It is interesting to look at the same incident from different point of views. The truth is usually lying somewhere between those views, if we are lucky and caring enough to find it.
From Trent's recent entry about the CDT article, it is quite clear that the correct interpretation depends on so many things, news sources, culture/political regulation understanding, etc.
It is quite a challenging job to try to offer a objective view. I don't think I am capable of doing that. But I want to try to offer a collection of views from Chinese media about important/interesting incidents, which I can find in English and are closely related to Chinese government/people.
I think 'New observation' is a good name for this attempt. I will only list what the reporters said and where the sources are, trying hard to do this without any personal opinions. And I mainly use Google as the search engine for my results.
For the first entry under this aim, there are two pieces of news:
1. US men volleyball coach's father-in-law was killed in Beijing
Most of the results are found in all kinds of BBS. Official one is Reuters Chinese webpage. In this Reuters report, the author cited words from Xinhua, also many other comments mentioned Xinhua reported this tragedy, but I can not find the Xinhua source.
For the content of the news, they are all similar, telling about the killer's name, background, and unknown reasons for this kind of rare attacking foreigners incident.
2. Dalai Lama was in hospital and the fast gathering calling for attention to Tibet
Most of the results are found in news website, including Yahoo, Sina, VOA. But all I can find is in traditional Chinese with Hongkong, Taiwan etc indication in the website address, no simplified Chinese ones. From anti-CNN, which is famous for fighting back the fake photos from CNN about the Tibet riot this march, there are simplified comments about this news and in a very hostile manner.
The content is all the same, only differing how much the background of Dalai Lama and the Tibet riot in March were given.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Xinjiang oil boom fuels Uighur resentment
By Jamil Anderlini in Korla, Xinjiang 2008-09-01
http://www.ftchinese.com/story.php?lang=en&storyid=001021683&page=2
“Offer energy resources as tribute [to Beijing] to create harmony” proclaims a giant billboard outside a petrol station in Korla, in Xinjiang province, China's restive western frontier region.
The increasing importance of the Muslim-dominated Xinjiang autonomous region as a source of the energy and minerals needed to fuel China's booming eastern cities is raising the stakes for Beijing in its battle against separatists agitating for an independent state.
“The Chinese didn't want to let Xinjiang be independent before, but after they built all the oil fields, it became absolutely impossible,” said one Muslim resident in Korla, who asked not to be named for fear of ret- ribution by government security agents.
The desert around the city is punctuated every kilo- metre or two by oil and gas derricks, each of them topped with the red Chinese national flag, an assertion of sovereignty over every inch of the energy-rich ground.
Korla itself is an important junction on the 4,200km-long west-east gas pipeline that carries natural gas from Xinjiang to Shanghai.
A brand new airport, high-rise office blocks and scores of new apartment complexes are proof that the city is reaping the fruits of an energy boom that has seen annual natural gas production in the surrounding Tarim Basin increase 20 times between 2000 and 2007. But the vast majority of profits from the industry are sent back east, along with the oil and gas.
In 2005, Xinjiang's local government was allotted just Rmb240m ($35m) out of the Rmb14.8bn in tax revenue from the petrochemical industries that are based in the region.
In Korla, the oil industry is under the control of a subsidiary of PetroChina, the state-owned energy giant, which answers directly to its head office in Beijing.
“We don't have the power to tell them to do anything, they only listen to their bosses in Beijing,” said one local government official who asked not to be named.
Many of Korla's original Uighur residents feel they have missed out altogether on the few benefits that have trickled down to the region from the rapid extraction of its energy resources.
Mineral exploration began in the Tarim Basin at the start of last century but it was not until 1958, nearly a decade after the Chinese Communist revolution and the re-conquest of Xinjiang, that the first oil field went into production.
At that time Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic people with stronger links to central Asia than the rest of China, were the only inhabitants. Today, Han Chinese from central and eastern provinces make up 70 per cent of the population in Korla.
“A lot of Uighurs say this whole area used to belong to them, and now they are strangers in their own home,” said Xie, a shopkeeper whose parents were sent out to Korla from their native Hunan province in the 1950s to work in a bomb-making factory for the People's Liberation Army. “Some of them are very angry and they're causing more and more trouble these days.”
Uighur resentment has been exacerbated by a massive security operation timed to coincide with the Olympic and Paralympic Games period. Under the auspices of ensuring a “peaceful Olympics”, the government has set up roadblocks and security checks and dispatched armed street patrols, all of which has failed to stop a number of attacks by suspected separatists in recent weeks that have left more than 30 dead. Two policemen were killed yesterday in a clash with armed Uighurs.
