Two hours prior to the anchor’s emotively-worded but utterly deadpan performance (which, along with her tearfully hyperbolic North Korean counterpart, deserve Oscar nominations), I had been discussing humorous cat anecdotes with a few of the Chinese people at my local gym. One of them, coincidentally, was a CCTV presenter, who told us her cat had learned to move its feces from its litter tray and onto the kitchen floor, thereby incriminating her pet dog. My boyfriend joined in the discussion. That afternoon, he had stood up in his office to announce the death of Kim Jong-il, China’s great pal, the guy whom the CCP never gets tired of shielding, and was met with utter indifference. “I don’t care about him,” remarked his deskmate. “I’m busy.”

Official portraits of Mao and Kim.

Kim Jong-il’s name wasn’t mentioned once in my office the following day, apart from by myself and the other two foreign employees, who were keeping up with The Onion‘s rolling-out of every back article it had on everyone’s favorite communist oligarch. I had personally witnessed my boyfriend’s parents teasing one another for crying after learning of the death of China’s own Dear Leader, Mao Zedong:

“You cried!”

“No, YOU cried!”

The endless footage of Mediterranean-style weeping helpfully provided to China’s state mouthpieces by North Korea’s even more ridiculous state media agency may have been a popular source of amusement on the Chinese blogosphere, but the Chinese, at least those in my immediate vicinity, seem pretty much unmoved. Compare this to the tears when staff at my previous place of work found out about Michael Jackson’s death in 2010. My boyfriend entered a deep mourning for the loss of his favorite pop icon, joining in the bidding wars on eBay for one of those precious few signed albums, so that he might own something his idol had once touched. To this day, Michael Jackson tributes and rip-offs dominate Chinese talent shows and the few other “entertainment programs” permitted to exist by the Party’s newly-zealous media czars. Hell, I’ve even seen Jackson referenced in advertisements for the children’s TV channel Kaku and the utterly ineffectual brain medication Nao Bai Jin.

I doubt the same treatment, whether reverent or shamelessly exploitative, will be meted out to Kim. Of course that’s entirely due to the media blackout imposed when it comes to mocking North Korea’s potato-faced ex-leader, but even if such a blackout weren’t in place, not even China’s countless brands of undrinkable alcohol would be able to up sales with a grinning Kim clad in a Tang jacket, proffering one of their products from the side of a bus.

The fact that CCTV was compelled to offer up this shameless smorgasbord of communist solidarity is further testament to the decline in its relevance to the sociopolitical views of the Chinese people. Time was that the television was the principal source of both entertainment and information in a Chinese household, and CCTV’s word had gravitas. Now, whether it’s slamming the Nobel Peace Prize committee, depicting the heroic actions of police in hog-tying and humiliating prostitutes, or offering up pronouncements from the Central Committee as if they were engraved on tablets of stone fresh from Mount Sinai, Chinese people have learned to switch off. If we may return to my gym for a moment, lack of a satellite or cable connection means the TVs are eternally tuned to domestic channels, but it’s curious that as soon as a news, current events or “lifestyle” show comes on, a staff member switches over to a nature show, TV drama or kung fu movie. That’s what people want to watch.

North Korean and Chinese propaganda posters.

You can’t liberalize education, open the floodgates to the Internet, sanction overseas travel and expect people to swallow the same propaganda they did in the 1970s. I doubt even the most voracious Party cadres in China looked to Kim Jong-il as an example. While his unique brand of belligerent Stalinist autocracy was a goldmine for satirists, it ran utterly against the Chinese government’s often painful efforts to appear non-confrontational and universally friendly. China rejected the cult of personality with the inauguration of Deng Xiaoping. It realigned its planned economy towards profitability—shrewdly funneling profits to the center in the process—and shaping China into a “rich country, poor people” nation modeled on 19th century Britain. In every sense other than name, the Communist Party of China and its North Korean equivalent have parted ways. And yet, at least on CCTV, they seem to be placed on an equal footing, with Kim’s death treated as the martyrdom of a fellow comrade who, of course, died of “exhaustion” and not a heart attack induced by a blowjob on a luxury train journey, or whatever Kim was more likely to have been doing when he finally shuffled off.

