Beijing Newspeak

If there is anyone still bothering to look at this site then thank you and apologies for needlessly nibbling away at the life of your keyboard over the last month. A combination of factors is to blame for the silence.

First of all, the election of Boris Johnson as mayor of London genuinely shocked me. The main reason though is that I have been devoting a lot more time to getting a freelance gig or two up and running which might prove slightly more profitable (you would hope) than blogging. Plus the well-known visa complications have made the inside of my head mushier and mushier to the extent that I am no longer capable of any coherent thought, my speech consisting of only the letters Z, F, X, L and that elusive J.

Hope to continue writing when things are a bit more settled …

Apologies for the long absence to anyone who is still bothering to check this page. (And to the person who arrived at this site while searching ask.com for “criticism of Xinhua”, fear not for this blog is not defunct and I’m sure I’ll be able to assist your research further at some point.)

I have been busy with being astounded by new and highly unfriendly China visa regulations in Hong Kong, doing very little in the Philippines (El Nido in Palawan - what a spectacular place), giving a portion of my Xinhua ”bonus” to the Casino Lisboa in Macau, visiting ghostly factory towns in Guangdong during the Spring Festival, making the odd propagandic “confession” to prove I’m really just a one-trick pony and devising new ways to replace Xinhua’s incredibly generous pay packet. My god, I’ve mentioned Xinhua three times (make that four) already - it really is a grubby obsession.

This is the first time I have lived in Beijing without working in the labouring heart of China’s propaganda outfit. It is a beautiful thing. However, I didn’t appreciate how just sitting at a desk surounded by government edicts, all the major news wires and a treasure trove of a database (former Xinhua comrades if you are reading and know how I can access it please do tell. Without it I am nothing …) enabled me to have such a wide knowledge of Chinese current affairs. Drooling over Google News just isn’t the same - and I don’t get paid for it.

It has happened only once but I actually found myself wishing I was back at Xinhua the other day when I read Richard Spencer’s post on “The strange case of the disappearing news story”, which told of inconsistencies within the Chinese media in its reporting of the “Olympic terror” story. Again, former comrades feel free to comment and enlighten while you bask in the warm glow of anonymity! My tender reminiscences disappeared, though, when I saw this sentence from a Xinhua ”two sessions” story:

“Andrew Kirillov, Beijing bureau chief of the Itar-Tass News Agency in Russia, appeared joyous when registering to cover China’s upcoming “two sessions ..”

The sad thing was that I correctly guessed which journalist had written it without needing to read any further.

Still, if I ever feel lonely, I can rest assured there will be always be a steady trickle of anecdotes leaking out of the Xinhua tower. Last month, Roland at ESWN flagged up a story released by Xinhua on February 21 about Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to the “AIDS village” of Wenlou, Henan, back on November 30. He pointed out that the old news had been re-released three months later in a laughable attempt to refute a story published in German by AFP on February 19, which said many of the villagers with whom Wen shook hands were amateur actors and actresses. (For more on this see Black and White Cat’s previous translation of a blog post from Hu Jia, the rights campaigner awaiting trial on charges of “inciting subversion of state power”.) Roland went on to say:

A proper piece of journalism would be for Xinhua to send a reporter immediately back to Wenlou village to identify the person shaking the hand of the Premier, check his background (amateur actor? or vegetable grower?) and interview him.

Well, apparently, a Xinhua journalist had already returned to the village a month earlier and confirmed what had been reported in November to be true. Who knows who the Xinhua journalist spoke to or if he had also been duped by local officials. However, every story involving Wen Jiabao has to be approved directly by the Premier’s office and the journalist was told by the secretary that he couldn’t write his new story, even if it did reflect favourably on the government. Much better to stick to the November visit he was told. Safer. There was much annoyance in Xinhua of course as no news agency, albeit a highly dodgy one, likes to report three-month-old news, particularly if there is new information. Clearly another case of govermental stubbornness making everyone look stupid.

ESWN then had a post saying AFP had apologised for the report and recalled it. It was written by a freelancer who hadn’t noted the source (Hu Jia’s blog perhaps?).  How I long to be able to transform my lanky foreign frame into a passable Henan native, allowing me to indulge in some undercover reporting in Wenlou. It’s just one of those infuriating mysteries that looks like it will never be solved.

Despite not being able to access the wire, I’m lucky enough to receive some Xinhua news on my mobile phone. A text I received from a former comrade the other day merely said: “Just polished one about a Chinese company building a block of flats in Free Press Square in Bucharest.”

That’s the kind of irony that would tickle blogging British Foreign Minister David Miliband. I was taken by the nature of Mr Miliband’s posts regarding his recent visit to China - the trip during which he was told the “cup of tea” joke by his opposite number Yang Jiechi. On the day of his departure from the UK’s fair shores, he was most sincere, writing under the heading “Look East, Young Man”:

“Today I head to China - specifically Hong Kong, Shanghai, Chongqing and Beijing. I am immensely looking forward to my visit, which I expect to be instructive, thought-provoking and inspiring in equal measure. I will follow up the Prime Minister’s highly successful visit to Beijing in January, and have the time to see how Chinese engagement with globalization is changing the face of the world’s largest country. My aims are simple: to try to understand the country better, to compare notes on the challenges of equality, security and sustainability in our two countries, and to forge relationships that foster Anglo-Chinese cooperation at an international level in the pursuit of shared goals.”

Five days later, he wrote a post that was very different in tone under the heading “China Travels”, which, bizarrely, was sent out via email by the British Embassy to all the registered Brits in Beijing, many of whom got over the ironies of Communist China a long time ago.

Irony of the day; Tuesday:

Long exegesis from representatives of the Communist Party about the lessons of the City of London’s big bang and the importance of deregulation.

Irony of the day: Wednesday:

Magnificent car to take us from the airport to the stunning Olympic site and the “water cube”, designed by Arup as a translucent energy efficient water sports centre - and the car was a Cadillac.

Wake up at the Wall:

The Great Wall has served over the centuries to try and keep the World out of China - so there is symbolism in meeting for dinner with the Chinese Foreign Minister at the “Commune Hotel” at the Wall. We are about to go for a walk on the Wall itself.

Oh dear, he’s got a lot of catching up to do with Kevin Rudd.

