Transcript

Host: This is “On the Line,” and I’m Eric Felten.

With a Communist Party congress expected this fall and the Summer Olympics slated to be held in Beijing in 2008, China’s government announced that it will now jail journalists that it considers guilty of reporting “false news” or committing “illegal news coverage.” Liu Binjie, the director of China’s General Administration of Press and Publication, told the People’s Daily newspaper that this is “a concrete action to create a healthy and harmonious environment for a successful 17th Party Congress.”

The media crackdown comes in the midst of ongoing scandals involving Chinese exports. In the U-S, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere, various Chinese-made goods have been recalled after it was discovered that they were either toxic or dangerous. The harmful products include adulterated foods, clothes and blankets processed with formaldehyde, tainted medicines and toothpaste, and lead-painted toys that could injure children.

Such news is damaging China’s image at a time when China is seeking to assure the world that the 2008 Olympics will go smoothly. Will that effort succeed? How should the U-S and other countries react to the apparently growing crisis over Chinese exports? And how should it react to China’s imposing further restrictions on human rights? I’ll ask my guests: Sophie Richardson, Advocacy Director for the Asia division at Human Rights Watch; and Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Claude Barfield; and joining us by phone from Toronto, Canada: Gordon Chang, Author of The Coming Collapse of China. Welcome. Thanks for joining us today.

Sophie Richardson, is there a relation between this crackdown on illegal news and on the various recalls and scandals involving tainted products?

Richardson: Yes, there is a relationship, I think, in a couple of different ways. I mean, fundamentally, we’re talking about the right to free expression, and if, for example, the Chinese press was free to report without constraints on problems in factories with tainted goods, you wouldn’t see these kinds of crises that emerge. At the same time, we see precisely those kinds of regulations being used to constrain journalists from writing on topics that the government simply finds embarrassing, distasteful, too sensitive. And in that category, we would include not just issues related to problematic products or factories, but fundamentally topics about Tibet, Taiwan, democracy, official corruption. So, yes, we think there is a relationship.

Host: Claude Barfield, what’s your sense? A relationship between the two issues?

Barfield: I think there is, but the newer issues, if you will, are the emerging problems that have come from imports to the United States and other countries, too, from China. It’s got to be put in the context of the continuing decisions of the government of China to suppress freedom of expression. That’s nothing new. I think there’s a connection, but only because you have, whether it’s SARS or whether it’s something for the products, the government is going to step in. This happens to be the set of issues that the government is stepping in now, as well as a lot of the questions about the Olympics. So you’ve got a long-range government policy, which we’ve known about, and that is filtered through new events that force the government to intervene in terms of freedom of expression.

Host: Gordon Chang, are you there by phone?

Chang: Yes, I am.

Host: What’s your sense on this? Is this a vicious cycle where some of these problems with the products arise because there isn’t the kind of press oversight you need, and then there’s a crackdown on press oversight after the problem arises?

Chang: That certainly is a dynamic that we’re seeing today. This is just not an issue, though, of product recalls or the 17th Party Congress or the Olympics that are coming up next year. This is an issue of late regime political rigidity, and I think it’s playing itself out over the issues that are arising today, which just happen to be the product recalls. But in a further sense, I think you can say that this is just a problem of an authoritarian form of government and especially a reforming Leninist one. So I think we’re going to see these problems continue because the system does not permit a freedom of expression that, as you suggest, could very well solve these problems in the long run. So we’re going to see more of these in the future.

Host: Sophie Richardson, what does the Chinese government mean by “false news,” “illegal news coverage”?

Richardson: That, of course, is the sixty-four-thousand dollar question. That kind of vague language can be interpreted in so many different ways, and by different officials, in different locations, under different circumstances.

Host: So by “false news,” they don’t necessarily mean news where the facts being reported are incorrect or motivated by a desire to put out something that is not true?

