprimands. How many more will be summoned for writing true stories about China?

Comments

[kimura]

You come to China, you should know what you're getting into.

To be fair, China is about "freer" press and they don't really have a constitution or freedoms to defend. So, at least they aren't total hypocrites, like certain western countries that stand for "freedom for all."

Foreign press operates illegally in so many respects in China and you still complain about other people's corruption? You act like diplomats of the USA and you write like them too.

For instance: Your hiring of local chinese journalists and calling them "researchers" is a well-known practice.

But why do this illegal and potentially risky move?

Because foreign journalists are deeply out of touch with Chinese society, most of you lack the language skills, knowledge and guts to write truthfully about China-- because much of it flies in the face of western understandings of the world.

You guys write like foreigners talking about China, and your editors won't let you write articles that sound like Chinese politicians/people might have a point. Your papers and your wires don't want to risk sounding "Eastern" so they hide behind journalistic integrity.

Real articles about China? Definitely wouldn't depend on any of the major news wires or groups. You sell news from concubines, pandas, corruption, and stereotypes-- you ignore or are ignorant of everything else.

Go home, you self-righteous egomaniacs-- nobody wants you here.

Oh-- but keep writing on your blog about how unfair everything is, that the whole world doesn't believe in one god, one nation, with liberty and justice for all-- its a dose of comedy for all the rest of us that understand.

[jc]

I looked at the "China Zoo" piece - what a piece of garbage it is!

You call that "professional"? And you guys are actually making a living out of that!?

Go back home and find another job while you can ...

[Gu]

The West is certainly not perfect. You only know that because Western journalists are free to report the truth, no matter how much it may hurt you or anyone. Are you against the articles you read because they are poorly researched, poorly written or reflect poorly on China? The notion many Chinese hold about the inscrutability of China is a poor and ignorant excuse used whenever anything unpleasant is reported by non-Chinese about China. And when it is Chinese who report such information, they are called traitors. Whatever you feel the strengths of China may be, openness is certainly not one of them.

[cat]

Note to Kimura, Article 35 of China's constitution:

"Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration."

http://english.people.com.cn/constitution/constitution.html

Of course, that doesn't apply to foreigners, but it does seem to suggest that Chinese people are supposed to have certain constitutional rights.

[kimura]

Note to Cat, thanks for making my point for me. One, China's constitution is focused on China and does not include foreigners.

Like government docs everywhere, its more important to look at what portions are promoted and why.

America has put all its money on the first couple amendments-- China doesn't. People don't immigrate to China to become Chinese-- by definition they can't and aren't encouraged to. So, naturally, foreigners are a completely separate category-- in a much more profound way than in the US. You cannot become a naturalized Chinese, or it is not common practice at all.

So, there's the big picture to crush your two sentences. Sorry for the overkill, but kind of fundamental to my point.

[Vietnamica]

The Far Eastern Economic Review, in April, has a very provocative essay by a professor. It has the title: "
Have China Scholars All Been Bought?".

The author, Prof. Carsten A. Holz, wrote: "Academics who study China, which includes the author, habitually please the Chinese Communist Party, sometimes consciously, and often unconsciously. Our incentives are to conform, and we do so in numerous ways: through the research questions we ask or don’t ask, through the facts we report or ignore, through our use of language, and through what and how we teach."

It is interesting to know what Beijing-based foreign correspondents think of this.

[Gab-Daru]

Kimura,
What is the point of having a Constitution that enshrines these values you think, or whatever it is you're doing, that the Chinese don't want, need, deserve or value? Because if they don't value them, or even want them, then who did they write the Constitution for? Surely they wouldn't have written them for anyone but the Chinese, because that would be the type of cynical and hypocritical move only a Western nation, not the righteous PRC, would be capable of, right? So then logically....you're just one more angry little man.