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 DOI: 10.1080/03064229208535406

1992 21: 5Index on CensorshipJasper Becker

Lies, lies and damned journalists  

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FOREIGN MEDIAJASPER BECKER

Lies, lies and damned journalistsThe media have gone along with politicians and diplomats in conveying a 'weird andwonderful' image of China that is totally at odds with the reality

if a true picture of China had emerged overthe past four decades, the public in the Westwould have been less shocked, or at least lesssurprised, by the Beijing Massacre. TheChinese army's intervention was a surgicaloperation, and the ensuing campaign mildand restrained when seen in the context of 40years of Communist rule. Since 1949, Chinahas witnessed repeated political campaignsagainst segments of its population, from theearly years of the struggle against landlordsafter the Communists seized power, throughthe anti-rightist campaign of 1957, the GreatLeap Forward, the horrors of the CulturalRevolution, the recent military intervention,and innumerable smaller campaigns. Thenumber of victims of persecution is notknown, but in the long term it may well beshown to bear comparison with the 60 to 100million who died under Stalin.

Although so much of the nature of theregime in China had escaped change by 1989,the Western public had generally not beenpresented with an image of China thatmatched reality. Thus, when the army crushedthe student-led uprising, it created a hugeemotional impact. Outsiders were takenaback by the brutality of the Chineseleadership because it shattered the acceptedview of Deng Xiaoping and China.

In reality, Deng had never hidden the factthat he was running a dictatorship backedby the army and secret police. He had alwaysmade it clear that he had no time for Westerndemocracy, or for the separation of powersbetween government, the judiciary and theruling party. He openly rejected Westernadmonishments about human rights, especi-ally in reference to the imprisonment of WeiJingsheng, China's longest-serving politicalprisoner. It also apparently came as a shockto the Western public to discover that theChinese people were not as happy and fulfilledas they had been led to believe. ManyWesterners had come to the view that underMao everyone at least had enough to eat,and that later under Deng there was at leastmore freedom than before. Many peoplehad accepted the argument of the left in their

Jasper Becker was China correspondent forthe London Guardian from 1985-89. Theabove is excerpted from Reporting theNews From China, ed Robin Porter (RoyalInstitute of International affairs, 1992).

The Democracy Wall at Xidan, 1978-9

own countries that the right to food andhousing was more important than any(bourgeois) individual right of free speech.

I had no first-hand knowledge of Chinabefore I began working there, and was

surprised to discover gradually how muchthe reality differed from the benevolent imageaccepted in the West. It was equally startlingto realise that part of the reason for the poorreporting had much to do with ideological

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FOREIGN MEDIA

conditioning. It was easy to condemndomestic reporting in China by Chinesejournalists as entirely the product of theideological imperatives of the CommunistParty. It was something else to realise thatWestern reporters were guilty of the samesin, albeit in a more subtle way.

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT'For nearly a quarter of a century, RedChina was portrayed by the US media asthe land of the crazies, the human antpeople, a nation bent on the dominationof all Asia. That image was a mirrorreflection of US foreign policy, whichrefused to recognise the government ofMao Zedong and prevented its entry intothe United Nations.

'Then Richard Nixon and HenryKissinger decided to capitalise on theSino-Soviet rift in the hope of using Chinaas a strategic card in the US/Soviet powergame. Nixon went to China. Virtuallyovernight, the American people beganreceiving a very different picture of China.So different, in fact, that one might havethought it pertained to a different country.

'The Chinese were courteous, indus-trious, family-oriented, modest to the pointof being shy. They had the most wonderfuland ancient cultural tradition; they werewizards of ping-pong; they loved giantpandas. In less than a year, Americanpublic opinion turned completely around.Everyone loved the so-recently hated andfeared Chinese'.

The author of this diatribe is, in fact, aRussian. Although Vladimir Pozner's bookParting with Illusions is about the US media,he could easily have been talking about theBritish or any other Western press.

HENRY LUCE, EDGAR SNOW, ANDTHE'1960s LIBERALS'The problems of reporting on China predatethe Communist Party's seizure of power.During the 1930s and 1940s, a false impressionwas created of both Chiang Kai-shek's regimeand the Communist Party. Henry Luce,publisher of Time and Life, altered the copyof his own journalists, and is largely to blamefor promoting a too-favourable image ofChiang Kai-shek and his American-educatedwife. In 1937, Luce made them Man andWife of the Year. Years later, Deng wastwice voted Man of the Year by Time, incurious repetition of what had happenedbefore.