It’s a very bad time to leave Xinhua News Agency. Next week, my department Dui Wai Bu will hold its first Spring Festival party for four years, an event I will miss as I’m due to polish my last Xinhua story today at 7 pm. I have experienced two Chinese New Years at Xinhua and they were both highly sober occasions.

Back in January 2006, I shuffled my first uncertain steps through the gate of the agency compound into an expected land of evil Communist rhetoric and robotic journalists chanting Party mantras, trying to avoid the eyes of those scary armed guards you only associate with Tiananmen Square incidents because you only ever see them looking stern in the newspapers every June 4. Just two days later, I found myself in a lift with a band of people much older than me who called themselves “The Releasers” on my way to a Spring Festival dinner.

It was held on the third floor of the Xinhua canteen. The buffet was like much of Xinhua’s output - high in quantity, low in quality. On a stage stood a microphone into which a string of men in suits spoke of how Xinhua had released many stories in 2005 and would be releasing even more in 2006. We all sat at round tables drinking coke from paper cups. The leaders gathered on the table closest to the stage on which a lady sang excerpts of Xinhua’s best government statements of 2005 to the tune of Mo Li Hua (I admit the lyrics bit is a flagrant lie), drinking red wine from crystal glasses. Every so often a leader would come round to each table and attempt to clink his wine glass with each paper cup of fizz. I reacted by saying what is expected of a cynical foreigner who has just skipped out of a haven of democracy into China, looking for fascinating examples of Communism at work: “Aha, that’s Communism at work.” The person next to me smiled politely.

The following year’s dinner stuck a couple of fingers - one on each hand for added rudeness - up at the concept of celebration, being as it was more dour than Gordon Brown’s attempt to match funnyman Wen Jiabao’s wisecracks over the weekend. President Tian Congming was on a cost-cutting drive so he didn’t even bother to turn up to feel the effects of his penny pinching. The live music had been scaled down to a cassette playing ”Jingle Bells” on repeat. Only one man in a suit spoke of how Xinhua had released many stories in 2006 and would release even more in 2007 (they succeeded, I can vouch for that). The man - actually one of the vice presidents - didn’t even stay for dinner. “The Releasers” had split up - I only had three for company this time. The round tables were now boring rectangles. The only thing that differed from a normal lunchtime on floor three was the slight increase in the number of prawns.

Not this year though. The party will feature salsa dancing, a modelling show and karaoke. I, and I’m being serious now, will be sad to miss it. I am also unable to attend a grand banquet for ”foreign experts” in the new five-floor canteen/leisure complex, the impending opening of which is another striking example of how Xinhua is now loping into the 21st Century in its own special way. Food won’t be served on a regular basis for at least another month because of poisonous paint fumes but my oh my dining will be a very different experience.

The old canteen, as mentioned above, is a true bastion of danwei dining. Not so long ago, the three-floor Xinhua canteen was known as one of the three great halls (san da tang) of Beijing. The saying went like this: “Mao zhu xi ji nian tang, ren min da hui tang, xinhua she da shi tang.” (Chairman Mao’s Memorial Hall, Great Hall of the People, Xinhua Dining Hall.” It held its prestigious status because during the days when food was at times scarce, Xinhua staff always remained well fed. I suppose if you want them to believe what they write when they are telling the people the food supply is plentiful, it helps if they have full stomachs. There are plans to turn the building into a Xinhua museum - I am still mulling over a request to offer my body up for the Pickled Polisher exhibit.

While I certainly do not begrudge a Xinhua journalist a bit of fine living, the new canteen flies hilariously in the face of a story the agency released in June last year, which began like this:

China’s disciplinary watchdog has ordered a thorough investigation into government buildings constructed after January 1, 2005 and those currently under development after the recent scandal in which more than 20 officials were punished for ordering the construction of lavish official buildings.

The Central Commission of Discipline Inspection (CCDI) of the Communist Party of China said the inspection was being conducted to find out whether some government buildings are excessively in terms of size, decoration and number of facilities.

The government has set a limit of 4,000 yuan (512 U.S. dollars) per square meter for the construction of ministerial level buildings.

Unnecessary items include: grandiose atriums, fountains in the floor one canteen that sound like waterfalls - guaranteed to send people scurrying to relieve themselves, an enormous area for the serving of “western” food which most people will ignore as the dishes are double the price and there are only about 30 foreign experts in the organisation who hate to eat bizarre versions of ”western” dishes, a domed glass arena on floor five under which two championship-standard table tennis tables wait to be christened, and a neverending choice of lavish banqueting halls for foreign dignitaries. Someone did tell me how much the whole thing cost but there were so many zeros I’ve forgotten. There is one nice example of conservation though. Outside the canteen, instead of planting grass that needs gallons of water to coax it through the Beijing dry season (ie most of the year), patches of fluorescent green artificial turf have been laid. I think I’ll nick a square on my way out.

On a more reflective note, it has been an eventful two years at Xinhua at least from where I was sitting. Unfortunately, the overall quality of Xinhua’s english-language output is worse than it was 18 months ago, basically because “reporting rights” were in essence taken away from Dui Wai Bu journalists in the summer of 2006. A new department was created called the Central News Desk (CND) and it became the only department officially authorised to contact government ministries. Dui Wai Bu journalists were reduced to translating meaningless six-par stories for fear that ignoring them would incur punishment. The CND reporters are the only ones allowed to attend regular press conferences and the quality of the reporting of them is pitiful for four main reasons: tighter censorship controls on the CND, huge workload governed by a set quota of stories, inadequate training and pure laziness. The establishment of the CND has been deeply unpopular in Dui Wai Bu. The official reason for the move was that government officials were complaining too many Xinhua journalists were showing up at press conferences and asking the same questions. However, I’m pretty sure it was mainly because restricting access to news-making events to one department makes ”media handling” a whole lot easier.

It’s all very frustrating as, individually, many Dui Wai Bu journalists have improved markedly over the last two years - it would seem, because of the flawed structure of the organisation and a total lack of management, the department is suffering from a nasty case of antagonism. In this sense, Xinhua can be a depressing place in which to sit as an observer. It’s not all doom and gloom for the journalists themselves of course. There are many benefits to being a Xinhua employee: prestige domestically, opportunity to travel, comprehensive insurance, access to information and job security (you have to be a spy to get sacked round here). But watching some hugely talented, creative people donning shackles every day is not particularly pleasant viewing. Some may argue: “What do they expect? Their role is to spread governmental love.” But I have met numerous graduates (Xinhua only employs fresh-faced university students so they have no time to develop any style other than “Xinhua-style”), who have joined Xinhua and, after a few months work, almost all have admitted the job is very different to what they anticipated - and not in a positive way.

