Media Coverage: Unspoken (and Spoken) Rules

The East is Red, Bremen-Hastedt power station, August 2010

Huanqiu Shibao isn’t the source of information in my books, but I’m glad to serve people who feel that some of its coverage is missing on American or European papers and websites. “Can’t quite see this getting our front page headines tomorrow”,  Richard W. wrote on the Media Lens Message Board yesterday.

That said, I hope people there are aware that there are unspoken, and spoken (propaganda department) rules of media reporting in China, too.

Currently, everything that may serve to create the impression that the Taiwanese public – or a substantial share of it – longed for being “united with the motherland” seems to be high on the agenda of the Chinese press. This includes a lecture by Noam Chomsky held there on Monday. Unless I find the contents of the lecture on Professor  Chomsky’s own website, or on any other reliable source, I don’t take it for granted that he was quoted correctly, and in a ontext he would agree with.

That said, Chomsky is a very outspoken academic – and an esteemed one, even at the Economist.

Huanqiu Shibao, in its report of Tuesday, went to great length to point out what a heavyweight Chomsky is, before quoting him. What they didn’t point out is how much China would need a Chomsky of its own.

Huanqiu Shibao: Be no Accomplice

Huanqiu Shibao, a Chinese paper apparently published under China Daily, had a report on Tuesday on a lecture given by Professor Noam Chomsky at the Academia Sinica in Taipei on Monday.

According to Huanqiu Shibao, Chomsky described Taiwan as a country conditioned by America, and an accomplice of America, a “top-terrorist country” (全球头号恐怖主义国家). America was making use of other countries and territories to help implementing terrorism (除了运用整个国家机器从事恐怖行动，更厉害的是，还会利用其它国家和地区帮忙执行恐怖主义). This included Taiwan. The US state department’s demand that China should bear more responsibilities only meant that China should act in accordance with American wishes.

A summary of Chomsky’s lecture by Radio Taiwan International (RTI, which translates the professor’s name as 杭士基, while Huanqiu uses the transliteration 诺姆•乔姆斯基) includes none of the above attributions.

The lecture was titled Contours of World Order: Continuities and Changes.

On Monday, Huanqiu reported on a Cross-Strait Peace and Development Forum (两岸和平发展论坛), reportedly a Taiwanese organization of nineteen civic organizations established in March this year, among them the Taiwan Labor Party. The Forum reportedly called on president Ma Ying-jeou‘s government to abandon it’s “remnant Cold war state of mind” (抛弃冷战的残余心态) in its interaction with China.

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Related
Good Ganbu: Be no Chess Piece, July 29, 2010
Xinhua: “Taiwan Public condemns ‘Rebiya Card’”, July 23, 2010
Noam Chomsky’s political views, Wikipedia

Obituary: Qian Weichang (1912 – 2010)

Qian Weichang (钱伟长)*), a Chinese physicist and applied mathematician, died in Shanghai on July 30, 2010, aged 98. Qian was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, on October 9, 1912 , according to the International Who is Who, 2004 edition. In a public notice of today, Shanghai University (上海大学), whose president Qian had been till the end, writes that all its staff would turn grief into strength (化悲痛为力量), continue to put Qian’s educational thought into practise, and make Shanghai University a first-class joint-research university in China. Among other functions, Qian was the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference sixth, seventh, eighth and nineth national committee’s deputy chairman, a member of the China Democratic League (中国民主同盟), and a close friend of the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党的亲密朋友). Xinhua quotes Rao Zihe, president of Tianjin’s Nankai University, as saying that “Qian put forward the advanced concept of open education in China last century, which has not yet been fully realized in universities nowadays”.

