Beijing Newspeak

And so, finally, it is here. The 80th birthday of China’s People’s Liberation Army. The celebrations started with an “Editor’s Note” on June 8 guaranteed to send the heart of a Xinhua polisher sinking to the bottom of the Mariana trench.

EDITOR’S NOTE: August 1, 2007, is the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Xinhua English service begins releasing a series of special reports on the anniversary from June 8, 2007).

Since then, something like 35 PLA-anniversary-related stories have been released in English - others have been cast out cruelly into the wasteland. The number of Chinese stories is thought to exceed 200. Xinhua hasn’t been taking orders from the PLA to flood their wire services with military tales - the agency’s top bods believe the anniversary is a unique opportunity to report on the inner workings of the notoriously opaque army. In this sense, they are right. But, as is demonstrated day in, day out, quantity does not equate to quality.

The sheer volume of features filed from barracks all over China serves to give the impression that the PLA is becoming more transparent. Compared to years gone by, it is. Xinhua reporters have never been allowed this level of access before although some reporters had to follow some bizarre procedures to be allowed to interview soliders, none of which I will mention here as they have probably already been classified as state secrets. Unfortunately, many of the features that have crossed my path, many of which I have recommended to be killed, contain glaring trivialities. One report focused on members of the “Blue Army” attacking the “Red Army” in a military exercise, the Blue Army being the PLA’s mock enemy. Here is a teaser:

Major Luo Chuanquan said his 8-year-old son was initially very confused and depressed when he discovered that his father was an “enemy” of the PLA.

“But now he understands and admires what I do,” said Luo, with a beam of pleasure.

Going back to the transparency issue, on Monday, this story was released about the prowess of “China’s third-generation main battle tank” - in fact it is among the most advanced in the world, according to an armoured regiment commander. We weren’t allowed to mention the actual “type” of the tank even though it appears to be common knowledge on the internet - www.sinodefence.com appears to be comprehensive.

Some of the more blatant pieces of propaganda have been enjoyable to deconstruct. One story arrived on Monday, two days before the big day, which told of a detachment of the local Armed Police in Gansu paying a rural Tibetan girl her primary school tuition fees so she wouldn’t have to drop out of school. It began with a tale of hardship before featuring a line from the journalist that signalled a change in tone to one of optimism and that suggested the Party needs to reinforce its atheistic teachings: “But heaven always leaves a door open …”. The main thing that troubled me about this article was the fact that in 2006 Premier Wen Jiabao had announced free compulsory education of nine years in the rural areas. So which was it? The school still charging fees or the local armed police exaggerating?

It turned out to be the latter and the writer, to his credit, immediately acknowledged the article’s flaws rather than arguing its relevance. He had gone to the local branch of the armed police in Lanzhou but the officers weren’t feeling particularly talkative. Instead, they bused in the Tibetan girl - a journey that took her three hours from her home in the middle of nowhere - and asked her to reel off how delighted she was. We finally established the armed police branch gave five girls in the area a total of 200 yuan a year each to help with buying books and clothes. Admirably charitable but hardly worthy of an international boast.

It has been fascinating to observe the whole PLA reporting operation. I sat in my office the other day watching a reporter photocopy reams of PLA-related material, assisted silently by an intern. I considered the huge amount of resources - manpower, money and time - that had gone into writing all these features. I thought about how much of the information would be read or used by other media. The scale of the pointlessness of the task was overwhelming. At best, snippets of features are chopped up and pasted into articles with no mention of Xinhua News Agency, such as in this blog post by Independent correspondent Cliff Coonan. The following paragraph contains the essence of three tedious Xinhua features:

To coincide with the anniversary, local media have been running stories offering an insight into the life of soldiers in the famously secretive army. They are still not allowed to use mobile phones or iPods in many cases, and they still often grow their own food on the grounds of the barracks. Soldiers have found that the introduction of limited internet access on the bases has allowed them to make their voices better heard.

Cliff’s post also included a paragraph from a four-page Xinhua story on how the PLA has developed over 80 years.

“We have no food and uniforms, but enemies will deliver them to us, we have no guns and cannons, but enemies will make them for us,” runs the stirring Song of the Guerilla, which was first written in 1938 and is still a popular marching song today.

Actually, when this feature was injected with an admission that China had received military assistance from the Soviet Union, it was a fairly good read. So if you only read one PLA feature from Xinhua …

The best thing to come out of the military reporting frenzy has been the opportunity for journalists in my department to spend two weeks  at a time staying at barracks in the back of beyond, even if it means, as one reporter had to do, feigning an allergy to alcohol to escape the merciless baijiu drinking competitions. Actually, an interview with the Chinese army’s drinking king would be a good one. One reporter stood with soldiers in Liaoning looking out over the North Korean border at the lights collectively going out early in the evening and the sight of workers going to the fields en masse in the morning. PLA soliders staring quizzically at their curious Communist neighbours. Could make a nice story.

Luckily, there is no danger in me forgetting Xinhua’s PLA coverage over the last few weeks. In fact, plans are afoot to compile all the English stories into a book. I assured the senior editor I wouldn’t be showing it off to my family or future employers. He suggested I tell them that the grammar is mine but not the actual content. Ummm … Although, without wishing to appear like I’m pinning a medal on my own lapel, I do deserve half the credit (the other half to the reporter) for an amusing story on military songs being downloaded to mobile phones despite the releaser slashing a couple of witty paragraphs without remorse.

BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) — In an effort to cash in on the 80th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), China Unicom, the country’s second largest mobile phone operator, has launched its own military service.

Subscribers will be able to receive military news from the People’s Liberation Army newspaper and download military songs and movies at a cost of between eight and ten yuan a month, or two yuan for each clip or track.

Yu Peng, a senior official with China Unicom, was coy when asked if the service, which has been running for a week, had been in high demand.

“It is too early to say - we are promoting the channel and carrying out market research as well as uploading songs, pictures and movies,” he said.

“I believe it will be popular since we have so many military fans in China. We have more than 300,000 pictures of weapons and military figures in our database along with clips of hundreds of movies, such as Battle for Berlin, Normandy Invasion and Shang Ganling, a movie about the Korean War,” he said.

“I guess I will subscribe to the service when more cool stuff, like the newest jet fighters and nuclear submarines, are added in the channel,” said 28-year-old military nut Yang Yong.

“It’s not just about making money. By doing it, we are celebrating the PLA’s 80th anniversary,” Yu said, “and, in the process, providing more healthy content through mobile phones.”

Rock on, as they say. (If anyone is still interested, “Partying with the PLA - Part 2″ follows tomorrow with a report on an evening spent rubbing shoulders with African generals at the exhibition marking the anniversary. Oh, the perks that come with being classified as a “foreign expert”).