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02 Jun 08
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Beijing Nospeak for a little while longer … If there is anyone still bothering to look at this site then thank you and apologies for needlessly nibbling away at the life of your keyboard over the last month. A combination of factors is to blame for the silence.
First of all, the election of Bo... |
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27 Apr 08
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Another window of opportunity … … for all those budding propagandists out there. Click here to apply for a spot on the hallowed polishing turf of Xinhua News Agency and here for some (limp) reasons why it might tickle your fancy. I’m travelling outside Beijing for a week ... |
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21 Apr 08
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Latest propagandic episode from start to (just about) finish The latest episode of Chinese news management, which began shortly after the Olympic torch relay protests in Paris, has made for fascinating viewing. Now it is nearing its conclusion, I reckon the time is ripe for un petit recap.
Back on April 6, ... |
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17 Apr 08
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Little British boycotts How did anyone get a proper boycott campaign going ten years ago? A full on leaflet assault has never really captured revolutionary imaginations. A piece of paper thrust in the hand is treated with the kind of suspicion normally reserved for a gau... |
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31 Mar 08
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Commentary: Stop fiddling with…just stop. Please. Stop. TFS sufferers are advised not to continue.
The Xinhua commentary is propaganda at its most stimulating. A wild, unruly beast of a thing, it has the power to make you cringe, chortle and cry out in disbelieving indignation all in the time it ta... |
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27 Mar 08
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A comedian’s take on Tibet I’m not planning to develop the habit of reproducing entire articles and passing them off as blog posts. And I’m not exactly sure why I’m pasting the following comment piece from the Independent in full, apart from the fact IR... |
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24 Mar 08
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A spot of light relief courtesy of the Dalai Mail Yesterday, Xinhua released this story which highlighted a number of foreign media sources condemning the riots in Lhasa and accusing the Western media of showing the bias of a crown green bowl.
A precis: Pakistan Television said Pakistan opposed a... |
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22 Mar 08
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More musings on Tibet propaganda drive It’s still going to be a few days yet before it feels acceptable to write about anything non-Tibet related. I was mulling over the possibility of tackling the reemergence of “thought liberation”, touched upon by the Economist, be... |
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16 Mar 08
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A week in Tibet: journalistic scoops, “cat’s paws” and BBC blunders The foreign ministry official whose signature granted the Economist a week-long reporting trip to Tibet beginning March 12 must be nibbling his nails. It was an incredibly generous act given the 49th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s escape... |
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12 Mar 08
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Liberation, mystery in Henan and irony-loving foreign ministers Apologies for the long absence to anyone who is still bothering to check this page. (And to the person who arrived at this site while searching ask.com for “criticism of Xinhua”, fear not for this blog is not defunct and I’m s... |
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22 Jan 08
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Final letter from the propaganda palace It’s a very bad time to leave Xinhua News Agency. Next week, my department Dui Wai Bu will hold its first Spring Festival party for four years, an event I will miss as I’m due to polish my last Xinhua story today at 7 pm. I have experien... |
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16 Jan 08
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Three years on: Zhao Ziyang as told by state media Three years ago on Thursday, January 17, Zhao Ziyang died at the age of 85 while still under the house arrest that had been imposed 15 years earlier for his sympathetic approach to the Tiananmen Square protests. Human Rights in China released a repo... |
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11 Jan 08
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Gamblers unite! And book a ticket to Wuhan. I think I’ll devote this post to lavishing praise on a fine story released by Xinhua yesterday. Admittedly, it was of particular interest to your blogging slave given my flirtation with horse racing journalism before coming to China.
