NationStates Jolt Archive


Bad News Tests China's Propaganda Arm

LancasterCounty
27-07-2007, 17:32
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/27/AR2007072700080.html?hpid=moreheadlines

As bad news continues to come out of China, it is actually being talked about in China until the propaganda arm of the Chinese Government steps in to try and squash it.

Some of the things being talked about is tainted food, power monopoly, and peasant unrest.

From the article:

BEIJING -- According to a report circulating among Beijing intellectuals, Li Changchun, China's senior propaganda official, went to President Hu Jintao recently suggesting a ban on the July issue of the magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu.

The scholarly monthly had published a long and daring article by a Communist Party professor saying that the party's monopoly on power was the "root cause" of many of the ills afflicting modern-day China, including corruption and peasant unrest.

And even more:

The incident was only the latest in a string of setbacks for Li and China's propaganda bureaucracy. An explosion of negative news -- tainted food exports, slave labor at brick kilns, political challenges and even supposed cardboard dumplings -- has pained party censors and renewed demands for ideological and political discipline among China's journalists.

And even going so far as to jail people and calling a story a hoax:

The order was handed down in response to a high-impact Beijing Television broadcast this month reporting that a fast-food restaurant had mixed cardboard with pork in stuffing its steamed dumplings. The report caused a sensation among Beijing residents, who cherish their dumplings and who were already sensitized by weeks of reporting on food safety concerns.

But authorities quickly branded the broadcast a hoax. The reporter, identified as an inexperienced temp called Zi Beijia, was jailed, and party propaganda officials scolded journalists loudly for lax ethics and needlessly stirring up worries among the public.

In the minds of authorities and Chinese who follow the party line, the scandal was a way to undermine weeks of other reporting on tainted food and drugs, including numerous dispatches by foreign correspondents. In their view, such reports were vastly overblown.

Yes we all know that China has no regard of what freedom of speech is and this is proof of that. However, they cannot continue doing this with the Olympics being held in Beijing next year. The more they crack down on "violations of journalism ethics" the more the people are not going to be very happy. In fact they are not happy as it is.

The article is very well written and I would like NSG's opinions on the future of China in regards to this issu.
Vetalia
27-07-2007, 17:32
Well, it's true. The Communist Party is nothing but a state-sponsored mafia used to loot the country's hard-working citizens of the money and property they earn. It is not a true government, it has no true civil code, and it is responsible to no one but itself. That appalling engine of corruption is entirely responsible for the country's ills, and they know it. That's why they have to ban articles like this.

No problem, though, because there's always samizdat. The people will not tolerate this forever.
Lunatic Goofballs
27-07-2007, 17:33
MMM... Cardboard! *drools*
Lacadaemon
27-07-2007, 17:35
MMM... Cardboard! *drools*

Sadly Goofballs, the cardboard dumpling story was a fake. So if you want some cardboard char sui bao, you'll just have to make your own. :(
Lacadaemon
27-07-2007, 17:36
I do like the bit where the execute corrupt bureaucrats however. I wish the US would adopt similar measures.
Vetalia
27-07-2007, 17:39
I do like the bit where the execute corrupt bureaucrats however. I wish the US would adopt similar measures.

We wouldn't have a government anymore.

But it would be even better if China had the legal framework and independent judiciary capable of preventing these problems in the first place. At the very least, though, they did actually do something about the crime and didn't just let him off the hook.
Lunatic Goofballs
27-07-2007, 17:40
Sadly Goofballs, the cardboard dumpling story was a fake. So if you want some cardboard char sui bao, you'll just have to make your own. :(

:(
Lacadaemon
27-07-2007, 17:56
But it would be even better if China had the legal framework and independent judiciary capable of preventing these problems in the first place. At the very least, though, they did actually do something about the crime and didn't just let him off the hook.

Unlike the US, where they generally do nothing, hold meaningless hearings, and then let people off the hook.

Seriously, there is a lot of government corruption in this country too.
Vetalia
27-07-2007, 18:07
Unlike the US, where they generally do nothing, hold meaningless hearings, and then let people off the hook.

Seriously, there is a lot of government corruption in this country too.

The only thing that keeps it in check is the 1st amendment and the judicial branch. We're easily one of the most corrupt nations, if not the most corrupt, in the developed world. Our system is just that open to abuse, graft and localist, pork-barrel politics.
Lacadaemon
27-07-2007, 18:23
The only thing that keeps it in check is the 1st amendment and the judicial branch. We're easily one of the most corrupt nations, if not the most corrupt, in the developed world. Our system is just that open to abuse, graft and localist, pork-barrel politics.

Oh, I see.

I think we are talking at crossed purposes. I don't want press freedom restricted when reporting about government failures/corruption/abuse. In fact I think there should be more of it. A lot more.

I'm saying that we need to take sterner measures against politicians and bureaucrats when they are exposed, instead of the puppet show we usually get.

A few hangings might put the ship of state back on course.
Non Aligned States
27-07-2007, 19:02
A few hangings might put the ship of state back on course.

The problem is how do you get that kind of legislature passed? I mean, extending the death penalty to corruption.
Lacadaemon
27-07-2007, 19:19
The problem is how do you get that kind of legislature passed? I mean, extending the death penalty to corruption.

Any politician who wouldn't pass that law, or something similarly harsh, is obviously corrupt. If they've done nothing wrong, they have nothing to fear.

(See, we can use their logic back on them).

But yea, in practice you are right. The populace in the US (and the west in general) is far too spineless to insist upon any meaningful political reform, so we'll continue to be sold down the river. Plutarch warned of this a long time ago.
Neu Leonstein
27-07-2007, 22:17
Democracy? Hu needs it! (http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9409197)

Good little article about the same topic.