Readers in America: When was the last time any of you went to a Confucius Center? I thought so. How about watched a Chinese television program or a Chinese movie that wasn’t directed by Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige? See any Chinese brands last time you walked down the street? Ever had an American tell you they think Hu Jintao is super cool? Driven a Chinese car lately? Right. Whereas here, people feast on American pop culture (especially TV and movies), the street corners are a plague of American fast food labels and Buick is an aspirational brand. Leaving aside your opinions as to the value of McDonalds and Starbucks as ambassadors of American values, let’s not get all hysterical about the Confucius Centers or wallow in insecurity about America’s cultural influence until poor American refugees start seeking a better life in Fujian.

In fact, China’s government is well aware of its soft-power deficit with regard to the US (see also this article on Danwei), and has been investing in building up its capabilities. International news is one of the key areas of investment, thus the revamping and expansion of China’s foreign-language media organizations. This has included a refresh of the venerable China Daily, the launch of the surprisingly interesting English edition of the Global Times, the revamping of CCTV’s English language station, and more. Most recently, the Wall Street Journal has an interesting story about Xinhua’s plans to roll out an international television news service:

China’s state news agency announced the launch of a global English-language television channel, part of a broader international push by the country’s government media aimed at countering the dominance of Western news outlets and conveying a Chinese perspective on events.

Xinhua news agency said trial broadcasts of the new 24-hour TV service, called China Network Corp., or CNC, will start Saturday, and the station will be fully operational July 1. CNC will be available by satellite, cable systems, the Internet and cellphones, Xinhua said, and will carry a range of programming on news, business and lifestyle issues.

“CNC will offer an alternative source of information for a global audience and aims to promote peace and development by interpreting the world in a global perspective,” Xinhua quoted its president, Li Congjun, as saying at a launch ceremony Friday.

Well, maybe.

I fully understand and even support the motivation behind this. China is a globally important country and has a right to be represented in international media. And as American news media continues its slow-motion implosion, you’d think this would be a good time for them to make their move. Nevertheless, I have a history of rolling my eyes at Chinese efforts to improve their international media efforts. This is not because I am some kind of cynical bastard (although that might also be true) or because I doubt China’s technical competence (I do not). It is because I feel that the natural control-freak inclinations of the Chinese government toward media essentially preclude any ability to develop a news organization with real, international credibility.

The objective–the real objective–is important. If the goal is simply to further disseminate the usual propaganda, then fine, they can do whatever they want. They’ll all feel good about themselves. But no one will watch.

If, on the other hand, the goal is to develop an international media organization that can compete with what’s already offered in English and offer a legitimately different but respectable perspective, then they’ll need to break their traditional mold a bit. Al Jazeera is perhaps the model here. It emerged from a country and region not known for a liberal approach to media and established itself as a serious and credible news organization largely on the back of its Iraq and Afghan war coverage. It did so while still presenting a point of view that was a clear alternative to most western media. They were helped along by some good journalism and slick packaging.

I don’t want to overwork the comparison. For one thing, Al Jazeera has had its problems (including serious personnel issues at their English service a couple of years ago). China certainly has the resources to try something similar to Al Jazeera, but it has some very different political and institutional factors to wrestle with than Qatar did. Also, the world isn’t necessarily screaming for an Asian alternative. Remember, Singapore has already tried the international TV news stunt with Channel News Asia, and it has had only modest international success at best. Even Al Jazeera kind of limped along for several years until it found its purpose and voice after 9/11 and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. One hesitates to imagine a Chinese news organization blossoming in the heat of such a controversial international incident.

So with all that in mind, here are a few things I think China should do if it is really serious about launching a successful international television news network.

Base it in Hong Kong
Let’s face it, as wonderful as Beijing is, nobody is going to take a Beijing-headquartered international news organization seriously. By my thorough calculations, credibility will increase by the square of the distance from Zhongnanhai. This will be especially true if your parent organization is formally a branch of the Central Publicity Department, as Xinhua is. Technically that probably makes Lima or Buenos Aires the best option, but since those might be impractical, how about Hong Kong? Hong Kong is an established media hub with a veneer of press freedom that will be important in helping a new network to establish itself. It’s visa situation will be easier for pundits and professionals, especially the foreigners (see the next point). And, hey, it’s still China, right? Beijing has no trouble calling the shots in Legco, so it could probably manage a Hong Kong-based media organization without too much headache.

