British media on China - Zhang Lijia/Jeremy Goldkorn

Zhang Lijia

The British Chamber of Commerce in Beijing is hosting a debate on how British media report on China, on November 29. Among the panelists, two of our speakers, Zhang Lijia and Jeremy Goldkorn. Is it fair to say the British media paint an unjust picture in its discourse and analysis?

From the invite:

In China there is a widespread belief that the Western media paints a distorted view of what is happening in the country. Recent cries from a range of sources have encouraged the media to be less bias in its portrayal of the Middle Kingdom. However, others argue that there is a solid connection between events on the ground and the way news is reported. 

Is it fair to say the British media paint an unjust picture in its discourse and analysis? Has the UK media’s reporting on China become distorted into the sensational and overly negative because of growing competition in the commercial news business? Or is this so-called ‘China bashing’ simply a true portrayal of the nation’s events? 

Join us in the latest of our Speakers Series in which we hold a lively debate analysing the portrayal of China in the British media. Our panelists will bring their diverse experience and points of view allowing us to hear opinions from both sides of the spectrum.

Apart from Jeremy Goldkorn and Zhang Lijia, other guests include Peter Foster of the Daily Telegraph and Tom Pattison, a media consultant and writer.
Tuesday 29th November 2011 19:00 – 19:15
Registration 19:15 – 20:30
Debate 20:30 – 21:30 Drinks & networking
Venue: Face Bar Add (EN): 26 Dong Cao Yuan, Gong TiNan Lu Chao Yang Ou, Beijing , 100020
Tel: +86 (10) 6551 6788
Cost: 100 RMB members; 200 RMB non members


Zhang Lijia and Jeremy Goldkorn are speakers at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need them at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

More links on Zhang Lijia and China's moral crisis on Storify

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Al Jazeera's red carpet into Zhongnanhai

The news station Al Jazeera did it on Saturday again: they aired a lengthy interview with Guan Guanzhong, the head of China's largest independent credit rating agency, Dagong Credit, warning for the ongoing monetary crisis of the USA, and an expected downgrade of the status of the US bonds. (I have included this broadcast here.)

For Al Jazeera this was the second hit in a short time, as it earlier has an interview with CIC-chairman Jin Liqun, China's souverain fund.

Both gentlemen have also severe warning for Europe, although Mr. Jian praises Europe for not devaluating its currency, compared to the US. 

Interesting is that Al Jazeera has been able to obtain a red-carpet treatment into China's financial leadership. Apart from a congratulation on the address of Al Jazeera, it seems also that China's leadership is doing a concerted effort to talk to the world, and would rather avoid the American and European financial media. No more thoughts at this time, but it is after two hits a possible trend that is worth to watch.
(First published at Fons Tuinstra's weblog)

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• "We are in an information war and we are losing that war. Al Jazeera is winning, the Chinese have..." (new-aesthetic.tumblr.com)

Receiving hate-mail after my Yueyue story - Zhang Lijia

Author Zhang Lijia's analysis of the death of toddler Yueyue, ignored by 18 passersby, in the Guardian has been praised as one of the better ones on the gruesome story. But not everybody appreciated the story and she has been flooded with hate-mail, she writes on her weblog.

From her weblog:

Among the emails I received from my web site, among the glowing praises and thanks, to my surprise, I found quite a few very nasty emails, attacking me personally, calling me the ‘running dog of the west’ and wishing me to die and so on. Very unpleasant!.. 

If I had had more time and space, I should stress that not all 1.4 billion Chinese are cold-hearted. In the wake of Sichuan earth quake, many touching stories emerged where people helped kindly strangers. And moral decline exists not just in China but the whole world. The riot in UK this August was just an example. 

But why can’t I criticize China? A nation, as in a person, needs to take a hard look at herself from time to time. I am patriotic – not a narrow nationalistic, I pointed out the problems in the hopes that the society can improve and China can grow. 

I wonder who are my attackers. China’s fast-growing economy and rising position in the world have made some young Chinese assertive and sometimes nationalistic. And I guess there will always are xenophobic who divides the world into 内and 外. Since I talked about some uncomfortable truth, they’d want to kick me out of the race. But I’ll surely stay and voice my concerns and opinions whenever I want to.

More on Zhang Lijia's weblog

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch, or fill in our speakers' request form.