Enorth (Tianjin) ranks Qian Weichang as one of China’s three top scientists (三强), along with Qian Xuesen (钱学森) who died last year, also aged 98, and Qian Sanqiang (钱三强, 1913 – 1992), a nuclear physicist, and highlights all three of them as paragons of patriotism. Enorth draws a link from the question [once] asked by Qian Xuesen – “Why don’t our schools ever bring up outstanding talents?” (为什么我们的学校总是培养不出杰出人才？) – to discussions after his death in 2009 from the top levels to the media and learners, to the Outline of China’s National Plan for Medium and Long-Term Education Reform and Development for the 2010-2020 period which was released late last month. Enorth describes the National Plan as an adequate way to live up to the three Qians’ legacy.

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Note
Qian Weichang is the common pinyin spelling. Qian was also known as Chien Wei-zang.

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Related
Wen Jiabao visits Elderly Scientists, Global Times, August 8, 2010
“Turn Grief into Strength”, Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 1976

Yellow Sea Updates: “no War, no Stimulus”

Aircraft carrier USS George Washington, which participated in last month’s joint drills between the US and the ROK in the Sea of Japan, will be sent to the Yellow Sea for an upcoming exercise, “after days of hesitation” at the pentagon, writes China Daily. The paper quotes a Chinese Navy Military Academy researcher, Lie Jie, as saying that the US is bound to gradually seek a bigger say in East Asia.”It will never give up the region and will take a real step sooner or later.”An air force colonel, Dai Xu (戴旭), is quoted as saying (or writing) that “inside the diplomat’s velvet gloves, there should be powerful iron hands”, demanding steps that would make the US “respect” China.

In a blog post of today, Dai argues that America had always been searching for adversaries, as its economy lost its stimulus whenever there was no war. Without an adversary, America was unable to unite – 从国家历史看，美国不停地进行战争，寻找对手，实际上是其社会发展的常态。没有战争，美国的经济就失去刺激；没有对手，美国就无法凝聚全体的意志。美国已经走上了这样一条战争的不归路。America was now attempting to form a NATO-style alliance with South Korea, Australia, India, and ASEAN, writes Dai.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell announced the aircraft carrier’s participation in upcoming naval exercises west of the Korean coastline on Thursday.

No full transcript of China’s foreign ministry press conference on Friday seems to be available yet, but the papers publish single Q & A exchanges, among them this one, between an unidentified reporter and spokeswoman Jiang Yu (姜瑜):

Q: According to news reports, the American department of defense said that USS George Washington will participate in several future South Korean-American joint military exercises in the Yellow Sea. What is the Chinese side’s comment?

A: We have expressed the Chinese side’s clear and firm position concerning the South Korean-American joint military exercises before. We encourage the parties involved to deal with the Chinese side’s concerns and positions in a serious and earnest way.

问：据报道，美国防部发言人近日称，美“乔治·华盛顿”号航母将参加今后几个月韩美在黄海举行的联合军演。中方对此有何评论？

答：我们已就韩美联合军演问题多次向有关方面表明了中方明确、坚定的立场。我们敦促有关方面严肃认真地对待中方的关切和立场。

Also at a press conference, Japanese foreign minister Okada Katsuya (岡田克也, quoted by Huanqiu Shibao via Kyodo News) said that “military exercises in the open seas are permitted by international law. We hope that China will respond in a calm way”. Concerning the passage of Chinese naval vessels near Japan on April 5, Katsuya is quoted as saying that “that was an exercise in international waters. Although there were problems about dealing with the matter, legally, there were no problems”.

Meantime, an Associated Press (AP) correspondent writes that

US naval planners are scrambling to deal with what analysts say is a game-changing weapon being developed by China — an unprecedented carrier-killing missile called the Dong Feng 21D that could be launched from land with enough accuracy to penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of more than 1,500km. The weapon, a version of which was displayed last year in a Chinese military parade, could revolutionize China’s role in the Pacific balance of power, seriously weakening Washington’s ability to intervene in any potential conflict over Taiwan or North Korea. It could also deny US ships safe access to international waters near China’s 18,000km -long coastline.

