Back on April 6, on the icy streets of London, the Olympic torch relay mayhem commenced as anticipated. Xinhua, though, appeared unsure how to report the event, perhaps lacking concrete instructions from the Ministry of Publicity. Shortly after the torch limped onto Downing Street, the sports department released this grammatically handicapped story which ignored the presence of the pro-Tibet crowd and started like this:

The heavy snow in London exerted slim effect on people’s passion of seeing Beijing Olympic flame as large crowds lined along the street to greet the relay of torch on Sunday in the host city of 2012 Games.

Xinhua’s news department, however, released this report at about the same time, detailing the number of arrests made by the British police and expressing local people’s disappointment at the unruly scenes.

British police on Sunday arrested 25 persons attempting to disrupt the Olympic torch relay in London while many locals expressed indignation at the attempt and a Beijing Olympic official condemned it.

Coordination between departments has never been Xinhua’s strong point.

Its coverage of the following day’s debacle in Paris was much more sensible:

Spectators of the Beijing Olympic torch relay were greatly annoyed and angered by Tibetan separatists and their supporters attempting to disrupt the Monday event in Paris, the fifth leg of the flame’s global tour.

“We’ve come here only to watch the torch relay,” said a Paris student, who only gave his first name as Mark.

“What in the world does this have anything to do with us except for annoying us?” he added, pointing to Tibetan separatist demonstrators.

No explicit mention of soon-to-be wheelchair heroine Jin Jing being attacked by a lunatic though; the image of her repelling her assailant with a mixture of angelic dignity and sheer bloody determination seemed to be initially regarded as too embarrassing. This Xinhua report glossed over her bravery and even her identity, referring to the protestor who attacked Jin Jing as “another one (who) failed in his attempt to snatch the torch from a torchbearer”. (Presumably, the anonymous torchbearer was Jin Jing.)

A day later, a directive was issued by the Ministry of Publicity, according to the SCMP (behind paywall), calling on Chinese media to pull no punches in its coverage of the Olympic torch relay protests and emphasising the need for speed. The byline was given as “Staff Reporter” to protect the journalist and the sources:

Newspaper editors and television producers should produce reports more quickly. They should stick to the official line to better make China’s case to the world or, more importantly, domestic viewers, according to an internal circular issued yesterday by the powerful Central Publicity Department, the Communist Party’s propaganda arm.

A Beijing-based newspaper editor who saw the document said it referred to the ongoing Olympic torch relay as “our unprecedented, ferocious war against the biased western press”.

The ministry had clearly realised that the hesitation it had displayed - highlighted by official silence - following the Lhasa riots and the disruption of the torch-lighting ceremony in Athens had not looked good. The main aim of its propaganda had also shifted. The most pressing task was now to discredit the western media having already achieved, with a minimum of fuss, its priority of ”inciting patriotism and hatred of the Dalai clique” in light of the riots in Tibetan areas.

A couple of the SCMP interviewees said the directive allowed more freedom for the state media to improvise.

“We were told some contents of the old rule book could be thrown out of the window at this special time,” the (Beijing-based) editor said.

Later on in the article, a Shanghai-based newspaper editor said:

“In a nutshell, the entire media machine was asked to speed up its response, even though it could cause a potentially de facto decentralisation of censorship decisions.”

Any form of ”decentralisation” is rare for such sensitive times but then perhaps it demonstrates how little state media needed to be guided. The task was easy: they just had to report what they saw - the violent attempts at torch snatching didn’t need spin -, criticise the western media, which they had been doing already, and take a lead from popular opinion. By this time, the Chinese Internet was awash with indignation and rage at what had happened in Paris. Jin Jing had ascended to a virtual heaven and anger was being directed at the whole of France. It was time for the media to give the people what they wanted. And you don’t need the Ministry of Publicity to do that.

Xinhua latched onto Jin Jing and commentaries asked if it was a “human right to attacked a handicapped woman”. But as with any stoking of nationalistic sentiment, the target of the propaganda often became blurred. Under the influence of the anti-France furore on the Internet, lines slipped into Xinhua opinion pieces, which linked one protestor trying to wrench the torch from a disabled woman to the actions of the entire French government:

Chinese people are seriously disturbed and hurt by the chaotic scene in which an extremist tried to grab the torch from a weak disabled Chinese girl, named Jin Jing, in her arm wheels. Is this the civil French government’s behavior?

Inflammatory propaganda is never plain sailing. It is impossible to keep people’s ire centred on one target however much you try. When the media itself veers miles from the bullseye, the collective finger starts pointing all over the place. After the Lhasa riots, the Chinese audience was supposed to feel hatred towards the Dalai Lama clique. But many felt hatred towards the Tibetan people as well.

Whisked up by the media, ill-feeling bloomed - although it hardly needed assistance. Boycotts of French supermarkets gathered steam and the Chinese government prompted fresh anti-CNN diatribes by responding aggressively to antagonistic remarks by a certain CNN anchorman. Voices of reason - eg efforts by Grace Wang, an overseas student in the U.S., to mediate between pro-China and pro-Tibet groups - were treated with contempt.

People took to the streets, using branches of Carrefour as a platform for protest. The government became nervous, just as it did during the anti-Japan protests in 2005. Last Friday, Xinhua released a commentary only in Chinese appealing for a more “rational” approach from the people, an attitude the news agency itself finds difficult to grasp. The government was clearly concerned it was unable to control its netizens to the extent it would like.

“Patriotic zeal must enter onto a rational track and must be transformed into concrete actions to do one’s own work well,” said the commentary widely distributed in the Chinese media.

“Thirty years of reform and opening up have created a China miracle … But we must be crystal clear that for China that has endured so much, the future road will not be all smooth-going.”

“What happened in France showed that some French did lack true understanding of China, including the Tibet issue,” said Prof. Zhou Xing, with the College of Art and Communication of Beijing Normal University.

“But I think what we should do is to improve foreigners’ understanding about China. We had better not turn extreme,” he said.

When China is ever most connected with the world, it will have to deal with conflicts, said Zhang Xingxing, deputy director of the Institute of Contemporary China Studies. “Whether or not it handles them well affects the country’s future development.”

“Those disrupting the torch relay in Paris did not stand for the whole French people,” he said, suggesting that, as the Olympic host, Chinese first show their friendliness to win those holding bias against the country.

Their sage advice is enough to make Xinhua and the Ministry of Publicity turn the colour of the Chinese flag.

But the people weren’t yet done and protests for the weekend had been arranged. Thousands turned out at Carrefour stores in Wuhan and Hefei. Minor protests occurred near the French embassy in Beijing including one outside the French school in Sanlitun - one of the more unpleasant chants was reportedly: “Kill foreigners”.

This New York Times report said the government was doing little to temper the protests:

In a sign that the government was still allowing anti-foreign sentiment to spill over into rare street demonstrations, thousands of people rallied on Sunday in front of Carrefour markets in six cities, including two, Harbin and Jinan, where there had not been protests earlier.

And:

In recent days, the government has called on citizens to temper their fury at the West, but it has not acted to halt public demonstrations, which have been stoked by newspaper editorials, Internet postings and text messages sent to millions of cellphones.

This LA Times report (via Observer) took a different line, focusing on how the government was censoring the Internet to dim the people’s passions.

Chinese censors have quietly warned cyber-police and internet businesses to delete all information related to protests against Western policies, nations or companies that have proliferated in the wake of demonstrations surrounding the global Olympic torch relay and high-level calls to boycott the opening ceremony of the summer games in Beijing.

A notice issued last week by China’s ‘Internet Inspection Sector’ instructs recipients to reset the keywords used to block access to certain websites, relay the instructions through all internet distribution channels and then delete the notice in a timely manner. ‘Such information has shown a tendency to spread and, if not checked in time, could even lead to events getting out of control as they did with the 9 April incident against Japan,’ says the censors’ notice.

When the calls to boycott Carrefour were mounting at the beginning of last week, a friend of mine noticed that all the comments relating to the issue on leading Internet portal sohu.com had been deleted. It would appear the censors started early.

Policing of the protests also depends on geography of course. Olympic host Beijing is out of bounds as the LA Times points out:

A planned event to give away patriotic T-shirts near Beijing’s Qinghua University reportedly was halted by police.

One point that the NY Times story ignored was that the authorities were hardly in a position to call off protests outside Carrefour involving thousands of angry people even if they had wanted to. It’s a delicate balance: appeal for calm without showing signs of weakness that might irritate the masses. As a Chinese professor at a British university told me recently: “The Chinese government is tied to the nationalism of its own people”, a state of mind it has done so much to foster. It’s another major reason why China won’t tone down its rhetoric to curry international favour.

