These remarks shed some light on why Chinese authorities delayed reports on the anti-Chinese rioting in Indonesia: They want to preserve friendly relations with Jakarta, even if that means ignoring the sufferings of the Chinese there.
Some Chinese journalists try to defend the government's policy of not reporting bad news. One argument goes like this: Because the Chinese trust their media, if the media were to report on problems at, say, the Three Gorges Dam project, people would be so angry they might bomb the site.
This is surprising. Why would the Chinese, when informed of problems at the dam, want to bomb the site? If there is any truth in this supposition, the situation must indeed be very serious.
From its inception 50 years ago, the Three Gorges Dam project aroused strong objections from some specialists, but their opinions were never reported in the main media. Now under construction, the dam continues to be controversial. Reports suggest that corrupt local officials are concealing the dam's true problems and submitting false figures to Beijing. But rather than raise the risk of a bombing, reporting the truth would attract the government's attention and remedial measures might be undertaken.
It isn't fair, to be sure, to blame only the media for the lack of honest information in China. The media are controlled by the Communist Party, and the party forbids freedom of the media. In Communist discourse, "journalism" is a form of "propaganda" that applies not only to editorials but also to news reports. Hence: Chinese news reports are tools of the Party. They cannot be objective and fair.
Who benefits from unreported news? The officials responsible for the errors or who actually made the errors. But failing to report negative news does not erase it. If anything, it exacerbates the situation. An important reason for the overwhelming prevalence of corruption in China is that too little of it has been exposed by the media.
Still, there have been some positive changes in the Chinese media. For example, interviews and discussions on "Public Focus," a program on Chinese Central Television, are welcomed by the public, precisely because they present a mixture of the good and the bad, though freedom of expression is still limited. The same is true for the popular Guangdong newspaper Southern Weekend, which often boldly publishes negative news, including the problems at the Three Gorges Dam. (3)
Jonathan Mirsky was appointed East Asia Correspondent of The Times in London to cover the period running up the handover of Hong Kong in June 1997. He retired as East Asia editor was retained as the newspaper's China Writer.