Why not be objective? Show the North Korean footage, sure, but at least acknowledge public opinion by keeping declarations of grief as low-key as possible. Chinese people overwhelmingly pity North Koreans—they compare North Koreans to Chinese two generations ago. The average Chinese youngster, many of whom will have come into contact with someone who has visited the hermit dictatorship on business, sees North Korea as what would have happened had the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward both come at once. Starving, brainwashed and helpless in the face of an absolute despot they have to pretend to worship as if he were a mix of Jesus, Che Guevara and Santa Claus. Sure they’ll cry for the cameras, but don’t expect that of the comparatively well-off and infinitely better-informed Chinese. Not only is it patronizing, it has the potential to be politically incendiary.

If CCTV continues to speak for the Chinese people (as Rui Chenggang famously did for Asia), and what it says continues to run directly counter to popular views, the only result will be that viewers will simply switch off their sets altogether and either immerse themselves in the relative freedom of real world or, more likely, Internet debate. CCTV and print media have had their day as China’s principal source of mind control, and yet they remain massively over-funded when compared to the most effective tool of State control: the education system. Schools in China are screaming for funding, with principals having to pay for school buses out of their own pocket, teachers underpaid and offered minimal training, and children who respond to the absence of authoritative teaching by reaching across borders via the World Wide Web for information. In the few instances where the government has gone all-out to enforce ideology, such as safe sex or anti-Japanese sentiment, the results have been startlingly effective.

However, rather than getting them when they’re young and impressionable, CCTV has the unenviable task of preaching to hardened cynics who, increasingly, are uninterested in hiding their real thoughts and feelings. Now, thanks to their utterly disingenuous coverage of Kim’s death, that distance from China’s social reality, is showing itself with greater clarity than ever before.

Brother High-speed Rail Safety Helmet

Niels Bohr once said, “Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them.” Certainly, humor is one way in which the Chinese public have chosen to deal with the Wenzhou train collision. I recently wrote an article for ChinaGeeks about the dual catchphrases uttered by ministry of railways spokesman Wang Yongping at a press conference after the Wenzhou train collision. His two phrases—”This is a miracle,” and, “Whether or not you believe it; either way, I believe it.”—have been co-opted by the Chinese public and raised to the apotheosis of humor: the Internet meme. But these Internet memes do more than poke fun at the governement—they prolong the public memory of the incident and undermine the government’s credibility. As I write in the piece:

Aside from finding humor in an otherwise depressing situation, memes like this are important because they embed the event in the social consciousness, preserving knowledge about the event for a longer period of time. After all, two of government’s greatest allies are forgetfulness and the extremely short attention span of the average citizen.

These cultural memes show that although the government is pursuing Internet censorship more and more seriously—blocking websites, deleting posts and reposts—they cannot stop their infamies from seeping into the culture itself. Perhaps the only way citizens can remind themselves of the tragedies that are whitewashed, rewritten, or otherwise brushed aside, is to make them a part of the underground lexicon.

But recently, jokes about the Wenzhou train collision have transcended Internet forums and crossed over into reality. The first example is a clever bit of performance art I first came across on the Shanghaiist regarding a picture of a man riding the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail wearing a motorcycle helmet. The Chinese Internet has dubbed him “Brother High-speed Rail Safety Helmet.”

Yunnan Baiyao Ointment. It might just save your life.

The reporter enumerates his safety kit:

The safety equipment he prepared includes a helmet, homemade seat belt, flashlight, Swiss Army knife, fan, floral water, video camera, umbrella, Yunnan Baiyao Ointment.

Brother Helmet was going from Beijing to Wenzhou via Shanghai and was, according to the report, sweating profusely. After he arrived safely, Brother Helmet remarked, “at least the fan came in handy.”

Another joke was tweeted on Weibo and has been retweeted and quoted a fair amount:

There’s a part in Harry Potter 7 where Dumbledore says: “If you want, there is a train that will take you there.” Harry asks, “Take me where?” Dumbledore: “The next life.” A guy next to me says, “Shit, it’s the high-speed rail!” Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha then we all burst out laughing.

Though it is impossible to locate the original tweet or ascertain the story’s veracity, the joke and the retweets prove that the Wenzhou train collision remains fresh in citizens’ minds and could grow to be emblematic of the Chinese government’s poor, ahem, track record.

Irene Xiong contributed research.