At a checkpoint outside Korla, wanted posters display the mug-shots and personal details of 11 Uighurs, some as young as 17, who are being pursued for the crime of selling banned literature, including DVDs and books on the creation of an Islamic state.
Amnesty International says Xinjiang is the only part of China where people are regularly executed for political offences.
“There are a lot of people who want Xinjiang to be independent of China but we personally don't even dare think those thoughts,” said one Uighur in Korla when asked what he thought of the separatist cause.
Locals say Uighurs are sometimes given low-level jobs in the oil fields, but there are none in management positions in Korla. In spite of affirmative action programmes that reserve a proportion of official posts for minority groups, all government and military positions with any real power are held by Han Chinese.
PetroChina and its Korla subsidiary refused to be interviewed, but one former employee said discrimination was rife within the company.
“There used to be two Uighurs driving for the oil company here,” said this former employee, who asked to be known only by his surname, Ma. “But they were moved to a different work unit because the bosses think Muslims are all terrorists and separatists.”
http://www.ftchinese.com/story.php?lang=en&storyid=001021683&page=2
“Offer energy resources as tribute [to Beijing] to create harmony” proclaims a giant billboard outside a petrol station in Korla, in Xinjiang province, China's restive western frontier region.
The increasing importance of the Muslim-dominated Xinjiang autonomous region as a source of the energy and minerals needed to fuel China's booming eastern cities is raising the stakes for Beijing in its battle against separatists agitating for an independent state.
“The Chinese didn't want to let Xinjiang be independent before, but after they built all the oil fields, it became absolutely impossible,” said one Muslim resident in Korla, who asked not to be named for fear of ret- ribution by government security agents.
The desert around the city is punctuated every kilo- metre or two by oil and gas derricks, each of them topped with the red Chinese national flag, an assertion of sovereignty over every inch of the energy-rich ground.
Korla itself is an important junction on the 4,200km-long west-east gas pipeline that carries natural gas from Xinjiang to Shanghai.
A brand new airport, high-rise office blocks and scores of new apartment complexes are proof that the city is reaping the fruits of an energy boom that has seen annual natural gas production in the surrounding Tarim Basin increase 20 times between 2000 and 2007. But the vast majority of profits from the industry are sent back east, along with the oil and gas.
In 2005, Xinjiang's local government was allotted just Rmb240m ($35m) out of the Rmb14.8bn in tax revenue from the petrochemical industries that are based in the region.
In Korla, the oil industry is under the control of a subsidiary of PetroChina, the state-owned energy giant, which answers directly to its head office in Beijing.
“We don't have the power to tell them to do anything, they only listen to their bosses in Beijing,” said one local government official who asked not to be named.
Many of Korla's original Uighur residents feel they have missed out altogether on the few benefits that have trickled down to the region from the rapid extraction of its energy resources.
Mineral exploration began in the Tarim Basin at the start of last century but it was not until 1958, nearly a decade after the Chinese Communist revolution and the re-conquest of Xinjiang, that the first oil field went into production.
At that time Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic people with stronger links to central Asia than the rest of China, were the only inhabitants. Today, Han Chinese from central and eastern provinces make up 70 per cent of the population in Korla.
“A lot of Uighurs say this whole area used to belong to them, and now they are strangers in their own home,” said Xie, a shopkeeper whose parents were sent out to Korla from their native Hunan province in the 1950s to work in a bomb-making factory for the People's Liberation Army. “Some of them are very angry and they're causing more and more trouble these days.”
Uighur resentment has been exacerbated by a massive security operation timed to coincide with the Olympic and Paralympic Games period. Under the auspices of ensuring a “peaceful Olympics”, the government has set up roadblocks and security checks and dispatched armed street patrols, all of which has failed to stop a number of attacks by suspected separatists in recent weeks that have left more than 30 dead. Two policemen were killed yesterday in a clash with armed Uighurs.
At a checkpoint outside Korla, wanted posters display the mug-shots and personal details of 11 Uighurs, some as young as 17, who are being pursued for the crime of selling banned literature, including DVDs and books on the creation of an Islamic state.
Amnesty International says Xinjiang is the only part of China where people are regularly executed for political offences.
“There are a lot of people who want Xinjiang to be independent of China but we personally don't even dare think those thoughts,” said one Uighur in Korla when asked what he thought of the separatist cause.
