The Endless Era of Propaganda

It begins to dawn on me that this won’t be a peaceful world, or even a world of armistices, as long as a fairly big number of people refuse  to think for themselves, about some fundamental things of love and hate, especially collective feelings of love and hate.

This is a great story, pretty short, but as good as many books about similar issues – The Unwelcome Villager, by Karoline Kan.

Hatred is no monopoly of any particular nation, even if at different times, different nations may be more or less prone to it, and especially those ruled by totalitarianism.

But you will find incredibly stupid quotes from any place, anyway. Words like entertaining the idea that PRC China is a cancer/virus to the world. Words so hopelessly goofy, underexposed, and brutal, that any argument would be a waste of time.

That’s what propaganda is doing to people.

So much to Blog, but Time is scarce

Lots of work. Not so much that I wouldn’t even read, to listen, or to take a few notes anymore, but blogging doesn’t work at the moment, even though there’s so much I’d like to translate and to write about. Might find more time next week, or in early February. Either way, there’s always time for a seasonal photo or two:

Bremen rampart, near Central Station …

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… and countryside.

Chinese Press Review: Preaching Water, living in France

The BBC had a review of the Chinese press on January 8 and on January 12. The Guanchazhe (Observer, Shanghai) article quoted by the BBC, suggesting that the absence of press freedom in China is in fact a blessing, was written by Song Luzheng, a regular columnist not exclusively for Guancha, who reportedly lives in France and seems to feel extremely challenged by his environment there.

The paragraph partly quoted by the BBC in full:

In either case, from the perspective of the aftermath, this kind of Western freedom of information has not only failed to assist in solving the contradictions between different ethnic groups, but rather intensified them. In fact, with different ethnic groups, with different values and religious beliefs, using one group’s standards to judge another , their collision is inevitable. Isn’t it strange that freedom of information also includes offending other peoples’ religious freedoms? From this perspective, the absence of this kind of freedom of information in China is actually the happiness of all nationalities.

不管怎样，从后果来看，西方这样的新闻自由不但无助于解决不同族群之间的矛盾，相反会激化。毕竟，不同的族群，其价值观和宗教信仰是不同的，如果用一个族 群的标准去衡量另一个，其冲突不可避免。更何况，难道新闻自由也包括冒犯他人信仰的自由吗？从这个角度讲，中国没有这样的新闻自由，实是各民族之幸。

On other occasions, Song Luzheng described democratic societies as idle masses indulging in a life  of pleasure and comfort, and badmouthed his colleagues at Southern Weekly.

In short: Song preaches water, living in France. But he’ll certainly have his share of readers in China.

What the Chinese press seems to have avoided is coverage on how the picture of “world leaders leading the march of 1.5 million was apparently taken. On ForoCoches, a forum nominally dedicated to discussing cars but practically discussing everything (Wikipedia), a user posted two pictures with inscriptions: The caste takes a selfie in Paris.

Chinese Press Review: “a Principled Stance against Terrorism”

Huanqiu Shibao has an editorial about the attack on the Charlie Hebdo editorial staff:

The bloody terrorist attack in Paris has been condemned by many countries’ governments. However, in some non-Western societies, notably in Islamic ones, real popular reactions may be much more complex. But although values are diverse, we believe that under conditions like these, the condemnation of terrorism should be unconditional. In the face of a major issue of right and wrong, any other choice would be out of line with the common interest of humankind.

巴黎《查理周刊》编辑部遭血腥恐怖袭击，多国政府予以一致谴责。然而在一些非西方社会、尤其是伊斯兰社会里，民间的真实反应却可能复杂得多。尽管价值观是多元的，我们认为，在这种时候谴责恐怖袭击应是无条件的。在这一大是大非面前的任何其他选择，都不符合人类的共同利益。

When terrorist attacks occurred in China in the past, the position of Western public opinion was often not firm enough. After official findings in China, Western mainstream media put the descriptions of bloody terrorism in Xinjiang between quotation marks, saying that China claimed it to be “terrorist” incidents. This made Chinese people very angry.