BEIJING, J... |
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06 Jan 08
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In the navy … Following a request for a photograph
of my new PLA calendar, I give you
Miss January. |
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06 Jan 08
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Dam truths, suspicious news polls and insensitive tourism With a fortnight in the UK came an almost total (self-imposed and needed) disconnection from the China news mill and blogosphere. The sense of detachment was magnified by the fact news coverage over the Christmas period was of course dominated by... |
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22 Dec 07
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One month to go … Today marks the start of my Christmas holiday and I am flying back to the UK in a few hours. It is also the beginning of my one-month countdown to leaving Xinhua after two years of enough polishing to make Mr Muscle blush. Life in Beijing without ... |
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20 Dec 07
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How bad is corruption in China? This bad … What must the webmaster of the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention’s red-hot new website be thinking? It should have been the least demanding job in the world, as quiet as that of a lift attendant in a bungalow. We’ve seen it all befor... |
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18 Dec 07
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The mysterious disappearance of China’s largest freshwater lake Over the weekend, a Beijing-based freelancer kindly bestowed upon me the secrets of how to succeed in the fickle, coldly commercial world that is journalistic self-employment. When in China, write about pandas, dragons and kung fu monks. I as... |
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18 Dec 07
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This week I have been mostly … … making very few grammatical changes to thought-provoking articles about “reincarnated soul boys”. As part of my duty to spread the word, the State Council’s latest opus is displayed in full below since I feel it has not receiv... |
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11 Dec 07
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A curious take on a gruesome murder Last week, two Chinese students were locked up for a minimum of 18 and a half years for the kidnapping and murder of a fellow Chinese student in Auckland last year. A third student was cleared of murder but was jailed for a minimum of three and a ha... |
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07 Dec 07
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How to make the foreign media’s task that little bit easier “It’s because the foreign media is so biased.” A well-worn defence, put forward by many a state media journalist, to justify resolutely one-sided reporting, deletions of chunks of critical speeches delivered by visiting dignitari... |
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04 Dec 07
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Diplomatic denials show disregard for Chinese fishermen lost at sea There are few things more unseemly than when diplomatic squabbles overshadow the potential loss of human life.
On Monday, Xinhua reported 12 Chinese fishermen were missing “in south China’s Nansha Islands”. It said the fishermen we... |
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04 Dec 07
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Mugabe’s gone missing and the post-congress blues I wrote a very foolish thing in a previous post. I referred to a story released on October 22 as “(seemingly) Xinhua’s final congress story”. It wasn’t. I somehow managed to forget about the in-depth ”analysis” of ... |
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25 Nov 07
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Your flight is delayed. Why? Unspecified reasons. On Tuesday, a journalist friend of mine tried to fly from southern China to Shanghai. The whole process took 11 hours. My friend was told the People’s Liberation Army, those lovers of late notice, had imposed airspace controls over eastern Chin... |
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20 Nov 07
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Three Gorges officials terrified by critical thinking So the State Council only managed to last seven weeks before deciding the sound of open debate about the Three Gorges’ environmental problems was more unbearable than fingernails on a blackboard.
On September 25, at a forum in Wuhan, a statement ... |
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14 Nov 07
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The harmonization of the Huawei debate (To skip to the actual point of this post, feel free to go directly to paragraph three) I haven’t been able to witter on very much in the last week or so. One of the reasons for this was a long weekend in Shanghai during which they wer... |
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13 Nov 07
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More cheeky pen names from the State Council Last month, the Information Office of the State Council released a few signed articles (as mentioned on this blog here) accusing the Dalai Lama of betraying Buddhism and worshipping evil cults ahead of his rendez-vous with President Bush. The au... |
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06 Nov 07
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Playing the “1989″ game I would equate the enjoyment experienced by a Xinhua journalist tasked with writing a story relating to Tiananmen Square 1989 to biting into a hollow baozi. Staring into a situation with the neon words “NO WIN” looming large, the writer has... |
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01 Nov 07
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Olympic “large-scale mass activities” won’t be banned! The Ministry of Public Security announced today at a press conference that “large-scale mass activities” in Beijing would not be banned during the Olympics, according to Xinhua (Chinese version). I had no idea this was even an issue ... |
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30 Oct 07
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Guinness confusion continues for China’s aspiring record breakers Anyone in China thinking of downing a few amphetamine cocktails and tearing around the animal market in Kashgar, armed with a pair of scissors and the intention to shear 51 sheep in eight hours in order to enter the Guinness Book of World Records (... |
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25 Oct 07
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FLASH: CHINA’S GREAT SPACE DEBATE No effort was spared to ensure Xinhua’s journalistic performance scaled similar heights to China’s first lunar orbiter Chang’e-1 yesterday. At 11:20, the headline “THIS IS A TEST” popped up on the wire. Unfortunately someone... |
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23 Oct 07
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Post-congress optimism tempered by Costa Rica denials Well thank Hu that’s all over with for another five years. I’m certainly not going to complain about the congress week though - the English-language polishing brigade of Dui Wai Bu, complete with new recruit, has been kicking back and baskin... |