There is a battle raging in Hollywood, and it’s getting ugly. The explosive growth of the Netflix customer base, which now has more than 24 million subscribers (more than any individual cable channel), has seen the Los Gatos, CA based company morph, in last ten years, from an under-the-radar DVD rental service into the distributor of movies online.

Netflix’s rise has come at Hollywood’s expense as cable and other traditional distribution windows have refused to buy titles that have hit Netflix, claiming that Netflix’s online on-demand streaming platform robs the cable companies of the ability to sell ads for the same content. In addition to a loss in licensing revenue from cable companies, Netflix has contributed to the decline in DVD sales across the board, as customers opt to rent and stream instead of own and buy. Essentially, Netflix’s model encourages customers to avoid more profitable viewing options for cheaper, online streaming content.

Continue reading at Penn-Olson.

"Aside from positive news received from authorized departments, do not report anything, and do not offer any comment."

The storm began with a screenshot of a message that a journalist received on his cell phone, which seemingly forbade all media from mentioning or writing about the Wenzhou tragedy or paying respects on touqi. (Pictured right.) That heavy-handed, some might say absurd, attempt to stop the truth from spilling out across the newspapers and televisions provoked strong responses on Weibo.

One of the first comments last night came from the editor of Southern Daily’s investigative reports department:

Tonight, hundreds of newspapers are recalling tomorrow’s issue, thousands of reporters are killing their articles; China, tens of thousands of souls are wandering restlessly, millions of truths are being torn to pieces. This country, countless evil hands are humiliating you.

Information about 7.23 (as the Wenzhou tragedy is called here) disappeared off of the main pages of Sina, Tencent, Sohu, 163.com, People’s Daily, Xinhua and iFeng.com. Every single newspaper and every television station across the country shelved their memorial reports and turned instead to Party-approved news.

Weibo stood alone.

A Defining Event

Journalists and editors came out of the woodwork and posted their “harmonized” front pages onto Weibo, pages that were forwarded thousands of times as professors, intellectuals and just plain outraged netizens called for justice, each posting the picture or video that best summed up the crisis for them.

Harmonized pages from Nandu Daily.

Wang Qinglei, the producer of CCTV’s 24 Hours program, was sent home from work after publicly protesting the way the government was handling the Wenzhou tragedy. He posted this after learning of the nationwide ban on touqi news:

A society will always have a few what I think are “basic professions”: teachers, doctors and journalists. If a nation still has at least one teacher willing to stay and teach children, then that nation still has hope; if a nation still has at least one doctor willing to heal the sick, that nation still has life; if a nation still has at least one journalist willing to defy authority and fix society’s ills, that nation still has soul. China has many!

Harmonized cover story from Xinjing News.

Calls to wake up and rise up went across Weibo and others spoke of being part of a nationwide revolution against the barbaric destruction of civilization, against the ignorant evil oppressors of truth and against the traitors to the Chinese nation, the corrupt officials and the police that do their bidding.

Left: Covers with the headline, "The Ministry of Railways must answer whether rescuing people is their first priority." Right: harmonized obituary page from Xinjing News.

A Silent Revolution

Graph showing spread of news via Weibo and traditional media.

But Shen Yang, a professor of information technology at Wuhan’s Information Technology Institute, used the spread of news about the train collision to compare the power of micro-blogging with that of traditional media. His relevant conclusions:

1) Weibo is fast and explosive.

2) [News on] Weibo lingers at the top for two days, then slowly begins to descend.

3) Weibo reaches its peak a day before traditional media, but their reports are similar.

4) The amount of reports in traditional media is extremely high, reaching 13,600 at its peak.

And based on the graph Professor Shen supplied, traditional media also has a much longer trail. What this means is that the government (authorities, police, security apparatus, what have you) is content to let the middle-class intellectuals rail away online, just as long as the workers, laborers and peasants are kept ignorant and distracted. No one knows better than the Communist Party what can happen if the lower classes rise up, so their decision to keep the clamp down on public protests, threaten or pay off angry citizens and control the traditional media will prevail over the power of Weibo. For now.

In summary, let’s take a look at joke going around the Interwebs today that helps clarify the true difference between the power of newspapers and television and the power of microblogging:

A journalist asked a street sweeper, “What do you think about the 7.23 railway tragedy?”

The street sweeper righteously replied, “At least they didn’t make the common people pay for the trains!”