Hire pros to do it
Al Jazeera raided the BBC Arabic service when it started, and then raided the BBC again when it started its English service. China should do something similar. There are a lot of good, unemployed journalists around these days, including TV journalists. Avoid the second-stringers and discount talent and hire some heavy hitters for the editing and mainstream talent. Go for some recognizable brand-names. This will be hard because most such people won’t want to work in a Chinese news organization. Basing it in Hong Kong will help, but people will have to believe it will be doing serious journalism.

Also, make sure the production values are competitive with the best out there. No college broadcasting, please.

Cover China for real
This is another area where the Al Jazeera comparison breaks down. Al Jazeera was able to concede limits to its ability to cover its patron’s country, Qatar. Fortunately for them, nobody outside Qatar much cares what happens there, and there are plenty of sexier, more powerful and weirder places in the Gulf, let alone the broader middle East.

This won’t work for China, however. China is pretty much story number one out of Asia these days. How a Chinese international news network covers China will be a key part of how it is evaluated by audiences. The real test will come when, inevitably, such an organization has to cover a serious disaster or bout of civil unrest in China. What plays domestically will not play internationally, especially when people are comparing the coverage to other international media organizations. With all due respect to the Chinese people, who have been poorly served by foreign media on more than one occasion, most people outside of China–even non-Westerners–don’t spend their time grumbling about how crappy and one-sided coverage of China is. So don’t waste too much energy tilting at that particular windmill.

I’m not sure how China could manage this. It might have to credential its own news organization’s China journalists as foreign media. Now wouldn’t that be something.

Less scolding, more seduction
We understand that this operation is there to present China’s point of view, but a little bit of nuance is called for. Sometimes, the organization is going to have to cover the Dalai Lama, or Rebiyah Kadeer, Taiwan’s DPP, or other people the Chinese government finds distasteful. The moment the announcers start slipping into hostile language about black elements, jackals (jackals always get a bad rap), splittist criminals, etc. it’s all over. By all means, be more sympathetic to the Chinese government point of view, but do without with the theatrical, throwback language that alienates foreigners and reminds people that the propaganda mission always comes first. Find articulate, polished spokespeople to present the Chinese government point of view and let them, rather than the journalists or newsreaders, present the government’s points.

Don’t forget the rest of the world
It shouldn’t be all China, all the time. Global news organizations report on, yes, the globe. If the big news of the day is from somewhere outside of China, let’s make sure we don’t lead with what the Standing Committee did today, in protocol order, and doesn’t Uncle Wen look nice with the bouquet those schoolgirls gave him. That means opening a lot of bureaus and sending hardcore journalists to interesting places. With many western media organizations in retreat, there are plenty of parts of the globe that could and should be covered better, and where China might get better access than Western media organizations. Africa and Central Asia come to mind. China has the resources and can do this if it wants to.

Or it could all be a fantasy. I’d be interested to see China come up with something polished, interesting and watchable. There have certainly been signs of life from corners of the Chinese English-language media in the last few years. But given the history, especially in the heavily state-managed regime of television, it’s hard to be optimistic.

A couple of days ago foreign media reported on a book by PLA Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu calling for China to seek global military supremacy. Today, the China Daily carries a follow-up titled, “China’s military not a threat – Major General.” It would seem, what with the “Lianghui” dual political meetings of the National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress (I’ll never get tired of typing that) under way, the cooler heads have prevailed:

China’s military development will not challenge the United States, a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) major general and member of the country’s top political advisory body said on Wednesday.

“China is the only permanent member of the UN Security Council that has not achieved territorial integrity,” said Luo Yuan, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and senior researcher with the Academy of Military Sciences.

“We need to think more on how to preserve national integrity. We have no intention of challenging the US,” he added.

Luo’s remarks came just before the opening of the third session of the 11th CPPCC, in response to Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu, who recently said in his newly published book that China should build the world’s strongest military.

“That’s just his ambition,” Luo said.