以往在中国出现恐怖袭击时，西方舆论的立场经常不够坚定。西方主流媒体会在中国官方已做出定性后，给发生在新疆那些血腥袭击的恐怖主义描述打上引号，说那是中国声称的“恐怖主义”事件。它们那样做往往让中国人很生气。

The article suggests that Chinese society should do does better and reject double-standards.

We strongly hope that the China’s, Russia’s and other countries’ attitude will ultimately influence the West, and won’t be “adapted” to [its] geopolitical considerations.^*)

消除恐怖主义有赖于国际社会的高度团结。这些年西方社会突发恐怖袭击，世界的公开表态总是一致的。中俄等国发生恐怖袭击，西方舆论往往闪烁其词。我们强烈希望中俄等国的坚定态度能最终影响西方，而不是西方对恐怖袭击的地缘政治考虑把我们“改变”。

[…]

Of course, one can debate about strategies to combat terrorism. We notice that the leaders and mainstream media of many Western countries, when commenting on the “Charlie Hebdo” incident, all purposely expressed “support for freedom of information”. We find this debatable.

当然，反对和打击恐怖主义是可以讲策略的。我们注意到，西方多国领导人和主流媒体在评论《查理周刊》事件时，都刻意突出了“对新闻自由的支持”。我们认为这是值得商榷的。

Western freedom of information is part of its political system and social shape, and also one of the core values of Western society. But in the era of globalization, if related Western practice and the core values of other societies collide, there should be a Western will to ease conflicts, as it is not suitable to put ones own values into the center and to increase frictions with a zero-sum attitude.

西方的新闻自由是其政治体制和社会形态的一部分，也是西方社会的核心价值之一。但在全球化时代，当西方有关做法同其他社会的核心价值发生冲突时，西方应当有缓解冲突的意愿，而不宜以自己的价值为中心，以零和态度推动摩擦升级。

An English-language article, much of it identical with or similar to the Chinese version, is also available online, but there are some differences, too. The paragraph with the line I can’t translate properly is entirely missing in the English version.

The idea of enemies of China feasting on calamities within the country is a recurring theme in domestic Huanqiu Shibao articles, from the Dalai Lama‘s alleged indifference and his cliques’ cold and detached gloating after the Wenchuan earthquake 2008 to complaints from the Xinjiang CCP branch about a lack of compassion from Washington after the Bachu County incident in April 2013. In the English edition – which differs greatly from the Chinese one in terms of content anyway -, there’s a tendency to drawing a more positive and self-confident image of China.

While Huanqiu, a paper focused on international affairs, carries at least two Charlie-Hebdo-related stories on its main page online, and the above editorial topping the page, Tianjin’s official news portal Enorth published a list of the twelve victims in a less prominent article today, one that had previously been published by China News Service (中国新闻网, CNS).

In another Enorth article, also originally from CNS, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei is quoted as saying that China had made its position clear on the attack, stating shock and condemnation and expressing condolences to the victims and their relatives:

China is opposed to all forms of terrorism and supports French efforts to safeguard state security.

中方坚决反对一切形式的恐怖主义，支持法方为维护国家安全所做努力。

Hong Lei said that China’s foreign minister had sent a message to French foreign minister Fabius expressing condolences, and emphasizing China’s principled stance against all forms of terrorism.

洪磊说，中国外交部长已经向法国外长法比尤斯致慰问电，向遇难者表示哀悼，并强调了中方反对一切形式恐怖主义的原则立场。

Also today, Enorth republished an article by the Beijing Times (京华时报), with a detailed account of the attack and its victims.

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Footnotes

^*) This may also point to active use of terrorism by the West to “alter China”, but I’m not sure if that would be an accurate translation.