"Cops came to the memorial service and threw away the candles. There was a survivor from 7.23 there and her parents angrily rebuked the police. All these days and not a word of sympathy from the government. She crawled out of a pile of corpses. Does the government even know she's alive?"

Sascha Matuszak is a writer based in Shanghai who blogs for Chengdu Living. Visit him at www.saschamatuszak.com.

However, most shows I watch grudgingly because I can’t avoid it. Living with a Chinese partner in a miniscule one-bedroom apartment has forced me to accept the ubiquity of the television in the Chinese household—it is switched on in the morning and in the evening, and left on at full volume. Why? Just because. It is only recently that I’ve come to see the striking similarity between the television itself and the programming it broadcasts.

I’m not here to lambast the politics of Chinese news. We’ve all got a viewpoint. China’s leaders merely use CCTV to express their approved public view on world events. This I can accept, just as I accept French TV’s assertion that whatever’s going on across the border can be handled by that country’s media, the naked populism of the U.S. networks following the death of Osama bin Laden, and the simpering monarchism of the BBC during their interminable Royal Wedding broadcast. TV news is supposed to pander to viewers, milk statistics, distort facts, and generally make somebody’s point. Unless you’re in China.

The blatant fecklessness of every Chinese journalist working on CCTV’s news shows really amazes me. Whenever I’ve lived in another country, from the U.S. to Malawi, the golden rule of TV journalism is to make yourself look authoritative. You need your viewers to believe you’re really in the line of fire, digging deep to get the scoops that really matter. Unless you work for CCTV, which seems to be the most cushy junket you can enjoy if you discount being retired from the Politburo. On CCTV News, it seems to be the case that it doesn’t matter what you say, as long as you look half-interested and get your hair done.

The CCTV coverage of Libya has been particularly risible, with barely a mention of the reasons why tens of thousands of Chinese workers were being evacuated from the civil-war wracked North African state (or, indeed, what the hell tens of thousands of Chinese workers were doing there in the first place). But suddenly, as soon as the U.S. got involved, Libya was everywhere. Go figure. War in Libya became the favorite subject of CCTV’s mannequin-faced anchors, with hours of programming devoted to analysis of the conflict. While the rest of the world struggled to find an angle on Libya, CCTV had no such problem.

"And if you'll look behind me, they are setting up buffet tables but it is unclear, with the recent bombing campaign, if the breakfast will remain complementary."

This was exemplified in a “live link-up with our correspondent in Tripoli” during a broadcast in mid-March which was to give us “the situation on the ground in Misrata,” a city held at the time by rebel forces but under constant siege by government troops. Juicy stuff.

Cut to a well-groomed and milk-faced Beijinger standing in what was transparently the garden of a five-star hotel. Behind his immaculately-styled hair was an impressive floral border flanking an elegant fishpond and fountain. His location flashed up onscreen—”Tripoli.” Not a sound disturbed the perfect quietude. I asked myself why this guy was wearing a flak jacket—he seemed more likely to be hit by an hor d’oeuvre than eviscerated by shrapnel.

“Ok,” I thought to myself. “So, he’s not exactly in the thick of it. But at least he’s in Libya. Maybe he has the scoop of the century.”

“Have there been any developments in Misrata?” asked the overly made-up anchor in Beijing.

“We’re not sure, the Libyan government haven’t told us yet. We are waiting for information from the government.”

Cue five minutes of pointless waffle about Gaddafi’s forces “doing everything they can to prevent civilian casualties,” and “making headway against the government opponents,” blah blah blah. This wasn’t journalism. Nobody had researched a story. Hell, they hadn’t even made a token attempt to look as if they were actually working as reporters. This guy was standing in the garden of his Tripoli hotel offering less analysis than I could have gotten in five minutes on Sohu.

I don’t know what this anchor’s experience of Libya actually was. I am reluctant to second-guess the working environment of any of the dozens of correspondents CCTV has shipped out there in order to look legitimate when in actuality they could have done the same job in Beijing with none of the expense. But reading the interviews with the Chinese people who had been evacuated with such pomp and ceremony when the revolt started, who talked at length about their isolated lives on construction sites and university campuses, speaking Chinese to each other and English to the few locals they might interact with, I have a pretty good idea of what these “journalists” are doing: they’re sitting in air-conditioned hotels in Tripoli while real journalists like Tim Hetherington are being shot to death in firefights in Misrata.