How’s that for tight messaging? Check it out:

1. We’re not out to challenge the United States.
2. We’re more focused on territorial integrity than anything else.
3. Senior Colonel Liu was speaking his own mind, not policy.

Well played as these things go. But the best part is the headline, which makes sure to point out that that the statements come from a Major General, and not a Senior Colonel. Sure, they’re only one step apart, but it’s an important gesture nonetheless.

“The Chinese should develop more efficient ways of communicating with the outside world,” said Wu Jianmin, president of the Foreign Affairs College and former Chinese Ambassador to France.

“An acclaimed foreign expert on China once told me China’s distorted image would be the largest obstacle for its further development,” Wu said. “Sometimes, even when information is reported objectively, it can still send the wrong signals.”

For example, some media focus too much on China’s GDP or exports growth, giving the foreign audience an impression that everything in China is rosy, but they forget the cost of the successes, for example harm to the environment, Wu said.

***

Experts believe Chinese media are facing tough challenges in communicating with overseas audiences. “The most difficult thing is that the most talented professionals are gravitating towards higher-paid jobs,” said Ma Shengrong, vice president of Xinhua News Agency.

“The voices of the Chinese media are still weak on the world stage due to various factors, including the difficulty of translating some Chinese values and phrases into English,” he added.

I am inclined to agree with those “experts” cited in the second to last paragraph, above. However, while loss of talent and translation may be part of the problem, I think they fit into a much larger picture that is conspicuously ignored by the article.

First, the general quality of China’s English language media is, by international standards, dismal. There are certainly talented people, both Chinese and foreign, working for China’s various international news services, but for various reasons the average level of quality in both print and broadcast is simply not up to international standards. This is true in the details, like copy editing in much of the English language print media and the foreign talent (in the broadcast sense) employed by CCTV 9, and in a broader sense, in the editing, story selection and frequent ham-fisting of the political slant.

All of these issues, however, are descended from the larger problem, the elephant in the room studiously overlooked in the article above. China’s international news services are explicit state propaganda organs. It is pointless to discuss whether Chinese media organizations are following a balanced editorial line, especially on issues that impact the image of China abroad, when the editorial line is heavily influenced if not dictated by the state. Even the perception of that influence is damaging, and tends to drive foreigners away or make them wary.

China isn’t unique in having state news organizations that fill a propaganda role. The United States maintains several state propaganda media agencies, and plenty of other nations do the same. And I would argue that there is a legitimate role for these kinds of organizations in the grand scheme of things. But China’s authoritarian government, with its reputation for micromanaging state public relations issues and zealous propaganda apparatus, will be seen by overseas audiences –correctly, I believe– as being much more deeply involved in the day-to-day operations of China’s international news services than the governments of liberal democracies are in most of their own. This is a problem for China, because I am sure that it wants CCTV9 to be seen as a peer of the BBC World Service or even the Voice of America more than as a peer of the North Korean KCNA. It certainly wants Xinhua to be seen as a credible global wire and financial information service, as we’ve all been recently reminded. But as long as its news organizations are seen as propaganda first and news second they’ll receive an immediate and steep credibility discount from foreign audiences.

The propaganda link and the general stodginess and stuffiness of state media probably also play a role in the talent drain as well. When state media was the only show in town that wouldn’t have been a problem. But China has an increasingly lively commercial media that is competing with the state behemoths for talent, including some magazines and newspapers with very good reputations. They might be subject to tight state regulation, but that’s not the same thing as being state-run. Also, there is an increasing number of foreign media organizations (and PR agencies) in China that are also able to woo the best and brightest, especially if they have English or other foreign language skills.

As for the ability to attract foreigners, I am acquainted with some smart and talented foreigners who have worked in Chinese state media. Many were fresh graduates or very young professionals for whom a year or two in Chinese state media was a reasonable way to work in China while moving toward a job in a foreign news organization or a grad school spot back home. Most of the older pros, however, had either grown an armor of cynicism or undergone a tortuous process of rationalization (or become embittered bloggers). And all foreigners working in Chinese state media, and especially the television presenters, had better reconcile themselves to being seen as complicit in China’s propaganda regimen, and to absorbing some of the bitter and often racially-tinged scorn that foreigners reserve for compatriots who are seen to have sold out their dignity or values to carry the Chinese government line. This scorn isn’t always fairly dispensed or justified, but it is there nonetheless.