Locals say Uighurs are sometimes given low-level jobs in the oil fields, but there are none in management positions in Korla. In spite of affirmative action programmes that reserve a proportion of official posts for minority groups, all government and military positions with any real power are held by Han Chinese.
PetroChina and its Korla subsidiary refused to be interviewed, but one former employee said discrimination was rife within the company.
“There used to be two Uighurs driving for the oil company here,” said this former employee, who asked to be known only by his surname, Ma. “But they were moved to a different work unit because the bosses think Muslims are all terrorists and separatists.”
Stifling of dissent tarnishes the gold
By Geoff Dyer 2008-08-25
http://www.ftchinese.com/story.php?lang=en&storyid=001021529
World records galore, magnificent stadiums, cleanish air and the seemingly inevitable victory for the Chinese team: as the Olympics nears its Sunday close, almost everything that could have gone right has done so.
Yet for all the successes, the authorities have also risked an own goal with the way they have dealt with dissent. The Olympic Games have demonstrated just how much China has been transformed over the past three decades, but have also exposed important ways the country has not changed.
With China winning so many golds, the domestic audience has been entranced. After a bruising few months, China is experiencing its third wave of national unity this year – first through anger at foreigners over Tibet and the torch relay, then in grief after the Sichuan earthquake and now in pride at the huge medal haul.
Zhang Yimou, the film director who designed the spectacular opening ceremony, summed up the mood of national ebullience when he said only China could achieve the strict discipline and technology needed to pull off such a spectacle: “If you think about it, no other country can achieve this in the world.”
Most foreign visitors to the capital – and many television viewers around the world – have been awed by the stadiums, impressed by the level of organisation and charmed by the polite and earnest Olympics volunteers.
Two big factors – pollution and chauvinistic nationalism – that could have undermined the games and damaged China's image proved to be non-events. A mixture of emergency measures on car usage and factory closures, together with wind and rain in the first week, washed away the pollution.
The marathon world record-holder Haile Gebrselassie admitted he was wrong to withdraw from the race in Beijing for fear pollution would spark his asthma. “I'm surprised. What do you expect from me? I was here in February, I didn't see no blue sky,” he said. “Since I came here everything is perfect.”
After the fierce emotions sparked by the disrupted torch relay, some observers feared controversy at the games would prompt another wave of anti-foreigner nationalism. However, the Chinese crowds have largely been polite and generous.
Xu Guoqi, a Chinese historian based in the US who wrote a book about China's relationship with the Olympics, says the games could have an important impact on the Chinese psyche.
“One of the lasting impacts is that Chinese will feel more confident of themselves as a nation and put the sense of inferiority behind them,” he says. “China could become less sensitive about foreign criticism and more willing to recognise weaknesses.”
Yet the Beijing games have also brought out some of the least attractive realities of the Chinese system: the way ordinary citizens with views considered awkward can be steamrollered.
Before the games began, the authorities announced the creation of three protest zones in parks around the city for citizens to hold officially approved demonstrations. Yet some who applied to protest have found themselves in jail or have disappeared and the authorities say they have yet to approve a single protest.
In what appears to be the most egregious case, two elderly Chinese women who applied to protest about the loss of their homes were sentenced to a year of “re-education through labour”, their families and a human rights group said.
“Wang Xiuying is almost blind and disabled. What sort of re-education through labour can she serve?” Li Xuehui, the son of one of the women, told the Associated Press. Beijing Public Security Bureau refused to comment on the case.
In the eyes of some foreign media, the treatment of such would-be protesters has tarnished the reputation of the Beijing games. According to one article in Der Spiegel, the German magazine: “This country [China] has hijacked the games, merely to celebrate and congratulate itself.”
Beijing's Olympics have dazzled but not seduced everyone.
http://www.ftchinese.com/story.php?lang=en&storyid=001021529
World records galore, magnificent stadiums, cleanish air and the seemingly inevitable victory for the Chinese team: as the Olympics nears its Sunday close, almost everything that could have gone right has done so.
Yet for all the successes, the authorities have also risked an own goal with the way they have dealt with dissent. The Olympic Games have demonstrated just how much China has been transformed over the past three decades, but have also exposed important ways the country has not changed.
With China winning so many golds, the domestic audience has been entranced. After a bruising few months, China is experiencing its third wave of national unity this year – first through anger at foreigners over Tibet and the torch relay, then in grief after the Sichuan earthquake and now in pride at the huge medal haul.
Zhang Yimou, the film director who designed the spectacular opening ceremony, summed up the mood of national ebullience when he said only China could achieve the strict discipline and technology needed to pull off such a spectacle: “If you think about it, no other country can achieve this in the world.”
