Telling the Truth In Today's China

eldavojohn writes "Inside the land of the Great Firewall censorship is rampant although rarely transparent. Foreign Policy has a lengthy but eyeopening recounting of what it's like being an editor for the only officially sanctioned English business publication inside the most populated country on Earth. Eveline Chao of the magazine 'China International Business' writes in her piece 'Me and My Censor' about her censor named Snow, the three taboo T's (Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen), a bizarre government aversion to flags and how she was 'offered red envelopes stuffed with cash at press junkets, sometimes discovered footprints on the toilet seats at work, and had to explain to the Chinese assistants more than once that they could not turn in articles copied word for word from existing pieces they found online.' Anecdotes abound in this piece including the story of a photojournalist who 'once ran a picture he'd taken in Taiwan alongside an article, but had failed to notice a small Taiwanese flag in the background. As a result, the entire staff of his newspaper had been immediately fired and the office shut down.' " (Read more, below.) Eldavojohn continues: "From shoddy CYA maps to language misunderstandings to an elusive 'words group' faxed out by government censors, this article exposes a lot of the internal workings and responsibilities of a 'government censor' inside mainland China but also the ridiculous absurdity of government censorship: 'I was told that we could not title a coal piece "Power Failure" because the word "failure" in bold print so close to the Olympics would make people think of the Olympics being a failure. The title "The Agony and the Ecstasy" for a soccer piece was axed because agony was a negative word and we couldn't have negative words be associated with sports.' The magazine couldn't use images of an empty bowl for its restaurant pieces because it might remind readers of the Great Famine."

Comments

absurdity

[HPHatecraft]

All of this is absurd, like a Dada or Surrealist depiction of a repressive government. I'm thinking of the Marx Brother's "Duck Soup" or something similar. It would all be hilarious if it didn't have real, and possibly fatal, consequences. Good luck, people of China.

This is horrible

[Quakeulf]

Just think of all the man hours spent on keeping people stupid and the labour cheap so that we can all have it made in China.

Re:This is horrible

[slashmydots]

I know, right? Keeping everyone in that mindset so that the people on the top running everything and owning the biggest companies can continue to make gigantic profits while the rest of the workers remain non-disruptive and work for dirt cheap is textbook communism.
As they say on the internet, Hey China, ur doin it wrong!

Re:This is horrible

[camperdave]

Just think of all the man hours spent on keeping people stupid and the labour cheap so that we can all have it made in China.

Well, if there's one thing China has in abundance, it's man-hours.

Re:This is horrible

[Kjella]

Some of the more expensive labor around is woefully ignorant of large parts of science like evolution and most things outside of North America, but it doesn't seem to significantly affect their work performance or salary requirements. China is no longer that cheap, it says "Labour costs have surged by 20% a year for the past four years" - pretty different from what most Americans have experienced the last four years I bet. China is rapidly becoming a modern country, compared to most other countries in South East Asia they are already rich. For example India is poor compared to China. Right now I'd hold Greece and Spain much more likely to have a revolution than China...

Re:This is horrible

[Stiletto]

Ahh, the old, "If you've ever bought anything from a corporation, you can't criticize corporations" argument still gets modded up here.

The problem, of course, is religion

[Anonymous Coward]

If the official religion of China was atheism instead of Christianity, none of this would be happening.

While I don't agree with China's censorship...

[Anonymous Coward]

One also has to take their culture into context. THis is not the US or anywhere in the "West" for that matter, where our stand is put out all information in whatever form you want, and leave it up to the individual to determine what they want to read and what interpretation of events is correct.

China's focus is more of an "internal harmony" approach, whereby maintaing social order is a higher priority than things such as freedom of the press. Many Chinese are perfectly ok with the government censoring certain things out of the media as it fits within their belief system of internal harmony (both Zen Buddhism and Daoism maintain this concept of balance) of both the self and society. But i think far more importantly is that here in the West we are taught shockingly little history of China, but if you have ever studied it you'll see that China has been beset 5 or 6 times by massive wars, several of whcih were huge revolutions against the existing regime, and during those wars millions of Chinese were killed. Most people are shocked to think of the destruction and loss of life during World War I and II; China has had several incidents in the past 2,000 years on that scale. The Chinese have a long memory, and they more than any other society are acutely aware of the dangers of revolution and challenges to the social order, and many are quite content to let things be if that means they don't have to go through another period like that.