A few people have emailed me and asked why I haven’t been sacked for writing this blog. I certainly should have been and I would never argue that my actions have been anything other than unprofessional. I nearly did get the boot following this post on the “Homer Simpson and the peanut brain” incident. The bosses of Xinhuanet were more than a little annoyed by the fact everyone else in the agency was having a good guffaw. By the sound of it, the Dui Wai Bu bosses backed me up for which I am extremely grateful. In a misguided attempt at defending the upkeep of this blog, I think it’s fair to say Xinhua is not your average workplace and there is very little professionalism on display in many quarters of the agency. As a foreigner, you are never included in the day-to-day operation of the department and are never officially told about structural changes that directly affect our work. In fact, foreigners are not directly employed by Dui Wai Bu - that’s the role of the Foreign Affairs department. Instead, we rely on the “reporters” themselves to supply us with a steady drip of information and we fit the pieces together. Also, there are a few Chinese colleagues in Dui Wai Bu who keep blogs - one put an internal Xinhua document on his website (I won’t embarrass with a link). It landed him and his entire section - collective punishment is favoured - a hefty fine. Last year, the leaders issued a regulation requiring any journalist with a blog to register it with the higher authorities. I was not informed.

Anyway, enough of defending the indefensible. Why was I allowed to carry on writing it?

1) I was writing in English so therefore off the radar of the leaders.

2) Who cares what a foreigner thinks about state media censorship anyway? (maybe this should be number one) It’s only a blog with a limited readership after all. Now if I had landed a column in the New York Times …

3) People in Dui Wai Bu are very open-minded - I have been amazed at how many people have supported it. I was even told some posts were used as training tools for new graduates. Some people really disapproved of it but I never experienced any open hostility.

4) One polishing comrade suggested it would be more embarrassing to sack me than to leave me be. I’m not sure about this one - if editors did think this way, they were misguided. The “I was sacked from Xinhua” post would have done the rounds on the blogosphere and then that would have been that.

5) I didn’t mention the spying scandal or the mini-Mandelson episode.

Anyway, enough of this self-indulgent behaviour. I could bore for hours on this subject as has become apparent by the length of this post. A quick note of thanks to my Dui Wai Bu comrades - thanks for putting up with me for two years and I hope things improve before all your hair turns grey. It’s been fun. I’m booked onto the Hong Kong-bound train tomorrow and not returning to Beijing for a month. Will probably continue to post a couple of things over the coming week.

Well thank Hu that’s all over with for another five years. I’m certainly not going to complain about the congress week though - the English-language polishing brigade of Dui Wai Bu, complete with new recruit, has been kicking back and basking in the glow of oppressive strip lighting for the last few days. In what was the quietest week of my Xinhua career/cameo, aptly coinciding with what is considered by the Party as the most important news event of the half-decade, I even had time to visit Nanjing and marvel at the way red neon Chinese characters shot down high-rise buildings at night to say, ”Wishing the Big 17th every success.”

Xinhua’s Party congress news was delivered to the world by journalists cooped up in the warren of tunnels built in the 1960s under the district of Qianmen (just south of the Great Hall of the People) which these days is open to tourists and billed as the Underground City. I can’t guarantee the truth of that statement but seeing as the journalists weren’t allowed to send text messages or make phone calls mentioning the congress, I would have thought being buried underground would have been the logical place to set up HQ.

The nature of Xinhua’s (seemingly) final congress story was fitting, sporting an emphatic last line:

BEIJING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) — Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, state president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, had a meeting with military delegates of the just-ended 17th Party Congress on Monday evening.

Guo Boxiong, Cao Gangchuan and Xu Caihou were present at the meeting, at Beijing’s Jingxi Hotel, along with other former and newly-elected senior military officials Yang Baibing, Zhang Wannian, Chi Haotian, Zhao Nanqi, Liang Guanglie, Chen Bingde, Li Jinai, Liao Xilong, Chang Wanquan, Qiao Qingchen, Jing Zhiyuan, WuShengli and Xu Qiliang.

Hu and the others were greeted with warm applause and they shook hands and had pictures taken with the Army delegates.

The military delegates represent the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Chinese People’s Armed Police (PAP).

According to law, the Chinese armed forces are definitely under the leadership of the CPC.

Dui Wai Bu journalists normally find themselves dancing in cages when writing stories in English but at least there is room for manoeuvre. However, in the last few months they have been confined to a collective strait jacket, required to stick to merely translating the Chinese-language stories that come from the domestic news department. The pre-congress restrictions unfortunately collided with the mass relocation to the newly renovated Xinhua tower which boasts a newsroom to rival any media organisation. This kind of news environment makes the absence of news all the more apparent.

Hopefully, we will start to see some decent stories again. It looks as if there will be a polishing team of five in place by the end of the month (as opposed to two throughout the summer) which means more time for on-the-job training. While, this is undoubtedly appreciated by the vast majority of Dui Wai Bu editors, it does mean they will be bombarded with, at times, unrealistic demands to improve stories.

A comparative glut of polishers should result in more opportunites to try and balance the stories. Although, I think I might find it difficult to rekindle my enthusiasm when stories like this one are released:

BEIJING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) — Oscar Arias Sanchez, president of Costa Rica arrived here on Monday morning, kicking off an one-week state visit to China at the invitation of Chinese President Hu Jintao.

During Arias’s stay in Beijing, Hu will hold talks with him. Chinese top legislator Wu Bangguo and Premier Wen Jiabao will meet him respectively.

Besides the capital Beijing, Arias will also visit northwestern city of Xi’an and China’s commercial hub Shanghai.

This is the first time for Arias to visit China since he took office in 2006. He had visited China in 1968 and 2004 respectively.