Most foreign visitors to the capital – and many television viewers around the world – have been awed by the stadiums, impressed by the level of organisation and charmed by the polite and earnest Olympics volunteers.
Two big factors – pollution and chauvinistic nationalism – that could have undermined the games and damaged China's image proved to be non-events. A mixture of emergency measures on car usage and factory closures, together with wind and rain in the first week, washed away the pollution.
The marathon world record-holder Haile Gebrselassie admitted he was wrong to withdraw from the race in Beijing for fear pollution would spark his asthma. “I'm surprised. What do you expect from me? I was here in February, I didn't see no blue sky,” he said. “Since I came here everything is perfect.”
After the fierce emotions sparked by the disrupted torch relay, some observers feared controversy at the games would prompt another wave of anti-foreigner nationalism. However, the Chinese crowds have largely been polite and generous.
Xu Guoqi, a Chinese historian based in the US who wrote a book about China's relationship with the Olympics, says the games could have an important impact on the Chinese psyche.
“One of the lasting impacts is that Chinese will feel more confident of themselves as a nation and put the sense of inferiority behind them,” he says. “China could become less sensitive about foreign criticism and more willing to recognise weaknesses.”
Yet the Beijing games have also brought out some of the least attractive realities of the Chinese system: the way ordinary citizens with views considered awkward can be steamrollered.
Before the games began, the authorities announced the creation of three protest zones in parks around the city for citizens to hold officially approved demonstrations. Yet some who applied to protest have found themselves in jail or have disappeared and the authorities say they have yet to approve a single protest.
In what appears to be the most egregious case, two elderly Chinese women who applied to protest about the loss of their homes were sentenced to a year of “re-education through labour”, their families and a human rights group said.
“Wang Xiuying is almost blind and disabled. What sort of re-education through labour can she serve?” Li Xuehui, the son of one of the women, told the Associated Press. Beijing Public Security Bureau refused to comment on the case.
In the eyes of some foreign media, the treatment of such would-be protesters has tarnished the reputation of the Beijing games. According to one article in Der Spiegel, the German magazine: “This country [China] has hijacked the games, merely to celebrate and congratulate itself.”
Beijing's Olympics have dazzled but not seduced everyone.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
IOC hits out over protest zone use
By Roger Blitz Wednesday, August 20, 2008 FTChinese.com
click the title of this entry or the link below to see the original post
http://www.ftchinese.com/sc/story_english.jsp?id=001021433&loc=story
Olympic officials have for the first time openly criticised their Beijing hosts for China's intolerance of public protests, questioning their desire to allow citizens the right to raise grievances during the games.
The International Olympic Committee is also understood to believe that lower than expected attendances at games venues is the result of Beijing's poor distribution of tickets for the general public, including the failure to reallocate unwanted tickets.
The two criticisms represent the first splits to emerge between the IOC and the Beijing organising committee (Bocog).
IOC bonhomie was missing in its response to the admission from Beijing authorities on Monday that they had received 77 applications from would-be demonstrators to use special protest zones set up in city parks, but had approved none of them.
The IOC told the Financial Times: “The IOC is not in a position to dictate to city authorities how to run their affairs, however, protest zones are a best practice from previous Olympic host cities for dealing with peaceful protesters who use the platform of the Olympic Games.
“We continue to ask for greater transparency from Beijing city authorities concerning the official protest zones in parks near Olympic venues and would like to see them genuinely used in Beijing.”
Bocog has been repeatedly asked by journalists to provide figures for protest park applications, and several prospective demonstrators have been detained by police. Activist groups have dismissed the Beijing authorities' claim that the applications were withdrawn because the nature of the grievances had been settled.
The IOC also said it was reviewing the distribution of the 6.8m games tickets. Beijing organisers announced prior to the games that all venues were sold out.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Over The Great Firewall
Found a few sources of ways over the firewall:
https://www.torproject.org/ (downloadable software - instructions available in Chinese)
http://www.internetfreedom.org/ (same)
http://www.anonymouse.org (the old standby)
The fact that China has completely censored the stabbing of Todd Bachman is an excellent example of why it's necessary to fight to get over censorship.
Though China's not the only one guilty of trying to guide its citizens. Freedom House provides an analysis of Press Freedom (http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=251&year=2006 )
This should be considered when examining problems with Olympic reporting or let's say the Georgia-Russia conflict.