More links to Zhang Lijia here. 

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How does media censorship work? - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

Media watcher Jeremy Goldkorn discusses the elaborate way media censorship works in China. Yes, the official censorship is very much in place, but both internet users and journalists have ways to deal with it - within limits.

Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

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Can English print weeklies jump the trend

The six-month' anniversary of the newly establish Asia Weekly triggered off a few pieces - like here on Time's weblog - on the sustainability of this kind of operation. Asia Weekly, set up by the famous journalist Jasper Becker, now has a circulation of 20,000 and that certainly exceeds my expectations.

Asia Week had a circulation of 210,000 when it was closed in 2001 and the Far Eastern Economic Review 100,000 when it ended as a weekly. Retaining readers has been much easier than getting new ones in, but the Asia Weekly expects to have 50,000 in two years time. The magazine goes in more than one way against the current trend by for example having no substantial online presence.

I have been reading the magazine for a few months but decided not to subscribe. The news was at least one week old, I was mainly interested in their China-coverage and found that rather disappointing. It might have improved, but I cannot see it because they have no online presence. I did not see any of their articles being quoted by other media.

Now even the major newspapers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have or will decide very soon to put all their content for free on the internet, not having a presence online seems a way to curtail the life cycle of the magazine. Beating the online flow on information is very hard and only by participating in the online conversation, media can make a difference. This era is about crumbling barriers. Putting yourself on a lonely island is a sure way into oblivion.

Can the Shanghai Media Group beat CNN?

The Shanghai Media Group (SMG) is planning to set up a 24-hours English news station to compete on a global market, reports Reuters. Since its major competitor CCTV has one in Beijing, Shanghai needs one too.
Could the Shanghai Media Group (or any other state-owned broadcasting station in China) compete on a global market. I'm not the most reliable expert in this field, since I have given up watching the boring nonsense on Chinese TV years ago.
But the Reuters dispatch offers a glimpse of what it needs to set up a new news station in China. The Shanghai Media Group has already been talking for a year to the local regulators. And what is next? Talking to the regulators in Beijing.

Although it has yet to receive final regulatory approval, Shanghai Media has already begun hiring English-speaking presenters, editors and reporters, including foreigners, for the new service, the sources said.

We will see. Or not, of course, since there are many more things to do than watching TV.

SCMP remains firmly behind a firewall

Chris Axberg, the editor in charge of the website of the South China Morning Post has left his job after a disagreement between management on the financial firewall the leading daily is maintaining, reports Shanghaiist.
Today the New York Times will remove the financial barriers (called TimesSelect) to read parts of its paper and - with the notable exception of the Wall Street Journal and parts of the Financial Times - financial firewalls are considered to be a nono for online publishing.

Axberg, who recently spearheaded SCMP’s relaunch of its online platform, confirmed his departure was effective from 28 September, bringing an end to an eight-year tenure with the company.
Sources indicated executive director, SCMP Group, Kuok Hui Kong was the front-runner to take the reins. Axberg said although he had advocated the SCMP’s online site becoming free for users with advertisers driving revenue, management had opted to retain a subscription-based model.

This is the verdict of online guru Jeff Jarvis on the move of the New York Times, but the same goes of course for the SCMP:

Bull. TimesSelect represented the last gasp of the circulation mentality of news media, the belief that surely consumers would continue to pay for content even as the internet commodified news and — more important — even as the internet revealed that the real value in media is not owning and controlling content or distribution but enabling conversation.

How to detect nonsense in articles on the Chinese internet

The Washington Post made a very sloppy article on this intriguing subject: how are the Chinese authorities going to control the internet and mobile communication? It started with a little anecdote that was new for me, but when I read this I knew I was losing my time:

It hasn't been for lack of trying. The Public Security Ministry, which monitors the Internet under guidance from the Central Propaganda Department, has recruited an estimated 30,000 people to snoop on electronic communications. The ministry recently introduced two cartoon characters -- a male and female in police uniforms -- that it said would pop up on computer screens occasionally to remind people that their activity is being tracked.