Richardson: Exactly. It can be interpreted to mean what the Communist Party does not want publicly discussed about it, and there are no clear guidelines given. Some parts of the government do issue guidelines to journalists about what they cannot and what they are supposed to cover. But beyond that, there is an enormous scope for arbitrary interpretation, particularly by local officials, that leaves journalists quite vulnerable as they decide what to cover and how to cover it. Increasingly, we see journalists, because of this vulnerability, choose not to try to cover certain subjects at all, which, again, compounds the problem, that people simply don’t have access to information that may be, you know, part of an important matter about public health or public safety.

Host: Claude Barfield, how much room is there for foreign journalists reporting in China these days? It was one of the things that China promised as part of securing the Olympics, was that they would open up to foreign journalists, and there has been an effort to take some of the restrictions -- Since January, foreign journalists are now able to travel around without having a minder officially with them. How much openness is there in practice?

Barfield: I don’t claim to be an expert about that specific issue. My guess would be, however, that the Chinese have opened up to -- Foreign journalists have always had more leeway. They always could be kicked out of the country or something like that, but they’d run into the same problems as others. So, as far as I know -- I mean, we get reports from The New York Times and The Washington Post and, you know, Wall Street Journal, and others daily, weekly about the kinds of things we’re talking about, and in most cases, you haven’t had any problem with the bureau itself. In other words, the Chinese have intervened in a famous incident, was with a Chinese citizen who was working with The New York Times. But I don’t think that you get the foreign journalists -- They’re not taken off in the night or usually not even kicked out of the country, though that certainly can happen.

Host: Gordon Chang, are people in China getting the same sort of news that people in the West are getting when -- from The New York Times and The Washington Post, et cetera?

Chang: Many of those publications are indeed blocked inside of China, but one of the interesting things, though, is that China has an extremely lively Internet, and so stories that don’t appear in the official media or appear in the outside but not in Chinese media are nonetheless known throughout the country, and that is really a striking development, and it puts the Communist Party at a disadvantage, because although it can block outside websites, it is not able to prevent effectively the Chinese people from talking to themselves, and this has really changed the nature of the propaganda mechanisms in China and the nature of censorship, because censorship is becoming less effective, and so therefore the government has had to ease up a little bit because they know people know anyway, and that’s a startling development that’ll have ramifications in the years to come.

Host: Claude Barfield?

Barfield: Just one addition that I think of equal importance is the Chinese have had for the last two decades as a part of their opening up, they have sent students all over the world. They are sending businessmen everywhere. People are coming in and talking to citizens of Shanghai or Beijing or wherever. It’s certainly not down in a small village, but China is basically in terms of information, if not an open sea, it’s wide open in many ways, and the government can’t do anything about the information that people get outside, and they’re encouraging people to go out, as well as foreigners to come in.

Host: Sophie Richardson, this has long been -- People have talked about how China, by opening up to commerce and in other ways, wouldn’t be able to sort of keep a lid on information in the country, so how’s that playing out, especially with efforts to censor the Internet and keep things such as democracy and human rights from appearing in search engines that people use in China?

Richardson: It is absolutely the case that people in China have access to far more information than they did ten or fifteen years ago. I think that’s something we all agree on. But the reality is that there are also certain subjects that you really can’t discuss online and that the government has taken quite seriously its efforts to restrict what people can talk about. There are no fewer than, I think, 14 separate agencies in the Chinese government that monitor Internet traffic. They took different capacities and different reaches. It’s also the reality that a number of major international technology companies, several of them based here in the U-S, including Microsoft and Google and Yahoo, who have, in various ways, contributed to the Chinese government’s efforts to censor the Internet. So while it’s true that more people have access to information and certainly a lot of users, I think, are well aware now that their conversations can be monitored and that there are ways around that, and there’s a great deal of innovation going on to figure out how to get around the great firewall, there are still certain topics that it’s dangerous to discuss, and people have been sentenced to prison for what they’ve said online.