Freedom of the press isn't the whole story. Ken Silverstein in Harper's Magazine has an excellent quick point on bias from US media on the issue of Georgia-Russia conflict. (http://harpers.org/subjects/WashingtonBabylon)
Ok, swimming relay. Finally something interesting to watch on the olympics
https://www.torproject.org/ (downloadable software - instructions available in Chinese)
http://www.internetfreedom.org/ (same)
http://www.anonymouse.org (the old standby)
The fact that China has completely censored the stabbing of Todd Bachman is an excellent example of why it's necessary to fight to get over censorship.
Though China's not the only one guilty of trying to guide its citizens. Freedom House provides an analysis of Press Freedom (http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=251&year=2006 )
This should be considered when examining problems with Olympic reporting or let's say the Georgia-Russia conflict.
Freedom of the press isn't the whole story. Ken Silverstein in Harper's Magazine has an excellent quick point on bias from US media on the issue of Georgia-Russia conflict. (http://harpers.org/subjects/WashingtonBabylon)
Ok, swimming relay. Finally something interesting to watch on the olympics
Below is a story from China Digital Times. Tibet isn't really the sensible topic these days with all eyes on Beijing. This article points to a number of issues with Western media and Chinese thinking on it.
For what it's worth, I've been extremely impressed with China Digital Times. It's run by Chinese folks (http://chinadigitaltimes.net/about and http://chinadigitaltimes.net/team ) CDT represents a rational Chinese approach to reporting I rarely find.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Liang Wendao, a well-known host of Phoenix TV, a Chinese broadcasting company based in Hong Kong, commented on the recent clash between members of the press and police during Olympics ticket sales on his blog. Translated by CDT’s Linjun Fan.
Many Chinese are confused over why people overseas often pick on our faults when the nation is becoming strong, its economy is increasingly prosperous, and people’s lives are being improved day by day. Why do the overseas media vilify us? Perhaps we could look at the problem this way: it is caused by the divergence of two images of China: One is a rising superpower, which is in the collective consciousness of the Chinese people; the other is a dinosaur with tons of problems, which is in the minds of people overseas.
We often say that when foreigners get to know China better, their prejudices would disappear. We all think that frequent contact and adequate information would help to reduce the divergence between the
two different perceptions. If this assumption stands, the Chinese people should also know better about what is happening to ourselves, so we could have a reasonable image of the country and won’t feel too good about ourselves.
A number of mainland newspapers published a tabloid news story on July 26, which said that a reporter from the South China Morning Post disobeyed Beijing police and even injured a policeman by kicking him. If they read only this news story on the incident, Chinese readers might think that overseas media were creating problems in China again, and that the Hong Kong reporters were so aggressive as to make trouble out of nothing at a celebratory occasion.
However, the media in Hong Kong told a completely different story about this incident. They published pictures showing that a huge crowd of Beijing residents who had been queuing for days to buy Olympic tickets went out of control. A single long line broke into three ones. The crowd as well as the police at the spot were restless from the scorching heat.
Various Hong Kong reporters took pictures of the scene with their cameras. The police tried to stop them. They intended to either confiscate their videotapes or detain them. They even beat the reporters.
We all know that the State Council had put forth a new regulation long ago to give more freedom to overseas press…We all applauded this regulation as a sign of China’s opening up, and its first step towards hosting a civilized Olympic Games. However, as we saw clearly on TV, the policemen in China’s capital kept questioning the Hong Kong reporters over whether they had permission. They did not to listen to the reporters who responded to them with the State Council regulation. The police also tried to block the photographers’ lenses with their hands. The kicking of a policeman by a South China Morning Post reporter took place at this chaotic moment.
Therefore, through the various indignant coverage on the incident by Hong Kong media, the image of Chinese bad at queuing and of Chinese police disrespecting press freedom was spread out to the world once again. But what people in China read about in their papers was that a Hong Kong reporter attacked a Beijing policeman for no good reason. The divergence of the two images gets widened with one such small incident after another.
Can the Beijing Olympics help to present the new image of contemporary China to the world? Perhaps. Take the Beijing police who rudely treated Hong Kong reporters as an example. I don’t deny that reporters could be blamed for going over a media zone designated by the police. However, was it necessary for the police to dispel the reporters even after they quit to the media zone? We might regard it as a new image of China that is worth celebrating — at least the police had realized that it was not a good image to be seen by the world that people in China didn’t wait in queues to buy tickets. The fact that the police asked reporters to stop taking pictures and forced them to hand over their videotapes showed that they were aware of the power of media supervision. How would the police have been afraid of reporters if we were still in the era when all media were the mouthpiece of the government?
