June 26, 2002
Bull In China Shop
An American Reporter's Notebook From Beijing
By Steve Friess
The rim editor comes to me late one evening
with a problem. Hundreds are dead and thousands are homeless
in flooding that has ravaged several southern regions in recent
weeks. Seemed pretty dire, so I wrote a headline that indicated
that the nation had been ravaged by storms. And that's the problem.
"The boss says this is too negative," the editor
tells me. "Please soften it."
"Too negative?" I ask with bulging eyes. "How
can it be too negative? Hundreds of people are dead. What's
soft about that?"
"Eh," the editor sniffs. "This is a country
of 1.3 billion people. A few hundred people really isn't the
whole nation."
So began my tenure as a copy "polisher" at
China's only English-language national newspaper, the China
Daily. I was a Medill School of Journalism-educated reporter
with clips in some of my nation's largest newspapers, yet I'd
grown bored with local journalism and yearning for adventure
when I spotted that E&P ad beckoning Westerners to come to China
and edit for a year.
They promised to fly me over and back, put
me up, give me a month's vacation, and pay me four times the
average Beijing wage. For all this, I promised to make the English
writing of the Chinese staff as readable as possible -- and
ignore how ridiculous, inept, and often outrageously false the
substance is.
But, of course, ignoring that was impossible,
since it was easily the most fascinating part of the job. Lots
of Westerners come to China, most to teach English or open a
new franchise. Not many get invited into the foyer of the inner
sanctum of the greatest totalitarian dictatorship to ever masquerade
as a respectable government. We weren't quite in there with
the Politburo, but we were probably closer than any other Western
could get.
Never mind that the staff of a dozen polishers
that I joined aid and abet in that charade by improving the
text of this rag to a point where it occasionally sounds authoritative.
We knew the Western readers -- mainly the foreign press -- didn't
view China Daily as a newspaper so much as a news source that
provided insight into where the Chinese government stands. American
journalists quote from the China Daily every day because direct
comment from actual government officials is often impossible
to come by, so I saw phrases I rewrote popping up in The Wall
Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.
As paid employees of the Chinese Ministry of
Information, we learned by heart the party line on certain hot
topics. The world has but "one China, and Taiwan Province is
an inalienable part of that one China." In 1951, China effected
the "peaceful liberation of Tibet." And the Falun Gong is "an
evil, nefarious cult whose brainwashed members turn into insane,
homicidal, and suicidal maniacs."
OK, that last one was overdoing it a bit --
we polishers often pumped in a bit of free-lance excess to show
the Western reader that somebody on this side knew this stuff
is absurd.
This was "journalism" that would make every
Medill professor ill. The sanctity of direct quotes? None. They
changed them regularly, even in wire copy, and not just because
the translations from Chinese required finesse.
Sometimes, they invented people, too. Would
anybody really believe, for instance, that a family forced to
move from a downtown Beijing home their ancestors built centuries
ago to a remote suburb is so patriotic as to accept with glee
this relocation as their contribution to making way for the
structures that will help China host a great Olympics? The China
Daily said so.
Statistics, too, were laughably employed. One
piece claimed a poll of 354,000 people found 99% said they would
buy organic foods even if they cost more. I wrote a query into
the text, noting that it would be virtually impossible to get
99% of any group of people to agree on much of anything. The
reporter's reply: "But the statistic is most assuredly true.
The commission would have no reason to lie."
The editorial page was particularly entertaining.
One day, this newspaper -- representing a regime that mowed
down a thousand or more in Tiananmen Square and then insisted
it never happened -- concluded, in reference to Japan, that
"a nation that lies about its history cannot be trusted by the
rest of the world." This was actually in print.
How did we stomach it? It wasn't always easy,
particularly when the U.S. spy-plane crew was held on Hainan
and the rhetoric wandered into a less-cartoonish viciousness.
Yet, even in those moments, we gained insight into the Chinese
political and cultural mind that few, including those at the
U.S. Embassy, can access. And I helped Chinese staffers apply
to U.S. j-schools, spreading the subversive gospel of the First
Amendment. In a land where free expression is considered a threat
to social stability, maybe that's the best you can do.
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