A couple days ago, I blogged that the “new Chinese openness in the media” was a farce, and in fact was a continuation of their long-standing tactics. Sometimes it feels good to be right, while other times it feels like a Pyrrhic victory, such as now.
The same story is being told by several reporters, here, here, here and here. This is exactly what I was trying to explain in my last blog, that the “openness” is a facade and that when push comes to shove, the government will not tolerate dissent, and refuses to be placed in a face-losing predicament that may then lead to a wanning of nationalistic, Party-loving, emotional outpourings.
In the New York Times/AP story, the most significant detail comes to light: “Several Chinese journalists have said in recent days that officials from the central government told their news organizations not to continue reporting on the issue of unsafe schools.” That’s right, no matter how despicable we may find the dragging away of grieving parents, who have a constitutional right to protest, the most important revelation is that the Central Government, for all the world’s fawning of quake-centric media transparency, is continuing to orchestrate and filter all undesirable elements from reaching mass local (China) media.
Qin Gang seems to agree with me, by stating that the “principle of transparency and openness remains unchanged.” Now, I’m aware he believes that there is and will be transparency, but the reality is that the Communist government’s principle of openness — as seen through their actions — has been and is, tell them how great we are. Look at how open we are; look at how great we’re being. That’s like a wife-beater saying, “look, I haven’t hit my spouse in weeks!” The mere fact that we are having a dialogue on openness and transparency proves there is a grave problem in that area. Praise should only be lavished after talking points are no longer pushed on or stricken off the list of topics the media is allowed to touch on.
Tags: China, Communist Party of China, earthquake, propaganda, Protest, Qin Gang, transparency, victims
