Giant lies about China

Giant lies about China
August 25, 2007
By Yuri Pines
The orchestrated wave of calls to boycott the Olympic Games in Beijing that began in the United States and moved on to Europe has recently reached Israel as well. Everyone is angry at China: the right, because it is ruled by the Communist Party; the left, because of the success of capitalist reforms there; and "the Western world" (and its disciple Israel), because China is so different, yellow and threatening. That is how it is in the West: Sometimes they hate Japan, other times they hate China (always the stronger of the two), and they cannot accept the success of countries where most of the inhabitants have never heard of the Ten Commandments and the crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem. It all combines to stir up an anti-Chinese wave: justified complaints (such as against the oppression of Tibet) alongside pure fictions (the extraction of organs from followers of the Falun Gong sect), as well as innumerable half-truths, half-understandings and unexamined cliches. All of the evil that happens in China - corruption, forgeries or environmental pollution - is certainly the fault of the "regime" and the "Communist government." (Only in the enlightened West are we able to distinguish between criminals and the country as a whole.) Every cliche is acceptable, without even a minimal need to check the facts. (These include the tens of thousands who are executed every year, according to a recent article by Uri Misgav in Haaretz, or the "100 million" Falun Gong disciples in other publications. Both of these numbers are sheer fantasy). In any case, those "yellow people" do not have a well-oiled public relations machine, so we can say anything we want about them without risking libel suits.
The critics have no understanding of the complexity of Chinese society, which is undergoing tremendous changes - more rapid and more extensive than anything humanity has ever known. The environmental pollution in China may be shocking, but remember that the developed, industrialized countries moved their polluting factories to Chinese soil. And how much does a Chinese citizen pollute compared with a European or an American? It is possible to bemoan the low wages in China, but it is also appropriate to note their rapid rise in recent years and the improvements in workers' rights, including those of "temporary workers" in the cities, that are taking place before our eyes. It is possible to thunder against China's large economic gaps, but it is also necessary to consider the regime's huge effort to improve the lives of villagers and the billions it has invested in recent years in village infrastructure and in eliminating taxes on farmers. It is possible to believe the reports of counterfeit and defective goods imported from China (such the Mattel toys recalled in August), but it is also worth noting the dramatic increase in the number of Chinese patents and inventions and the increasing protection of copyrights. China clearly has a very long way to go before it becomes a prosperous society, but no other country can match its success in dramatically improving the lives of hundreds of millions of people in recent decades. A bit of learning about China would not hurt anyone who wants to write about it. Sometimes it is a matter of ignorance, pure and simple; sometimes of cynical racism. When Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg call upon China not to aid (even indirectly) the genocide in Darfur, one may ask: And what about your own country, the great United States of America, whose weapons proliferate like a plague in the Middle East, which has destroyed Baghdad, and whose machine guns have trickled easily into the hands of Shi'ite and Sunni militias? Do the U.S. and its citizens have the right to preach morality to others? Oh yes, I forgot. Americans, after all, are white, and therefore they are entitled to speak in the name of democracy and Christian compassion. It cannot be helped that the Chinese are too different, and therefore always guilty.
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The writer is a lecturer on Chinese history and politics in the East Asian Studies Department at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

The past two weeks (Aug 16 - Aug 31)

The past two weeks have seen me doing something interesting and relevant to my internship here. I proposed a story idea to Metro editor: the acupuncture and Chinese medicine in Minnesota. I'm glad that she gave me the go-ahead. I interviewed head of an acupuncture academy, its doctors in the clinic affiliated to the academy, some patients and students studying there. I was surprised that there are two such academies in Minnesota, which altegether churn out about 60 graduates every year, and some Americans like to receive acupuncture and Chinese medicine treatment, citing its effectiveness.
I've finished the story, which, if published, would be the longest one, if not the most interesting. I'v not had any feedback from the editor, but to me, it's a good opportunity to learn doing interviews (such as how to protect privacy of those patients and make them willing to share their stories with me), how to organize the materials I've got from the interviews, and how to structure the story, making it interesting.
Before writing, the editor gave me some tips as how to organize the story. They are good, but it turned out that I used my way of starting and telling the story, because I think mine is more relevant based on my interviews.
The process of doing the story helps me in structuring a feature story.
A by-product of the interviews is that I met a Chinese Qi-gong practioner, who introduced his clients to me. We had pleasant talks on Chinese culture, Chinese medicine, and its difference with the western medicine.
On Saturday (Aug 29) I visited the Minnesota State Fair, the major annual local event, where there were a variety of shows, food, exhibitions, markets, parade ... everything. It lasts until the Labor Day.