Then it hit me. Chinese journalists aren’t journalists in the strictest sense. They’re more like PR reps. I have spent two years working in the Chinese media, editing the full gamut of dross published here on a daily basis, from lifestyle puff pieces to so-called in-depth news features which read like puff pieces. Working on a lifestyle publication I witnessed the ugly process of regurgitating press releases into microphones and onto microblogs verbatim without allowing a single alternative viewpoint to taint the purity of an approved text. Here, I was seeing the same thing practiced in all openness on a world television network.

"I am currently detained in a secret compound they call a 'resort.' They are treating me well and I am not under duress. Tell my family I love them."

Now I finally understand why my partner’s family scoffs at the Xinwen Lianbo which drones out of every channel at 7 every night. The only thing more predictable than the Party proclamations read word-for-word is the chorus of “哼。骗自己” with which my in-laws greet each news item. CCTV really is fooling itself. Perhaps at one time people actually took the Propaganda Department’s word as gospel. Ok, it’s a fair bet to say plenty still do, but not the people actually delivering the message. When it comes to these journalists, anchors and researchers, they’re most likely aware of the facts, but know that the facts are irrelevant in their particular profession.

As with so much in China both now and in the past, nobody cares what is said, so long as it’s said with sufficient gravitas. Mix in some computer graphics, pad things out with “live broadcasts,” throw in a couple scripted interviews with happy beneficiaries of benevolent Party policies, and keep to the running time. Whether it’s the Libya conflict or the Royal Wedding (during which the Chinese commentary on Star World revolved largely around the anchors spouting banalities about British culture such as our tendency to talk about the weather, rather than offer any insight into the event itself), you see the same pattern. Say nothing, but say it incessantly, and pronounce every word correctly. It’s all about appearances because the content is bullshit.

It’s a bit like singing the American national anthem. We all lose our thread in the middle, but nobody drops their hand from their chest or reduces the volume—if anything, we strive to look more patriotic when we’re just mouthing random sounds because we hope we’re being convincing. And it might just work, if everyone else weren’t in on the scam.

I wrote last week about Chinese state media’s coverage of the unrest in Egypt. Xinhua this week said that it supports Egypt’s efforts to “maintain social stability” but cautions that “Egypt’s affairs should be decided independently by the country without foreign interference.” This was written less for Xinhua’s Egyptian readers than it was for Xinhua’s Chinese readers. The Chinese government has always been a vociferous opponent against foreign meddling in “domestic affairs,” however loosely defined.

Reuters reports that another article by state media stressed, “Social stability should be of overriding importance. Any political changes will be meaningless if the country falls prey to chaos in the end.” This veiled language is all that Beijing can muster. There is no mention of the word revolution, or suggestion that a popular uprising against an oppressive government could be positive. Those words are too charged and mass demonstrations like those in Cairo are still fresh in the Communist mind.

Both Washington and Beijing have an ideological interest in how events unfold in Egypt. Depending on the result, this revolution could become an example for pro-democracy movements around the world or one more fable that oppressive governments tell their people to highlight the dangers of political reform.

UPDATE: This link is making the rounds in the China blogosphere. It shows several signs in Egypt written in Mandarin. Some have suggested that this means Egyptian protesters want Chinese citizens to take notice, but this is unlikely. For analysis, I point you to Evan Osnos at the New Yorker.

But don’t worry, the Chinese government won’t let something like reality subvert their grand narrative. If netizens sow disbelief and discontent on the Internet, then the next logical step is to carefully police the Internet. And so we turn to the government’s treatment of the unrest in Egypt. Though news of the events are not blocked per se, the government has a clear idea of how they would like the events to be interpreted. According to the Christian Science Monitor:

“All media nationwide must use Xinhua’s reporting on the Egyptian riots,” read a directive issued last Friday, referring to the state run Xinhua news agency. “It is strictly forbidden to translate foreign media coverage,” the order said, warning that websites that did not censor comments about Egypt would be “shut down by force.”

Official media is instead focusing on the evacuation of Chinese nationals and hinting at the chaos that attempts at political reform can bring. As a result of this directive, microblogging sites like Sina and Sohu have banned searches with the word “Egypt.”  Any such search returns an ominous, “According to the laws in force, the results of your search cannot be given.”