Although resident correspondents did theirbest to convey news of the corruption of theKuomintang regime, and by comparisonlooked favourably on the Communists,matters came to a head during the war withthe dismissal of General Stilwell, as has beennoted by the American historian BarbaraTuckman in Stilwell and the AmericanExperience. Sterling Seagrove's book The

Wei Jingsheng in 1970

Soong Dynasty also analyses how Luce andothers ensured that their prejudices wereconveyed to the American public, withdisastrous consequences. Americans wereduped into supporting a Chinese leader whowas both disliked by his people andincompetent at fighting the Japanese.

After the Communist victory, a lengthyand painful post mortem was carried out,and journalists numbered among those whowere often unfairly blamed for the failure ofAmerican policy. The doyen of Chinareporters, Edgar Snow, was one of thoseattacked. According to him, the Americanmedia 'refused to publish any reports byeyewitnesses of the China scene except thosewhich confirm their own wishful thinkingand self-deception*. He went on to warn:'The danger is that Americans imagine thatthe Chinese are giving up Communism —and Mao's world view — to become niceagrarian democrats. A more realistic worldis indeed in sight. But popular illusions thatit will consist of a mix of ideologies, or anend to China's faith in revolutionary means,could only serve to deepen the abyss againwhen disillusionment occurs.' After 1979,much Western reporting did serve preciselyto create a new image of 'nice agrariandemocrats'.

In the event, Snow was both criticised byright-wing Americans for his book Red StarOver China, being condemned as a fellow-traveller who romanticised the Communists,and repudiated by the left-wing Americans.In recent years his book has been publishedin Chinese by the Communist Party in orderto re-educate its members about their ownparty's history. The significant point is thatSnow's reporting was, one way or another,

assumed to have had an ideological bias andwas undoubtedly used for ideological reasons.Whatever his prejudice, Snow seems to havecarefully recorded what he saw and what hethought about it, which is about all anyonecan expect of a good journalist.

China reporting subsequently became, asPozner has observed, a significant battle-ground in the wider struggle by the USA tooppose the expansion of Communism. TheCold War was actually, after all, fought inAsia. The left in the West promptlytransferred the hopes it had .misplaced inStalin's Soviet Union to China. AlthoughMao faithfully duplicated all Stalin's policies— collectivisation, the suppression ofminorities, the persecution of the intelligentsia—and created an atmosphere of considerableterror, an extraordinary procession of'liberals' came to China on 'guided' tours toreturn to the West with glowing reports.Characteristic of the books written in thisvein is Kurt Mendelssohn's In China Now,published in 1969. A Berlin-born Oxfordphysicist, he travelled around China duringthe Cultural Revolution. Mendelssohn foundthe cult of Mao quite sane and reasonable,and saw no evidence of civil strife or anyviolence. He rejects any suggestion ofideological bias, claiming only to have adeep respect for China's culture.

US journalists (except for Snow) were notpermitted to enter China at this time, andthere were few Westerners resident there.Truthful reporting of events in China waseasily dismissed as propaganda by those whoviewed it in the context of the Cold War andthe Vietnam conflict. Mendelssohn andsimilar writers left a far greater impressionon a generation convinced that in Chinathere was an earnest and honourable attemptto create a form of socialism especiallyrelevant to the Third World. A wholegeneration in the West grew up acceptingthis view.

THE OFFICIAL VIEWFrom 1979 a new dimension was added.Increasingly Deng Xiaoping became popularwith the US right for exposing the horrors ofMao's China, for his pro-capitalist ruralreforms and for a foreign policy helpful toWestern interests. This was carried throughto official policy during the presidency ofRonald Reagan. Although the suppressionof the Democracy Wall movement and likeprotests were well reported in the West, theoverriding impression was that the Chinesewere moving steadily towards capitalism anda respect for human rights. When Reaganvisited in 1984, he spoke of 'so-calledCommunist China'. Margaret Thatcherwanted to see in China evidence that marketforces could transform a Stalinist economicsystem; indeed, there was plenty of evidencethat rural reforms had dramatically boostedfood output.