It is also difficult to restore public order when the government is not ready to make sacrifices. Its insistence on demanding an apology from CNN for Jack Cafferty’s comments is likely to have far more weight in people’s minds than any urgings for more measured acts of patriotism.

The protests will continue for a while but probably die down fairly quickly. Xinhua is reporting them as “demonstrations against Tibet independence” when really they are aimed at western media and ”the West”, particularly France of course, for their sympathies towards Tibet. It has been careful to quote the more reasonable beefs:

“Today’s activity is simply an awareness-raising activity, aimed at finding a way out for the patriotic emotions of our students,” said Wu Sheng, Xi’an resident and one of the organizers.

“We do not support a boycott of French companies because the economy is globalizing. We choose Carrefour front doors because we draw more attention there,” Wu said.

Some factions of the government can’t be over the moon to see such public dissent, albeit lauding the motherland, all over the country as the Olympic nears. Back to the LA Times and a quote from Li Datong:

‘These young people get very emotional,’ said Li Datong, former editor of the Freezing Point, an influential newspaper supplement. But ‘it’s unthinkable for the government to let demonstrations happen before the Olympics’.

Still, it can’t be too concerned. These protests do not even come close to the violent anti-Japan shenanigans that occurred three years ago and hardly constitute a threat to domestic stability. Anyway, it’s nearly time for a new episode.

The Xinhua commentary is propaganda at its most stimulating. A wild, unruly beast of a thing, it has the power to make you cringe, chortle and cry out in disbelieving indignation all in the time it takes to read two sentences.

About a year ago, there was a concerted effort by Xinhua’s English-language news factory to up its production of commentaries. I’m almost certain the motivation behind the move was not to sate its subscribers’ thirst for an opinion fest. Rather, it was seen as a good way to put across China’s point of view ie tell the depraved western media to put a sock in it.

The immigrant polishing community at the time suggested, diplomatically of course, that it was not a good idea. Big Reason number one: a news agency does not publish commentaries. Big Reason number two was slightly more complicated due to Xinhua’s primary role as the Ministry of Publicity’s muck spreader. Any commentary released by Xinhua must surely convey an official opinion from on high. But this wasn’t always the case.

Sometimes Xinhua was told to release a commentary written by the State Council eg a character assessment of the Dalai Lama. The journalist’s task was to translate it word for word. The polisher’s task, well at least how he saw it, was to sign his name on the copy without making any changes (apart from glaring grammatical errors, which if left uncorrected would have constituted a gross betrayal of the English language).

On other occasions, the senior editors would decide on a topic and a writer would be asked to construct a comment piece, which corresponded more or less with the government line on the issue. And this is where it all became a bit ridiculous. The journalist was effectively writing an opinion piece. He or she didn’t always share the government’s opinion but wasn’t allowed to write his or her own opinion. More often, the journalist didn’t have an opinion, which was reflected in the opinionless opinion piece. The polisher then had to do an entire rewrite, chucking in liberal clumps of his own opinion. Of course, there was no point in contradicting central government policy. It probably wouldn’t have sneaked through the political content screening but even if it had, the article would hardly have been reflective of a governmental change of heart. But I do remember one polishing comrade writing his own suggestions for how the one-child policy could be better implemented. Maybe the family planning office read it and took note. Or maybe the article was only read by a couple of perplexed foreign news agency journalists given the glorious task of Xinhua wire-watching.

Luckily, the commentary craze never really caught on, probably because they were always rejected by the polishers and writing one became more hassle than it was worth. But as soon as the Ministry of Publicity decided how to respond to the Tibet ruckus, it was as if someone had set off the whole of Liuyang’s annual explosives output next to the Three Gorges Dam. Now, every day without fail, Xinhua releases a commentary.

The Dalai Lama critiques are of course highly entertaining for the readers, who marvel at how little has changed since the Cultural Revolution. For the journalist writing/translating, it must be a bizarre experience being told to shut down the part of the brain that houses rational thinking and then sign your name to the article. I once asked a colleague how he felt about putting his name to a State Council rant about the Dalai Lama. “I know I’m brainwashed but I still believe 80 percent of it,” was the reply.

As for the current commentaries, I’m not sure whether they are coming from the State Council for direct translation by the Xinhua journalists or if the journalists are being told to write them themselves, at the direction of the Ministry of Publicity. Wherever they originate, I’m finding it disconcerting to see familiar names occupying the byline slots, particularly as the majority of those names belong to the best writers in the department, and with whom conversations are always highly enjoyable, stimulating and informative.

These commentaries have a distinct unpleasantness about them, possessing characteristics that are certainly not relefective of the authors’ personalities. They are snide and bitterly sarcastic, right down to the use of quotation marks around phrases like “simple monk”. Often, they are just plain ugly, descending into acerbic name calling, which is of course why they only succeed in turning their audience against the Chinese government. There also seems to be a policy of tossing in as much first-person content as possible, presumably to emphasise that the author is writing from the heart rather than on order of the propaganda masters. Take this odd concluding paragraph to this commentary:

I have no power to make this “simple monk” truly as simple as a monk. I only know that I have heard sweet words one day and seen them contradicted the next.

Sounds like something from the Bible.

When it comes to Tibet, there are two main targets for the commentaries’ ire: the Dalai Lama and his “clique” and the West (usually media). The victims both have an ambiguity about them. The Dalai Lama’s “clique” has never really been defined and the West is a concept. But last Friday, a Xinhua commentary chose to attack a group of young and very scared monks who had dared to speak out against the authorities in front of foreign media cameras - they believed they would be arrested for their actions but felt their words were worth the risk. And that’s when I felt the propaganda assault plumbed new depths of unpleasantness.

BEIJING, March 28 (Xinhua) — The images of the saffron-robed monks in Lhasa’s Jokhang Temple complaining about rights and freedom and demanding the return of the Dalai Lama certainly grabbed the attention of the world’s media.

It was a very effective intervention by the monks. Yet, what do they know about Tibet’s feudal past, which ended only in 1959?

After all, most of them are young men around 20 and know their spiritual leader only by his name.

The 14th Dalai Lama, like all his predecessors, was the biggest serf-owner. He owned every inch of land and every head of cattle in Tibet and was free to exploit — even sell off — his serfs and slaves.

Had the protesting young monks known this, they would probably know better than to fiddle with human rights now.

Having told the monks they had no right to think whatever they were thinking - or “fiddle” with their own human rights - because they were ignorant it then highlighted their ungratefulness:

They complained of having no religious rights, but the central government has allocated more than 700 million yuan (97 million U.S. dollars) since 1980 to maintain 1,400 monasteries and cultural relics.

That’s a hefty amount even for the world’s fourth largest economy.

Tibet now has more than 1,700 religious sites for Tibetan Buddhism that accommodate 460,000 monks and nuns, four mosques with 3,000 muslims, and a Tibetan Catholic Church for 700 believers.

Latest figures say 100 percent of farmers and herders, who account for more than 80 percent of the Tibetan population, get free medical care.

Remember the migrant would-be father who refused to sign off a Beijing hospital’s request for a Caesarean section last year, and lost his wife and baby? It was all because he had no money!

(Incidentally, I have to confess I’m having difficulty remembering the migrant would-be father story. I blame the cloudiness on the fact that Xinhua’s English-language department refused to release this particular story at the time because “it was just one individual case, the type that happens all the time in China, and the foreign media would only use it to make China look bad again.” The Chinese media covered it widely and it developed into one of the big talking points of the year.)

This commentary sums up perfectly the reasons why it will be a long, long time before the Chinese government gets the Tibetans on board. There is no attempt at understanding anything about what Tibetans are thinking. The argument is based purely on money and statistics. The door to discussions is closed. Funny really, because the Xinhua bosses could feed a similar argument to many of their journalists…

“What do you mean, you hate your job? Just count yourself lucky you didn’t have to whip up public insanity during the Cultural Revolution! You weren’t even born then! We’ve just allocated millions of yuan on a fancy new dining hall to make your TWO-HOUR lunch breaks more palatable. You get free healthcare and if you write lots of meaningless four-par stories you can easily meet your quota! What could you possibly dislike about working here?”

It’s time to admit the commentary made a good point though, which I believe Roland on ESWN mentioned in his entertaining conspiracy theory post:

When they cried out “it’s all lies”, I really wondered who was lying?

