Tying to Commit Journalism in China
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China Media Research, 3(1), 2007, Watts, Tying to Commit Journalism in China Tying to Commit Journalism in China Jonathan Watts The Guardian East Asia Correspondent Abstract: A first person account of reporting on China in the run up to the Beijing Olympics by a foreign correspondent for the UK based Guardian media group. Drawing on several high profile stories, the article describes the risks, challenges and rewards involved in newsgathering. The author discusses the changing regulatory environment, relations between central and local governments, the growing importance of the Internet, the domestic media and problems related to language and culture. Part of this is done through comparison with coverage of Japan, where the author was previously based. The paper offers suggestions for smoother coverage and attempts to convey the excitement of reporting on a country during a period of immense change. [China Media Research. 2007; 3 (1):65-72]. Keywords: foreign correspondent, Olympics, Guardian, regulations, detentions, Internet, blogs I confess. I have attempted to commit journalism in There is nothing unusual about this. In China, such violation of the Chinese government's rules and treatment and the paranoia that comes with it are regulations. I understand that the authorities would not considered part of the territory. There are other cultural, like me to report what I have seen and heard today to linguistic and ideological issues that affect coverage, the outside world.’ This is a fairly typical extract from a but I believe the government's controls on foreign correspondent's self-criticism - the usually hand- journalists have had one of the biggest and most scrawled, semantically convoluted and anything but negative impacts on the overseas image of the country. penitent letters that foreign journalists are sometimes My experience of one detention per year is not at all obliged to write in return for their freedom if they are untypical. A survey (see appendix 1 below) released caught conducting unauthorised interviews or visits. I last August by the Foreign Correspondents' Club 4 of was obliged to sign my most recent self-criticism in China found 72 cases of harassment since 2004 - the March 2006 after I was detained by police in Yunfu, year Beijing was handed the Olympic torch. They Guangdong Province, for talking to some elderly included more than 30 police detentions of journalists, villagers engaged in a land dispute 1 . As usual, the 21 incidents of reporting materials being destroyed, and experience was unpleasant, humiliating and glaringly at 10 case of physical harassment, including several odds with the image of a modern, open, international beatings and a strip search, of reporters or their sources. country that China is trying to project to the outside This is not by any means a comprehensive total. Just world. It was not my first detention. under half of the 543 foreign journalists in China are Before I came to China in 2003, I had never had members of the FCCC. Many of those were reluctant to any serious trouble with the authorities in a 13-year provide details for the survey either because they were career covering a dozen countries - even including busy or they feared repercussions from the authorities. North Korea and Burma. But since I moved to Beijing Usually, detentions are a mere inconvenience. The in 2003, the police have detained me three times for, interrogators are generally polite and freedom can variously, talking to Tibetan activists in Beijing2, the usually be attained after two to six hours of questioning. widows of a mining accident in Shaanxi 3 , and the Unpleasant as it feels to be taken away by the police, peasants in Guangdong that I mentioned above. They there have – so far - been no long-term repercussions. It have also confiscated my press card once, state security is more than five years since a foreign journalist was agents have interrogated at least one of my assistants thrown out of China. and local officials and their hired thugs have frequently Far worse treatment is meted out to ethnic Chinese harassed and sometimes beaten my sources. There have journalists. Ng Han Guan, an Associated Press been three occasions when it has been clear that my photographer5 was clubbed and his camera smashed by phone conversations are monitored. And the behaviour plain-clothes security personnel when he took a picture of my internet provider - far slower and more erratic of a colleague being manhandled by police after the than in other countries, particularly when I used Asian Cup final in 2004. BBC producer Bessie Du and sensitive words - makes me suspect that my email is cameraman Al Go were strip-searched by police after being read and my online research disrupted. they visited a riot scene at Dingzhou village in Hebei province last summer. My biggest concern is for http://www.chinamediaresearch.net 65 [email protected] China Media Research, 3(1), 2007, Watts, Tying to Commit Journalism in China Chinese sources and assistants. It is as if there is a circle warned Fu last May that this was illegal. In the year of fire around correspondents in China - one that since, Fu has been beaten by thugs using police batons, protects the reporter but threatens anyone they come had his home broken into and received numerous death near. Four of the activists I have interviewed this year - threats. "We have no doubt that this incident was partly the blind, "barefoot lawyer" Chen Guangcheng 6 , the a revenge for Mr Fu Xiancai 's statement on German legal rights campaigner Gao Zhisheng 7 , Aids Television; also, because he had been called a "traitor" campaigner Hu Jia 8 and a land-dispute activist, who by local authorities for having talked to foreign media," asked to remain anonymous – are either in prison or the director general of ARD, Jobst Plog wrote in a letter detention as I write. to the Chinese ambassador in Berlin. He called on the Assistants are also vulnerable. Zhao Yan9, the New government to ensure that "Chinese citizens do not have York Times researcher, was recently sentenced to prison to fear for their health or life in the future", just because for three years ostensibly for fraud. His supporters say they make a factual statement to the foreign media. this charge was a fig leaf to cover the real reason for his The same month, police pressed charges against punishment: a New York Times story that former Chen Guangcheng13, the blind activist who exposed the president Jiang Zemin was about to step down as head Shandong government's coercive family planning of the military commission10. If the government had a methods to the central government and foreign media. stronger case, it did a bad public relations job in After being kept under illegal house arrest for almost a presenting it. The trial was held behind closed-doors year, Chen was sentenced last August to three years and and no witnesses were allowed to testify - all factors four months in prison for "inciting a mob to disrupt which raised suspicions that Zhao's sentence was traffic." His wife Yuan Wejiang and lawyers were retribution rather than justice. detained by police or placed under house arrest during A worrying trend has been the rise in violence his trial. meted out against sources by thugs. Last October, the Ｉ recently discovered that several of the land activist Lu Banglie was savagely beaten when he protestors I spoke to in Guangdong were also jailed in attempted to take one of my Guardian colleagues into June. It may have nothing to do with me – they had Taishi village in Guangdong, the site of a land dispute. been tussling with the authorities for more than a year When I went back six months later11, only a handful of and The Guardian took great precautions to keep their residents were still brave enough to talk. They said identities concealed in the published story – but there is there are still 30 guards restricting access to the area. a niggling thought in the back of my mind that the local "It's like there is a black fog enveloping the village," police may have found out about our interviews and one man told me. "Everyone feels they could be used it against them. arrested at any moment. It's appalling, like a form of The story is not all dark. At a central government level, terrorism." We had to break off our interview halfway I have never got into trouble as a result of a detention through because my source saw police officers entering by the local authorities. Indeed sometimes it feels like the restaurant where we were talking and he did not Beijing is grateful for the reports from the provinces want to be caught with a foreign reporter. gleaned by foreign correspondents who can provide an Such fears are understandable. The harshest alternative and unsanitised view of events. I have no retribution appears to have been meted out to Fu strong proof of this, but academics and officials have Xiancai - one of the most vocal opponents of the Three praised - though always off-record - the contribution Gorges Dam – who was left paralysed by a savage made by the foreign media in helping to expose the beating after he ignored police warnings not to speak to Henan HIV-Aids scandal, mine disaster cover-ups, foreign journalists. On 8 June, Fu12 was attacked by bird-flu outbreaks and corruption and pollution scandals. unknown assailants on his way home from the Zigui I have never received an official complaint. public security bureau in Hubei Province, where he had As relations between the foreign media and the been interrogated about an interview he granted with central authorities thaw, there should be less suspicion reporters from the German channel ARD.