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FOREIGN MEDIA

The British government had a furtherinterest in promoting a positive image ofDeng's China: the Hong Kong agreement.Clearly, it would be unacceptable to handover Hong Kong, or indeed negotiate anyagreement, if Deng was running a shaky andcorrupt dictatorship that survived becauseits citizens were exhausted and intimidatedby events of preceding years. The Britishembassy and the government were alwayskeen to discourage negative reporting onChina. Briefings were always upbeat andoptimistic. To allow them to be otherwisewould undermine confidence in the HongKong agreement.

In private, embassy officials might dissent,and there may well have been argumentswithin the Foreign and CommonwealthOffice. The more transparent US system ofgovernment occasionally afforded insights,since startling differences sometimes existedbetween the reports from Hong Kong-baseddiplomats and from those in Beijing. Theformer were far more negative. There wereother issues, such as Cambodia, over whichthe West needed China's help. And thepromise of huge new markets in China tendedto discourage negative reporting. All thiscontributed towards fostering the view thatChina was stable and that the Chinesegovernment was popular. The legitimacy ofthe regime could not be questioned. Whereasreports on South Korea consistently referredto its government as a military junta whichhad seized power in a bloody coup, it wasimpossible or rather inconceivable to referto Deng's government in the same way. Hecould not be termed 'ex-general DengXiaoping' who seized power in a military-backed coup in 1976.1 The fact that there had never been electionsin China, and that the Party was responsiblefor crimes against its own people, was notdiscussed. Instead, visiting politiciansexpressed admiration for the way the Chineseleaders controlled such a vast country, withoutlooking closely at how it was done. Similarly,experts from the World Bank observed withenthusiasm that China was wonderful towork in, especially compared with India,because orders were given and obeyed.

THE JOURNALIST'S DILEMMABut if official attitudes toward China werealmost uniformly positive, surely journalistsat least were free to write what they pleased?This is only partly true. Of course, we werenot like Chinese journalists, who are issuedstrict instructions on the subject and contentof their articles. Nobody told us what towrite. Editorial decisions are not made ineither Whitehall or in the Embassy. Yetjournalists must reflect the prevailing politicalconcerns of the time. They react to whatpoliticians are saying. If visiting politiciansare not prepared to comment on theauthoritarian nature of Chinese leaders, there

NO LAUGHING, PLEASEChina banned unauthorised memorials,wreath-laying and laughing in TiananmenSquare ahead of the third anniversary ofthe 1989 crackdown.

A warning was posted at the base ofthe Monument to the People's Heroes inthe centre of the square. A list of eightrules said that anyone who carried outunauthorised memorial activities would bepunished.

'Writing or carving is banned on theMonument to the People's Heroes,hanging or putting up other articles isbanned', the sign said. 'Sitting or lying,laughing and causing trouble is banned'.The monument was headquarters forstudent demonstrators during thepro-democracy movement crushed on 4June 1989.

is no incentive either to prove or disprovewhat those leaders are saying. For example,rarely did visiting Congressmen or otherleaders request permission from the Chinesegovernment to visit prisons.

In one way at least, the Chinese politicalscene was unique. Most dictatorships havean active opposition either inside or outsidethe country. Unlike in Poland, Hungary,Czechoslovakia, the USSR, Cambodia, EastGermany, or even Bulgaria and Romania,there was for a long time simply no one inChina to talk to who could present a caseagainst the Chinese government. No onecould be contacted who had been detained,no one who'would issue a statement.

It was impossible to gauge what Chinesepeople really thought about the Party beyondguessing on the basis of talks with Chinesefriends. It was thought too risky to quotethem. It was easy then for the rest of theworld to assume that the vast majority of the 'Chinese supported the government, that itwas in effect a country without majordissension or conflict. Of course there wereprotests in 1976, 1979 and 1987, but thesewere not sufficient to keep a running storygoing. However, in the case of right-wingdictatorships supported by Western govern-ments, there was always a very vocalopposition backed by the left, perhaps fundedby Moscow or Libya. But in any case withgenuine grievances.

Neither in Britain nor France was the leftinterested in criticising China, to which theyhad given so much support. It was still asocialist and Third World country. The left,which had applauded Mao's 'experiments'in socialism, had no incentive now to reporton the true nature of the current regime,since it made their past assessments lookeven more foolish.

My articles on the aftermath of the CulturalRevolution were printed in my newspaper

• with some reluctance. Six months before the

Tiananmen movement started, a series ofarticles describing the true situation in Chinawas spiked. 'What would people say if theyread this?' was my editor's comment. Thefeatures editor simply said that, as far as hewas concerned, nothing of interest hadhappened in China since the start of thereforms. The situation was similar at LeMonde.