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Related

» ‘Made to eat’ at Ramadan, BBC Blog, July 11, 2014
» Chinese Press Review: Kunming Attack, March 3, 2014

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Deutsche Welle Updates: “Mindless Competition”

Combative Director, Annoyed Politicians, December, 2014

German politicians reacted with resentment last month, to an announcement by Deutsche Welle (DW) director Peter Limbourg to cease programs in German and other important languages if there was no significant increase in the broadcaster’s funding. “I’m thinking of the cutting of the German language as an unnecessary threat posture to get more funding. A Deutsche Welle that does without the German language and doesn’t broadcast in rare languages misses the mark and damages its reputation”, the main representative of the Christian Democrats in German parliament’s foreign affairs commisson, Roderich Kiesewetter, told a German paper, the Handelsblatt, around December 15.

Tabea Rössner, media spokesperson for the Greens in German federal parliament and quoted in the same article, also criticized Limbourg’s policy. The decision to adjust the broadcaster to the English language was “fatal for Deutsche Welle’s future”, Handelsblatt quoted Rössner. The multi-language character of DW was its core competence and its unique selling point. “Thus, a source of information, with broad great esteem for its reliability, is lost for the broad population.”

Kiesewetter had been positive about Limbourg’s idea to “counter” Russia Today (RT) television, some two months earlier.

Some 600 DW employees took to the streets in Berlin’s government quarter on December 15, according to Frank Überall, treasurer of German journalist association DJV. They reportedly protested against Limbourg’s plans. DW would only remain a success story if further developed in close cooperation with the employees and politics, and Limbourg should know that, Überall told his organisation’s website, djv-berlin.de, in December.

Members of the two biggest groups in German federal parliament’s lower house, the Bundestag, had stated in November that they had recognized the problem of structural underfunding at DW. On December 18, three days after the demonstrations in Berlin and in a debate of DW’s Aufgabenplanung (task planning), federal state minister for culture Monika Grütters and spokes persons of all parliamentary groups said that DW should get more funding on a regular basis. Above all, rising labor costs needed to be taken into account. All parties seem to have agreed that far.

The Christian Democrats, their Bavarian sister Party and the Social Democrats (SPD) – i. e. all bigger parties and all of them forming the current federal government – agree with Limbourg that DW English-language television needed to be strengthened. Martin Dörmann (SPD) pointed out that while the German television program reached only 250,000 viewers, the English program had an audience of 30 million. Members of parliament from the governing parties also suggested that DW “countered” frequently propagandistic coverage from other foreign broadcasters, from countries like Russia and China. That’s where the opposition disagreed.

The Left Party and the Greens, currently the only oppositional parties in federal parliament with only a fifth of all mandates there, oppose the idea, if it leads to closing down departments in other languages. Rather than entering a mindless competition with the English-speaking television stations of other countries, DW needed to strengthen their core competences.

In a motion for a Bundestag resolution, the Greens also addressed a paragraph from Germany’s co-determination law for federal institutions, the Federal Staff Representation Act (Bundespersonalvertretungsgesetz), § 90. The paragraph in question states that only permanent employees (with indefinite as well as temporary contracts) are eligible to elect members of the employee committees or to be elected. Non-permanent employees should be represented by the employee councils, too, according to the motion, which was turned down by the CDU/CSU/SPD majority.

The motion, if accepted, wouldn’t have greatly strengthened the position of non-permanent DW employees when defending themselves in the labor court against sackings, but it would have allowed – and obliged – the employee councils to pay closer attention to such issues.

Member of parliament Marco Wanderwitz (CDU) rejected criticism from Green member Tabea Rössner that Limbourg had taken DW employees hostage in order to get more money. However, Monika Grütters (also CDU) acknowledged that Limbourg’s move to threaten the closure of the German service had been wrong.

As many other departments, too, the German radio service was closed down during the past decade.However, there are still German-language television programs and a German-language internet website run by DW.

Foreign-language Service “from a German perspective”, January 2015

From the the [German] foreign office’s press release:

the foreign office and Deutsche Welle have agreed to establish a new multi-medial foreign-language service to promote international coverage of Germany abroad. The news agency dpa will contribute content, and the foreign office will support the project financially.