Again, here in the West we idolize social disturbance, and in fact I think we've done a good job overall in allowing it to come out so when it does come out now in the 20th and 21st centuries, it typically results in a political revolution instead of a violent one, and my own opinion is the Chinese approach simply represses those feelings which ultimately magnifies them and when revolution comes it blows up harder than it would have otherwise. But that's my own opinion; the Chinese seem to think differently.

Re:While I don't agree with China's censorship...

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

As one of the somewhat rare caucasian Americans who actually studied Mandarin for 5 years (during which included historical and cultural studies of predominantly mainland China but also Taiwan -- my focus was on the Han dynasty but was seconded by a fairly lengthy study of the Tiananmen incident), and for 6 months lived with a Chinese family state-side who had immigrated to the US, I'm often left shaking my head when reading highly opinionated or "dramatic" articles about China.

In no way shape or form do I agree with the government's stance or behaviour on most things (especially their approach to handling certain media-oriented items), however stories like the above often seem to lack cultural context. I'm not trying to justify the government's behaviour, I'm saying if you understand the culture, the history, and the thought process that exists in China (both amongst people and government), much of what's considered "shocking and appalling" to the average American no longer applies. For example, the above article made me nod and think "still the same as it was 20 years ago", rather than read in disbelief.

I can assure readers that there are much more nefarious and awful things that go on in China, just as there are equally horrible things that go on here in the United States.

TL;DR -- it's important to understand the history, culture, and overall "societal demographic" of any foreign country, no matter if communist or otherwise. Before jumping on the stereotypic anti-communist bandwagon, it helps to get some context first, *then* draw a conclusion.

Re:While I don't agree with China's censorship...

[Anonymous Coward]

One also has to take their culture into context...

And Muslims have a culture of abusing women, so we must tolerate that as well!

Just because "its tradition", doesn't make it right.

Re:While I don't agree with China's censorship...

[poity]

I hate when bullshit like this gets modded up.
Do you also take the Religious Right's culture into context, and implore others to sympathize?
Do you also take the racist rural white culture into context, and implore others to sympathize?
When confronted with domestic abuse, do you say "well maybe she likes it, who are we to judge?"
When conservatives say "don't disturb the social order" do you pipe up in their defense, because they too have a culture of their own?

In your over-enthusiasm to be tolerant, you've embraced a type of paternalistic prejudice. You judge, albeit with a well-meaning heart, an entire nation of people with broad assumptions and meaningless generalizations. I find posts like yours only slightly less intolerable than overt racism.

I'll tell you this as a Chinese person: The majority of Chinese aren't followers of the same organic vegan yoga-studio interpretation of Buddhism that you might be enamored with -- they follow a mixture of traditional local paganism that has been intertwined with figments of Buddhism over hundreds of years. They are not "ok" with government censorship, but through years of being powerless in the face of the government, the majority have taken on the attitude of "there's nothing to be done, so just cope."

As you say, China has indeed been the geopolitical victim for much of its modern life, but having been bullied by foreign nations is not a argument for or a rational explanation of Chinese apathy. In fact, the government and nationalist groups/individuals have consistently relied on China's history of victimhood as a rallying cry for activism, though always for rights of the state and respect for the country, yet rarely if ever for rights of the people. There's a sentiment common among majority of Chinese internet users which I've noticed, and can be summarized as "no matter who's in charge [Imperial/foreign/GMD/CPC] we're always the downtrodden rabble." They're are not content, they merely deal with it the best they can since business, marriage, and finding a house they can afford are far more urgent matters. But that doesn't mean accept censorship, or embrace it as you imply.