The monks, who claimed to be eyewitnesses to the alleged “killing of more than 100 Tibetans and arrests of more than 1,000″,also complained of having been confined at the temple from March 10 to March 26, while the riots took place on and after March 14..

None of the foreign reporters on the scene seemed to have noticed the contradiction — that if confined they couldn’t have witnessed what they claimed he had.

What about asking the authorities to clear this up? Are the young monks being imprisoned in their own monastery? Or are they allowed a modicum of “religious freedom” which would allow them to stumble across dead bodies?

Looks like I’ve developed the sarcastic quotation mark thing …

Surely no one with a fragment of humanity can fail to be moved by the protesters in Tibet, not so much because of their courage and optimism, but because in one clip on the news they were on horseback. That’s how to arrive at demonstrations. Imagine if there was some protest at the local town hall, and just as it was petering out it was joined by the “Save Luton Library Cavalry”. Then the leader fiddled with his knee-length beard, announced “Councillors, prepare to meet your doom” and laughed with a threatening high-pitched cackle before jumping off his horse to drop-kick the mayor. Then it could all be portrayed in a film called Placards of Fury.

But mostly it seems the Chinese government are working hardest to live up to their stereotype. For example, the Communist Party Tibet Daily described the protesting monks as “Loyal running dogs of the Dalai Clique.” You’d know if someone from the Tibet Daily got a job on the Shepton Mallet Gazette, because the articles would begin “On Saturday there was a demonstration by pensioners who object to the proposed closure of the sub-post office in Wickton Street.

“It was organised by proprietor Mrs Henderson, a poisonous feudal decaying rat, lickspittle bourgeois stooge of her stamp-peddling reactionary camel-dung husband, the so-called Mister Henderson.”

Similarly, if the Communist Party chief in Tibet was seriously trying to persuade neutrals of his case, he might not have referred to the Dalai Lama as “A devil with a human face, but the heart of a beast.” To be fair, this sort of language might be what’s needed to liven up political debate in this country. Then on Question Time, Dimbleby could say: “So Frank Dobson says you’re a devil with a human face and the bowels of a hyena - how do you respond to that, Shirley Williams?”

The Chinese government’s claim that the situation in Tibet amounts to random criminal violence, which the military are trying to deal with calmly, might be open to question, given that one side is protected by armoured vehicles and the other side is protected by loose-fitting silky orange cloth. Maybe the Tibet Daily will inform its readers: “Kindly policemen faced further anarchy yesterday when batty Buddhists tried to DAZZLE them with their blinding robes. A spokesman said: ‘We had no choice but to open fire. Some of them had gongs, and if they’d started using them as frisbees who knows WHAT damage they’d have done?’”

The Chinese government may add its flourishes to its justification for brutality, but in general the language is familiar. It’s similar to the line put forward by any empire when faced with an uprising: “an anarchic minority, opposed to progress, funded by outsiders” and so on. Back in the days of the Cold War, this type of scenario led to the most splendid hypocrisy, such as Western leaders cheering heroic trade unionists in communist Poland but supporting the army that was murdering heroic trade unionists in capitalist Chile. But there was another infuriating side to that situation, which is that most people who considered themselves “on the left” had an affection for the communist countries. Speaking to them about some vile dictator in Eastern Europe was like talking to a woman who insists on going out with a grotesque bloke. You’d say “Can’t you see - he starves his population and there’s no free speech and he puts dissidents in gulags,” and they’d reply “Aah but you don’t see the gentle caring side of him like I do.”

Then they’d cheer heroic trade unionists in capitalist Chile but support the army that was murdering heroic trade unionists in communist Poland.

So yesterday, with a touching hint of nostalgia, the Communist Party paper the Morning Star told us anyone who supported the Dalai Lama was “A fool or a rogue,” and the fact that there have been riots in several cities “is evidence they were put up to it by someone”, and suggests “someone who had fundamentalist power over these people.” So Tibetans are defying a powerful army because they’ve been brainwashed by a 72-year-old with glasses who presumably chants his orders up a mountain, and as they echo round the valleys his followers stare into the distance and say robotically “Orders - from - master - must - get - crushed - by -tank.”

The marvellous modern twist, however, is that now Western leaders and Rupert Murdoch want to be friends with the Communist leaders of China as well. What a feel-good story it is, communists and captalists finally settling their differences, and realising they have so much in common, such as the desire to shoot teenagers protesting for freedom - and all in the name of freedom.

A precis: Pakistan Television said Pakistan opposed any attempts to violate “China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”, Indonesian Chinese-language newspaper Guo Ji Ri Bao accused some western media or groups “harbouring evil intentions” of seizing upon the riots in Lhasa to tarnish China’s “image of peaceful development” and the LA Times quoted tourists describing the ferocity of the rioters. Singaporean paper Lianhe Zaobao said the Western media was playing its part in attempts to “sabotage” the Olympics, New Zealand TV3 relayed the anger of Chinese citizens in New Zealand at Western media bias and NZ’s Dominion Post published a reader’s letter saying people should stop labouring the human rights point and look at the actual situation in Tibet. The Albania-China friendship association said the riots were “premeditated splittist activities” and the Western media’s reporting was a “manifestation of their traditional prejudices”. And the former director of Romania’s national news agency said the riots were “elaborately planned” to discredit China.

Xinhua, forget about all that. Lay off the Tibet subject for a moment and make hay like you’ve never made hay before with this piece from Britain’s bastion of respectable journalism, the Daily Mail.

The headline goes: “I’m off to China to be with my bride: the food’s fresher, living is cheaper …. and bins are emptied TWICE a day.” Here it goes:

In just 18 months of marriage, Ken Miller and his bride have found the road to wedded bliss rather rocky.

There is their 25-year-age gap, the fact that they live 6,000 miles apart - not to mention the small matter of neither speaking the other’s language.

But when 70-year-old Mr Miller managed to secure his 46-year-old Chinese wife Lei Genxiou a place in his sheltered accommodation near Swansea, it seemed they would at last be together - until she was refused a visa.

So now he is turning his back on Britain and moving to China to be with her … and he can’t wait to get there.

Mr Miller will set up home in the south-western Chinese city of Nanning, where the couple married in 2006 after meeting on the Internet.

“The quality of life over there is much better than it is here,” he said. “The food is fresher, the lifestyle is cheaper, and you get your rubbish emptied twice a day.

“The British have an old-fashioned view of China. It is a great place to live. I know of people who have come from Nanning to live here, and hated it.

“In China, there are 14-lane roads in the middle of town lined with shrubs and trees which are never damaged by vandals.

“They’ve got shops that women over here would die for. I am very excited about going to live with Lei, and she is too. I have just been talking to her on the computer. We have never been closer.”

He has visited his bride three times since they married and says he will have no regrets about leaving Britain.

Recalling a recent visit to Nanning, he added: “We went out to a restaurant which served 30 different dishes of food. The bill for seven of us was £14, and we drank 35 pints of beer.

“So they haven’t got an NHS, but on practically every street there are doctors and dentists which are open 14 hours a day, seven days a week. And yes, they eat dogs there - but we eat deer and rabbits.”

Mr Miller, who has been married twice before, said they can live well off his pensions. “And my wife has a job as a buyer for a restaurant so I will definitely be well-fed.”

He dismisses anyone who might be tempted to question the basis of their relationship.

“People have said to me that she’s just after a visa. I say, ‘Yes, of course she wants a visa. Of course she wants a better life. And who can blame her?’ But it works both ways - I get companionship, so I think it’s a fair gamble.

“And now she has been refused a visa and we are still together, so what does that prove? This is my life and after all my years, I’ve earned the right to do as I please.”

Asked if he is nervous about moving to a country without understanding the language, he said: “Lei’s not taking English lessons, and I can’t say five words in Mandarin. But when we’re together, we communicate a lot through touch.

“I’ve been around long enough to know I’ll get by. You pick up the language more easily if you live in a country, and I might take some lessons.”

Their romance began after Mr Miller saw an advert in a local newspaper for a dating agency which specialised in matching British lonely hearts with Chinese brides.

After paying £300, he was put in touch with Lei and they began communicating via the internet.

He described the lifestyle he is seeking abroad with a younger woman as “every old man’s dream”.

Describing their mutual attraction, Mr Miller added: “She is absolutely gorgeous. She says I’m handsome. But whether or not she loves me, I don’t know. What is the definition of love anyway? I’ve only got a few years left, so I’m going to China and I’m not coming back.”

You could develop quite a few lines of argument here. Britain’s draconian visa laws? Carnivorous double standards? Or just proof the Western media is indeed Satan incarnate.