The new multi-medial foreign-language service shall spread current news and background from a German perspective to media partners and end-users all over the world. News from Germany and topics that shape discussions in the German public are at the center. The foreign-language service will be produced in German, English, Spanish, and Arabic, and fitted with regionally relevant topics respectively.

German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Social Democrat) is quoted in the press release as saying that the new service offers the opportunity to spread news from and about Germany in a contemporary way and at high standards, thus shaping Germany’s image abroad in a positive way.

Limbourg, also according to the press release, said that the offer contributes to put Germany’s global political and economic weight into a medial context. Lasting partnerships can only evolve with cultural understanding. We want to promote this understanding with an honest, independent view onto Germany.

A press release by Deutsche Welle (in English) also mentions a budget from the foreign office, but does not become more specific than the foreign office either.

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Related

» Phoenix/DW, press release, Dec 19, 2015

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2014: “Social Media”, “Little Secretaries”, Blogs, and the big Trend for 2015

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1. Getting Started

To get started, here’s one of my most recent sketches:

And if it isn’t self-explanatory, I’ll come back to it under item #4.

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2. “Social Media”

I’m not studying the annual WordPress statistics too thoroughly, but what struck me this time is that, compared with 2013, “social media”, i. e. Twitter and Facebook, have become major referring sites to this blog. that said, maybe 2013 was an exception, because in 2012, too, Facebook and Twitter mattered a lot.

That makes me feel kind of sad. Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate Tweets that link to this blog, and I appreciate links from Facebook, too, even if I usually won’t find out what you are writing about there (I’m not facebooking). But the trend seems to indicate that the internet turns from a more public into a growingly privatey-run business. That’s probably not the internet the founding fathers dreamed of.

Woeser found out in December that running an account with Facebook doesn’t make you the owner of that account – well, maybe she knew that all along, but her post came across as somewhat alarmed when she found that what she had reposted on Facebook –  a video of Tibetan Buddhist monk Kalsang Yeshe’s self-immolation that occurred on December 23 […], accompanied by an excerpted report explaining that self-immolation is a tragic, ultimate protest against repression,  had been removed by the company. At any rate, she couldn’t help but suspect that Facebook might be employing “little secretaries”, i. e. censors, just as Sina Weibo does.

Her belief that Chinese dictatorship is manipulating freedom of expression elsewhere, too – i. e. in the West – is understandable, and true to an extent. But internationally, Chinese dictatorship is only one source among several, of censorship and repression, as totalitarian as it may be.

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3. Blogs

There’s still a lot of writing going on in the – what was the name again? – English-language Chinese Blogosphere. The nicest surprise this year was the return of EastSouthWestNorth. Obviously, I have no idea if the recent posts, mostly about “Occupy Central”, mark anything more than a stopover, but they are what makes the internet great: raw material, but made intelligible to every user, to work his way through, without easy answers right at his fingertips.

Then there’s Sino-NK. Articles finished and polished, but from a sober perspective, and plowing their way through the past and present of Sino-North Korean relations, rather than leaping at every headline.

Some blogs I used to like are beginning to look like mainstream media, but here is something I’d recommend, to make this three blog recommendations: China Copyright and Media. They do what really needs to be done: they look at the CCP paperwork. That’s no yadayada, that’s the decisions the party is actually taking and never fail to surprise our media when carried out, even though they’ve usually been communicated long before.

I can’t close the blog compartment of this post without a link to that blog post there in Shanghai: the Mother Teresa of the blogosphere, musing about the whereabouts of the legendary Dalai Lama of China blogging.

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4. The Big Trend for 2015

It’s not terribly original, but it seems to be obvious. China’s totalitarian skeleton is being refitted with flesh, after a few years of what looks (at hindsight) like a thaw, during the days of the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao collective troupes. This is now turning into a blend of modernization and personality cult. The slaughterhouse scene heading this post refers to the political death of Zhou Yongkang, and the Great and Impeccable Leader who brought it about. To lose your CCP membership is probably worse than death. If you are a truly faithful Communist, anyway.

Happy new year, everyone!