And no, people in the West don't "idolize social disturbance" either. In every nation there are conservatives who want stability above all. In the US, we have at least half who are adamantly conservative, and half again more who are nominally liberal but don't dare rock the boat. Your propensity to generalize the unfamiliar I've seen in friends and family back in China. When they ask me "Do Americans really do/believe/think this?" I have to explain to them "No, American attitudes are diverse, just like Chinese attitudes here are diverse."

Re:While I don't agree with China's censorship...

[poity]

It seems Chinese (and "distant" foreigners like other Asians, Middle Easterners) have to deal with two sides of prejudice -- one end regards us as soulless and less than human, the other fetishizes us to irreproachable heights.

Chinese thought process is not much different from the thought process of anyone else around the world. Their desire for comfort, for love, for every bit of freedom they can get to live without encumbrance is no less than yours. When housing prices are astronomical, they blame speculators and mafia-connected developers; when street cops beat up unlicensed vendors trying their best to survive, they blame the uncompromising inhumanity of the law; when there is melamine in milk and kids get sick, they blame greedy companies and regulatory complicity; when government waste stares at them in the face, they shake their heads and wonder where the country is headed; when the rich do as they please without regard they take offense; when they see heartlessness towards the common man they stand with him in anger, when they see the weak treated with indecency they offer their most heartfelt sympathy.

But they cannot do any of those things too loudly, you see. They cannot desire too loudly, blame too loudly, wonder too loudly, take offense too loudly, gather together too loudly, show anger too loudly, or sympathize too loudly. It's not because they don't want to express themselves to that degree, it's because there are consequences for doing so -- consequences not only from the government, but from society itself which has normalized towards repression. Think of it this way: how publicly and how vociferously can a church member dissent within his congregation and still be regarded as faithful? He wouldn't dare, he would only do what little he can while bending over backwards to not be ostracized. It is not culture, it is a social disease, and by elevating it to culture in a pretense of tolerance and understanding you give it legitimacy.

With that said, however, those who are not Chinese cannot do anything themselves to help. Change has to come from the Chinese people. But know that when you unwittingly make excuses and give support to the illnesses that afflict China, you make the job of those Chinese who wish to cure it that much more difficult.

Re:While I don't agree with China's censorship...

[shadowofwind]

I hate when bullshit like this gets modded up.
Do you also take the Religious Right's culture into context, and implore others to sympathize?
Do you also take the racist rural white culture into context, and implore others to sympathize?

I think these are both good examples. Americans outside the religious right mostly do not understand the religious right, and see only a caricature of it. Likewise for rural racists. I'm strongly against both the religious right and against white racists. However, I still think its worth trying to see them for what they are, so as to deal with them more realistically, rather than attributing characteristics to them that they don't actually have.

Of course people who try to 'explain' China are going to be annoyingly wrong about a lot of things, but that doesn't mean its not worth trying to understand better anyway.

I used to work in the drone/surveillance/defense industry. I left it, at some sacrifice, because it became clear to me that it was wrong. My Chinese friends and family had no arguments against my views about what that industry is, but all argued against my actually doing something about my part in it. To them, financial advantages for one's own family always trump all other considerations. I realize that Chinese people I know are not a representative sample of Chinese people in China. And I see Americans of European descent to be self-serving, amoral, and cowardly in a similar sort of way. But a significant minority of white Americans at least understand what I did, whereas I haven't interacted with a Chinese person who seems to understand at all.

There's a difference between resenting censorship and actually being willing to do what it takes to change it. And it appears to me that Chinese reflexes about harmony and pragmatism do partially account for why there is censorship, even though there are a lot of other reasons also.

Sadly, I don't think modern American's have enough of what it takes to fight for certain kinds of civil liberties either. I think we're where we are mostly for historical reasons, and as we do loose our freedom there isn't much will to get it back.

"footprints on the seats" = "Chinese hillbillies"

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> sometimes discovered footprints on the toilet seats at work

Some context here - "normal" toilets in China don't have anything to sit on, so you squat over the hole or bowl, depending on your location. I believe this phrase was meant to indicate that this woman had to work in the same office as some unsophisticated Chinese citizens.