(Jim from Indianapolis makes a good point in the comments section. How do Ken and Lei communicate on the Internet given their language predicament?)

UPDATE: I can’t believe I’m updating this post but anyway … it appears the Daily Mail found the story in Wales on Sunday. The original article has a couple of amusing snippets and the answer, as kindly pointed out by Chris Crook in the comments section, to the how-do-they-communicate conundrum. Here are a few pars:

“I’ve heard all the knockers saying things like ‘she’s only after your money, Ken’, but we’ve been together 18 months now and if that was her intention she would have done it by now,” said the passionate pensioner, before pausing.

“Hang on, wait. I’ve got to put my teeth in.”

Ken continued: “Right, as I was saying, we’re even stronger than ever now so the doubters can get stuffed.

“I’ll admit the language barrier can get a bit frustrating, but we have a machine that can translate English to Mandarin and vice versa, although it tends to get things a bit wrong sometimes,” laughed the twice-married former Royal Navy man.

“One time she was trying to tell me she loved me, but it came up with, ‘you are a big elephant’ instead.

But the real answer as to how they communicate lies here:

Ken’s been investing in new technology so he can get to see Lei every day.

“I bought one of those web-cams and we get together two or three times a day.

“Actually, it’s surprising what you can do on those!”

With Tibet hoovering up the column inches, Tuesday’s predictably farcical trial of human rights campaigner Hu Jia received limited coverage, understandable given most China correspondents were playing hide-and-seek with police in Tibetan areas of Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai. No verdict was given at the end of a trial that lasted a few hours, the typically brief period of time allowed for a defendant on “inciting state subversion” charges. Strange really, seeing as the government could have regarded the issuance of a prison sentence as one of those good-days-to-bury-bad-news moments. Could that mean the government is waiting for the Tibet furore to die down before showing Hu Jia leniency in a spectacular, although painfully unsubtle, pre-Olympic PR stunt? Hu’s lawyer doesn’t seem to think so, according to the Reporters Without Borders press release:

One of his lawyers, Li Fangping, was pessimistic when he left the court at the end of the hearing, saying his client faced the possibility of a five-year prison sentence.

On a personal note, it has been a different week. I have done very unexpected interviews with four different BBC radio channels and NPR, discussing China’s propaganda tactics on the Tibet issue in my capacity, I presume, as a blogging ex-propagandist. In between these, I was working on an article on the short-term effectiveness of China’s propaganda on the domestic front which involved speaking to people much more qualified than myself to speak on national radio. I was going to post in detail about it but Will “Imagethief” Moss, clearly juggling recent fatherhood and analytical thought rather well, wrote a superb piece that covers all the points I wanted to come out my mouth during a three-minute radio slot and a whole lot more. (Shameless ode to new media coming up …) Print media rarely has such comprehensive, measured and intelligent commentary. Instead, national newspapers fire out opinion in brief, emotive editorials, adopting a simplistic black-and-white approach that does nothing to encourage creative thought on issues like Tibet. (Blimey, I thought I was going to bang on about ”emancipation of the mind” for a minute there).

During my research into China’s propaganda strategies, I contacted the China Media Project’s David Bandurski, who made an interesting observation on the type of images screened on CCTV of the riots in Lhasa. Obviously, they focused on Tibetans attacking Chinese, survivors talking about their friends being killed and both Chinese and Tibetans lying injured on hospital beds. Powerful stuff and highly effective as propaganda tools when context is absent. Yet, they stopped short of allowing the more graphic shots such as cars being torched or overturned. According to David: “This is because party leaders do not want Chinese with different kind of grievances, like stolen farmland, to get any ideas.”

I also spoke to a Chinese friend of a friend, a marketing manager who studied for a year and a half in the UK, about what she thought of the government news shaping. Her answer was something I have heard many times before and I always find it a depressing opinion.

“I know the government cuts all the negative information and we can not see the true story. But it has to do this. Most Chinese are poor and not well educated. They are not capable of independent thought or making their own judgements. They need to be guided by the government.”

We could almost get back to “thought liberation” here …

Xinhua journalists are also well aware of the ugly nature of government propaganda and have wide-ranging access to foreign media reports. But I’m sure the majority are fully committed to their current work on Tibet. Behind all those ludicrous commentaries vilifying the Dalai Lama, stories of Tibetan grannies receiving birthday cake from the government and tales of genuine tragedy in which innocent Han Chinese civilians have died, are journalists trying to do a good job. “Xinhua is doing some good work on Tibet,” a former colleague told me the other day. In some respects he is right. In terms of information gathering and following the Ministry of Publicity directives, they are being highly efficient. Some are working until 4am to pump out stories onto the wire, others have been sent to Lhasa to bolster the story-hunting operation. But Dui Wai Bu journalists face a disheartening reality. While their colleagues in the Chinese-language department for domestic consumption believe in what they are writing and strike a chord with their audience, the English-language writers believe in what they writing and only succeed in turning the stomachs of their audience. Such is the rift between the effectiveness of the propaganda on the international front and at home.

The ultimate aim of the news output is to incite anger and resentment. But I’m sure the blood of many Xinhua journalists would have been boiling well before the first Xinhua story was released about Tibet. And it wasn’t just because of the presence of a particular image on the database: the charred shell of Xinhua’s Lhasa bureau, its doors ripped off their hinges (there’s a pic somwhere on ESWN). After all, the Ministry of Publicity had done what it does best and bumbled around for a few days after the riots broke out, unsure of what strategy to follow. This allowed the western media to get a headstart and convince Dui Wai Bu journalists of its deep-rooted bias. One major motivation behind the department’s work (and I do have a small amount of sympathy for this) is a perceived duty to protect China’s international image in the face of what is deemed one-sided, critical reporting from the whole of ”the West”. The fact that some of India’s newspapers can be the most biting is always overlooked for some reason.

I had an interesting conversation with one former colleague, who said he didn’t need the agency’s propaganda ouput to make him feel irate.

“We are angry not because of the news stories but because we can see the facts. It’s not just pictures from Xinhua. When I see photos from foreign news agencies, I also feel hatred towards the people who are carrying out the violence.

“Before the riots I was neutral towards the Dalai Lama, despite the government’s criticisms. I heard he was a calm, spiritual leader. But now I realise he is two-faced. He orchestrated the riots in Lhasa and all around the world. Premier Wen (Jiabao) said he had ample evidence to prove this. It is obvious. Why else did Tibetans all around the world start demonstrating?”

On a crude level, the Ministry of Publicity has done a good job.

Moving off the topic of objectivity for a moment, this story released by Xinhua entitled “Dalai-backed violence scars Lhasa” was a valiant effort at masquerading as an international news agency, if you disregard the headline. Plenty of “witnesses said”, “sources told Xinhua” and “Xinhua reporters learnt”. It’s as if the fax machine belonging to Tibet’s propaganda chieftans was power off. Note to writers (with whom I get on very well): please forgive my playful jesting. From the story, it would appear local authorities in Tibet are having difficulty maintaining an united front, presumably because of the distance between Lhasa and Beijing. On Saturday morning, Xinhua were told to say “police were forced to use a limited amount of tear gas and fired warning shots to disperse the desperate crowds”. About an hour later, the chairman of the Tibet government Qiangba Puncog was speaking on the sidelines of the current parliamentary jolly in the Great Hall of the People. “We fired no gunshots,” he said. He also went on to say something foolish:

In regard to western criticism on human rights in Tibet, he expressed his invitation to the critics. “Seeing is believing. They should go to Tibet themselves to feel the improvements.”

Tourists are currently barred from entering Lhasa, non-Economist foreign correspondents have even less of a chance. It’s also worth noting a regulation was introduced last month which further restricted foreign tourists in Tibet: they are now required to sign up for a tour to visit places in the vicinity of Lhasa, according to a tour company I contacted recently, as well as needing an extra permit to travel deeper into the region.

I seek no forgiveness for lightly spanking this Xinhua commentary, headlined “Stop the hand behind Lhasa terror”, with my well-worn mockery stick. Even I was surprised by the author’s predilection for poetry with his politics. This piece reminded me of the kind of verse I used write in English lessons at the age of 12 when I would toss together a motley assortment of florid, polysyllabic adjectives, as many as my Oxford Young Person’s dictionary would allow, without worrying too much about the meaning. I’m sure my general grammar skills were a tad more proficient though but, hey, what are polishers for. Ah yes, polishers aren’t allowed anywhere near such mighty opuses:

BEIJING, March 15 (Xinhua) — The Nobel laurel was tainted, and the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal proved nothing but a fig leaf of the Dalai Lama when on Friday rioters, backed by the self-proclaimed peace preacher, turned the tranquil holy city of Lhasa into a land of terror.