The main criticisms of those who knewanything about China were about theagricultural reforms, showing that they werenot working as well as the Party claimed.The opinions of those who defended pastrural policies (such as William Hinton, authorof Fanshen), or the policies in Tibet, weregiven unusual prominence. China's supportof the Khmer Rouge during these yearsreceived absolutely no censure in thenumerous articles written on the country bywriters who were anxious to highlight onlythe role of the British or US government inCambodia. It therefore escaped the awarenessof most people that the Chinese had armedand backed the Khmer Rouge throughoutits unpleasant history. China was unique inbeing a dictatorship that received less thanits fair share of criticism, whether from theright or from the left.

The Chinese government for its part wasadept at hosting foreign visitors with thebanquet routine and a good deal of flattery.Western politicians went out of their way topay homage to China's great culture andhistory. Well-known journalists, experts andsinophiles of all kinds were wary of crossingtheir Chinese hosts and jeopardising theiraccess to top leaders. It was not possible,after all, to be a successful China expert ifyou were no longer welcome in China. Thecharge against such people must surely bethat they transferred their sympathy for theChinese people to their masters by confusingthe two.

PRACTICALITIES ANDPREFERENCESBut what, in practice, could Westernjournalists have done to highlight the natureof the regime? This question is far harder toanswer. It was almost impossible to penetratethe secrecy surrounding important issues. Itwas simply very hard to find out anythingthat the Chinese did not want disclosed.Interpreters were under strict instructions toreveal nothing other than what was in thepress. Real news about daily life was notusually released in the press, but passed onin meetings at work units. If the price ofwinter cabbage was going up, it would notbe announced in the press.

There are very few ways of bypassing theauthorities because so little information isavailable to any Chinese except those in thetop levels of the Party. Instead, there areonly rumours. It is astonishing that in 1989,Continued on page 9

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PROPAGANDA

Explorations. He challenged Deng's pro-gramme of economic reforms known asthe 'Four Modernisations', claiming thatwithout the 'Fifth Modernisation' —democracy — dictatorship would remainintact after economic liberalisation. Justbefore 29 March, an important date onChina's 'human rights calendar', Beijingallowed him access to 'approved' books.

In April, the Chinese authorities reportedthat Wei spends his days watching television,reading several daily newspapers andengaging in debate with his jailers. Thisinformation was conveyed by John Kamm,former head of the US Chamber ofCommerce in Hong Kong, who has recentlybeen a conduit for information that Beijingwishes to publicise in the West. This idyllicpicture contradicts all earlier accounts; thesereported him in poor physical (including theloss of all his teeth) and mental health. Weihas spent most of the last 13 years in solitaryconfinement. To be credible this accountwould have to be corroborated by outsideobservers; this is a step Beijing refuses toallow. Despite the pronouncements on Wei'swell-being, the Justice Minister announcedthat Wei may not be released at the end ofhis 15-year sentence in 1994 because hecontinues to exhibit 'poor behaviour'. Inother words, after 13 years he still refuses toacknowledge wrongdoing.

In May, the Chinese authorities also issuedphotographs of Wang Juntao and ChenZiming to Kamm. These showed Wangwatching a prison dance performance andChen standing before a number of books onthe upper berth of a bunk bed. The menappeared in good health. The photographswere undated and have not been verified byindependent agencies. Their release was timedto coincide with the third anniversary of theTiananmen Square massacre.

The use of photographs to depict improvedprison conditions occurred most recently inthe case of Liu Gang, a leading activist fromthe 1989 movement. A physics graduate, Liubecame involved in the movement in themid-1980s when he worked as a researcherat SERI and organised 'democracy salons'(discussion sessions on political changes inEastern Europe and their relevance for China)on university campuses. Designated Number3 on the government's list of 21 'most wanted'students, he was arrested in June 1989 andheld for nearly 18 months without beingcharged. In May 1990, he tried to organise ahunger strike in Qincheng Prison in Beijing,in commemoration of those who died on 4June 1989. He was thrown into solitaryconfinement and his arms were painfullybound behind him. In February 1991, a weekbefore the trial of Wang Juntao and ChenZiming, Liu Gang was sentenced to six years'imprisonment.