One assumes that the Chinese government feels uneasy about the unrest in Tunisia and Egypt because they see more than just a little of themselves in the events there. Mass demonstrations against a corrupt, autocratic government led by popular uprisings sparked by unemployment and inflation. Tens of thousands of reform-minded demonstrators gathered in a square in the capital city surrounded by tanks. Sound familiar? Perhaps the Chinese government understands that these events are more than just echoes of their past, but could be scenes from their future if they are not careful.  (To be fair, one difference is that Egypt’s military has vowed not to fire on protesters.)

Though many similarities can be drawn between the governments of China and Egypt, the countries themselves remain vastly different. Even if all the news about Egypt were broadcast to Chinese citizens, I doubt there would be cause for immediate concern. The fact remains that many Chinese trust their government, or at least support it. Despite the increasingly severe social problems plaguing China, life has gotten better for the majority of citizens and very few would argue that regime change would benefit them at present. But if unadulterated news about Tunisia and Egypt, and more generally about political reform and human rights, were available to Chinese people, they might get ideas. Ideas about how a government should be responsible to its people and about how, even today, grassroots anger can incite change or even topple a government. The Communist Party, which turned an ideology into a revolution and a revolution into a country, knows exactly how dangerous ideas like that can be.

The CCP’s response to the events in Egypt brings their age-old political strategy—manufacture a narrative, prevent conflicting reports, and curtail discussion—into the 21st century. We are witnessing a government that is getting better and better at controlling the Internet, which is one of the few things that can threaten its power. As the protests began in Cairo, the Egyptian government blocked Twitter, which inflamed protesters and drew attention to the unrest. The Chinese government doesn’t have to worry about that—Twitter is already blocked and its Chinese clones are obediently practicing self-censorship. One thing’s for sure: the Chinese government will never allow a website to precipitate regime change (though I’d like to see Wikileaks try). On this last day in the year of the tiger, let’s pause for a second to reflect on how a single website promoting human interaction and the facilitating the transmission of information has become the greatest fear of oppressive governments. What a beautiful world we live in.

A number of his fellow first responders are too sick to work and are fighting with insurance companies for the funds to pay for their medical care. A bill named after Zadroga, intended to give financial aid and medical support to these people who have been lauded as heroes, passed the House but was blocked by a Senate Republican caucus that is fighting for the passage of tax cuts.

As Media Matters for America has pointed out, ABC, NBC, and CBS news programs have ignored this story entirely, which should have been newsworthy for a number of reasons: Republican obstructionism, the blocking of 9/11 legislation, and the juxtaposition with the tax cuts. It’s been left to The Daily Show and Al Jazeera to actually cover this story with any seriousness.

The propaganda model of media, developed by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman and laid out in Manufacturing Consent, points out how newsgathering and reporting are distorted by a series of filters that controls what information reaches the public. One of these filters is the desire for a standardized national narrative, whether that is anti-Communism or anti-terrorism. In this case, the narrative in question is that of 9/11, a tragedy which has been invoked by many politicians to claim the moral high ground, especially in situations of questionable legislation or policy.

When the news media is presented with a story that does not fit the national narrative — here, 9/11 first responders are not faceless heroes invoked as a talisman but are real people with needs that underline the hypocrisy and failings of the American health care and political systems — the media clams up.

Leaving aside partisan politics (the Republicans who used 9/11 as a shield to push their agenda are now suddenly ignoring one of the consequences of 9/11 to fight for tax cuts), consider this: The Daily Show is one of the few reliable political gadflies in the media, which itself is a tragic fact. But in this case, they’ve had to step up and commit to bringing an important issue to light and make it part of the public discourse because no other mainstream news outlet would. If things keep up, The Daily Show is going to have to stop calling itself a “comedy news show”, because it’s the rest of the news that’s the real joke.

Just the opposite.  Xia Lin, the deputy editor-in-chief of Xinhua, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China, was giving a lecture entitled “Understanding Journalistic Protocols for Covering Breaking News” at the Tianjin Foreign Studies University in which he defended the practice of massaging the truth when it comes to news, citing the critical role of media to maintain societal stability.  The examples he gave were shocking, but only confirmed what most skeptical human beings believe: that their government lies to them on a daily basis.

