Beijing Newspeak

Every so often a report on some sickening crime that has been committed somewhere in China lands on my desk for editing. In the majority of cases, there are hardly any details, similar to this offering of three paragraphs I received last week.

Xinhua, Lanzhou (June 13) - A Chinese teacher has been sentenced to death for raping 18 female primary school pupils in northwestern Gansu Province.

Cheng Laifu, a teacher at a school in Changhe Township of Tongwei County under the jurisdiction of Dingxi City, was convicted of raping a total of 18 grade three and four - aged nine to ten years old - pupils on 70 separate occasions between September 2001 and March 2005, according to the Dingxi Municipal Intermediate People’s Court.

Cheng forced or lured the children into his dormitory or office under the pretext of tutoring them before committing the crimes, the court said.

Such a horrific event, so little effort in conveying it to the world. Pressing the journalist for more information on this story brought to light some opinions I found very difficult to accept and which luckily are not held by anywhere near the majority of journalists in my department.

The journalist in question began his case as to why he could not possibly get more information by bemoaning the lack of substance to a Sichuan newspaper report, which had just been copied down by a Xinhua journalist in the Lanzhou bureau. This is something I do symphathise with, but it is the English-language’s journalist to push them to find out more details. Then he decided to raise his hand, shield the side of his mouth nearest to his colleagues, and whisper, “This kind of thing is quite common in rural areas. People there are very uneducated.” He moved on to say how he didn’t want to exaggerate the story for the sake of the children who had suffered and that they should be allowed to forget. The final excuse was predictable and one I suspected was coming all along. “It would not be good for China’s image.”

I found it particularly worrying that this reasoning was coming from a young journalist of his own accord. It certainly wasn’t the opinion of the department and one of the more senior editors encouraged him to make a couple of phone calls. This was the version that was released and subsequently picked up by AP.

Xinhua, Lanzhou (June 13) - A Chinese teacher has been sentenced to death for raping 18 female primary school pupils in northwestern Gansu Province.

Cheng Laifu, a teacher at a school in Changhe Township of Tongwei County under the jurisdiction of Dingxi City, was convicted of raping a total of 18 grade three and four - aged nine to ten years old - pupils on 70 separate occasions between September 2001 and March 2005, according to the Western Economic Daily based in Gansu’s provincial capital of Lanzhou.

Cheng forced or lured the children into his dormitory or office under the pretext of tutoring them before committing the crimes, the report said, citing a statement released by the Dingxi Municipal Intermediate People’s Court.

Cheng even raped several girls at the same time, the court document said. “Cheng’s crimes have had an extremely negative impact on society,” the statement said.

But an official with the county education bureau, when contacted by Xinhua on Wednesday, refused to provide more details about Cheng and the name of the school. Sources said the the court had conducted a closed-door trial.

In July 2005, school teacher Li Guang, also from Changhe Township, was sentenced to death for raping 23 pupils in grade four and five between September and November in 2004, which led to the resignation of the director of the county education bureau surnamed Cui.

But the local education official would not say whether the two cases happened at the same school.

This was probably the best that could be hoped for from a brief search on the Internet for the local newspaper article from Lanzhou, in which a crucial piece of background information came up, and a phone call to an untalkative local education official. Anything less would have been an insult to the children and their families.

Unfortunately, given the story was written for the overseas service in English, the children and their families will never know about it. Xinhua did not release this story in Chinese. The report about the death sentence was buried, as usual, on page four or five of the local newspaper. Presumably a clear report on the crime would be regarded as a negative impact on society and would reflect badly on local education officials and teachers.

But how can the downplaying of this kind of crime be considered a safeguard of social stability? The facts are there in the story to suggest censorship in this case can cause more suffering. Back in 2004 another teacher from the same township raped 23 primary school girls. Presumably this crime was permitted a similar amount of media coverage because at the same time, another teacher - and it even hinted in the report that he could be from the same school - got away with his abuses for several more months (although there is the possibility that Li Guang was arrested after Cheng Laifu committed the last of his crimes in March 2005).

It appears there could be 41 kids in the same township who were raped by their teacher. The effects on that community must be devastating. However, the families have to make do with a snippet of justice on page five and no public promises from local education officials to stop it from happening again or to tighten supervision of teacher recruitment.

UPDATE: I missed this New York Times story at first - credit to Jim Yardley for travelling to this village in 2005 to report on the previous incident mentioned in the Xinhua story in which Li Guang was found guilty of raping 26 (Xinhua appears to have been wrong by saying 23) girls. It appears this story was treated to the same restrictions:

It is the sort of horrific case that in many countries would be a national scandal but in China has disappeared into the muffled silence of state censorship. That silence matches the silence at the heart of the case: the fact that students considered a teacher so powerful that they did not dare speak out.

and:

Local education officials as well as prosecutors refused to be interviewed about the case, other than to confirm that the trial would be forthcoming. China’s state-controlled news media have remained silent, except for a short initial newspaper article that reported Mr. Li’s arrest.