In November 1991, supporters announcedto foreign correspondents in Beijing that Liu

and a number of other political prisonersbeing held in Lingyuan Prison in northeasternLiaoning Province would begin a hungerstrike to protest the brutal conditions there.This was scheduled for 15 November, theday US Secretary of State James Baker arrivedin Beijing. It has been reported that Liubegan a hunger strike but was force-fed; hisarm was broken while resisting. Relativeshave been denied access to the prison andhave been told that the men were 'in onepiece'.

On 19 May, a photo of Liu released byXinhua appeared in the South China MorningPost; another was distributed in late May asone of a number of alleged photographs ofprominent dissidents recently circulated bythe Chinese government. On 28 May, theofficial news agency reported that photos ofsix dissidents were being published to 'dispelrumours of torture and mistreatment'. Theywere to appear in the June issue ofBauhinia,a Hong Kong-based publication attached toChina's official media, to coincide with thethird anniversary of 4 June. One of thephotographs portrayed Wei Jingsheng with

a full set of teeth.The picture of Liu Gang showed him

playing volleyball in a prison yard. Theaccompanying caption refuted reports thatLiu's arm had been broken at the outset ofhis hunger strike in November 1991. Thephoto was not dated.

These adjustments in the handling ofreports of prison conditions are a key part ofa larger adjustment. In November 1991, theChinese government issued a White Paperon Human Rights. While it contained theusual emphasis on the priority of economicrights, the preface included language thatdiffered from past pronouncements. It ack-nowledges human rights as a universal idealand changes the terms of the discourse.

Visiting human rights missions havebeen a part of this shift, as have Chinesedelegations sent to study human rights in anumber of Western countries. While Chinahas done this to improve its imageinternationally, these delegations havecontributed to an atmosphere in which rightshave become an appropriate focus fordiscussion. •

Continued from page 7when dissidents composed a letter to Dengpetitioning for an amnesty for politicalprisoners, they found it hard to draw up alist of names. They had in desperation toresort to reports by Amnesty International.

Chinese youth know very little about therecent past because their parents have oftenbeen reluctant to tell them. Even if peopledid know, they were reluctant to talk tojournalists. Contact was severely restricted.It was still normal even in the late 1980s toreport the visits of foreigners to the police.

The attitude of editors back home did notencourage a great deal of enterprise in thisdirection. They knew what the story was:pragmatism (Deng's comment 'it does notmatter what colour a cat is as long as itcatches mice' was repeated in nearly everyarticle) and the problems of getting rich.There was not much of a market for storiesthat bucked this trend.

Leading US journalists known to mecomplained angrily about the reluctance oftheir editors to run stories about the realnature of life in China. Nobody wanted tohear about oppression at that time. Thecorrespondent was left with reporting whatthe Chinese themselves reported. There wasno point in writing about prisons if access-was impossible, when entry could be obtained,for example, to factories.

Anyone who did fight against this tendencyoften got into trouble. One exampleconcerned an article by Galen Rowell, a USwildlife photo-journalist, called 'The Agonyof Tibet', which eventually saw the light ofday in the Greenpeace magazine of March1990. In it he explained how his articles wentunpublished in the USA for fear of Chinese

retribution. Rowell describes how he paidnumerous visits to Tibet to photograph thelocal wildlife, only to discover that the forestand herds of wild animals that had onceexisted had disappeared. They had simplybeen wiped out by the Chinese in what hetermed an environmental holocaust. Whenhe first discovered the extent of the disaster,he gave one leading US news agency thestory. A correspondent in the USA then told 'him that they could not afford to print it;it would put their Beijing bureau in jeopardy.

Rowell claims that many US magazineswere unwilling to criticise China for fear ofbeing punished by a denial of future access,and his reports went unpublished. Editorstold him that readers wanted up-beat stories,and that, after all, 'China is our friend'.Rowell claims he was tried and sentenced inabsentia by the Chinese for sedition: 'I beganto see how the Chinese could censor the USpress almost as successfully as their own.'

The other problem was simply theingrained prejudice of editors at home. Theyoften regarded China as an oriental societywith an ancient civilisation, and expected itsinhabitants to be quaint and curious. Thisbetrays serious ignorance and not just aconcern with triviality. The key to under-standing China must be to realise that it hasmuch in common with the former SovietUnion and the East European nations nowin process of transformation. It is indeedrelevant to raise the issues of reform andfreedom as they have been raised in EasternEurope and the USSR. Chinese rulers havenot been expected to behave as well as whiterulers. It is time the idea that 'life is cheap inthe East', with all its condescension, was setaside once and for all. •

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