However, even if America may have to get used to the fact that aircraft carriers aren’t unsinkable, Ed Stephens jr, formerly a naval officer himself, argues that the Dong Feng 21D (DF-21D), an anti-ship ballistic missile, would depend on updated guidance to hit a moving target:

If you think your life is rough, try being a ballistic missile warhead. Specifications vary widely, but a typical warhead will sizzle along at 15,000 mph or so at peak speed, and when it re-enters the atmosphere it can encounter 19,000 degrees Fahrenheit of friction heat. That’s not exactly a hospitable environment for delicate sensors and guidance stuff.

However, Stephens concedes that the DF-21D appears to be quite a serious effort indeed.

An appearance by the George Washington in the Yellow Sea had become a matter of “face”, in the view of Robert Haddick of Small Wars Journal.

Anything less than a transit of the Yellow Sea within the next few weeks by the George Washington and its escorts will come off as a loss of face by the United States,

he wrote in an article for Foreign Affairs in July.

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Related
Dong Feng 21D “nearing operational capability”, Stars & Stripes, July 19, 2010
Short DF-21 History, Global Security, last update on June 25, 2010
PLA Raises its Voice, Asia Times, March 9, 2010

Updates: Love and Respect, Fifty-Cent Party

五毛红旗，我爱你。

There are such things, say the China Digital Times and the Telegraph.

Either nepotism (Telegraph) or a sense of love and respect for Mao Zedong, transferred to Mao Xinyu, the late helmsman’s grandson, were definitely  a factor in Mao Xinyu’s recent promotion to the rank of a major general.

And there’s such a thing as a wumaodang (Fifty Cent Party), too, if a set of documents currently circulated on the internet are genuine, and the China Digital Times is up to date.

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Related
50 Cent Party, Wikipedia

China: no full Modernization in our Times?

Chinanews Net (中新社) quotes Chinese Academy of Sciences researcher He Chuanqi (何传启), director of the Center for Modernization Research, as identifying thirteen major opportunities and challenges for China’s modernization. The challenges were greater than those faced by any other country and were giving rise to great uncertainties, He reportedly said today. The main challenges were issues of population, resources, energy, agriculture, urbanization, education, technology, the (political) system, concepts, the economy, society, informationization, and greening. On the 8th Chinese Modernization Forum, he delivered a report on “challenges and Prospects of China’s modernization”, saying that if China maintained its current population policies, this would lead to a Chinese population of 1.4 billion – and if the current policies were eased, it would lead to 1.5 billion in the 21rst century. The current level of modernization had been achieved with a population of one billion.

Per capita, the natural resources China was able to provide were below the global average level. China had become dependent on oil imports, the rural population still exceeded 600 million with earnings below the national average, the country’s urbanization was neither completed nor uncontroversial, neither elementary nor higher or further education levels were high, innovation was over-planned and over-regulated and rather inefficient, China’s political system lagged behind economic development which meant that democratization needed to be speeded up, and in terms of concepts, feudalism (封建观念, fēngjiàn guānniàn) still lingered and influenced modernization. Concerning the economical challenges, among others, there was a growing gap between Chinese average incomes and global ones, universal social security coverage was needed to ensure social stability, a balanced development of manufacturing and informationization was needed for a new pattern of industrialization, and a green development formula was needed to create a double-win situation for the economy and the environment.

In He’s view, according to the Chinanews article, the concept of knowledge-based society, deindustrialization, informationalization and globalization, a new technological revolution, networking and greening offer opportunities for China’s modernization. It was estimated that China’s modernization level could rank among the top-20 nations worldwide in the year of 2100. China had risen from the status of a less-developed to a primary-developed country so far. It would take a struggle of another 100 years to come from the status of a primary-developed to an advanced, and a fully modernized country.

The initial four comments aren’t exactly supportive. Only one of them considers He’s report to be objective and something for the political decisionmakers to learn from. One points out that corruption is in fact the biggest challenge (it’s striking indeed that the article makes no mention of either corruption, or rule of law), one commenter seems to draw unfavorable comparisons with the past, and one suggests that the expert should eat shit – are there no people to whom China is good as is?

He’s forecast seems to look surprisingly conservative indeed – but then, it doesn’t take full modernization for China to become the world’s largest economy, and to translate that into political weight.