China and Costa Rica posted 1.56 billion U.S. dollars of bilateral trade in the first seven months of this year, up 61.3 percent year-on-year. The Chinese side predicted that trade for the whole of 2007 will reach 3 billion U.S. dollars, up from 2.16 billion U.S. dollars reported last year.

Beautifully-timed, the first post-congress visit from a head of state is Oscar Arias, president of Costa Rica. The blue, white and red flag waved at the crowds on Tiananmen yesterday, four months after the Central American country switched its allegiance from Taiwan to China. I have given up asking why this basic fact is deliberately avoided in this kind of story.

I fear this post will be illogical and completely lacking in a central theme as befits a polisher who is not so much losing his marbles as seeing them crushed into powder under the weight of pre-Congress propaganda and who is becoming bored, in a petulant kind of way, with harmonizing the content of his blog. Spare a thought, though, for those souls who are actually required to write articles under the headline of “Chinese people proud of nation’s development” rather than just tossing a few commas into the mix. What, you want the link for that one? Gluttons.

Of course, it could be a lot worse. Luckily, I have had nothing to do with the Special Olympics coverage. One reporter saw a great opportunity to link a volleyball game featuring the German Unified Volleyball Team (I had no idea we still have to make that kind of clarification) to the buzzword of the upcoming Party Congress through the headline, “German team shows harmony, though loses match”.

It seems the Zimbabwean team’s efforts are receiving a decent dollop of coverage on the Xinhua wire, some of which has been snapped up by Mugabe’s pet publication The Herald to complement the stories filed by its own correspondent.  Xinhua’s stories probably won’t go too far to softening the blow of China’s move away from Mugabe’s regime but The Herald is unrivalled in its snide remarks anyway:

Clothes for the Special Olympic Zimbabwe team were tailor-made for the grand official opening ceremony and it was a refreshing sight from some nations which wore tracksuits.

Material for the attire was sourced through the Harare Mayor’s Christmas Cheer Fund where SOZ where one of the charities which benefited to the tune of $20 million.

The money was then used to purchase cloth and a top-up was made for the tailors to come up with the attire. Sentiment among some people here had been that Zimbabwe would not be able to send a team due to the negative publicity the country has been subjected to by some international media organisations.

But to their surprise the nation has managed to field a decent number of athletes for golf, bocce, swimming and track and field.

China hosting the Special Olympics is of course a very good thing but improving awareness of people with intellectual disabilities within the country is largely down to the media. Some of the stories I have seen that have been translated into English have been so naive they don’t really help anybody. For example (an unfortunate use of quotation marks around the word “stars” it seems):

Five intellectually disabled players from the British delegation attending the 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games had their birthday party Thursday at Wugong Hotel in Shanghai.

“I am so excited now. I just want to say ‘thank you’,” 20-year-old tennis player Thomas William Styles said, eating a birthday cake.

“It’s my birthday today, and it will be a wonderful memory in my whole life,” Styles said. “I want to call my parents now and share with them my pleasure.”

“Happy birthday to you.” The delegation members sang and danced.

The five “stars” lit candles, cut the birthday cake, received gifts and expressed their gratefulness to others.

Another event in which I will not be involved in the dissemination process is the Party Congress. This leaves me with plenty of time to keep up with the latest analysis on China Media Project, which is providing superb insight. Personally I can’t get enough of the intricasies of Party speak - something that can be lost in translation in Xinhua’s English versions - and it’s all here, courtesy of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre in Hong Kong. Of course, we can keep up with the breaking news through the website of the 17th National Congress Press Center, on which the government clearly disproves theories that it doesn’t do all it can to assist the foreign media with the following advice for correspondents:

In Beijing, it becomes colder in October. For the large temperature differences between day and night in this season, we would like to remind you of taking a coat with you when working outside so as to avoid catching cold.

Nice. On a related note, I expect the homepage of  the Communist Party news website will be updated shortly, seeing as it still has a picture of Huang Ju among its bigwigs.

One story that did stir a modicum of interest in me in recent days was this piece about the number of new Communist Party members in the last five years. According to the CPC’s Organization Department, the Party took 13.16 million new members under its wing and the total now stands at 73.36 million. However, out of 19.6 million applicants only 134,000 came from the “new social stratum” - 0.68 percent. And out of them, only 64,000 “are likely to join the Party soon”. The idea of a “new social stratum” was put forward officially by Jiang Zemin in 2001 to add to the five strata of farmer, worker, intellectual, cadre and soldier. It consists of “private entrepreneurs, technicians, managerial-level staff in private or foreign-funded companies, the self-employed and employees in intermediate organizations”, according to Xinhua. Xinhua journalists are classed as intellectuals but one joked that I was from the “new social stratum” because I earned lots of money. Great dig.

It has long been accepted that many people join the Party out of convenience - to rise up the ranks more smoothly - or to please their Party-member families. Clearly members of the so-called new social stratum, a section of society that will continue to balloon over the next few years and which contains some of the country’s richest people, do not feel Party membership is of particular benefit. Nor is the CPC rushing to snap them up.

Right, I’m off to stare in wonderment at the latest anti-Dalai Lama tirade …

I’m off to Xiamen on Monday morning for a few days to eat fish balls and dried meat floss. Apparently. The holiday should go some way to protecting my long-term sanity ahead of Xinhua’s coverage of the Party congress in mid-October. I think I’ll just leave you with this article by a Chinese journalist, who works for the Global Times, on his recent “special assignment” to Burma. It has been translated by a good friend of mine Mark Binnersley, a journalist in Beijing. Obviously Xinhua News Agency has a branch in Yangon but isn’t allowed to make much use of this privilege. I thought this article serves as an example of what the average Chinese is reading about the current situation in Burma. I don’t really have time to comment on it (why do I always find myself on the computer, with bag unpacked, a few hours before my plane leaves) so make of it what you will …

Myanmar government controls the main streets and districts

Global Times journalist yesterday went on special assignment to Myanmar

By Ren Jianmin, Cheng Gang, Wang Liangliang

By September 28 the situation in Myanmar had entered a delicate period. On this day America’s CNN satellite service claimed that the Myanmar army was continuing to shoot dead more of the demonstrators, but some said the news had not been verified by a third party.

AP and AFP news agencies reported that police fired warning shots into the air, and that the military junta’s tactics had started to become effective, particularly the measure of blocking the protesting monks in their temple yards.