…
Hong Kong reporters intuitively responded to the questioning of the police with the new State Council regulation on the rights of overseas press. They forgot how loyal these policemen were. To the policemen, the orders from above were everything. If they receive a new order (let’s suppose that the order is to maintain social order at any cost), they could ignore all previous laws and regulations to carry it out. In China, the lines between laws, regulations, and orders are blurred. You could regard all of them as orders of different types. A new order always overrides all previous orders, no matter if it is an administrative regulation, a national policy, or a codified body of law.
The police who beat the the reporters might have received orders to treat reporters politely. They might also know that overseas media need not get permission from the government to conduct interviews, and that it is important for them to fulfill their duties in a civilized way. However, since they’ve got the latest and the highest order, they would do their utmost to carry it out and to maintain
peace and order during the Olympics.
What was most interesting during the incident was what a Beijing resident said in an interview with a Hong Kong reporter at the chaotic scene, “We are in good order. There is no problem. Please don’t ask me about it any more.” We could see clearly from recorded pictures that the scene in the background was chaotic and people were pushing each other at the time he spoke. Yes, we were in peace, in harmony and in good order, although the crowd was a mess and a policeman pinched a
reporter on the neck.
(For more on this story, see these posts from ESWN.)
For what it's worth, I've been extremely impressed with China Digital Times. It's run by Chinese folks (http://chinadigitaltimes.net/about and http://chinadigitaltimes.net/team ) CDT represents a rational Chinese approach to reporting I rarely find.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Liang Wendao, a well-known host of Phoenix TV, a Chinese broadcasting company based in Hong Kong, commented on the recent clash between members of the press and police during Olympics ticket sales on his blog. Translated by CDT’s Linjun Fan.
Many Chinese are confused over why people overseas often pick on our faults when the nation is becoming strong, its economy is increasingly prosperous, and people’s lives are being improved day by day. Why do the overseas media vilify us? Perhaps we could look at the problem this way: it is caused by the divergence of two images of China: One is a rising superpower, which is in the collective consciousness of the Chinese people; the other is a dinosaur with tons of problems, which is in the minds of people overseas.
We often say that when foreigners get to know China better, their prejudices would disappear. We all think that frequent contact and adequate information would help to reduce the divergence between the
two different perceptions. If this assumption stands, the Chinese people should also know better about what is happening to ourselves, so we could have a reasonable image of the country and won’t feel too good about ourselves.
A number of mainland newspapers published a tabloid news story on July 26, which said that a reporter from the South China Morning Post disobeyed Beijing police and even injured a policeman by kicking him. If they read only this news story on the incident, Chinese readers might think that overseas media were creating problems in China again, and that the Hong Kong reporters were so aggressive as to make trouble out of nothing at a celebratory occasion.
However, the media in Hong Kong told a completely different story about this incident. They published pictures showing that a huge crowd of Beijing residents who had been queuing for days to buy Olympic tickets went out of control. A single long line broke into three ones. The crowd as well as the police at the spot were restless from the scorching heat.
Various Hong Kong reporters took pictures of the scene with their cameras. The police tried to stop them. They intended to either confiscate their videotapes or detain them. They even beat the reporters.
We all know that the State Council had put forth a new regulation long ago to give more freedom to overseas press…We all applauded this regulation as a sign of China’s opening up, and its first step towards hosting a civilized Olympic Games. However, as we saw clearly on TV, the policemen in China’s capital kept questioning the Hong Kong reporters over whether they had permission. They did not to listen to the reporters who responded to them with the State Council regulation. The police also tried to block the photographers’ lenses with their hands. The kicking of a policeman by a South China Morning Post reporter took place at this chaotic moment.
Therefore, through the various indignant coverage on the incident by Hong Kong media, the image of Chinese bad at queuing and of Chinese police disrespecting press freedom was spread out to the world once again. But what people in China read about in their papers was that a Hong Kong reporter attacked a Beijing policeman for no good reason. The divergence of the two images gets widened with one such small incident after another.
Can the Beijing Olympics help to present the new image of contemporary China to the world? Perhaps. Take the Beijing police who rudely treated Hong Kong reporters as an example. I don’t deny that reporters could be blamed for going over a media zone designated by the police. However, was it necessary for the police to dispel the reporters even after they quit to the media zone? We might regard it as a new image of China that is worth celebrating — at least the police had realized that it was not a good image to be seen by the world that people in China didn’t wait in queues to buy tickets. The fact that the police asked reporters to stop taking pictures and forced them to hand over their videotapes showed that they were aware of the power of media supervision. How would the police have been afraid of reporters if we were still in the era when all media were the mouthpiece of the government?