Host: Claude Barfield, what about this issue that Sophie Richardson brings up about U-S companies -- Western companies -- who have business interests in China and thus cooperate in efforts at censorship. Companies that are in the business of providing Internet services that, at least in the U-S, take a position of the more freedom on the Internet, the better. And what does that say about the other issues of business trade with China and how it affects policy in the U-S?

Barfield: Those are separate questions. And the first question -- I think there’s no easy answer. I mean, it’s easy to say that Google should not have cooperated, they should never be in cooperation. But the Chinese government and the Chinese economy is large enough so that the alternative is going to be that [the Chinese] -- in fact, they’re doing it, anyway, and they may do it, anyway – will set up their own set of Internet systems, their own sort of international radio, television, whatever. So, you know, I think this is not going to be a popular, I suppose, reaction, but you have to take it on a case-by-case basis, and Google has to look at the United States and its constituency here and the U-S Congress and the U-S regulatory system, and they have to look at China, thinking as a world-wide [company]. Not just Google -- It shouldn’t take just a U-S company. It would be any information company around the world. And I think my judgment would be that only in the most egregious cases should they not, because there are things that the European companies or African governments have that these companies also bow to, so they’re kind of caught in between. That may be too sympathetic a view of them, but I think it’s certainly in the case of China as opposed to the case of some small African country. The Chinese government will just go up and set up something separately.

Host: Gordon Chang, what’s your sense on this question, both the Internet one and also, then, the second question about how the extensive trade between the U-S and China affects policy decisions?

Chang: Trade not only is undermining the Western democracies, as we’ve been discussing with these Western companies helping the Chinese build their firewall, but it is also undermining the Chinese government, as well, because there is the big question that we’ve been discussing, which is the openness that China now exhibits, and that has tremendous implications for a formerly atomized and closed-off society. And so we see a China which is very different today, which is very dynamic, and it’s just changed almost every aspect of society. So this commercial effect not only -- It works both ways in terms of changing the way we react towards China and the way that China is. You know, in terms of American companies and whether they should cooperate with the Chinese, I think it’s true that if we don’t do it, the Europeans will. But nonetheless I think that at some point there have to be some standards that the United States government imposes on American companies, because it’s the same question that people have been discussing in many contexts throughout the twentieth century of, “If we don’t help the Third Reich, somebody else will.” And I think that we do need to have a better conversation, a better understanding in the United States of the standards that American companies operate under, because these are critical issues for the future of democracy, not only in China, but elsewhere.

Host: Claude Barfield, why don’t you respond to what Gordon says there.

Barfield: I don’t -- I agree with sort of the latter things that he said. I don’t agree that this is undermining Western democracy, and that’s a bit of a stretch. But there’s one point I would like to make, which would really amplify what Gordon said, and that is there’s all this debate -- political scientists and international relations people -- about those who are so-called liberal internationalists have assumed that trade and commerce will ultimately produce N-G-Os and various elements -- nongovernment organizations and middle class in China -- and you will move toward democracy. The so-called realists have said that’s nonsense. It’s not going to happen, and it hasn’t happened, and to be where we are now, 2007, it hasn’t happened yet. But I think -- I don’t foresee the Chinese -- the top leadership ever becoming Jeffersonians. But there is something important about what is happening in terms of whether it’s food or any of the other imports, and that is they don’t have to believe in democracy or freedom or human rights, but they are very concerned about Chinese brands, and what is ultimately they’re going to be faced with is they have got to clean up the corruption and they’ve got to have a regulatory system which is backed by administrative law and the courts that will actually allow them to certify that what they’re sending abroad, whether it’s a toy or whether it’s a food product or whether it’s an engine of some sort, is what they say it is, and that is going to force the government, even against its will, to take action, I think. It’s not that they’re going to become democrats -- small “D.” But they will have to get their regulatory house in order, and a part of that is the kind of due process and non-corruption that we’ve been pushing for them to do in a theoretical way, if you see what I’m saying. I think it’s going to come to the back door this.