On the 28^th, Western media did not show any pictures of large groups of monks on the streets. But British and Australian embassy officials gave the media direct descriptions of the sounds of gunfire, guessing the numbers of people killed, obviously influencing public opinion. As a result of internet connections being cut off news from Myanmar became incomplete.

Global Times Bangkok-based journalist, on the afternoon of the 28^th entered the city that is being watched by the world, Yangon, Myanmar.

At lunchtime on September 28, Global Times journalist Ren Jianmin, without buying a ticket, anxiously rushed to Bangkok airport. Because media reports were saying Myanmar was in total chaos and a Japanese journalist had been shot dead, lots of tour groups had cancelled trips. This left this journalist feeling a bit stressed, fearing that flights to Myanmar would all be cancelled. Unexpectedly, Myanmar tickets were easy to buy at Thai Airways desk.

The plane was very empty. This journalist counted only 46 passengers on the 200-seat aeroplane, including 11 foreigners, and apart from businessmen the rest worked in Myanmar. After about two hours the plane started its descent to Yangon airport. Journalists looked out of the window and saw on the airport apron six other aircraft. According to a Thai Airways airhostess the number of people traveling to Myanmar on the company’s daily flight had not declined, but the airline had changed its evening flight to an afternoon service to get around any possible ban on nighttime landings.  

Going through Myanmar customs, foreigners and Myanmese queued separately and this journalist started to worry again because his passport stated that he was a journalist. In Bangkok journalism circles word had been going round that the Myanmar authorities were furious with journalists. It was uncertain whether the authorities would block journalists’ entry or send them back to Bangkok. Unexpectedly, the two young women customs officials processing our entry treated everyone the same and quickly stamped our passports. Passing customs, customs officials picked out some travelers for checks. When they finished looking at this journalist’s papers, the officials in not very standard Chinese said: “Xiexie”.

The drive from the airport to the hotel was uneventful, apart from a couple of junctions being blocked. According news reports, the day before had witnessed a serious conflict near the Shwedagon pagoda, which had blocked half the road, meaning that cars could only travel in one direction. At the end of the road there was a bus full of people and the small shops of the roadside were all still open, it all seemed normal. But on the roadside you could frequently see troops, and in the middle of the road there were roadblocks. In some places there were five or six army vehicles full of troops holding loaded guns, wearing steel helmets and red neckerchiefs. My local driver told Jimin me that normally the soldiers don’t wear these neckerchiefs, which signify that the soldiers are in a war situation. He also pointed out some depots on the roadside and said although these look quiet, if something happens lots of soldiers will come out from them.

Arriving at the hotel, I saw in the lift a notice reminding people that a night curfew was in place and not to go out. The hotel’s satellite TV was still broadcasting some foreign reports, including one by the DVG channel, which was repeating the previous day’s protest scenes. But there were no images of troops shooting anyone. According to local people, Myanmar TV channels had increased reporting, with the latest news being shown between other programmes.

In Yangon, journalists discovered that in every internet bar people were unable to get online, and many internet bars had just shut up shop. But according to local people, it was much easier to make long distance phone calls today than it had during the previous two days. Three days before all long distance phones had been cut off and even many national lines were not working. Near to Yangon University, on Detong Road, there is a telephone booth where lots of foreign students had queued up in the hope of calling home, but even this had been cut off. But on the 28^th this journalist discovered that the phone was working again. At the hotel I was able to call family in Bangkok and the office in Beijing, and the connection was extremely quick. It was uncertain whether this was a signal that the Myanmar government had “already got the situation under control”.

Maybe what this journalist saw in Myanmar is only one aspect. On the 28^th, CNN reported witnesses’ claims that the army had again opened fire on demonstrators to disperse the crowds. Another Western media organization broadcast a video of protesters at the end of one street dispersing amid gunfire, but the time that the incident happened was unclear and you couldn’t see whether anyone had been killed. American, British and Australian embassy officials made statements to the media that caught everyone’s attention. British ambassador Mark Canning told CNN that on the 28^th soldiers had really shot at protesters. “I heard the sound of gunfire for 15 to 20 minutes,” he said. AFP on the 28^th reported an Australian embassy official’s description of the conflict the day before, claiming: “Witnesses are saying that people killed by the army are higher than the Myanmar authorities are admitting, maybe 10 times more.”

But there has still been no believable evidence that the reports of the new “bloody conflict” by the Western media are true. AP and AFP both claimed on the 28th that soldiers were firing towards the sky, and using batons to disperse people. As for demonstrator numbers, every media organization’s figures were different. AP said there are 2,000 people, AFP said there are 1,000. And even CNN said according to some reports the monks have “already been brought under control”.

On September 28, Myanmar’s official media The New Light of Myanmar carried a front page story, under the headline “Truths and Falsehoods in Myanmar’s Political Field of Vision” criticizing the protesters for breaking up Myanmar’s unity and stability. On the last page, the newspaper carried two notices in large font. The first notice on just two lines said: “The Voice of America and the BBC have told huge lies”, warning these two media organizations: “Be careful you saboteurs”. According to this newspaper’s journalist based in America, Voice of America’s Burmese language channel has increased its reporting time two-fold lately. The second notice said: “The people wish for stability, peace and don’t want chaos and violence.” Besides that, The New Light of Myanmar on its back page carried a report on the conflict in the country on the 27^th. The report said: “The crowds of demonstrators armed with stones, bows and arrows, sticks and knives attacked security forces and attempted to seize their weapons, but the security forces stopped them many times but couldn’t control the situation. They had no choice but to fire their guns in the air to warn the people. A total of 31 members of the security forces were hurt and nine demonstrators were killed, while 10 males and one woman were hurt.”

On the 27^th, America, France and some other countries continued to announce punitive sanctions against Myanmar. America announced that it would freeze funds of 14 Myanmar government officials. According BBC reports, even America’s first lady Laura Bush has become more interested in events in Myanmar lately. She often meets with people from Myanmar who hold different political opinions about the country. In August this year, Laura even called the United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-moon to talk about Myanmar’s problems. For any first lady, these are unusual activities. A CNN analysis said as Bush approaches the end of his term as president, he is determined to see change in Myanmar. This is part of an attempt to alter the effect the Iraq war has had on his image, changing him from a “war crazed president” to a “founder of democratic peace”.