2014: Memorable Shortwave Logs

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1. Russia

One memorable listen would be the Voice of Russia (VoR or, in its dying days, Radio VR). Last time I listened to the station on shortwave was on March 27, from about 06:30 to 08:00 UTC on 21800 kHz (probably Irkutsk transmitting site). Shortwave transmissions from what had been Radio Moscow until the early 1990s, and Voice of Russia since then, were terminated this year, apparently by the end of March.

2. Northwestern Germany

I came across a low-powered shortwave station (one to ten kW) in northwestern Germany in April, Radio HCJB Weenermoor. HCJB used to be the callsign of a shortwave station in Ecuador, has a history of more than eight decades there, and much of their operations has been shifted to Australia after the construction of an airport near Ecuador’s capital Quito which led to the closure of the big HCJB’s transmission site there.  HCJB’s German department, now named “Vozandes Media”, launched the Weenermoor transmission site in June 2012. Even earlier, apparently in 2009, the German department had installed a shortwave transmitter and an antenna on Pichincha Mountain near Quito. It’s for the local and regional population (programs in Quechuan and Spanish), but can frequently be heard in North America and Europe as well, on 6050 kHz.
Most of the programs aired from Weenermoor aren’t my cup of tea, but they do broadcast a half-hour media magazine several times every Saturday – interesting stuff for German-speaking shortwave listeners.
Many of the first-generation German broadcasters at HCJB were apparently Mennonites. At least three of them, Sally Schroeder, Maria Hübert, and Peter Hübert, were emigrants – or refugees – from the former USSR. Mennonites with a USSR history are frequently referred to as “Russian Mennonites”.

3. Sweden

Then there was the Radio Nord revival. The legendary offshore radio station “Radio Nord” came into life years before yours truly did, but a number of fans in Sweden have established the tradition of making annual broadcasts to commemorate the station. They are also blogging. Their broadcasts in August this year caught my attention, and that was the first time in years that I heard a shortwave signal from Sweden at all (except for ham radio signals, obviously).

4. Northern Germany

Hamburger Lokalradio QSL card: a one-kW transmitter in Göhren (near Schwerin), and studios in Hamburg. 6045 kHz (Wertachtal) is outdated – the Wertachtal transmitter site was » blown up in November.

Almost next door: Hamburger Lokalradio. They are broadcasting mostly on FM in Hamburg (96.0 MHz) and on the internet (see bottom of this page). The station also appears on shortwave (at least) three times a week. Own observation: on Wednesdays at 12:30 UTC or earlier, until 15:00 UTC (or later), on 7265 kHz, and on Sundays, from 14:00 UTC (or earlier) to 14:30 UTC (or later), on 9485 kHz. They broadcast in English, too: Glenn Hauser‘s World of Radio audiomagazine is aired on Saturdays at 07:30 and 15:30 UTC on 7265 kHz, and on Wednesdays, also at 07:30 and 15:30 UTC, on the same frequency, according to this BCL News notice. If you understand German, their culture programs are definitely worth listening to.

5. Ukraine / USA

First time in many years that Radio Ukraine International (RUI) appeared on shortwave again – not from Ukraine, but from Okeechobee, Florida, aired by WRMI. Not an ideal time of day here in central Europe, at 23:30 to 24:00 UTC (and I’m not sure if RUI will stay on the air from Florida with the beginning of this new year), but it’s fun while it lasts. The signal varied during the ten times I listened this year, from good to nil – it was probably much better in North America, the main target area.
I did catch a signal right from Ukraine in May and July, Radio Dniprovska Hvylya, but all in Russian or Ukrainian language.

6. Taiwan

Voice of Guanghua, transmitting from Guanyin or Kuanyin District, Taoyuan City, northwestern Taiwan. Their programs are in Standard Chinese (guoyu), apparently without being jammed. At any rate, it came in pretty well on 9745 kHz at daytime UTC, on December 19 and 26. Japanese tourists seem to have done the usual thorough research and took a photo of the station’s transmitter site, some time during the past ten years.

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Related tag: »shortwave

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