One of the first stories I covered when I was still looking around in China in the early 1990s to find out whether it would be a nice posting as a foreign correspondent was a scandal that broke, just weeks before I visited China. I was making a radio documentary about dogs in China, then the newly found symbol of China's new rich. "China kills all dogs", reported the Dutch media and while I was happily scrolling Beijing with a colleague and a Beijing dog, we discovered the background of that story.
In a Beijing park police had, on the urgent and repeated requests from local citizens, closed an illegal dog market because some of the dogs were suffering from rabies and had been attacking visitors in the park. The dogs were killed on the spot.
A Dutch correspondent in Beijing picked up the story, but by the time it reached me in the Netherlands, the story had become so huge that is was actually no longer true. The story "Beijing police kills sick dogs in park" was not catching enough for foreign media, so its because a "China kills all dogs" story.
Unfortunately, as China is developing fast and its complexities become more important for all stakeholders to know, Western media too often rely on their traditional way of simplifying their China-stories to such a degree they are often factual untrue. How to recognize those stories? Most of them begin having "China" as the first word in their headline.
When the media recently cried that "China" was going "to clamp down on the internet", they suggested an clear top-down regulation to censor online video's in stead of a minor move by the State Administration of Radio, Film and TV in an effort to defend its own turf. Sources in the industry did not support the panic-like headlines of the Western media, but that did not stop the nay-sayers.
When Reuters wrote that "China denies pressing Eastern Air shareholders". They should have identified right away the State Administration of State Assets Commission ISASAC) as the government agency involved.
The new labor contract law has over the past few years regularly caused panics for often totally the wrong reasons.
Even when the official spokes person of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs gives a statement, it is too often not a statement on behalf of "China", since this ministry is very often left out of the decision making process, especially when it concerns the military, but it is not excluded to that.
To be honest to the major news wires, after starting with a deceptive headline, they often provide the necessary details in the third of fourth paragraph, but those nuances are seldom found back when back home traditional media just go for the simple message. They see China wrongly as a country that is governed top-down, where new laws are always watersheds and where Chinese like meek sheep follow any bureaucratic whim sent to them from the national government departments.
But the only way to do it right, is how the Financial Times does it here: they identify the CIC as the agency of the central government being responsible. Yes, it is a sign of quality reporting and as China's influence in the world increased we need more quality reporting, not the spread of false rumors.
Fons Tuinstra
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