But as a result of many years of sanctions against Myanmar by America and Europe, these new measures won’t have much effect. Therefore America and Europe hope that Myanmar’s surrounding countries including India, China and ASEAN will increase pressure on Myanmar’s government. But India’s foreign ministry announced on Thursday that Myanmar’s government and society should “use all peaceful means to solve this problem”. ASEAN countries Thailand and Singapore cautiously expressed: “We are watching developments”, Malaysia said: “The only way to solve this crisis is peacefully”. Australia’s foreign minister said: “Australia won’t copy America because these measures are not effective at all”. Even a day after a Japanese journalist was killed in Myanmar, Japan said it would not stop aid to Myanmar. Additionally, Singapore’s foreign minister revealed that Myanmar has already given United Nations Undersecretary General for Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari his visa and he is on his way to the country.

Events in Myanmar have sparked international concern, and some Western media and politicians are increasingly saying that China has a big responsibility in the situation, announcing: “Only China can influence the final outcome of the situation”. Reuters news agency even reported that European Parliament vice president Edward McMillan-Scott, an experienced Conservative party European parliamentarian, appealed to Europe to boycott the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing as a way of pressuring the Chinese. According to Singapore’s United Morning Post on the 28^th, the editor of British internet magazine Spiked and columnist in The Times newspaper Mick Hume said in a column that the West has suddenly become interested in Myanmar democracy, putting all the pressure on China. But in fact this reflects the West’s increasing concern over China’s rise. They want to steer China towards taking the “international community” route, making China play the role of “third-rate regional policeman”.

Yunnan University, South East Asia Research Office chief Li Chenyang said to Global Times that out of all the countries that the West doesn’t like, Myanmar is the one of the most moderate ones. Myanmar always pursues closed and neutral foreign policy, and never makes it known what it thinks of other countries’ affairs and international hot issues. Because 90 percent of Myanmese believe in Buddhism, they are not crazy extremists. They don’t take part in terrorist activities, try to spread their religion to other countries, nor do they have the capability to produce biological or nuclear weapons of mass destruction, so they’re not really a threat to America and Western security. But because Myanmar sits in the middle of China, India and ASEAN its strategic position is quite important. American media almost every year issue propaganda that China is building a military port in Myanmar. Additionally, Myanmar has plentiful supplies of gas and minerals, and recently has discovered rich oil reserves. In fact, Myanmar’ military junta has been in government for a number of decades and lately America and Europe have only been paying attention to Myanmar because they are interested in its resources.

Yunnan Province School of Social Science vice chief He Shengda thinks Myanmar’s military junta’s ability to control the country is quite total and the monks’ momentum in the current situation has already shrunk. Myanmese don’t want to sink into chaos. In this situation, as long as the government could take adequate action, especially suitable measures as far as people’s livelihoods are concerned, and reassure ordinary people, peace could still possibly return to Myanmar in a short time. He Shengda said Myanmar’s military junta has decided its political roadmap. Myanmar’s national parliament has already in principal passed a constitutional framework, but the West is not happy about this and is not prepared to easily let go. He thinks Myanmar’s domestic livelihood issues are more urgent. If Myanmar could quickly return to a peaceful national mood, tension will be alleviated, and the worsening effects of external influences will be limited.

This link takes you to a post a week old and has already been referenced by ESWN. But I just think this piece by Mutant Palm about the British media’s coverage of “China’s cyber army” is exactly what blogging is all about and I would happily band it about the next time someone complains that bloggers are a threat to the art of journalism. And a follow up to that post is here.

My first shift after a week and a half back in the UK seemed to be sticking rigidly to the post-holiday cliché. Nothing’s changed. My sole colleague, who had been working in my absence to the tune of only his own head banging against the desk, had gone on holiday the previous day so again there was only one polisher for the department’s output. In fact, not even the news had changed. “Rescuers scrambling to reach 181 miners trapped in flooded coal mine” panted the headline of a story released just before I took my seat. What? Surely not another disaster involving close to 200 miners. There had been a tragic case involving a similar number of miners in two mines in Shandong on August 17.

Click on the headline. Relief and disbelief. It’s the same one, as was reported on August 20 with the headline “Hope fades for survival of 181 miners trapped in E China”. But if you took this latest report as a stand-alone story you would be led to believe rescuers were in touching distance of 181 alive miners. It appears the reporting of the event has turned into a distasteful show of heroic rescue efforts under which realism is buried.

But a brief flick through the stories released by Xinhua last week did throw up what may turn out to be a significant change, albeit conveyed in a curt four-line statement:

BEIJING, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) — China’s State Council, or the cabinet, on Thursday appointed He Ping as editor-in-chief of Xinhua News Agency to replace Nan Zhenzhong.

He Ping was Xinhua’s vice-president before the appointment.

The State Council also appointed Li Congjun as vice-president of Xinhua.

I think I would be pushing my luck to discuss this leadership issue in more detail so I’ll keep it brief. The appointment of Li Congjun to the number three spot behind He Ping appears to be the most significant in that he is widely expected to replace Tian Congming, who is set to retire, as president of the agency next year, thereby leap-frogging He Ping. Li Congjun was previously a deputy chief of the CPC’s Publicity Department, to whom Xinhua is answerable. I know absolutely nothing about the man but his political background doesn’t exactly inspire images of agency journalists brandishing mighty pens with new-found relish in the near future. But then what did I really expect?

Limited access to the South China Morning Post’s website often means many stories slip by unnoticed - well in my case anyway. This is regrettable given the range of some of its news coverage, much of which you can’t find anywhere else. On Wednesday, Stephen Chen reported for the SCMP (no web link for the above reason) on a protest outside Xinhua’s Sichuan headquarters in Chengdu.

More than 50 villagers protested outside Xinhua’s Sichuan headquarters in Chengdu yesterday, saying the official news agency had faked a news report about job creation.

The protesters, mostly women from Wenjiang and Chenghua districts, massed in front of the Xinhua building at about 2pm with a petition demanding the agency correct a news report about district government successes in creating jobs for dispossessed villagers, witness Huang Qi said.

Mr Huang said a Xinhua official accepted the letter but told villagers that agency leaders and journalists who wrote the article were not in the office, and so no decision about a correction could be made any time soon.

