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Laying to rest old Hollywood concepts

By Jaime A. FlorCruz (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-12-17 07:56

Only three decades ago, weather forecasts in China were considered virtually a state secret. Twenty years ago, reporters were permitted nothing more than carefully guided visits and stilted interviews. Now, getting timely information is becoming relatively easier.

Why is it important for foreign correspondents to report freely?

When China was closed off to foreigners, reporting on the country relied on a small band of China-watchers, mostly based in Hong Kong, or government officials in various capitals. Without setting foot on the mainland, they interpreted China and drew caricatures of it according to their own parochial notions and political agendas. At best, this resulted in simplistic, one-dimensional images of China. At worst, journalists became mere appendages to their governments and were subjected to their "spins".

For decades, China was viewed through the prism of the press and Hollywood and often reduced to single-frame images or stereotypical stories.

In the 1950s, the pejorative image of China was that of little blue ants or automatons.

In the 1960s, the Chinese were stereotyped as the devious "Fu Man Chu" and the seductive "Suzy Wong" - all figments of Hollywood's imagination.

In the 1970s, following Richard Nixon's landmark visit, the tone of foreign reporting swung to the other extreme.

It was of the Communist cadre, who may be a bit strange and inscrutable, but was okay just the same, because he was America's ally against the Soviet Union.

In the 1980s, the hype was that "China had gone capitalist" - the glitzy images of discotheques, golf courses and luxury cars.

These one-dimensional images can be misleading. A country as big and complex as China cannot possibly be explained in such simplistic ways. These images twisted public perception and government policies overseas. Conversely, they warped the Chinese impression of the outside world.

Covering China now offers great joy and equally great challenges.

Thanks in part to the Olympics, there have been signs of improvement in the reporting environment. In January last year, China revised the rules and issued a set of temporary Olympic regulations which stipulated that foreign journalists no longer needed to get advance permission from local authorities for every interview and visit in and outside Beijing.

We kept this "little white book" to defend ourselves from the "hand in front of the camera". Whenever there was a "misunderstanding" with the police and officials, we cited these new rules and reminded them that they were approved by no less than Premier Wen Jiabao.

But even that does not always work. In the first year after the Olympic regulations were introduced, the FCCC recorded more than 180 cases of interference. In some cases, problems were resolved after our Foreign Ministry handlers in Beijing interceded by phone.

China is a great story to cover. One of the best things about the job is the opportunity to travel around this vast, diverse and fast-changing nation. We also enjoy the opportunity to meet and interview interesting people and newsmakers. Because the country is so large and it is still difficult to get access to senior officials, we seek to cover China bottom-up, rather than top-down. Enterprising journalists can actually venture into the interiors, and put together compelling stories.

When I first started out as an international journalist in the early 1980s, there were only a few of us covering China for about 24 overseas news organizations. In 2002, there were 353 resident journalists from 199 foreign media organizations. By January this year, the total had gone up to 818 journalists from 378 media organizations.

Beijing officials - especially those in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Council Information Office - have become more sophisticated in their efforts to shape China's image overseas. Many of them have better understanding of how journalists operate and why.

They now understand when we speak of the need to get accurate information promptly. They have lifted restrictions on where journalists live and set up offices.

China is considered a "hardship post", but it is also a privilege to watch the development of this huge nation, and report firsthand.

When I look at the China of 2008, I see a very different country to the one I studied in the late 1970s and the one I lived in during the mid-1980s.

China's market reforms over the past two decades have produced tremendous growth and change. It now depends heavily on international trade, with exports and imports accounting for about 40 per cent of GDP. China has joined the WTO. It is one of the world's top recipients of foreign investment. Foreign joint venture companies produce about 40 per cent of the nation's exports.

Still, per capita income is only about $1,300, and consumption is only about 40 percent of GDP. That is because about 700 million of China's 1.3 billion people still live in the countryside. Of those, at least 80 million, maybe more, still live on less than one dollar a day.

There is no doubt that many Chinese have benefited from the reform and opening up. However, some of these changes have been painful. The economic explosion has produced many unintended consequences: income gaps, regionalism, corruption, rising criminality and social instability.

In the early 1970s, the dominant Chairman Mao slogan was "Never Forget Class Struggle". Now, President Hu Jintao calls on the Chinese to seek a harmonious society. To me, this change in slogan best captures China's dramatic shifts that I've witnessed in the past 30 years.

After years of chaos and isolation, of perpetual political campaigns, China is now locked into the global community through diplomacy, tourism, trade, and through the mass media and the Internet. After years of stagnation, China now is bursting with explosive energy as it rapidly moves forward.

For China's sake, and for our own, we should wish it continued success.

The author is CNN Beijing Bureau Chief. The above are excerpts from his speech delivered at a recent meeting of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines.

(China Daily 12/17/2008 page8)