Re:"footprints on the seats" = "Chinese hillbillie

[oodaloop]

My first thought was that she meant there were people hiding in stalls to spy on people, as in listening to people talk in the bathroom. But your comment makes more sense. I guess I'm just paranoid.

No, It's Way Over the Line and Abusively Ambiguous

[eldavojohn]

How's this any different from banning Big Gulps?

Well, the ban on big gulps is not a ban on soda or even how much soda you can buy, it's a ban on the convenience of selling massive amounts of soda in the interest of public health. Also, the ban is clearly defined and written into law. If you read the article, you would get a taste of the ambiguity and the surprising way that censorship in China can bite you in the ass. It's neither codified nor tested in a court of law, it just happens.

Big overweening governments do things like this "for your own good".

Big overweening governments also require you to have car insurance and wear seat belts and now it's illegal to smoke in bars almost everywhere and dump your fecal matter in rivers -- on top of a number of other things that you're not bitching about. You are free not to live in NYC where Big Gulps are banned but if that experiment turns out to have a positive effect on health, you'll see a lot of other cities follow (similar to no smoking in public restaurants and dumping fecal matter in rivers). That fine line may be felt out by governments but at least it's well defined when they tell you what is and is not legal.

Are you really comparing your rights to buy soda in 64 oz containers with your right to free speech and free criticism of the government? Really? You see those as two equivocal "overweening" acts? Please.

Re:But capitalism sucks...

[eldavojohn]

But capitalism sucks and socialism is the way to go!

What part of the article indicated or led you to believe that this is a problem of socialism or capitalism and not one of basic human rights and government corruption?

Also, can you tell me which country is more socialist and which is more capitalist, USA or China? Both are working hard to meet each other in the middle.

Representation can be achieved in capitalism as well as socialism. Ethical versus morally corrupt politicians can arise in either system with ease. Why do you change the focus from one of criticism of abuse of universal human rights to some bullshit political thing?

Re:No Innovation

[Nidi62]

Censorship never helps an economy.

It's not designed to. It's only desinged to do one thing: protect those in power. Those in power would gladly trade off a little economic growth for more government stability. History has shown that the PRC government fears 2 things: looking bad and dissent. You could see this during the Olympics, and you can really see it right now with the upcoming power transition. Just like the USSR before it, they have to maintain the illusion of power and superiority. By maintaining control on certain things such as the media, it indoctrinates the people to accept government control in other parts of their life, whether the government actually has control or not. From the view of an authoritiarian government, the illusion of control is jsut as good, if not better, than actual control, because people and society eventually start controlling themselves, reducing the burden of control on the state.

What's ironic is that communism is supposed to be about the power of the people, how the people govern themselves. Yet the actions of the PRC government, and indeed the actions of most Communist governments, show through the fear they have of their own people how strong teh people really are, and how weak the system is. They are like a house of cards that they claim is glued together but are afraid people will realize how easy it is to remove a card. If they start removing those cards eventually they will remove the wrong one and the whole house will come crashing down.

Sweden

[Anonymous Coward]

In sweden the 3rd largest political party still get bullied by the mainstream media.
Their main message is to stop immigration until we solve the problems we have with the immigrants who have not been properly integrated with swedish society yet. Also to avoid rising unemployment rates due to importing unemployable (illiterates) people by the truckload.

Complaints by smaller counties who get overrun by immigrants they can not take care of get silenced.
Police does not give a description of a criminal if it is an immigrant.
Any offence against an immigrant get blown out of proportion, recently a somalian woman claimed some kids had poured a glass of milk on her kid. Media covered it for 2 weeks, a rally supporting the somalians in the tiny community which had had 200 somalians to take care of. After all this, turns out noone had poured a glass of milk on her kid and all of a sudden all was silent again.
Meanwhile, gangrape at gunpoint of a swedish girl by 3 immigrants gets silenced for a year.

Until censorship in my own country gets taken care of, I don't think I am in any position to judge china.