Xinhua reported that 70 per cent of landless villagers were employed, thanks to the efforts of the Wenjiang district government leadership.

“We, 200,000 landless villagers in Wenjiang have never seen you reporters,” the petition says. “The fact is most of us are jobless, hungry and homeless.

“We have been arrested, beaten up and robbed by local officials. But you never listened to us.”

Wenjiang villager Li Chunfeng said the highest payout to a family for their land was 8,000 yuan, plus a 100 yuan monthly subsidy.

“Many villagers remain unemployed seven years after the government took their land. No men went to the protest today, because they are afraid of being arrested,” she said.

Calls to Xinhua’s Chengdu office went unanswered yesterday.

Apart from the obvious, one of the most worrying aspects of this story is that no one deigns to pick up the phone at one of the main bureaus of a news agency. Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone in the Chengdu bureau and given the view tentatively put forward recently that this blog might be losing the agency too much face, I think that is probably the last we will hear of it. Still, I shall recall this particular incident when I next edit stories about fake news hotlines or laudations of the wealth of employment opportunities open to untrained hersdmen from Xinjiang/Tibet/Inner Mongolia that seem to have increased in recent months.

If I may continue my tribute to the SCMP … Also on Wednesday was a story by Bill Savadove comparing the media coverage of the Hunan bridge disaster to the way the collapse of the Minneapolis bridge was reported in the United States. It drew attention to a story on the front page of the China Daily that appears to have less taste than Xinhua canteen’s head chef and also mentioned Homer Simpson’s brain for good measure.

Even as state media was updating the death toll from the fatal bridge collapse in Hunan province , readers of China Daily saw the front-page headline: “Thousands of unsafe bridges to be fixed.”

Was it simply tragic irony? Or an attempt at a pre-emptive propaganda strike against bad news to come? Regardless, it could be embarrassing for the central government’s English-language mouthpiece, which has sought to become more appealing.

“The collapse of the 40-year-old Minneapolis bridge in the United States on August 1 also highlighted the need to fix decaying public infrastructure before it is too late,” the article said.

The mainland had more than 6,000 damaged or dangerous bridges which needed to be fixed or rebuilt, a government ministry said. No mention was made of the Hunan disaster.

Xinhua reported the collapse of the bridge in Fenghuang county at 10.27pm on Monday, six hours after it occurred.

Coverage of the two incidents is a study in contrasts between US media and the mainland’s state-controlled media, which is still struggling with a fabricated television report about dumplings stuffed with cardboard and the use of a Homer Simpson image to illustrate a Xinhua story about multiple sclerosis.

US broadcaster CNN quickly went live with news of the Minnesota bridge collapse, taking witnesses’ calls and showing viewers’ photographs. Mainland reporters were told to use Xinhua reports for the Hunan case.

The mainland has recorded several bridge failures, often blamed on shoddy building or corruption, which prompts builders to cut corners. Two months ago, a bridge in Guangdong province collapsed when a sand barge hit it. Nine people were killed.

In 1999, the then-premier Zhu Rongji complained about “tofu construction” after a bridge in Sichuan province collapsed, killing more than 40 people.

In 1998, a scandal hit Ningbo when a 2,500-metre bridge at the mouth of the Yong River cracked a month before it was to open and the two ends did not meet in the middle. A further three years was needed to rebuild the bridge, and 40 officials were said to have lost their jobs.

This article mentions “mainland reporters were told to use Xinhua reports for the Hunan case”, which is clearly a major problem. As I have said before, some Xinhua local bureau reporters go out of their way to find the facts behind disasters in very difficult situations and others would rather wait for the information to come in the form of a local government statement. In the case of the Hunan bridge, it appears the Beijing Times is finding out its own information, as shown in this report by Reuters via the Sydney Morning Herald.

“The ruptured parts of the bridge show broken stones; also, it was a clean break. It’s obvious the quality was too poor,” the Beijing News quoted an architecture expert as saying.

Xinhua reporters can also come up with a crucial quote but often it just touches upon a huge issue and leaves you dangling. Take this line from an unnamed local official, that inspired the Reuters story linked above (this quote was Xinhua’s not China Daily’s).

“While the cause of the collapse is still unknown, a local official at the scene said that a ‘traditional-and-risky’ model of bridge, made of stone and concrete, had been chosen over a steel structure to ensure it remained ‘in harmony with the natural environment’,” the China Daily said.

When I received the quote in its original form, it made little sense. Something about how concrete complemented nature. On asking for clarification, the key points about harmonious environment and the absence of steel emerged but the official remained unnamed. I later found out he was the deputy director of the communications department and a “bridge expert”, whatever that means. I asked my colleague to call the local reporter and ask him or her to try and interview the official again for some more detail as it seemed the official was willing to talk to Xinhua about an issue in which he claimed to have expertise. Ask someone to ask someone else to ask someone else. That is the frustrating level of efficiency at work in the office. The reporter was unavailable and the opportunity was gone, once again leaving us with fragments of information and the overall picture unexplained.

It is annoying to be ill and confined to my apartment on what appears to be the finest blue-sky day for a good few weeks. I barely made it through my midnight shift yesterday. Sentences were blurred and I was only able to muster enough energy to make some token grammatical changes. There are times when you are drawn into a world of Special English where, after seeing 25 stories on 25 different topics, it is no longer possible to realise many of the stories just don’t read very well. The world’s eyes were on the Olympic countdown gala on Tiananmen Square but all Olympic-related stories were dealt with by the sports department. I was instead gazing vacantly at empty official words on the 60th anniversary of Inner Mongolia which stretched out like a bunch of rubber bands way over their elastic limits. So, because my head is too fuzzy to attempt logic, I think I’ll mention a few points rather than focus on one topic.

1) A fortnight ago, following the cardboard baozi mystery, China’s press watchdog set up a hotline so the public could phone up and accuse stories in the Chinese media of being fake,

If a member of the public believes he has sniffed out a rat, he or she can call 8610-65212787 or 65212824, directly contact the news organization concerned, report to GAPP’s press office by telephone or by clicking onto http://press.gapp.gov.cn, GAPP said in a notice.

