You can always tell when the Information Office of the State Council is pissed off. Particularly when it is 11pm on a Friday night and all the wordsmiths want to do is get to the KTV bar and rap along to Ice-T’s Freedom of Speech. Often the most important news events covered by Xinhua are relayed through their shortest reports based on meaningless collections of abstract nouns from the Information Lords. This one made me snigger for the sheer begrudgingness (yes I’m taking liberties with the English language but I work at Xinhua so I demand more freedom of expression) of it all.
Song Pingshun, chairman of the Tianjin Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in the northern port city of Tianjin, was found dead on Monday.
A police investigation showed that Song had committed suicide.
Relevant departments said that they had received reports accusing Song of corruption and an investigation is underway.
Clearly having had no intention of reporting this occurrence, I bet the Information Office was delighted to see Song’s colleague had been blabbing to Reuters to guarantee news of Song’s suicide was in the public domain. Reuters goaded them with the highly effective line “China’s state-run media has remained silent on the issue” and the terse statement is handed to Xinhua complete with the irritated signature of its author. Better than nothing I suppose.
For more than my fleeting comment on this story, Rob at Black and White Cat has many more details and he managed to quote the Xinhua story correctly (unlike me, who despite polishing the stuff, still couldn’t remember the three pars off the top of my head).
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