And the intention harbored behind the monk’s claim of seeking “real or greater autonomy” of Tibet also proved hypocritical when hundreds of his followers yelled independence, attacked police, smashed windows, robbed shops, and set cars and a mosque ablaze.

Yet, this impudent politician did not show any sign of shame when he disassociated himself from the conspiracy as an innocent monk, leaving his followers standing as cat’s paws by persuading them, in a canting manner, “not to resort to violence” reportedly in a statement after the serene abode of the gods was disturbed.

I was under the impression any notion of tranquility and serenity disappeared from Lhasa a long time ago, especially after polishing a few stories about traffic congestion which featured this fine statistic: there are nearly more vehicles per capita in Lhasa than there are in Beijing. Anyway, such a romantic image of Lhasa doesn’t really correspond with the Party line: before Tibet was liberated, it was an oppressive, feudalistic society which needed to be civilised.

Oh go on then, let’s have some more, seeing as some serious enthusiasm has gone into the piece:

When a woman who dared not to step out of her office near a looted and burnt supermarket told me through mobile phone short messages that Lhasa was cloaked in an atmosphere of horror, I believed the hand behind the cat’s paws was a master terror maker.

and:

Now the blaze and blood in Lhasa has unclad the nature of the Dalai Lama, and it’s time for the international community to recheck their stance toward the group under the camouflage of non-violence, if they do not want to be willingly misled.

Stunning.

On a more sympathetic note, this story headlined “Ethnic Han survivors: Tibetan folks saved us”, while painfully obvious in its agenda, does contain an important point that is not coming across in many foreign media reports. Take this excerpt:

The four-storey Landun shopping mall in the old city center, which sold children clothes, was devoured by flames instigated by the horde.

Its owner, Ye Danping, and her 20 Tibetan employees barely survived after scrambling onto the roof of the building. “Some of my local Tibetan employees have been working with me for years, and they offered to protect my commodities in store,” she said.

“My employees and I cried at what we saw and what we experienced. I was shattered when I saw years of hard work was lost to the fire.”

The divide between Chinese and Tibetans in Lhasa is not clear cut and a fair few must be neighbours and friends. There have been reports both from Xinhua and international media of indiscriminate attacks by Tibetan youths on the Han Chinese. Shops have been torched and Xinhua reported ten “innocent civilians” were killed, although that figure is under dispute. From a cold PR point of view if nothing else, the Dalai Lama would do well to keep reminding the wilder Tibetan youths of his opposition to violence, particularly when it is being directed at innocent Chinese. Back to the Economist piece, I thought this paragraph was notable for its poignancy:

As your correspondent spoke to a monk in the backroom of a monastery, a teenage boy rushed in and prostrated himself before him. He was a member of China’s ethnic-Han majority, terrified of the mobs outside. The monk helped him to hide.

Quick aside about something that has just caught my eye … the Guardian website is classifying all its breaking news about Tibet as sports stories. While, undoubtedly related, that’s just Olympics mania gone mad.

Oh, and ridiculous tangent number two … Check out this video clip featuring CCTV-9’s James Aitken reading a Dalai Lama bulletin. Obviously, as a former state media slave myself, I’m in no position in point a finger and mimic Woody Woodpecker. Neither is this kind of thing anything new but for some reason this tickled me more than those tiny fish at spa resorts that are supposed to gnaw off the dead skin on your feet but sometimes stray into the armpit region. I saw many of these Dalai Lama criticisms, all identical of course, at Xinhua but they were just routine words on a screen, incapable of commanding even fleeting attention. It was an absolute pleasure, then, to see them take on a life of their own with some artful news-reading-style word emphasis. I hate to sound terribly British but I particularly enjoyed the delivery of “distort facts”.

Defiant Tibetans, annual U.S. human rights reports and asthma-suffering marathon runners; China is getting it from all sides. But a modicum of pity did come last week from a most unlikely source: the dear old BBC, whose website is famously blocked in China unless you go to the outrageously inconvenient lengths of typing the word “vote” in the browser (ie newsvote.bbc.co.uk for the uninitiated).

I’m referring to the first episode of BBC4’s A Year in Tibet documentary that was screened about ten days ago under the title “The Visit”, revolving around an official visit to a monastery in Gyantse, western Tibet, of Gyaltsen Norbu, the Chinese-approved Panchen Lama . It provoked a furious response, covered by the Guardian’s media pages, from the Free Tibet campaign. Anne Holmes, the director of the campaign, said the programme was a “grievous misrepresentation” of the Panchen Lama issue as it failed to discuss the disappearance of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who was selected by the Dalai Lama as Tibet’s 11th Panchen Lama in May 1995. The six-year-old and his family went missing soon after and have not been heard from since. Human rights groups contend that Nyima is under house arrest; Chinese officials say he and his family are being kept in a secret location for their protection. This what Holmes argued:

In her letter (to the BBC 4 controller), Holmes said the programme made no mention of Nyima’s disappearance and did not explain that “for Tibetans there are two Panchen Lamas - Gendun Choekyi Nyima, the real Panchen Lama, and Gyaltsen Norbu, the Chinese Panchen Lama or Panchen Zuma (’false’ Panchen Lama)”.

Holmes added that the programme would leave viewers with the “impression that Tibetans have accepted Gyaltsen Norbu as the 11th Panchen Lama and as their spiritual leader”, but said this was “simply not true”.

“Unprecedented access should not mean agreeing to film an event stage-managed by the Chinese authorities and presenting less than half the story as the truth,” she added.

“Tragically, in its wish to record a photogenic and unique series on Tibet in Olympics year, the BBC has fallen into China’s trap and misrepresented the deeply held beliefs of the Tibetan people.”

The counter argument went as follows:

A BBC spokeswoman defended the programme, saying it was an observational documentary on ordinary Tibetans and not a “detailed examination of its history or politics”.

“As is made clear from the outset, the purpose of A Year In Tibet, as an observational documentary, is to learn more about the every day lives of real people living in Tibet today; it is not intended as a detailed examination of its history or politics,” the spokeswoman added.

“In the film we witness the preparations of monks before a visit by the Panchen Lama Gyaltsen Norbu and in this scene we repeatedly refer to the controversy surrounding Norbu’s appointment. We leave the audience to draw its own conclusions about the way the Chinese government functions in Tibet.”

I was delighted to hear I could watch the programme myself thanks to http://www.uknova.com/ as recommended by a former polishing comrade and fellow Brit. He has managed to cling onto sanity by creating an alternative Beijing life governed by episodes of Eastenders and Grange Hill.

The documentary, which is beautifully shot by the way, features a hotel owner’s battle with his blocked drains, a pregnant mother with a suspected penchant for the local firewater and a shamen who banishes evil spirits by spitting on his patients’ faces. But the main thread, and the most intriguing, of the first epsiode was the preparations for Norbu’s visit by the monks of the monastery in Gyantse.

At the beginning of the film, the deputy head lama is asked to organise the “most important event in Gyantse for a generation” - Norbu’s visit. The narrator then says, “It is effectively a state visit by the most senior Buddhist living in China today but the security surrounding the visit is so tight that the authorities won’t even tell the monks which day he is coming.” Now would seem like a good idea to put the Panchen Lama in political context. But it cuts to the deputy Lama talking: “It is rare for the Panchen Lama, the leading Lama in Tibet, to visit the Baiju monastery. I was still an ordinary monk when the previous Panchen Lama last came. I think that was in 1989.” Interestingly, he makes no distinction between the previous Panchen Lama selected by Tibet and Norbu, chosen by the Communist Party.

The narrator then says: “The 11th Panchen Lama was only six when the Chinese declared that he was Tibet’s new spiritual leader and his position has been very controversial since. The inevitable tensions surrounding his visit are going to make Tsultrim’s (deputy lama) job even more difficult over the next few weeks.” Bizarrely, that’s it. Why the controversy? Why the tension? If you had no knowledge of the Panchen Lama saga, you would be very confused.

Forty minutes later, cue spooky music and images of the Chinese police. The narrator: “The atmosphere in town is tense. The relationship between the monasteries and the government has always been strained. The authorities are worried that somebody might sabotage the visit so they’re taking no chances.” Cut to grinning monks being briefed by Chinese security chief about arrangements for the visit and then suddenly we’re back at the hotel owner’s sodding blocked drains (from the stuff that’s being removed from the pipes it would appear someone shaved an entire yak and flushed the trimmings down the toilet). Why would someone sabotage the Panchen Lama’s visit? the uninformed viewer is asking. Still no answer.