Don’t ask me why I added in the rat line although I suspect boredom would be high up on the list of reasons. Incidentally, I would like to take credit for the immortal line that is now repeated in every state media English-language report when conveying the Chinese government’s feelings about the existence of fake news reports:

In the notice, the press watchdog reiterated that “authenticity was the lifeblood of journalism”

I can’t remember the original translation (similar meaning I might add) but I thought “lifeblood” was a suitably dramatic word the government wanted to use in this context and I would like to think it will be quoted down the ages.

I asked an intern to phone up the hotline to try and dig out some interesting “fake” stories that had been reported since the operation’s inception. The operator wasn’t keen to discuss specific cases and admitted that his phone had sat in a great deal of silence. It seems such a shame that the government’s good intentions are going to waste so if anyone has a spare minute please keep an eye out for some suspicious looking stories. Maybe just type in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region into Google News. And pick up the phone. They even included the international dialling code which was nice. 8610-65212787 or 65212824.

2) If I was ever worthy of an obituary from Xinhua (there can’t be many more unlikely things in this world), the fear of the final article would probably be enough to send me into an interminable sleep. Renowned Chinese scientist Tu Guangchi died at the age of 88 on July 31. A former student of the University of Minnesota, he sounds an impressive individual judging by the university’s comments about him in 1999:

After graduating from the University, Professor Tu returned to China and went on to become the most outstanding and recognizable figure in the geologic community in China. He is credited with establishing the field of geochemistry in China and has helped to develop the world-renowned Institute for Geochemistry in Guiyang. He has also served as its Director and played a leadership role in the development of ore-deposits research and environmental sciences, both of which have had a tangible effect on mineral and water resources in China.

On August 3, the Chinese Academy of Sciences paid their respects in a simple statement on their website, summarizing Tu’s contributions to geochemistry in China.

What follows is pretty much a literal translation of the statement in Chinese released by Xinhua a full four days later, which was no doubt just a word-for-word statement from a government department.

President condolent to death of renowned scientist

State-President and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Hu Jintao has showed condolence to the death of Tu Guangchi, a renowned geochemist and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who died of illness on July 31 at the age of 88.

Other leaders or former leaders who have showed their sympathy in various ways include Jiang Zemin, Wen Jiabao, Zeng Qinghong, Wu Guanzheng, Zhang Lichang, He Guoqiang, Zeng Peiyan, Wang Gang, Li Peng, Zhu Rongji, Li Lanqing, Lu Yongxiang, Han Qide, Chen Zhili, Zhou Guangzhao, and Zhu Guangya.

Tu, a native of Huangpi, in central China’s Hubei Province, joined the CPC-led revolution in 1938. He studied at the University of Minnesota between 1946-49 and he joined the CPC in New York in August of 1949.

Between 1966 and 2007, Tu was a researcher, president and honorary president of the Geochemistry Institute of the CAS. In 1978, he founded the Chinese Society for Mineralogy, Petrology and Geochemistry. In 1980, he became a member of the CAS.

Tu was also a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Third World Academy of Sciences.

He was a deputy of the Fifth and Sixth National People’s Congresses, and a vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the Provincial People’s Congress of Guizhou Province, in southwest China.

I should have left it as it was but it didn’t seem fair on Tu Guangchi so I just switched the emphasis from Party members saying sorry to the fact the man had died. Hu Jintao enjoys hailing the importance of science and innovation but when it comes to obituaries, Party etiquette is a more pressing priority.

3) Shanghai Daily has 12 foreign polishers. Xinhua, because of my temporary demise, currently has one and the recruitment process for finding more is as efficient as China’s food and drug supervision system. China Daily, it seems, doesn’t know what to do with all their’s. This is an extract from Canadian journalist - and China Daily employee - Mitch Moxley’s blog. The whole post is here.

Now, as far as I know - and I should emphasize that I do not know much about what goes on here - I am in both business and features. But even if I were definitely assigned to either section, I still wouldn’t be sure what, exactly, I am supposed to be doing.

Thing is, China Daily has too many “foreign experts” than it knows what to do with. In an attempt to bolster credibility before the Olympics, somebody up the ladder at some point said, “We need more foreigners!” and so China Daily went out and brought in about two-dozen of us.

In years past, the foreigners here were mostly travellers, students on summer break, or out-right nut jobs. One polisher, whose career at China Daily lasted just a few days, believed in aliens and claimed to have 13 PhDs (14 if you count the one suppressed by the Vatican).

Today, all the ex-pat staff at least have journalism backgrounds, are legally sane, and, to the best of my knowledge, do not believe in aliens. But what does a state-owned Chinese newspaper do with such a distinguished staff of “foreign experts”? The answer: nobody really knows.

And the conclusion:

There are thirty some odd “foreign experts” here so some official can point and say, “Hey, look what we’ve done!” Yet every day I sit at my desk unsure of what, exactly, I’m supposed to be doing. And when I do write something, the boundaries of what I can write are still very, very narrow.

It’s a sugar coat, and I’m beginning to realize I’m just a granule of sugar.

 Oh, the luxury.

4) This isn’t an attempt to bury an apology - I have only just thought about it. It appears I was wrong regarding Homer-gate. I asked four or five people if Xinhuanet had a foreign polisher and they all thought no. But a more senior source has confirmed that there has been an American guy working there for nearly a year. Apologies for the Duff (terrible gag) info. Which brings us on to an important plea. If you are out there, Xinhuanet’s foreign polisher, please tell all! Slap on the wrist for me - how will I ever grow up to be a journalist with such lax fact-checking …

5) Many thanks to everyone who voted for Beijing Newspeak in the China Blog Awards, helping to achieve the monumental travesty of amassing more votes than Imagethief and finishing fourth in the Best News Blog category. But then he didn’t stoop to my level and actually ask for votes. The list of winners is here.

And it was an honour to receive the award for Best Political Post from the Hao Hao Report’s “Zui Hao Report” section for my post on the Chinese media reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings. That post received an incredible amount of coverage and, to be quite honest, I was waiting patiently for the sack. And cheers to China Machete for nominating it in the first place. Ryan, the man behind the Hao Hao Report and about ten other websites it seems, emailed me an icon, or whatever you call it, to display the award on my site. But considering I won with just seven votes - and one of those was from my younger sister - I think that would be too self-congratulatory. Thanks to the Chinalyst and the Hao Hao Report for organizing.