Host: Sophie Richardson, let’s talk a little bit about the upcoming Olympics and the effort that has been made in China to keep a sort of positive attention focused on the Olympics, and part of the promise there was that there would be openness for foreign reporters, and yet there’s a manual that has been distributed to Beijing policemen, teaching them the English they will need to deal with foreign reporters while the Olympics are in process, and I’m just going to read from a practice dialogue that’s in the Beijing policemen’s English speaking manual. Here. The policeman says to the foreign journalist who is -- “Excuse me, sir. Stop, please.” The foreign journalist is doing an interview with someone that he’s worried is not relevant to the Olympics. He says, “Excuse me, sir. Stop, please.” And the foreign journalist says, “Why?” “Are you gathering news here?” “Yes.” “About what?” “About Falun Gong.” “Show me your press card and your reporter’s permit.” “Here you are.” “What news are you permitted to cover?” “The Olympic Games.” “Falun Gong has nothing to do with the Games. You should only cover the Games.” “But I’m interested in Falun Gong.” “It’s beyond the limit of your coverage and illegal. As a foreign reporter in China, you should obey Chinese law and do nothing against your status.” “Oh, I see. May I go now?” “No. Come with us.” “What for?” “To clear this matter up.” So...

Richardson: Sort of a marvelous admission in so many different ways of sort of what motivates public policies like that.

Host: Does China think that it’s going to be able to sort of keep a limit on what reporters will be covering when they are in China for the Olympic Games?

Richardson: I don’t think it’s just aspirational. think it’s reality. This is actually a report that we released on the date of the one-year countdown to the Olympics, and the quote comes from David Barboza, who works for The New York Times, describing what happens to foreign journalists in areas where local officials don’t want them reporting on particular issues. He actually said to us, “You will be harassed and detained.” You know, obviously it will be very difficult, given the thousands and thousands of foreign journalists going to China to cover the Games for the Chinese security agencies to track all of them and monitor every single one of their conversations, but I think they’re certainly going to have a good try at it. New regulations went into effect this January -- they’re supposed to go through next October -- that give foreign journalists wide latitude to report on just about any subject, including things like the Falun Gong. But we already see that those restrictions are being rolled back.

Host: Claude Barfield, should this be a priority for U-S policy, dealing with press freedom, both for foreign journalists -- for U-S, Western journalists -- and for Chinese journalists?

Barfield: I think it should be a priority, but we have a lot of priorities, and so I would not take it -- Let me be specific about the Olympics. I think we should press Human Rights Watch. Others should press and press and press. And that the U-S press -- the newspapers and television -- should cover incidents, like if somebody is stopped or they’re kicked out. What I worry about, however, is that -- And the Chinese are big boys. They knew this when this was coming. This is coming in the middle of a U-S presidential election. I think it would be a mistake for the United States to allow -- or other countries. We’re not going to be the only one. Or the European Union. To begin to press larger issues -- Darfur or Iran or other issues -- You’re trying to press them. Because I also think, in the end, it would be a mistake for us to get to a situation like we did with the Soviets where you either boycott or you walk away, and that’s up to the U-S government to stop. I think up to a certain point, we ought to just keep -- We ought to be pressing on these issues. But it is not in our interest to have this blow up, I think.

Host: Gordon Chang, we have about 20 seconds left. You have the last word.

Chang: I certainly agree. I mean, there’s so many different issues involved in the Olympics, and we should probably just try to keep it to sport. There’s so many things that are going to change China, and we don’t have as much influence as we would like. But I think change is coming to China, and so we don’t have to press in the ways that would be counterproductive in the long run.

Host: I’m afraid that’s going to have to be the last word. We’re out of time. But I’d like to thank my guests -- Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch; and from the American Enterprise Institute, Claude Barfield; and joining us by phone from Toronto, Canada -- Gordon Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China.” Before we go, I’d like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can reach us through our website at www.voanews.com/ontheline. For “On the Line,” I’m Eric Felten.