Ten minutes later, the narrator again: “It’s almost 20 years since the previous Panchen Lama made a visit to Gyantse and today is a rare public appearance of the new Panchen Lama.” Spooky music returns as bags are searched by police. “Gyantse has never seen security at this level before.” And then the wait for enlightenment is over …

Narrator: “It’s all because of the controversy that surrounds the choice of the new Panchen Lama.”

But no! Denied! Cut to young monk getting dressed. Two minutes later, the explanation finally arrives:

 ”Gyaltsen Norbu is the 11th Panchen Lama and he’s now 17 years old. In the past the new Panchen Lama was selected from a list of several candidates by the Dalai Lama. But the Chinese government rejected the Dalai Lama’s choice and appointed one of the other candidates. And this is what the controversy is all about. Gyaltsen Norbu also happens to be the son of two Tibetan Communist Party members.

Gyaltsen Norbu has been living in Beijing since the age of six, all part of his “education” (quotation marks reflect word emphasis) to be Tibet’s new spiritual leader … Despite heavy censorship in the country, ordinary Tibetans know all about the controversy surrounding the choice of their young leader. But, as good Buddhists, they accept the situation and show appropriate respect, even to a Panchen Lama of doubtful origins … But whatever the controversy surrounding the young Panchen Lama, the devotion of ordinary Tibetan people is clear to see and there is little doubt that today is a very special one for the people of Gyantse.

The narrator then tells us it is traditional for monks to make a wish after being blessed by the Panchen Lama. The head lama has three: “That Buddha’s teaching may flourish, that people enjoy peace and happiness, and that our People’s Republic of China will become more propserous.”

And that’s it - fascinating stuff but ultimately a total and utter rejection of journalistic principles by the programme’s producers. Firstly, there is absolutely no mention of abduction. Secondly, they failed to ask monks and local residents a raft of obvious and essential questions. What do they think about the puppet Panchen and his visit? Is he a puppet or is that a disrespectful term? What do they think about the hordes of policemen, plainclothes PSB etc that are accompanying the Panchen? Where do they think Gedhun Choekyi Nyima is now? What is life like under Chinese rule? What’s good about it? What’s bad about it? Why are the monks so visibly delighted to be kissing up to the authorities when relations are supposed to be strained (and this would have been asked before Lhasa started burning)?

The thing is, the Tibetan people did look genuinely delighted to have the opportunity to meet Norbu. Lines of residents giggled at the metal detectors, strained for a first glimpse of the Panchen when waiting for their blessing and clutched photos of him which were being handed out by the monks. The viewer is desperate to understand the reasons for these reactions but analysis was absent. 

The BBC’s justification was woefully inadequate. The documentary’s purpose was to learn about the everyday lives of Tibetan people and “not a detailed examination of history or politics”, it said. But surely a huge part of Tibetans’ daily lives is influenced by what has happened in the past and the current political climate. The documentary says as much itself. After just 30 seconds of the programme, the narrator said, “For some Tibetans, the harsh reality of living cheek by jowl with the Chinese is a daily experience.” Maybe in return for subservient journalism, the Chinese government could consider removing the need to add “vote” into our BBC web addresses.

PS I just have to highly recommend Mutant Palm’s coverage of the fascinating Tibet tweeting going on over the weekend. I have to confess I’m new to this tweeting malarkey but I’m going to give it a try. Every so often a post is written that just emphasises the beauty of blogging and this is one of those occasions.

In hindsight (a quick flick through Google News), it was remarkable that I managed to come into contact with the important and welcome announcement that one of the most visually stunning parts of China will not be submerged in Yangtze river water. The story sneaked past all the major news agencies busily preparing their year-end ”Best Of” pieces and appeared to be broken by the Guardian on December 29. Subsequently, it was picked up by United Press International and that’s about it in terms of news outlets. It goes to show what happens when the Big Three (AP, Reuters and AFP) are not on hand to spoon feed. Fortunately, blogging provided valuable assistance in spreading the word (shameless support of the craft I know, but it’s true) with Go Kunming and Shanghaiist following up.

In fact, the South China Morning Post broke the story more than a week earlier on December 20. The Hong Kong newspaper does itself no favours in terms of reputation by shielding its online stories behind a paywall. As a result, its ability to pick up regular exclusives is often overlooked. The Chinese Publicity Department’s favourite Tibetan website Phayul.com quotes chunks of the SCMP report though, drawing attention to the Yunnan provinicial government’s gag on the local media about the Tiger Leaping Gorge affair:

“Muzzled in its reporting of the controversial project over the past two years, local media have been told not to report the scrapping of the dam proposal,” SCMP noted.

On one hand, it seems strange the local government is so reluctant to play up the fact it has mulled over the deeply unpopular dam proposal, taken the local people’s concerns into consideration and decided for the good of mankind to ditch the idea. They wouldn’t even have to admit that the tourist revenue generated by the Tiger Leaping Gorge was a major factor in their decision. It is a sharp turnaround in intention. When I visited the gorge last April, the owner of Sean’s Guesthouse, located along the hiking trail, had already resigned himself to the project definitely going ahead and suggested the high population of bulldozers in the area was because of preliminary work on the dam - and not the huge quarry nearby.

However, given the local media have been prevented from discussing the project in recent years, it would be strange if the issue just popped up again in print. Also, any hint that the government has given into public opposition could be seized upon by the people living at the next proposed site. Phayul quotes SCMP as saying:

The new location, which had yet to be chosen from three options available, is expected to displace some 20,000 people; SCMP reported sources as saying.

As far as cold, hard figures go, 20,000 people beats the 100,000 set to be relocated by the Tiger Leaping Gorge dam. I wonder if all these 100,000 people actually know they are staying in the area. I remember some friends learning that a decision to replace their house with a new runway at Stansted Airport (recognised as London’s third airport - although a world away from London - for the benefit of non-UK readers) had been overturned through the Herts and Essex Observer. Yunnan residents, on this occasion, do not have such a luxurious form of communication.

Returning to Xinhua after a two-week break always brings the stagnancy of the office atmosphere back to the foreground. I’m relieved to be leaving although I cringed when I explained why I was abandoning a well-paid job to the taxi driver (he established my salary early on, which I halved out of embarrassment) who picked up me from my night shift yesterday. “I need a change,” I said. The guy drives taxis from 10am to 2am every day seven days a week and only sees his wife in bed between 2.30 am and 7.30am, when she gets up to go to work. That’s better than never seeing your wife in bed at all, but still.

Two stories grabbed my attention at Xinhua in recent days, the rest just drifted onto my screen and off to the releasers’ desk without me noticing I had edited them. The world’s media has naturally been spewing out Top Ten Moments of 2007 and thankfully Xinhuanet.com (Chinese version) was no exception. The popular news portal, as I think it is described, gave the country’s netizens the chance to vote for their favourite domestic news story of the year. Naturally, the Party Congress came in first.

BEIJING, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) — The successful staging of the 17th National Congress of Communist Party of China has been selected by the country’s netizens as the top domestic news in 2007, Xinhuanet.com said on Friday.

About 800,000 Internet users voted for news items on 38 major news websites across the country, including People.com.cn, China.com.cn, cctv.com and Xinhuanet.com.

“China succeeds in its first moon-probing mission” came second and “China’s National Congress passes Property Law” was the third, according to Xinhuanet.com, which posted the top ten news events on its website on Friday.

The major news events were selected by Internet users from a pool of 20 items, an executive with Xinhuanet.com told Xinhua. The executive declined to provide information on detailed voting results.

The top three international news stories were: “World oil price close to 100 U.S. dollars a barrel”, “U.S. sub-prime mortgage market crisis shakes global financial market” and “National theme years fuel momentum for Sino-Russian cooperation.”

Clearly the most important piece of information came in the fourth paragraph, which wasn’t included in the Chinese version. A “panel of experts”, chose their top 20 for netizens to get stuck into, removing any references to cardboard dumplings, fake tigers and the slave trade. What the story doesn’t mention is that voters were required to pick 15 out of the 20 provided for them. The 15 most popular choices were then rearranged according to the “panel’s” preference. Maybe Will Hutton was right to hyperbolise the Congress’ importance last October. Or maybe he wasn’t.

The other story of interest goes a long way in reflecting the comprehensive - and often insensitive - nature of China’s tourism drive in Tibet.