As a sidenote, censorship in china is probably a bit complex, I am here right now and every day there is some controversal news with quite graphical material being shown, yesterday there was a big piece about teachers for 4-8 year olds who abused their students. One clip showed a teacher slapping a kid 10 times in a row, another a teacher throwing a kid around and 3rd some photos of a girl whose ear was cut off by her teacher, yes they showed the cut off ear too. I am fairly certain that would not have been shown at home, and I could see from the faces of the 100 people in the restaurant everyone was pissed off.

Re:No Innovation

[shawnhcorey]

What's ironic is that communism is supposed to be about the power of the people...

Communism has become Newspeak for totalitarianism. Just like the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Bad governments can change the meaning of words faster than you can think.

Plagiarism in China? SHOCKER!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

And had to explain to the Chinese assistants more than once that they could not turn in articles copied word for word from existing pieces they found online.

Oh God, it's like grad school all over again.

But seriously, what do you expect? It's a culture built on shameless plagiarism and copyright abuse. You need look no further than the huge Cisco parts scandal to see my point in all this.

Re:absurdity is everywhere

[arpad1]

Not sure if you noticed, but it's absurd to compare voluntary ignorance resulting from having too much information from which to choose to mandated ignorance that helps keep in power an authoritarian elite trying to hang onto that power a little longer even though their decrepit ideology has been repudiated everywhere people have the option to do so.

Re:No, It's Way Over the Line and Abusively Ambigu

[Anonymous Coward]

One step at a time. The argument is that it's good for public health for them to tell you what you're permitted to put into your body. Sound familiar?

Yeah like that time they wanted us to wear seat belts! Now we have to have airbags and we are chained to our seats in straight jackets with restraints on our foreheads and our eyes are peeled open so we're forced to watch the road and ... oh, wait, that didn't happen. I guess sometimes they can take little steps and never cross the line into absurdity.

Re:No Innovation

[Guppy]

Communism has become Newspeak [wikipedia.org] for totalitarianism.

And the Newspeak was right in the names of the countries; the more often you saw "Democratic" and "People's" on the label, the more oppressive you could bet the country would turn out to be:

West Germany: "Federal Republic of Germany" vs. East Germany: "German Democratic Republic"
Taiwan: "Republic of China" vs. Mainland China: "People's Republic of China"
South Korea: "Republic of Korea" vs. North Korea: "Democratic People's Republic of Korea"

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'The People's Stick.'" --Mikhail Bakunin

Three T's my ass

[DNS-and-BIND]

Jeez, not a mention of what China actually censors. Did she actually run a magazine? I ran an English magazine in China. Here's what my censor told me:

The forbidden topics are in three categories, color-coded for your convenience. The colors have cultural significance, if you're in to that sort of thing. The first, YELLOW. Yellow is pornography (think of "blue movies" and you'll get the color reference). Don't print anything too sexy. This one's pretty easy. Moving on: RED. Anti-government activity. Falun Gong, Tibetan separatists, Xinjiang separatists, talking about local unrest, protests, etc. Anything that makes the government look bad, basically. BLACK, mafia and crime. As the mafia competes with the government for authority and taxes, this one seems a no-brainer as well. Don't report about the gambling den that takes up an entire floor of a local 5-star hotel and you'll be fine.

For all other topics not covered above, follow the lead of Xinhua News.

I know I'm going to get some dumbass in here saying something like "but Chinese publications break these rules all the time!" Yes. Chinese publications. Foreigners in China, especially those in communications, have this obsession with overthrowing the system...in English. Basically, nobody cares about what's written in English, and few people read it. Even foreigners don't usually read English magazines. The Chinese government doesn't care too much about what happens in foreign languages. In fact, they're more worried about foreign influence spoiling Chinese culture than any revolution sparked by an angry ABC managing editor. "Zhong shang Ying xia" was how they put it, "Chinese up and English down" literally, or in the American vernacular "G's up and hoes down". And you ain't the G's.

