China Segment

The news in China is a complete joke. The main nightly news just finished Shanghai TV. Let me summarize it.

First, fifteen minutes of self-congratulatory pats on the back for how great Shanghai is. Report after report on how the city has made so many improvements for the 2010 Expo, such as new subway lines and tunnels under the Huangpu River. Okay, so Shanghai deserves to celebrate, but is the news the proper forum?

Then, about ten minutes of reports on traffic disruptions and rerouting for a fairly large zone around the Expo site. This, at least is newsworthy and people need to know about it. The drivers interviewed seemed to go along with it quite well - how nice of them not to grumble on camera! Then there was a little more news about all the beefed up security around town at train stations, highways, subways, and especially any transport headed into the Expo zone.

Finally, after twenty-five minutes of news, they got around the big story of the past two days: the earthquake in Qinghai. This was a fairly large quake, at 7.1, and it killed 600 people and devastated villages with poorly built homes. Shanghai TV spent approximately 30 seconds on it. My jaw almost dropped, only hesitating from seven years of low expectations from news on state-controlled TV.

Bad news doesn’t play well in China. The earthquake Sichuan had made massive headlines only because of its enormity and the massive demand for information. But the stories were well managed by the Party apparatchiks and interesting and important information about such topics as poorly built schools collapsing were hushed up. During the recent Party Congress meetings, reporters had lists of subjects they couldn’t report on or had to limit, as reported by the New York Times.

This kind of biased reporting is a national tragedy. People deserve real news. I cannot defend what happens in much of North America, where the news is drama and opinion and frightening the public is the way to get ratings. China should be smarter than this, but the Communist Party is still afraid of anything that reflects badly on them. And unfortunately, the disparity between people’s grumblings and the news reported is growing. Most of the people I know have had it with the Expo and all the inconveniences it’s brought to life in this city. So life carries on in China, with people grumbling and the government and its news cronies continuing on as if everything is as rosy as the 11.9% GDP “growth” (read: investments in empty buildings and make-work projects) they had in the first quarter of this year.

Forgive me for getting so pessimistic. I should chill out more; the average person here already knows the news is mostly hooey.

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