All the news that's fit to print.

Lin recounted the “live broadcast” of the Shenzhou 5 landing, in which Chinese viewers saw astronaut Yang Liwei emerge from the space capsule smiling and flashing a victory symbol.  But actually when the capsule was opened Yang had blood all over his face due to a cut on his lip.  Workers wiped the blood off his face and shot the second reveal for the country to see.  Lin also mentioned the “July 5th incident” in Xinjiang when state media underreported Han deaths for fear of mob reprisal and, when the reprisal happened anyway, omitted mention of Uighur casualties.

The revelations are startling not because of the obvious fact that news in China is manufactured, but that its top officials are unrepentant about it.  In fact, they see careful management, or manipulation, of the truth as not only justified but integral to their job.  Reporting is not in the service of facts but rather facts serve reporting, and can be airbrushed and edited to benefit those in power.

Though this seems immoral and propagandistic, there are two cultural factors that contextualize the government’s mentality.   First is the Chinese preoccupation with face, and no one is more vain than the government.  Chinese leaders, from emperors to demagogues to its current politicians, have always taken pains to appear irreproachable and by now it has become a part of the fiction.  Every misstep is seen as potential ammunition for those who might want to challenge the incumbent power.  Thus, mistakes are admitted only posthumously, for fear of damaging the reputations or political fortunes of those still alive.

Second, the Chinese government is willing to sacrifice much for stability: ideals, lives, even fundamental tenets of their own party ideology.  If they are willing to abandon their own beliefs for stability, then why shouldn’t every branch of the government, including the media, the military, and the legal system, be used toward that end?

Recently, one can see their point.  In March, the state media reported the first of what has now become a rash of kindergarten stabbings.  Likewise, the reports of factory suicides in Shenzhen have led to nothing but more suicides and a belated pay increase.  If suppressing the news of that first stabbing could have saved the lives of children who died in subsequent attacks, wouldn’t we all think twice?  But denial of death is on some level a negation of life.  Not reporting the deaths of those children would mean they died for nothing and would be an affront to their memory and the grief of their families.  And yet, what is the point in honoring death when it only leads to more of the same?  Truth is lofty and eternal; lives are earthly and transient.  How does one weigh the two?

We can’t.  And maybe we don’t have to, because the news itself is not as important as how we act in response to it.  If we look for easy answers to tragedies, then those who died did so in vain.  If we settle for easy explanations—the killers were mentally ill; the young people who jumped from buildings were heartbroken—then we should not be surprised if these things continue to happen and have one to blame for their proliferation but ourselves.

The furor over the factory suicides have made amounted to some small victories—a pay increase at Foxconn and in Beijing—and has raised awareness of issues like poor factory conditions, the growing income gap, and the dark side of economic development.  However, the response to the epidemic of kindergarten stabbings has been and will continue to be characteristically simple.  The murderers responsible for the stabbings will be executed.  Their point of view will not be reported.  Their reasoning will be lost along with their lives and we will get no closer to knowing, let alone understanding, what would drive them to take the lives of defenseless children.  Even if we are reluctant to understand their reasons, aren’t they the most important piece of this puzzle?

The worst thing about edited news is not the deception or the misinformation—it is the lack of information.  Information that can help us prevent further incidents.  Information we can use to ensure long-term stability, instead of settling for short respites.  Instead of knowing less about these tragedies, we need to know more.  We need to know, truly, why these things happened, because only then can we ask the right questions, the hard questions.  And though we might not like the answers, at least they’d be honest.  People want the truth; the government just needs to believe that they can handle it.

—

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/world/asia/04china.html
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2010/06/xia-lin-夏林-xinhua-deputy-chief-editor-reveals-secret-details-of-old-news-stories/

The recent spate of school stabbings across China is further evidence of the increasingly desperate attempts by the downtrodden to draw attention to China’s vast income gap. While Zheng Minsheng, the perpetrator of the Nanping stabbing, appears to have acted independently, the subsequent rash of attacks have the unmistakable whiff of the copycat. While it may seem crass to label these grisly incidents as a case of follow-the-leader, the international media seem unable to come to any more satisfying conclusion.