I was more disturbed by the article and how the lady was just determined to hate her censor. Why? Her Western mindset, of course, and the ingrained "hero journalists vs. mustache-twirling government villains" mentality. Censors aren't evil. They're just government workers, that's all. Actually, having a censor is GOOD because if anything goes wrong, you can point to her and say, "but she APPROVED it!" Trying to dehumanize such a person as "teh CoMM13z"...well, it's just not what I would expect from a journalist. And the part at the end where she thinks the lady is looking for a "lifeline"...bah. I've done the exact same thing before, I call it "planting the seed." You see someone who's obviously going on to bigger and better things in life and you give them a nod and say, "call if you need anyone like me." Hey, it could work, right? I've had some longshots pay off before. But this journalist is so eager to be utterly depressed by seeing her tormentor exposed with feet of clay, she never bothers to question her preconceptions.

Re:Three T's my ass

[eldavojohn]

I was more disturbed by the article and how the lady was just determined to hate her censor. Why?

Did you miss this part of the article:

This was not the relationship I wanted to have with Snow. I believed in free speech. I‘d spent a summer interning at the ACLU. I was beginning to question the morality of my paycheck, of playing any part, no matter how incidental, in a system of which I disapproved. Thinking of her as my adversary allowed me to feel I was fighting the system. But my adversary wanted to be friends.

I don't think the ACLU cares if you have a Western mindset or Eastern mindset, I think they see their values like freedom of the press as a universal human right (as I happen to as well). And when you start to challenge universal human rights, that's the point in time where I throw your politics and socialism/capitalism crap right out the window and tell you you're wrong.

Also, you might have glossed over the context this piece was written in:

This was easier back then; the August 2008 Beijing Olympics were a year-and-a-half away, and it behooved China to demonstrate that it was an open country.

So perhaps back then your color coding system was subdued to make Beijing look more appealing to the west and they concentrated on the merely the three T's. Do you mind revealing when (I don't want anyone losing their job) you ran an English magazine in China? Or where you operated? I'd imagine Beijing would be harder to operate in. If you're not afraid of releasing more details and proof, I'm almost certain the Foreign Policy magazine would be interested in talking to you -- I fine censorship around the world very interesting so you can spot it and reference ailments in other nations before it happens to your own.

But this journalist is so eager to be utterly depressed by seeing her tormentor exposed with feet of clay, she never bothers to question her preconceptions.

Odd, I read this whole piece as willful exposure of her preconceptions. She chose to keep those parts, you know. I think she disclosed all of this in an effort to be transparent. This wasn't written in an a absolutist "I'm 100% right and they're 100% wrong" way although that seems to be how you read it ... It is what it is, it happened how it happened. She's not going to make herself look 100% righteous in this piece because there are things she can't rectify in here. A good person can work for a really shitty government. A bad person can work for a really good government. Etc etc etc, this is the spice of life and makes things interesting and worthy of discussion.

Re:"footprints on the seats" = "Chinese hillbillie

[DigiShaman]

Call me paranoid, but when I read that, the first thing to go through my mind was some Chinese laborer being ordered to electronically bug the restroom. Something along the lines of placing something in the plenum above the ceiling tiles.

When you want to make a private phone call, you usually do it outside where it's very noisy, or in a small restroom.

Re:absurdity is everywhere

[arpad1]

Not even close to similar. Nothing in common at all and to suggest there is is evidence less of a desire to illuminate then to obscure. Or to find excuses for a failed and brutal ideology.

The Chinese leadership is trying to keep a lid on popular dissent by trying to enforce ignorance of factors which might lead to popular dissent and answers to no one on that score. In representative governments censorship is always a lively issue with those in favor of this or that convenient form of censorship finding themselves very often on the recieving end of unwelcomed attention and not infrequently losing their bid to impose censorship and just occasionally their position of political influence as well.

That's why the results are also not remotely similar. A Chinese citizen who wishes to educate themselves on some contentious issue is very likely to find their way as thoroughly blocked as the strenuous efforts of the Chinese government allows. A British, French or American citizen who wishes to remedy their ignorance on a previously ignored topic will find no such impediments in their path and, as like as not, find information on the topic from government officials.