The urban myth of those 30,000 police officers monitoring the internet is the official benchmark that we are leaving serious journalism. The number has never even been proven and - it has been argumented before - on 162 million internet users that is actually a very low number. That number - if true - only proves China does not take controlling the internet very serious.
For the ministry of Public Security it might be news that they are under the guidance from the Central Propaganda Department. There is a committee of about 17 government departments who try to discuss how the government should deal with the internet, but none of those departments takes the overhand.
Of course, the cute cartoons - what a way to crack down on the internet users - were not introduced by the ministry, but by the Beijing public security. It is a very local affair, but Western media try to make small things big by declaring them wrongly into national issues.

SARFT-ban of today: sex

Sex sells, all media know and since being attractive is the last thing the State Administration of Radio, Film and TV (SARFT) want their Chinese media to be the regulator has banned sex, reports Josie Liu.

Prompted by some sex talk radio programs on several radio stations in Sichuan, China’s broadcast regulator has banned television and radio stations from planning, producing and broadcasting programs relating to sex life, experience or medicines.

China's media have always found ways around the rather conservative character of the regulator. In the 1990s you could listen all night long to call-in programs on the radio where people could ask expert advice om their sex problems. This was of course meant to be purely educational.

Now, sex is everywhere and the boys at Xinhua even have their own soft-porn departments. But that is print and SARFT will not allow that for "their" media. Not that the ban will help though, but since it is their job to ban thing, they will even ban the rain, when then think they should do it.

"The Standard" goes for a kill

The Standard, for ages the number two English language daily in Hong Kong, will be available for free from Monday, it announced today. The move is likely going to change the media landscape in Hong Kong.

The South China Morning Post has been a highly-profitable quasi-monopolist, relatively unhurt by the internet, although Hong Kong is one of the world's best wired places. But because of its relative small surface and good services, internet-based initiative, including media, did not make the impact it is making on the mainland.

With a mature free newspaper on the market, that is likely to change, especially in a city where sales are based on street vendors rather than subscriptions. The South China Morning Post has in the past decade mainly focused on cutting costs, since whatever quality they would deliver, there was anyway no competition. That might now change.

Free newspapers have a big impact wherever they show up. In Shanghai print readership in the subways is almost limited to the free paper that is handed out four days of the week.

Crushing the online conversation - Sam Flemming

Sam Flemming

Life at the internet in China has always been rather rough. With annually millions of youngster smelling the freedom of being able to say whatever they want, triggers off - next to very beautiful things - a lot of aggression too.

Originally they were called the "chatroom warriors", angry young men denouncing almost anything they would meet online, often becoming a nuisance for the more experienced users, looking for a decent discussions.

Sam Flemming now focuses in his latest entry at a the latest technological move of the chatroom warriers of today, the "Baidu Post Bar Crushing Machines". China's leading search engine Baidu has developed a tool that makes it really easy to start online discussions, but the latest technology has now developed a tool to crunch those discussions.

"Forum Crushing" refers to netizens using "Forum Crushing Machine" (爆吧机), a software designed to let users continuously post content with different IP address until the forum is overloaded and "crushed."

Sam Flemming warns:

For now, such "crushing machines" target mostly fan clubs sites. But don't be surprised if in the future it is brand related forums which are targeted. (Baidu Post Bar is filled with forums dedicated to such as this one for McDonald's. In this age, engaging consumers could result in a black eye.

Sam Flemming is also a speaker at Chinabiz Speakers. If you want to invite him for a speech, do let us know.

Kicking your reporters

The feature is unfortunately not that new. Reporters who belong to more powerfull publications get routinely beaten up when they show up, because local authorities fear they might be the subject of a fine piece of muckraking.

ESWN translates a first hand account of such a beating at the collapsed Fenghuang bridge that killed over 60 people.

At 11:30am on August 16, a People's Daily reporter together with a China Youth Daily reporter, a Southern Metropolis Daily reporter, an Economic Observer reporter and an Observe Orient Weekly reporter went to the Baiqing Hostel where the families of the victims of the Fenghuang bridge collapse were placed.
The family of Chen Jiaxiang from Lianyuan had five dead men, and the women and elders were crying with sorrow.

More at ESWN.

