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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."
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.
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.
If the official religion of China was atheism instead of Christianity, none of this would be happening.
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.
>> 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.
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.
My work here is dung.
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?
My work here is dung.
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.
Don't stop where the ink does.
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.
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.
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
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
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.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!