There has been a series of cuts into the station’s budget in the past ten years or so, there are less programs – in German language – than before (they used to repeat themselves every eight hours or so, and now it is only a four- or two-hours program that is being repeated during the day. Radio Austria International and Swiss Radio International were closed down completely or almost completely, and the way the Deutsche Welle works sometimes seems to suggest that they have to justify their remaining budget by promoting Germany and make us look nice to audiences abroad – to a mainland Chinese audience, too. But if that’s the case, it isn’t what makes a country any greater, and it does actually make the value of its international broadcaster smaller. It certainly isn’t what made the BBC World Service what it still is today.

One of the most interesting comments on the matter came from Günter Nooke, the federal government’s human rights commissioner and member of the Deutsche Welle board of directors. “You can’t be proud of your distance to your own state on the one hand, and slip into the proximity of other governments on the other.”

A number of German authors also wrote a critical letter – however, it is confusion about who of them really signed it. One of them, Lutz Rathenow, was apparently surprised to hear that he had criticized the Chinese service. The biggest problem that I see is a high degree of opportunism. It shouldn’t have been chique to hype China in the past – and it shouldn’t be chique to blanketly condemn its political system now. It should be a question of values and convictions. That could have spared the Deutsche Welle some of the chaos it has probably gone through during the past weeks.

I hope the chaos will help to find a straighter and more convincing way of programming.

I have to admit I haven’t been following this incident. So what I’m saying here may not be at all relevant.

But it seems to me that the open letters (there are actually two of them) to your government were signed by a very large group of Chinese and non-Chinese people from all around the world. Many of these signatories are very famous internationally. They don’t seem to be to be FLG members, as some of their critics in Germany have suggested. That explains why your parliament is taking their protest against Zhang Danhong so seriously.

You can find a record of both letters, as well as the names of those who signed them at Woeser’s site. Check it out:

http://woeser.middle-way.net/2008/11/blog-post_03.html?showComment=1225766220000