First official day at Chinabiz Speakers

t Today was the first official day of Chinabiz Speakers, the project that might pop up here every now and then. What makes this project special for me is that it also offers an opportunity to test some of the new-media techniques I have been reading, learning and talking about in a very practical way.
The morning began by sending off press releases to media outlets and through mailing lists of different Foreign Correspondents Clubs. The classic press release is more or less passe, but I do think it is for a lot of purposes useful to write up in one page what you are up to and where people can call you. Otherwise, sending off press releases to the old media was only a way to pay tribute to my old occupation, since I do not expect too much off it for our project.
We are - in terms of news - squeezed between 12 million recalled toys and a collapsed bridge. You have to know your place. But where in the past you could only hope somebody would still notice you, today a project like ours can follow the long tail. We do not have to be Harry Potter's to get things done.
Using your networks and relationships is key in the new-media toolkit, building up conversation with your different constituencies. Fortunately, the speakers' business is very much a people's business, even better, people who are supposed to bring in huge networks themselves.
Plan one was to get a core group of now slightly over 30 speakers on a closed mailing list to start forming a group. Some of the speakers do not each other, but some don't.
Plan one also failed, at least today, since the Google mailing lists have a quota of 30 people and by putting 31 on my list, I triggered off the Google spam alarm. My list was not activated and I seem to on a waiting list while a real human being looks at it.
Plan two was the mobilization of my own network. I had prepared emails to my friends and contacts that could be interested in the project and started to blast them off. What I first noticed was how many people are still on holidays: many out-of-office messages came back. What was further striking is the huge number of people who changed email addresses in the past two years. Then the Google spam guards hit again: after 500 emails they thought I should take a brake and they blocked my account for 24 hours. Fortunately, there is still Outlook.
Then we started to reactivate Chinabiz with a piece on KFC by one of our speakers Warren Liu. With over 20,000 subscribers interested in business in China Chinabiz is a network of itself and we are going to ask our speakers, if they are not yet one of our columnist, to join that stable of writers every now and then.
My digitally advanced friends suggested I should also start a group on Facebook. I did so, but this might not yet be the tool for the biggest part of my constituency. But in terms of networks, you can never have enough of them. In less than 24 hours, I have now already 26 members there!
That is very short my virtual marketing strategy for ChinaBiz Speakers. I will report now and then about the results.

Update: Ah, forgot to tell you that ChinaBiz Speakers has of course its own weblog. It focuses more on operational issues but shows also how the network is slowly getting into place. I think.

Who is reading the China Daily?

I'm not, not even their own editors read it, illlustrates ESWN with a nice screenshot, but somebody must have discovered this. The China Daily picked up a sentence from Reuters that would normally have been sanatized in a report on the Olympics:

"Security was tight around Tiananmen Square, where troops crushed pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989 with huge loss of life, as crowds gathered for the celebrations."

Of course, we cannot blame them for not reading their own propaganda, but it looks like somebody is going to shop wood for a while in one of the few forests taht have not yet been cut down.
More at ESWN.

Has Jongo.com a chance?

China Media News comes after earlier entries with more news about Jongo.com: the project I had already written off is said to continue with the support of the UK investors. Today's entry includes what I consider to be the funniest statement of the day:

The Managing Director of Jongo once said, "It takes a long time to build a portal, but once it's profitable, it is basically like printing money." Expect to see more of Jongo in the future, just not the near future.

It might explain a bit the lemming-like behavior of the UK investors who have until recently been pouring in 100,000 US dollars per month into the project. It shows such a lack of understanding how things have worked, work and will work in China that I can hardly set myself to the boring task of explaining all this.
First, the operation is illegal, a foreign entities are banned from having this kind of media organizations. There is nothing against being illegal in China, as long as you do not get noticed. And you cannot print money without being noticed.
The Chinese portals (who now have a potential customer base of over 160 million internet users in China, compared to maybe a few million who might be interested in and English language service) had a hard time. More than ten years after Sohu, Sina and others took off, things seem to be picking up for the first time. They have been under threat of being kicked off the Nasdaq more than once because they underperformed. The news market has certainly changed dramatically: there is no market for a web1.0 service like Jongo is offering.
You wonder what consultant has been making money on this project. I know Cam of the China Media News only arrived when it was all too late, but somebody has been giving dramatically wrong advises here.

Xinhua dives into citizens reporting

A citizen reports

The state news agency Xinhua as a nice go at the phenomena of "citizen reporting" and gives a fairly solid overview of the conundrums in the collaboration between unpaid volunteers and professional news organizations. They conveniently ignore that apart from grabbing a camera and getting footage for the traditional TV-stations, those citizens can also start their own broadcasting station for little costs. But otherwise it covers the main issues pretty well.

