Bridging the perception gap

Frenchman Dorian Malovic has written on China for 30 years, but claims too many Western reports on the country are still laden with age-old prejudices and stereotypes

Despite the dramatic social and economic progress made by China in recent decades, Dorian Malovic says he remains disappointed by the way the country often is portrayed by journalists in the West.

A regular traveler to China over many years as chief editor of the Asian desk of French daily newspaper La Croix (The Cross), Malovic says he gets frustrated when he reads reports that are still laden with age-old prejudices and stereotypes about a country that he has been covering for 30 years.

He says some still feel obliged to falsely portray China as a mystical land, which is "still waiting for Western salvation".

With that kind of attitude, "how will Europeans ever properly understand China?" he asks.

He adds that he finds it extraordinary that many of his fellow European journalists, and readers, suggest to him that he is being naive in his reporting about China's success.

"Despite its rapid progress in urbanization, in social issues, in further expanding its domestic economy, among other areas, many European journalists still choose to focus instead on the country's problems, typically social inequality, poverty, pollution and corruption," he says.

He points out that in his mind it is quite clear that never before has a country of China's scale emerged so quickly on the international scene to become such a powerful global economic force.

But that gap in understanding, he adds, must be bridged, and he says it is up to European journalists like him - who have a truer understanding of China - to fight against images that have become the norm in much Western media coverage, under emotive labels such as "empire, communist China, and regime".

He says that the Chinese government readily admits it has problems, but that there isn't a country in the world that doesn't either, and that the reality of its growth is actually being ignored in the typical European's vision of the country.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he adds, "it was unimaginable for the European public to accept that another ideology could succeed, and especially the fact that China was coping so well with two seeming contradictions: Communism and being economically strong".

Encouragingly, Malovic says there is no lack of understanding of Chinese history, and the issues facing the country.

During recent visit to China with 80 French and Belgian readers of his newspaper, he said what struck him was how well informed they actually were.

"There was just no need for me to explain, despite the fact 80 percent of them were in China for the first time, the key moments in the country's history.

"They were well aware of the opium wars, the country's relationships in the past with the West, right up to the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, and the country's opening over the past 30 years.

"They were curious, and well-informed, too, about the recent issues facing the country: for instance, the changes to the one-child policy, the phenomenal growth of social networks such as Weibo, and of course, the recent events and issues in places such as the Tibet autonomous region and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region."

So why then, he wonders, do some still choose to focus just on the negative, rather than provide balance?

Malovic often lectures on China to university students and other groups.

He says he asks them what they know about the country, and many can only offer the same clichd answers: "pandas, how to use chopsticks, the Forbidden City, and the Shaolin Temple".

He is often left wondering, "What it is that Europeans actually want to know about China?"

He reckons there is actually a degree of "jealousy mixed with admiration" among the mainstream Western media.

However, he does concede that it can be a complicated job for Western journalists to report on what is a complex country.

"The problem is often the contradictory nature of the messages they get," he says, "but all they have to do to get a more accurate picture of life here is to taste it for themselves."

He insists that his job as a Western journalist reporting on China is to write about the human reality of life in the country.

During another recent trip, he explains, he was invited by a Chinese friend to visit a small village in Hunan province to attend his wedding.

Remembering how difficult it was to travel to the more remote parts of China back in the 1980s, he was delighted to be given the chance to visit the countryside once again.

Over many glasses of strong Chinese liquor and dishes of homemade food, what amazed him most was how open and willing people were to talking about what hard times they faced in the 1960s, and the social and environment problems China is still now tackling.

However, everyone, he adds, was "so positive now about their lives, and China as a nation".

"For them, life is not to be complained about, but adapted to - that's the true China of today," he says, "and more people should know about it in the West."

But the problems facing Western journalists were highlighted, too, recently, during another trip to Beijing with a group of around 15 European writers and scholars, just after the Third Plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee in November.

He says they had the chance to meet Chinese scholars, economists, and high-ranking officials from the National People's Congress, and the Foreign Affairs Ministry, as well as officials in charge of the anti-corruption campaign within the Party.

"These kinds of trips are essential to European and international journalists to gain a better understanding of not only what's going on in China, but who's doing what.

"But they really were faced with a dilemma when they were here."

He explains the journalists were eager, and able, to ask whatever questions they liked of their hosts, but they told him what they then read in the Chinese press, appeared to be very different from what the officials told them.

He says foreign journalists have to read between the lines or study a lot more of the context to a story to fully understand the messages being delivered by the officials, otherwise the material being given to them is just too abstract to understand.

Back at his desk in Paris, he says China's ongoing success is no better illustrated than by what is happening to economies closer to home, with rising unemployment, an ongoing debt crisis, and doubts over the future of the euro.

He adds that back in the 16th and 17th centuries, or even much further back in the times of Marco Polo, China was considered a sophisticated, powerful, rich empire, admired by the European kings who were willing to trade and exchange ideas with the country.

However, as the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) weakened, the opium wars erupted, and unequal treaties were signed, and these two huge ethnocentric sides confronted each other, and it was the Europeans who were left with the upper hand.

But with the birth of New China, after decades of being closed to the outside world, he says that with the country willingly opening its doors, and the power balance has shifted.

He thinks that as China grows stronger than ever and the European Union struggles economically and lies divided on many fronts, much more in-depth reporting about China is needed by journalists with a better understanding of how the country really works.

But more important than anything else, he says he is determined to continue presenting a balanced view of China, not the one that is too often still "politically biased, or culturally discriminating".

While he says he fully appreciates the positive sides of the "China miracle", the problems being experienced in its development have to be reported, too.

"I have always felt like a bridge between two universes that are trying to understand each other - or two people living on opposite sides of a river.

"I have enjoyed, and will continue to enjoy, reporting to both sides, about life on the other side."

For China Daily

(China Daily Africa Weekly 07/11/2014 page28)