Blah blah. Why no mention of the democracy march?
Thursday, 5. July 2007, 11:53:08
Positive Solutions
2007.07.03
In the main editing room of China Daily there is a wall, upon with the day’s newspaper is displayed for senior editors to add their comments. Predictably it is known as the “wall of shame”.
Usually there is little of interest on the wall. The senior editors will praise stories they like or are widely picked up by foreign media, while stories that contain editing errors or miss crucial information are criticized. Amusingly, stories are often praised for being “timely” – you would think this would not need to be said at a newspaper.
2007.07.03
In the main editing room of China Daily there is a wall, upon with the day’s newspaper is displayed for senior editors to add their comments. Predictably it is known as the “wall of shame”.
Usually there is little of interest on the wall. The senior editors will praise stories they like or are widely picked up by foreign media, while stories that contain editing errors or miss crucial information are criticized. Amusingly, stories are often praised for being “timely” – you would think this would not need to be said at a newspaper.
Yesterday, however, a strongly critical comment appeared about the front page lead, I suspect from a disgruntled foreign polisher (we do stories and shoes).
No words can express how grim the front page was: a staid picture dominated by a vast flag and the driest, Zhongnanhai-ese reporting on the Hong Kong handover anniversary. It seems that the more important the event, the more boring the newspaper becomes – a nice little metaphor for the contrariness of China’s official media.
The disgruntled commenter scrawled in large letters, eruditely, “blah blah etc. Why no mention of the democracy march?” Delighted by this flowering of dissent, I facetiously added “because this is China Daily.”
It was a silly, spur of the moment comment I regret – I’ve become somewhat demob happy the last week or two. The reason it was silly was because it made light of what was in fact a serious point: Why did China Daily not mention the democracy march that took place during the handover anniversary?
First and foremost, this was not a riot in a remote rural area of China that may or may not have happened. Many thousand people marched in Hong Kong, and many international media were there to see them do it. ( http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/01/news/hong.php ) It obviously happened, and it is not something that can be denied.
Here are some potential reasons the democracy march wasn’t mentioned:
1. Perhaps it was considered unimportant by the State Council Information Office?
2. Perhaps the march was considered embarrassing to the leadership?
3. Perhaps the propaganda bosses are yet to formulate an appropriate response to democracy marches in Hong Kong, and so continue with their “close our eyes and look away” approach to the issue?
4. Perhaps the leaders aren’t wild about the precedent?
Hell, we all now what happened last time. ( http://youtube.com/watch?v=XJBnHMpHGRY )
If the answer is options 1 or 2, this is bad news for the citizens of Hong Kong. It shows how hollow the CPC’s talk about progress towards democracy is.
If the answer is option 3, then the propaganda bosses just aren’t doing their job properly.
But more likely it is option 4. The last thing the leaders want is democracy marches in the mainland – you can’t blame THAT on local governments – so while they still can they want to keep the knowledge that this happened in a part of China, and was tolerated, away from the majority of people.
From China Daily’s point of view, however, this is a major problem, as it is exactly this sort of outright denial of a fact that causes it such credibility problems. To be honest, if the paper had any balls it would have mentioned it anyway – “screw the system, we’ve got to watch our own backs”.
It would have been so easy to give it a mention and a positive spin: “Several thousand people gathered to call from greater democracy, and they would have been reassured by President Hu Jintao’s pledge to ensure step-by-step progress to universal suffrage.”
Not exactly rocket science.
I find Hong Kong politics very surprising: I just can’t quite believe that despite helping build a spectacular city, an extraordinary economy and a liberal, cosmopolitan society, after 100 years the British didn’t manage to create a democratic government. Oops.
By this logic, if the British couldn’t manage a democratic Hong Kong, what hope Beijing?
WIDGETIZE