Yes, all of these men were poor. Yes, all were unemployed or unhappy in their jobs. Some, such as Zheng Minsheng, had reportedly failed in relationships, others may have been mentally disturbed. Their life histories have a million parallels in China’s developed regions, where the rich are filthy rich and the poor are filthy poor. With the exception of the Hepu attack, all of these men lived in China’s success-story provinces, the industrial and economic heartlands across the eastern coast. However, their low status placed them at the very bottom of an income-based pecking order. They were the least consequential of the inconsequential—unmarried, unemployed, too young to be respected and too old to be hopeful for change. These were men who’d played the game of life and lost out, just a handful of the many casualties of rampant capitalism and China’s wholesale sell-off of the “iron rice bowl.”  And so they should have remained—forgotten, overlooked, the kind of men nobody thinks about, much less talks about.

However, every single one of these men became infamous overnight, their names bounced between chatrooms and blogs, their deeds told and retold in grisly detail and with much head-shaking by people across the length and breadth of the world’s most populous nation. Nobodies one day, arch-villains the next. There is little doubt that every one of them (apart from Wang Yonglai, who died from his injuries) will receive the treatment meted out to Zheng Minsheng—a swift conviction and a bullet to the back of the head. Considering the miserable lives they all led, priced out of their own housing, jobless, unmarried, and generally hopeless, this seems like the best kind of euthanasia. Suicide paid for and carried out by the nation’s alarmingly efficient system of capital punishment. No lengthy death-row languishing, no protracted Amnesty-led appeals. These men all wanted to be caught in the act.

Why? Well, we only have to look at the grassroots response to see that all of these men have gained immortality through notoriety. For mere minutes of effort, they have gained fame to rival that of most mid-level pop stars, and also a permanent solution to their personal problems. Even China’s top blogger Han Han is talking about them. Perhaps it was just a rumor that one of Zheng Minsheng’s disgruntled neighbors, an elderly woman who later presented a petition to reporters warning that poverty and anonymity would drive others to follow his example, told the Nanping killer to “do something horrifying. You’ll be remembered for it.” However, this rumor seems to illustrate with horrific accuracy the thought that may have occurred to a middle-aged, unemployed, unmarried man reduced to sleeping on his parents’ balcony.

It’s the same story for all the subsequent perpetrators. Their crimes are being studied and analyzed by psychiatrists, their mental states pored over by media and netizens. Their names have become synonymous with the problems created by China’s income gap. They have sent shockwaves through the country, with parents turning out in droves to drop off and collect their children from school—children who, a few weeks before, were trusted to walk or cycle anything up to several miles by themselves to school every day. Their crimes have called attention to the plight of China’s countless, faceless, unemployed, unmarried, and unsatisfied. The Internet has prevented the government from concealing their crimes, though some have cast doubt on the zero body counts of the Leizhou, Taizhou and Weifang attacks as government spin. Indeed, the Internet has been these criminals’ largest source of publicity.

Maybe China’s impotent majority, long denied solutions to some of China’s biggest problems, have found the perfect way to make their voices heard. They face a selectively deaf media, a winner-takes-all social race, a massive gender imbalance and an insurmountable income gap. Perhaps the Western media have been too quick to sneer at China’s official labeling of these crimes as “one-person terrorism.” They have inspired fear and unsettled society and made themselves known to the world with a single action. Is that not the motive of every terrorist? What sets these men apart from suicide bombers? In China, committing a murder in open view of dozens of witnesses then allowing yourself to be caught is suicide. And for those who decry these men’s failure to find another outlet for their grievances against the society that they feel rejected them, please offer up a situation in which these men would be listened to. Even China’s Internet rumor-mill is dominated by the loudest, most eloquent voices. The beautiful, the smart, the well-educated, the well-connected, and, above all, the wealthy, have a public voice in China. That’s where it stops.

Denied a niche, these men have created one. And the victims, as is so often the case, are the innocent. With the places at the top already filled, there’s plenty of room at the bottom.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Another stabbing occurred yesterday morning, May 12. From the Telegraph: “Wu Huanmin, 48, broke into a nursery school in Hanzhong city, in northern Shaanxi province, soon after 8am on Wednesday. Officials say Wu killed himself after murdering seven children and two adults, and wounding 11 other children, two severely. The motive for the attack was not immediately clear. Chinese censors quickly removed any mention of the attack from the internet and banned the story from the main state television news broadcast, possibly fearing more copycat attacks.”