The past two weeks (Aug 01 - 15)

In early August, I wrote a short story on Minnesota's economy based on an index compiled by a university professor. It's published monthly and this time, it shows the Minnesota economic recovery is faring well, although it's still a long way ahead. It's like in China Daily where I have done numerous such index stories - analyze the index, contact experts for comment, rush to write it and submit it to the editor. This time, the editor reminded me of not using the word "crisis" to depict the US economy. Rather, it should be called recession or slowdown or meltdown or whatsoever. But not a crisis.
I had a chance to visit a friend of my friend Jerry in St Paul in the second week. Jerry's friend (a Chinese and a PhD in economics) runs a Chinese acupuncture and medicine institute, which has six clinics and enrol about 120 students in its four-year program. Most of them are young Americans. I was interested why Americans could be interested in such a mysterious science that has often been criticized of being unscientific.
I talked with the metro editor and decided to do interviews that could possibly lead to a story. I'll start it next week.
And the past two weeks were all about how to handle stories.

The past two weeks till July 31

It is said no one can predict what happens tomorrow. But I think I can - for one thing only.
I'll update my blog today, or I'll lose some 33 dollars tomorrow. :-)
Right after returning from Florida, I was asked to write a short story. It's a routine story on Minnesota's export decline in the first quarter. I did it routinely.
One small tip for my training plan may be that I learned from the editor that I need to add some background information to the story. I know that, but sometimes I forget to do it, which is unforgivable.
So I added a small paragraph about Minnesota exporters' performance last year to provide a context and comparison for the readers.
After the story got published, I got a message from my China Daily editor that I should fly to Washington D.C. to cover the China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue. I asked for a leave from Katie and my host newspaper editor and flew to the D.C. It's a two-day event, but I've been there earlier to attend some pre-dialogue seminars as a preparation for the coverage of the formal meeting.
During the event, I published several pieces both for the newpaper and the website (some under the name of Bao Daozu, which literally means "reporting team" - we had three reporters, including me, in D.C this time). The real challenge is to rush to write stories within a short time. And it once again reminded me of the need to get knowledge of necessary background information before you start to write any story.

Selected pictures during Poynter seminar

The past two weeks (till July 15)

The past week at Poynter is so interesting that I almost forget what I did in the first week (forgive me).
In early July, I published a very short story on an economic index indicating the bottoming out of the mid-American economy. It has become a routine job for me, since I've done a similar one when the monthly index came out in early June. Not much to learn from it, also because it's too short. No space for me to write more and think more.
Before I left for Poynter, as usual, I read the newspapers, both print and online, when I had nothing to do. What I have focused was the Xinjiang incident in China, where the Uighurs and Han people were involved in mass killing. I read various reports from US publications to see from what angle they have tackled the topic and whether they have been "balanced" and "unbiased'. It's very important not for that I want to criticize them for alleged "bias" or "imbalance", but to learn from them how to avoid any problems in my future writing when it comes to such topics as Sino-US relations.
I found that many reports simply were technically flawed by quoting only one side and ignoring the other. Sometimes they quote the underquoted side simply to rebutt it by following it with more quotes from the opposite side. It's not only a bias; it's a purposeful technical crafting so as to achieve a result tilted towards one side.
Reflecting on my own writing in the past, I also made the same "mistake". Indeed, I made similar "mistakes". For example, I sometimes quoted those, although unconsciously, who support China's policies more than those who support US policies when reporting Sino-US economic relations.
Journalism would not promote peace, or virtually anything, in this world if journalists are biased by their own stances.
The reflection is good for both my training goal of business story writing and multimedia reporting, because without being balanced and unbiased, one could neither do good business stories nor quality multimedia reporting. While they try to grasp sophisticated, state-of-the-art techniques and tools, journalists sometimes simply ignore some basic and core values of journalism.

Journalism and human nature

1. I'm all for a free press; it's the damned newspapers I can't stand. - Tom Stoppard
2. Western journalism is western; universal journalism exists only in theory. It is in reality very often distorted when people try to practice it.
3. When it comes to international journalism, journalism sometimes is but a tool to demonize countries which those who own the media dislike or want to collapse.
4. If communism is a devil (it is, isn't it?!), there's a bigger, much powerful devil in the west called journalism.
5. Human beings (including me) are fundamentally bound and guided by their bias no matter how democratic or open-minded they claim to be.
6. Borders exist also in the MIND (not only the eyes) of human beings.
7. Men are born equal, in theory; they are born different, in reality. DIFFERENCE: We must respect it instead of trying to eliminate it.