Cui Jianzhong, chief producer of DV Observation says, "Our citizen contributors mostly cover the stories happening around them from their own perspective, which is different from professional journalists, but closer to our audience."

Of course there is the odd bureaucrat who wonders where the world is going to when unlicensed citizen reporters roam around in China, but he is served off:

"There's no law saying that only the professional journalists can cover news. China's constitution guarantees every citizen's freedom of speech," says Guo Zhixin, legal counsel for DV Observation.

Well, that is good to hear and I will put the last quote apart for frequent usage in the future.

The ongoing demise of Jongo.com

Jongo back in April

Cam of China Media News, until May himself employed by jongo.com, details the further demise of what I would call an amazing misinvestment. Setting up a massive media investment through UK money - they have been spending 100,000 US dollars per month! - was already a big nono for everybody who is a little bit familiar with China.

Foreign media have a very hard time to find ground in China and only by avoiding calling yourself a media company, you might have a chance of surviving. Unless you become too big of course.
I walked in April by accident into their operation (that in itself says enough) and was wondering why they did not use the most obvious new media tools. They were trying to set up a new traditional media brand, as if nothing had changed in the media industry. You might hope that the investors learned their lesson, but I'm afraid they are now already busy finding other ways to lose money.

Trying to blackout an explosion

The Washington Post describes the efforts of local authorities to keep an explosion at Tian Shifu in Liaoning province under wraps. It is an excellent case study in how an explosion, costing at least 25 lives and problably much more, is kept out of the publicity.

In Beijing, officials in the central government of President Hu Jintao have suggested repeatedly that a more open attitude is necessary in the age of cellphones and the Internet. Wang Guoqing, vice minister of the government's national Information Office, told China Central Television last month that local attempts to block coverage of negative news are "naive" given the new technology.
Whether Wang was sincere or not in his call for more openness, the message has not gotten through in China's provincial propaganda offices. At those levels, senior propaganda officials often are on close terms with local newspaper and television editors; they attend the same party meetings and follow similar career paths. Coverage of Tian Shifu's explosion was a case in point.

The struggle for openness is an ongoing one. The story in the end made it into the Washington Post, but might not got a huge readership in Benxi county.

CCTV fires one third of work force

China Central TV might shed between 3,000 and 5,000 jobs or one third of its work force, summarizes China Media News in a round up of the rumors at China's central TV-station in Beijing.
The dismissals seem to focus on un-licensed journalists, temps and part-time university students in an effort to avoid future scandals like the news on the fake cardboard baozi's that embarrassed the broadcaster earlier.

Update: The China Digital Times comes with an interesting encore and looks for the cleanup at CCTV at the Labor Contract Law that will be in force next year:

Also following the baozi debacle reports say, central media authorities ordered CCTV to dump contractors and other freelance staff - some 2000 in all. CDT sources cite an another key motive for the staff cuts, however. In late June, the country passed its new Labor Contract Law, which comes into effect at the turn of 2008. CCTV, they’ve been told, has been maneuvering in recent weeks to comply. The law essentially forces employers to put contracts into writing within one month of employment, making it much trickier for them to hire temps. For an institutional work unit (事业单位) like CCTV, which has a limited number of staff positions and thousands more working informally, full compliance would appear quite the conundrum. Of course, as the sources acknowledged, the law could be just another excuse to clean house.

"China on TV" hits my screen

Nobody bothered to tell me, but since a few weeks we have a new English-language TV-channel about China on the internet: Chinaontv. This US-based initiative is a second, next to Tokyo-based ITV-Asia. (Disclosure: I'm currently discussing possible cooperation with ITV-Asia).
Compared to ITV-Asia Chinaontv seems to have a technically much more sophisticated operation. People who know me will realize that especially their RSS-page caught my attention: this is state of the art.
Both operations have their drawbacks: ITV-Asia seems more a podcast where the image does not add any value. Chinaontv has cute women readings texts in a professional TV-studio setting. Unfortunately, what they say is mostly no news and often outright boring: "Trade with France Up".
Both initiatives I cannot study very well, since in both bases playing the video's takes too much time. They might have to set up operations in China to solve those technical problems, exposing them to the regulatory drawbacks of China.