LHASA, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) — Tibetan authorities are beginning restoration work on former residences and office buildings of some of the first Communist Party members to be sent to Tibet in the early 1950s, which have been turned into “revolutionary” tourist attractions.

“The government has worked out a list of the revolutionary sites which need restoring and the second list is soon to be submitted,” said an official with the Tibetan Regional CPC Committee.

Money will be spent on sprucing up buildings used by the PLA as they “liberated” Tibet in 1951 and the site used for the first branch of the Communist Party in a Tibetan village in 1959. I feel the following line from a local official will be hard for the majority of Tibetans to swallow:

“By visiting the buildings, people can experience the hard times that their forefathers had to pull through and the sacrifices they made so that we can be inspired to treasure the peace and prosperity we have today.”

I remarked to the translator of this article that Tibetans would absolutely love that paragraph. Recognising that a foreigner was making a typically snide Tibet-related remark, she quickly snapped back, “Well it’s not for the native people and the majority of people in Tibet are Chinese, Han Chinese.” According to the census in 2000, 92.8 percent of the population of the Tibet Autonomous Region were Tibetan. It’s always worrying when some journalists have so little knowledge about a place they write about on an almost daily basis.

Entitled “The Religious Ritual and Historical Convention of Living Buddha Reincarnation” and bylined “Yi Duo”, it marks a different approach to recent tirades against the Dalai Lama. Here, we see an essay confirming that the Chinese government has always been responsible for approving the “Living Buddha” since Kublai Kahn came along in the 13th century, without making any reference to its explicity public enemy, the 14th Dalai Lama. Different tactic, same result: propaganda that demonstrates the subtlety of an illuminous elephant in a game of Laser Quest.

BEIJING, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) — The reincarnation of the Living Buddha is a succession system, which distinguishes Tibetan Buddhism from other religions or other forms of Buddhism.

Based on ancient Tibetan beliefs in the nature of the soul and the unique incarnation theory of Buddhism, it was established to solve the problem of leadership succession in various Tibetan Buddhist sects and monasteries.

The term “Living Buddha” emerged in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). It was called sprul-sku in Tibetan, which was the abbreviation of sprul-pavi-sku, meaning “magical change” or “incarnation”.

In the 13th century, Tibet became an administrative district under the central government of the Yuan Dynasty. Emperor Kublai Khan (1215-1294) honored Phags-pa, head of the Sa-skya-pa Sect, by granting him the title “Buddha of the Western Paradise”. Thereafter, eminent Tibetan monks were referred to as “Living Buddhas.”

In the mid 13th century, Yuan Emperor Monge Khan (1209-1259) honored Karma-pag-shi, leader of the bKav-brgyud-pa Sect in Tibet, as “State Tutor” and bestowed upon him a gold-rimmed black hat and a gold seal of authority, which helped the bKav-brgyud-pa Sect become a powerful religious sect with great influence.

In 1283, Karma-pag-shi passed away. Monks of the bKav-brgyud-pa Sect were not allowed to take wives, nor have children. As a result, leaders of the bKav-brgyud-pa Sect could not pass over the religious power to his blood disciples. To prevent power succession from masters to apprentices, which could lead to the malpractice of each sect establishing its own school of thought and the decentralization of power, Karma-pag-shi decided, prior to his death, to adopt the principle of reincarnation in solving the problem of leadership transmission and continuation in his own sect.

His disciples followed his order and located a boy who was determined the reincarnated soul boy of Karma-pag-shi, marking the starting point of the Living Buddha reincarnation system in Tibetan Buddhism. Thereafter, various sects of Tibetan Buddhism reacted to the Living Buddha reincarnation system by creating nearly one thousand similar systems.

After several centuries of practice, a relatively complete set of standards and procedures in searching for and confirming the identity of the reincarnated soul boy had taken shape.

After the death of a Living Buddha, there are various fixed religious practices and procedures to be followed: making funeral arrangements; displaying his body for the purpose of worship; praying and chanting Sutras; praying for his early rebirth; diving and consulting oracles; observing sacred lakes; searching for reincarnated soul boys within the territory of China; checking them repeatedly; asking them to identify the objects left by their previous incarnation and further testing to confirm the soul boy; having him tonsured and welcoming him into the monastery; conferring upon him a religious title; allowing him to be officially enthroned and so on.

Throughout history, central governments of various dynasties paid great attention to the administration over the Living Buddha reincarnation. Living Buddhas usually belonged to the middle or upper class of monasteries and some of them were sect leaders. They played key roles in Tibet’s politics and religion and were important forces used by the central government in governing Tibet.

Emperor Kublai Khan of the Yuan Dynasty honored Phags-pa, head of the Sa-skya-pa Sect, as “Imperial Tutor” and authorized him to take charge of the nation’s Buddhist affairs. Considering the large number of religious sects in Tibet, the Ming Court (1368-1644) adopted the principle of “conferring honorific titles upon many leaders of religious sects and having them participate in the affairs of the Tibetan government based on historical convention”.

For example, the Ming Court conferred the honorific titles, such as the well-known “Three Great Princes of Dharma”, the Great Treasure Prince of Dharma, the Great Vehicle Prince of Dharma and the Great Mercy Prince of Dharma upon leaders of the bKav-brgyud-pa Sect, the Sa-skya-pa Sect and the dGe-lugs-pa Sect in Tibet.

After taking power, the central government of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) enforced its governance of Tibet by supporting the dGe-lugs-pa Sect.
During that period, the Qing Government greatly enhanced the governing of Tibetan Buddhist Living Buddhas as well as affairs related to their reincarnation, and made governance standardized and systemized.

In 1653, Emperor Shunzhi (1638-1661) granted the Fifth Dalai Lama the honorific title of “the Dalai Lama, Overseer of the Buddhist Faith on Earth under the Great Benevolent Self-subsisting Buddha of the Western Paradise” and bestowed upon him a gold album and a gold seal of authority.

In 1713, Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722) granted the Fifth Panchen with the honorific title “Panchen Erdeni” and also bestowed upon him a gold album and a gold seal of authority. Thereafter, the titles and positions of the Living Buddhas of the Dalai and the Panchen were officially established by the central government of the Qing Dynasty.

Relying on the support from the central government, Grand Living Buddha of the dGe-lugs-pa Sect possessed great political and religious power in Tibet. Therefore, the reincarnation of the Living Buddha became a bone of contention within the privileged class in Tibet, which led to rampant corruption.

In an effort to turn the tide by overcoming the drawbacks that arose from the soul boys being nominated from the same tribes, the Qing Court decided to directly control the search and confirmation of the reincarnated soul boy of the Grand Living Buddha to tighten its governing of Tibet and improve stability along the country’s southwestern borders.

In 1793, the Qing Court promulgated the 29-Article Ordinance for the More Efficient Governing of Tibet, establishing the rule of drawing lots from a gold urn. Article one of the Ordinance stipulates: in order to ensure that the Yellow Sect continues to flourish, the Grand Emperor bestowed upon it a gold urn and ivory slips for use in confirming the reincarnated soul boy of a deceased Living Buddha.

For this purpose, four major Buddhist Guardians will be summoned; the names of candidates, as well as their birth years, will be written on the ivory slips in three languages: Man, Han Chinese and Tibetan; the ivory slips will be placed in the gold urn and the learned Living Buddha will pray for seven days before various Hotogtu Living Buddhas and High commissioners stationed in Tibet by the Central Government officially confirm the reincarnated soul boy by drawing a lot from the gold urn in front of the statue of Sakyamuni in the Jokhang Monastery.

If there is only one candidate, his name should also be written on an ivory slip and put into the gold urn together with an empty ivory slip. If the empty ivory slip is drawn from the gold urn, then the boy should not be confirmed and the search for the reincarnated soul boy should continue.

The system of drawing lots from a gold urn ensured that the central government was in control of the search and identification of the reincarnated soul boys of the Living Buddhas of the Dalai and Panchen, further clarifying the subordinate relationship between the central government and Tibet.

The system not only helped maintain state sovereignty in Tibet but also helped avoid bribery and cheating in the reincarnation procedures. It showed a religious ideal that the deities’ decisions were just and sacred, and conformed to the Tibetan Buddhist doctrines and religious practices and thus won the hearts of all Tibetans.

The Eighth Dalai and the Seventh Panchen then wrote articles to express their support to the system and gratitude to the Emperor for his concern. The Eighth Dalai issued an official statement, in which he pointed out the importance and necessity of the lot-drawing method and said “in this aspect, those who still confirm reincarnation arbitrarily according to the old custom will be severely punished without mercy”.