…
Hong Kong reporters intuitively responded to the questioning of the police with the new State Council regulation on the rights of overseas press. They forgot how loyal these policemen were. To the policemen, the orders from above were everything. If they receive a new order (let’s suppose that the order is to maintain social order at any cost), they could ignore all previous laws and regulations to carry it out. In China, the lines between laws, regulations, and orders are blurred. You could regard all of them as orders of different types. A new order always overrides all previous orders, no matter if it is an administrative regulation, a national policy, or a codified body of law.
The police who beat the the reporters might have received orders to treat reporters politely. They might also know that overseas media need not get permission from the government to conduct interviews, and that it is important for them to fulfill their duties in a civilized way. However, since they’ve got the latest and the highest order, they would do their utmost to carry it out and to maintain
peace and order during the Olympics.
What was most interesting during the incident was what a Beijing resident said in an interview with a Hong Kong reporter at the chaotic scene, “We are in good order. There is no problem. Please don’t ask me about it any more.” We could see clearly from recorded pictures that the scene in the background was chaotic and people were pushing each other at the time he spoke. Yes, we were in peace, in harmony and in good order, although the crowd was a mess and a policeman pinched a
reporter on the neck.
(For more on this story, see these posts from ESWN.)
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Activists play parallel Beijing games
By Mure Dickie in Beijing
Thursday, August 07, 2008http://www.ftchinese.com/sc/story_english.jsp?id=001021084&loc=story
The Beijing Olympics do not formally open until tomorrow but a parallel competition between international activists and Chinese authorities began yesterday.
Demonstrations against Chinese rule in Tibet, its national policy on population control and the use of animal fur underscored campaigners' determination to use the “Protest Games” to win publicity.
In one dramatic stunt, four activists from Britain and the US hung banners calling for freedom for Tibet from two street-lamps towering over the Olympic Green.
“We did this action today to highlight the Chinese government's use of the Beijing Olympics for whitewashing [its] human rights record,” said Ian Thom, a member of the group Students for a Free Tibet, in a recorded phone call from “30 or 40 metres” up one of the lampposts. “Now is a really critical time for Tibet,” said Mr Thom in the call, which was released online on the Free Tibet 2008 website. Mr Thom was later detained by police “for investigation”, the Xinhua news agency said.
Separately, three US Christian campaigners shouted slogans denouncing China's population control policy on Tiananmen Square, just hours after a huge Olympic torch relay rally was held in the politically sensitive area. The three were hustled away by police but later released, said Reuters news agency.
Amanda Beard, a US 2004 Olympics swimming gold medallist hoping to repeat her success, unveiled an anti-fur poster featuring a nude photograph of herself at an impromptu event outside the athletes' village after police banned a planned press conference in a Beijing hotel.
China has sought to limit opportunities for critics and campaigners to demonstrate during the games in part by dramatically tightening policies on visa issuance and by barring known activists.
Joey Cheek, the winter Olympic gold medallist founder of a group of athletes seeking to draw attention to the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, said his visa to China had been revoked this week.
Jill Savitt, executive director of Dream for Darfur, another campaign group, said her application for a visa had been rejected.
Such moves have not silenced the critics. Dream for Darfur is to hold an online “alternative opening ceremony” tomorrow,followed by a daily webcast by the actress Mia Farrow from a Darfur refugee camp.
The impact of such demonstrations on China's international image will depend in part on how the authorities respond. While Chinese police sometimes deal roughly with domestic protesters, the authorities are keen to avoid any on-camera violence during the games.Domestic state media largely ignored yesterday's protests, with Xinhua's report on the Tibet activists released only on its English-language service.
However, further demonstrations could trigger angry responses from Beijing residents, with nationalist sentiment running high among the many Chinese people who saw disruption of the international Olympic torch relay as a sign of foreign hostility.
A translation of Xinhua's report on the “Free Tibet” activists that was posted on a local website prompted harsh comments from internet users. “Drag them out and shoot them,” wrote one poster. “Castrate the men and cut off the breasts of the women,” wrote another.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Grand opening of the Olympics
08/08/08, yesterday, is the opening date for Beijing Olympics. I was stuck in a heavy rain for very long and missed most of the performance, then watched the replay from NBC on a very crappy and small TV in a kind of crowded and noisy room...So I wouldn't say I fully got the wonderfulness of this exciting event. But still, I think it was a very impressive and beautiful opening ceremony.