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17 Oct 07
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Congress update: ill-fitting trousers and dodgy vox pops I don’t envy the foreign media’s task of bringing the Party congress to the masses in their prospective homelands. One good friend of mine back in the UK, who does have a keen interest in news about China, sent me a text yesterday ... |
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12 Oct 07
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“I know … this will swing it for us,” by the propagandists Last month, Angela Merkel became the first German chancellor to hold an official meeting with the Dalai Lama. The Chinese government’s response was standard enough. The Dalai Lama is not simply a religious figure, he is a longtime political exi... |
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10 Oct 07
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Pre-Congress fun, Special Olympics and the “new social stratum” I fear this post will be illogical and completely lacking in a central theme as befits a polisher who is not so much losing his marbles as seeing them crushed into powder under the weight of pre-Congress propaganda and who is becoming bored, in a petu... |
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30 Sep 07
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What the Chinese are reading about Burma I’m off to Xiamen on Monday morning for a few days to eat fish balls and dried meat floss. Apparently. The holiday should go some way to protecting my long-term sanity ahead of Xinhua’s coverage of the Party congress in mid-October. I ... |
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28 Sep 07
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An effort to clear up confusion over Three Gorges reporting I think I should do my bit to enhance the often rocky polisher-state media bilateral relations and save Xinhua a tiny bit of face. I don’t know if anyone has seen this snippet from the Financial Times (reproduced below via ... |
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28 Sep 07
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Sanlitun saga update: anti-drug operation uncovers no drugs Just a quick update on the Beijing police’s docile efforts to harmonize Sanlitun’s streets (nothing like a good bit of “soft power”). Associated Press (via Yahoo News here) released the following report yesterday in which th... |
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27 Sep 07
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Three Gorges coverage now open for environmental horror stories I’m half expecting my task for today will be to trawl through the Xinhua database editing caveats about potential environmental damage into all the Three Gorges stories released since Hu Jintao came to power. Sounds like one of Winston Smith’... |
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25 Sep 07
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Crude drug raid highlights ignorance of Beijing’s police I’m an unavoidable day late with this post but I think there are a few things to add regarding the drug raid in Beijing’s main bar district Sanlitun on Friday night, particularly as the Reuters report (via the Guardian) only touches upon t... |
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21 Sep 07
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Corruption falling, flawed supervisory systems rising There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned open day to demonstrate Party transparency. On Thursday, the Communist Party’s internal disciplinary body, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, allowed foreign reporters a litt... |
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19 Sep 07
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Official HIV/AIDS estimates for China gathering dust “According to official estimates, there are believed to be 650,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in China.”
A line similar to the one above can be found in practically every story about HIV/AIDS in China, from Xinhua to Reuters, published in... |
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15 Sep 07
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Government lesson in how to avoid “total havoc” Honesty is the best policy. Maybe not for Zheng Binghui. In fact Zheng, the director of the Chinese Research Academy of the Environmental Sciences’ Institute of Water Environment, is so honest he flags up a brutally frank form of dishones... |
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14 Sep 07
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Read this if you haven’t already This link takes you to a post a week old and has already been referenced by ESWN. But I just think this piece by Mutant Palm about the British media’s coverage of “China’s cyber army” is exactly what blogging is all about ... |
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11 Sep 07
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China, Zimbabwe and Xinhua’s generosity This post is balancing on the edge of the out-of-date shelf but I feel like I’m playing catch-up after two weeks at home (voluntarily) wrapped in China-resistant clingfilm. One story that did fox the sieve while I was away was Richa... |
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06 Sep 07
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Mystery over death of Korean diplomat in Beijing continues More than a month has now passed since senior Korean diplomat Whang Joung-il died at Vista Clinic in Beijing. Yet the cause of his death has still not been officially confirmed by the Chinese authorities despite the issue being raised at the Ministry... |
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05 Sep 07
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Something’s changed (if you look hard enough) My first shift after a week and a half back in the UK seemed to be sticking rigidly to the post-holiday cliché. Nothing’s changed. My sole colleague, who had been working in my absence to the tune of only his own head banging against the ... |
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05 Sep 07
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Just time for two shameless plugs I thought this would be a good time for some unadulterated advertising for my nearest and dearest given this will be my last post for a couple of weeks.
Shameless Plug No. 1: Beijing Playhouse is putting on a production of Guys and Dolls every Fri... |
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05 Sep 07
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A little bit of substandard history repeating itself (time for a holiday) Sometimes the cyclical hopelessness in the way Xinhua operates just rears up and flicks you in that tender bit between your two nostrils (nasal septum for those who want to take away one piece of useful information from this blog). After reaching t... |
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05 Sep 07
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Pouring scorn on Olympic medical advice We are all aware that the air pollution in Beijing often makes a dirty weekend away in a Shanxi coke plant seem like a tempter but I’m struggling to take the World Health Organization’s recent warnings to Olympic spectators seriously. I s... |
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