From 1793 when the system of drawing lots from a golden urn was established up to the end of the Qing Dynasty, 91 reincarnated soul boys were confirmed for 39 Grand Living Buddha pedigrees by the Qing Court, of whom 76 were confirmed through drawing lots from a golden urn and 15 were approved by the central government to be excused from the lot-drawing method due to special reasons.

The central government of the Republic of China (1912-1949) continued the conventions and policies implemented by the Qing Court in the management of Grand Living Buddhas and the reincarnation affairs. The government issued the Regulation on the Management of Lama Monasteries and the Method for the Reincarnation of Lamas in 1935 and 1936 respectively.

It also promulgated methods for searching and confirming the reincarnated soul boys of the Dalai and Panchen and approved the reincarnated soul boys of the 13th Dalai and the Ninth Panchen.

Based on the policies of the previous central governments, especially the practice following the establishment of the system of drawing lots from a golden urn, there are five key points concerning the governing of the Living Buddha reincarnation system by the central government:

(1) The central government keeps under its control the affairs concerning the reincarnation of Grand Living Buddhas. Special commissioners sent by the central government to Tibet will help to implement it.

(2) The local government of Tibet will file a report to the central government for its approval. Then the reincarnated soul boy will be sought according to religious practices. Three boy candidates will be reported to the central government for approval after they were repeatedly examined.

(3) The central government will appoint special commissioners to preside over the lot-drawing ceremony and draw lots.

(4) The designated reincarnated soul boy will be reported to the central government for approval for him to be enthroned. The central government will dispatch officials to visit the soul boy and preside over the enthronement ceremony.

(5) The local government of Tibet will report to the central government for the approval of the reincarnated soul boy’s Sutra teachers’ names and the use of the seal owned by his previous incarnation.

The religious rituals concerning the reincarnation of Living Buddhas of Tibetan Buddhism and the historical conventions formed during the administration over the reincarnation of Living Buddhas exercised by central governments, especially the common rules followed by all Grand Living Buddha reincarnation systems, have become essential conditions in establishing the authority of the reincarnated Living Buddhas.

They have also become the faith of Buddhist followers. The system and the implementation of it fully demonstrate national sovereignty and the authority of the central governments. It not only helped to improve national unification and solidarity and maintain social stability in Tibet, but also helped to boost the healthy development of the Tibetan Buddhism and consolidate its position in Tibetan society.

Wu Yi, China’s vice-premier, when asked about Mr Mandelson’s comments, merely replied: “I am extremely dissatisfied.”

They also make the mistake of grouping “foreign media” into a single entity. I’m not sure who they were reading but Richard Spencer chucked in a retort from another Chinese government official for good measure to make up for Wu Yi’s lack of elaboration.

Wei Chuanzhong, deputy head of China’s product regulator, the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (Aqsiq), said Mr Mandelson was being unfair and inappropriate.

He accused Mr Mandelson of backing efforts to use safety regulations as a form of trade protectionism.

“No single country or company can ensure 100pc of their products meet quality standards,” he said. “Mandelson, as the trade commissioner, should criticize trade protectionism instead of defending it.”

And Bloomberg led with Wu Yi’s reaction.

Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) — China’s top trade official, Vice Premier Wu Yi, said she’s “extremely unhappy” about European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson’s speech in Beijing today on product safety.

Wu spoke to reporters at a food-safety conference where Mandelson expressed concern at Chinese counterfeiting and unsafe exports. She didn’t elaborate. The spat extended through the day, with Mandelson later defending the speech.

I could go into glorious detail about the Peter Mandelson in Beijing saga (which included a visit to Xinhua News Agency) but I think I’d better keep schtum. There are some action snaps of the occasion though right here. Affixing a speech bubble to the last image on the list is all too easy (feel free to join in by the way) but if I was suddenly thrust into a Have I Got News For You caption competition kind of situation, I’d go for something like: “Look, you reduced my opinion to the size of my little pinkie!”

Anyway, all this serves as a verging-on-tenuous link to a story released by Xinhua last Friday night involving the PLA and the Qinghai-Tibet railway. I often wonder why, if ”western” news organisations - I’m not sure why biting criticism from sections of the Indian press for example is passed over - always play up the negative aspects of a China story, Xinhua then spoon feeds them material to make their jobs even easier. First rule of censorship in China: avoid a story that involves the Chinese military in Tibet unless it’s really necessary.

A passenger train carrying newly recruited soldiers left Xining, capital of Qinghai Province, on Friday, heading for Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

It is the first time the Qinghai-Tibet Railway is used for transporting troops, according to sources with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

In the past, all the troops entering or leaving Tibet had to be transported by air or road, but in the future the railway will become a main option for the armed forces to transport troops, the sources said.

The 1,956-km-long plateau railway was put into official operation on July 1 of last year. Now, it transports about 75 percent of goods between Tibet and other parts of the country.

It was picked up by AP and subsequently published on a number of the websites including the BBC. The foreign media had only one choice of angle of course, which was duly taken. The lead pars:

BEIJING (AP) — China’s high-speed, high-altitude railway to Tibet carried troops to the region for the first time, state media has reported, in a development likely to fuel concerns about the railway’s impact on the restive Himalayan area.

The brief Xinhua News Agency report late Friday did not say how many soldiers were aboard the train that left a provincial city Friday for the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. The report cited unnamed sources in the People’s Liberation Army as saying that the “railway will become a main option” for transporting troops to Tibet, replacing the air and road routes used since Chinese troops annexed Tibet 57 years ago.

The Times of India went further, linking the PLA train trip to the Chinese army’s demolition of Indian Army border posts and even the strengthening of ties between China and Japan.

The move comes immediately after Chinese troops were reported to have demolished Indian Army posts on its border with Arunachal Pradesh.

The official Xinhua news agency quoted an unnamed official of the People Liberation Army as saying that the “railway will become a main option” for transporting troops to Tibet, replacing the air and road routes used since 1950 when Chinese soldiers annexed Tibet.

The move also coincides with signs of strong improvement in China-Japan relations with a Chinese navy missile destroyer visiting Japan on a goodwill mission after several decades. The cold war with Japan made it difficult for Beijing to take an aggressive approach in its relations with other countries including India.

China has maintained a stony silence over suggestions that one of the purposes of the Tibet railway was to transport troops in larger numbers and at much reduced costs from mainland China to border regions in Tibet.

It also refrained from immediately using the railway for this purpose in order to avoid giving rise to a new controversy. The latest move confirms Beijing’s strategic purposes, sources said.

I very much doubt the announcement was made by the PLA in order to make a political point to India. A more simplistic approach goes like this: the PLA made the announcement because it shows another benefit of the Qinghai-Tibet railway; Xinhua released the story in Chinese because it is an easy quota-filler and the editor was fearful of ignoring a PLA press release; it was translated into English by one of my colleagues for the same reasons. A classic “soldiers take train” shock horror.

If I remember correctly, this time of the year is when new PLA recruits are stationed to their prospective barracks after passing their initial training. Early last December, I was travelling by train back to Beijing after spending a weekend in Pingyao. I staggered onto the platform early on a Monday morning and found myself in the middle of a mob of giggling, wide-eyed boys in camouflage subconsciously competing to assemble the world’s least intimidating army troop. It appears the transferral of new recruits to Lhasa was a similar exercise. And really, how else were the PLA soliders going to get to Tibet now the cheaper, more efficient option of rail travel exists. Maybe, it does encourage the PLA to station more troops in Tibet but I doubt the length of a few road journeys or the cost of a few flights would have prevented them from positioning as many troops as they would have liked there in recent years.

Oh well, if the PLA wants to be overtransparent then who I am I to argue. It just struck me as peculiar, given all the stories that never see the light of day, many of which involve the military, that this particular report was released.

Maybe I’m wrong, perhaps it has been done deliberately for reasons known to the PLA. After all, it has long been common practice to release bad/sensitive news on Friday nights in the hope it will slip by most media watchers. This is also something the propaganda ministry should address. The trouble is, this tactic is now so well known I imagine every Friday night at 11pm foreign news agency journalists lay out the welcome mat for juicy Xinhua offerings that are more sensitive than a FG follower calling for Taiwan independence with a Dalai Lama pendant hanging around his neck.

Yesterday, the State Council appeared to abandon the approach of seeking credibility through the opinion of a sole expert. It released a signed article entitled “Has the Dalai Lama truly given up ‘Tibetan Independence’?”, distributed by Xinhua and planted on page ten of today’s China Daily. The author’s name was given as “Zang Yanping” which can be translated as “Peaceful Tibet”. You have to admire their sense of humour.