My friend in Beijing sent me an email about his experience and feelings (the following is excerpted from the email and translated by me):
Tonight is destined to be a sleepless night. We sent out to find a big screen outside to experience the the very rare moment. We ended up watching it in Wang Fu Jing.
It was very hot and humid, but I can feel all the people around me were really excited and enthusiastic. We were too happy tonight. We were standing the whole four hours in the crowd and applauded when there were close shot about Chinese athletes, we also sang national theme sometime to express our excitement. The whole ceremony was really great, especially the ignition of the Olympic torch.
It feels so excited and happy as a Chinese! Beijing has been preparing this very carefully for quite a long time and finally it is time now for the whole world to focus on it.
Poor Tian! It is such a pity you were not here and missed the great atmosphere filled with Beijing! But no need to be too sad, there would be other opportunities in the future. Wish you work hard and become wealthy, letting the foreigner feel the high spirit and the eager to do well in everything of the contemporary Chinese youth!
I post the last part of his email just for fun since this friend likes to talk and encourage me in a manner of a leader's speech. But anyway, I think you would be impressed by the excitement and the national proud from his email.
I really wish I could be in Beijing now, for the first time in the past two years of staying in US. No matter what problems China is having inside and outside, just give a break for us all to feel happy and proud for a short while! I begin to realize things are happening simultaneously and there is no such points that can mean a total ending to worries or concerns, also there is no brand-new start or something like that---there are always shadows from yesterday that shows who you are when you are facing a new day. But maybe exactly because of this, there are some moments, just very short and very unstable, but are very beautiful and memorable, in the short intervals between the unstoppable wheel of time or life.
Based on the same reason, I feel very irritated to read http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/olympics/article4481513.ece
the title is 'Lucy Fairbrother and Iain Thom return with promises of more Tibet protests', about two British students post a banner 'one world, one dream, free Tibet' around the main stadium on the eve of the Games. It also mentioned there were two Americans carried the similar protest and were also departed. Give us a short break! Show some respect for the long time dream of a country! And if you want to win a debate or a negotiation, don't make the other side feel stupid and mad. Having valid reasons is far from getting the successful solution of a problem, no matter in interpersonal relationship or international issues.
My friend in Beijing sent me an email about his experience and feelings (the following is excerpted from the email and translated by me):
Tonight is destined to be a sleepless night. We sent out to find a big screen outside to experience the the very rare moment. We ended up watching it in Wang Fu Jing.
It was very hot and humid, but I can feel all the people around me were really excited and enthusiastic. We were too happy tonight. We were standing the whole four hours in the crowd and applauded when there were close shot about Chinese athletes, we also sang national theme sometime to express our excitement. The whole ceremony was really great, especially the ignition of the Olympic torch.
It feels so excited and happy as a Chinese! Beijing has been preparing this very carefully for quite a long time and finally it is time now for the whole world to focus on it.
Poor Tian! It is such a pity you were not here and missed the great atmosphere filled with Beijing! But no need to be too sad, there would be other opportunities in the future. Wish you work hard and become wealthy, letting the foreigner feel the high spirit and the eager to do well in everything of the contemporary Chinese youth!
I post the last part of his email just for fun since this friend likes to talk and encourage me in a manner of a leader's speech. But anyway, I think you would be impressed by the excitement and the national proud from his email.
I really wish I could be in Beijing now, for the first time in the past two years of staying in US. No matter what problems China is having inside and outside, just give a break for us all to feel happy and proud for a short while! I begin to realize things are happening simultaneously and there is no such points that can mean a total ending to worries or concerns, also there is no brand-new start or something like that---there are always shadows from yesterday that shows who you are when you are facing a new day. But maybe exactly because of this, there are some moments, just very short and very unstable, but are very beautiful and memorable, in the short intervals between the unstoppable wheel of time or life.
Based on the same reason, I feel very irritated to read http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/olympics/article4481513.ece
the title is 'Lucy Fairbrother and Iain Thom return with promises of more Tibet protests', about two British students post a banner 'one world, one dream, free Tibet' around the main stadium on the eve of the Games. It also mentioned there were two Americans carried the similar protest and were also departed. Give us a short break! Show some respect for the long time dream of a country! And if you want to win a debate or a negotiation, don't make the other side feel stupid and mad. Having valid reasons is far from getting the successful solution of a problem, no matter in interpersonal relationship or international issues.
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