Either way – how much sense do such forecasts make? If technology transfer continued at its current pace, it’s hard to see how it should take China another ninety years to become a fully developed country. Political decisions at home and abroad, by foreign governments and businesses, will have a strong influence on China’s development, too.

It would be interesting to read He’s report in full, to find out if there are more aspects covered by it than the Chinanews article would suggest. But even as it is, it has caught the attention of CNA (Taiwan’s Central News Agency) and of the Liberty Times online edition (自由電子報) already.

The long-term view He’s report takes may also be meant to be a measure against complacency, rather than scientific material. The article has certainly enraged a handful of laobaixing netizens so far.

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Related
How an Independence Movement is Born, New Dominion, Aug 5, 2010
Fourth Modernization, One Step Up, July 30, 2010

RTI: For the World to Hear?

Radio Taiwan International (RTI), the foreign broadcasting service of Taiwan’s Central Broadcasting System (中央廣播電台), celebrated its 82nd birthday on Monday. Premier Wu Den-yih attended the celebration at CBS broadcasting house, and a letter from president Ma Ying-jeou was read at the ceremony in which Ma praised RTI for the service it performs by broadcasting information about Taiwan’s vibrant democracy for the world to hear.

RTI’s freedom to report about Taiwan isn’t beyond doubt. When then CBS board chairman Cheng Yu (鄭優) resigned his post in 2008, and Shao Li-chung (紹立中, then Radio Taiwan International‘s director-general), and Shao’s deputy Chang Cheng-lin (張正霖), plus four members of the board, resigned along with them or offered their resignations, there appeared to be little coverage on it by RTI itself.

The Ma government – allegedly – interfered with the media, particularly public television, the Central News Agency (CNA), and RTI, too, placing pressure on Radio Taiwan International to stop news reports critical of the Chinese Communist Party.

Back then, the Government Information Office’s (GIO) minister Vanessa Shih (史亞平) denied the allegations and said that the GIO, as a supervisor of RTI, has urged it to build a good image of the country. It has not asked them not to criticize China.

Less than three months after her statement, it was announced that Shih would also step down as the GIO minister, to become Taiwan’s representative in Singapore.

The Central Broadcasting System (CBS) was founded in Nanjing on August 1, 1928.

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Related
A Bookish Experience, April 12, 2010

Mao Xinyu becomes Major-General

Mao Xinyu (毛新宇), the PLA Academy of Military Sciences (AMS) Department of War Theory and Strategic Studies (中国人民解放军军事科学院战争理论和战略研究部) deputy director and a grandson of Mao Zedong, has been promoted to the rank of major general in the Chinese army, reports the Hindustan Times. Aged 40, he is reportedly one of the youngest officers presently holding the rank in the People’s Liberation Army, but Bao Guojun, a spokesman at the AMS who confirmed Mao’s promotion, explained that “this is a natural elevation. Mao’s many achievements earned him the right to be promoted.”

According to the BBC‘s website in Chinese, the government website of Guangyuan, a prefecture-level city in Sichuan province, first reported Mao’s promotion on Sunday, which is Army Day in China. Mao was promoted on an unspecified day before Sunday. Media reports about a promotion in September last year were later said to be “rumors”. AFP , quoting Changjiang Daily at the time, was one of the agencies who apparently reported Mao’s elevation prematurely. Mao Xinyu was later quoted by media as saying himself that he would become major general in July this year. In his capacity as a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), he appeared to be rather unwilling to talk with the press in March this year.

Mao Xinyu is the son of Mao Anqing (毛岸青), who in turn is said to be Mao Zedong’s last known surviving son. Mao Anqing’s mother was Yang Kaihui (杨开慧), Mao Zedong’s second wife, from 1920 to 1930.

Mao Anqing was a (Russian-speaking) translator and also a researcher with China’s Academy of Military Sciences, which gave him military rank and ensured his status and livelihood, according to the Independent‘s obituary of March 2007.