Glossing up the production values in both print and broadcast might help, but it won’t be a solution as long as the hand of the state is seen to loom over newsrooms. Singapore, which has tried to turn its Channel News Asia cable news station into a regional equivalent of CNN has experienced some of this. CNA is relatively slick, manned by native English speakers, and should be able offer unique insight into Asia. But as long as parent Mediacorp and CNA are perceived as subservient to the Singapore government’s agenda other governments will be suspicious of them and people –especially the educated, affluent international businesspeople who make advertisers’ mouths water– will reach first for CNN, the BBC or their local equivalent.

The competition, every other English language print and television news source in the world, will be tough. Many of those organizations have cultivated reputations over decades. Ultimately success will come down to building a solid track record of good programming, editing and talent. China’s international media can’t be run like an English version of domestic media, which is what happens now. Foreign viewers won’t endure a stream of turgid articles reciting awkwardly translated political slogans and concepts, or news spots showing the Chinese leadership’s daily activities in protocol order. Even the Chinese seem to be growing considerably less patient with that, judging from the increasingly zippy and salacious Chinese language media. In fact, if the Chinese really want their global programming to fly, they might consider a significantly lighter government touch, perhaps just laying down some ground rules. That might enable them to do something else helpful, and hire top-flight, experienced foreigners or returnee Chinese from developed media markets to program or help edit. After all, Al-Jazeera has gleefully raided the BBC in its quest for respectability.

Such a move seems beyond the pale for the Chinese leadership and for the moment it probably is. The instinct to closely manage the media is probably too strong for the government to trust foreigners or even returnees to get too close to levers of power, although they’re welcome to copy edit and be talking heads. But as long they keep sailing the same path they have been, Xinhua the People’s Daily, China Daily and other English print media are doomed to be little more than attributions in foreign news reports and CCTV9 is destined to be a station of some use to locals practicing English, but shunned by most foreigners with access to anything better.

Note: See also the Peking Duck, especially the comment thread, in which a very good point is made. There is no monolithic “foreign” market, or even a monolithic “English language” market. Reaching out to Americans will be different than reaching out to Australians, Singaporeans or English speaking Italians for that matter. But every international broadcaster deals with that by either segmenting its programming, having different channels or publications, or targeting a narrower segment that crosses nationalities such as businesspeople. For the purposes of reaching a global audience, even via other country’s media, one of the best resources the Chinese ought to have at their disposal is savvy, quotable press officers with local knowledge stationed at embassies around the world. However one gets the sense that those people aren’t always the most quotable individuals around.

1. The nominal grievances, Japan’s textbooks that gloss over culpability for wartime atrocities and generally insufficient post-war contrition, are, in reality, minor.
2. The protests were sanctioned by the state, which is tacitly condoning broad, anti-Japanese sentiment.
3. There is a whiff of hypocrisy about the whole affair.

So, rather than a spontaneous outpouring of grassroots sentiment in response to a profound, historical grievance, the facile textbook row is just theatrically blunt diplomacy rooted in grubby, contemporary issues, such as competition over East China Sea gas deposits and Japan’s bid for permanent representation on the UN Security Council.

Stripping the lingering romance of the heroic Anti Fascist War reduces the protests to messaging, and the protestors to manipulated patsies. The government has decided to send an implicit threat: We have not forgotten and we are still angry. (It’s only implicit at the state level. In published vox populi quotes it’s explicit.) The dismal subtext of the message is that the legacy of the War, six decades later and counting, may still be future retribution.

Pardon my Outraged Masses
To engineer its message, the government is indulging in a timeworn bit of political sleight-of-hand. Stoking nationalist fury at Them (in this case, the Japanese) amplifies the diplomatic message, fills an ideological void and deflects activism that might otherwise be focused inconveniently inward. This old chestnut seems to fare particularly well in places where the state has a functional monopoly on public discourse. The refrain is familiar from other times and places: All your miseries are caused by the Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Tutsis, Blacks, Irish, Latin Americans, etc.

The Chinese government has been careful to stress that its complaint is with the Japanese government, not the Japanese people, but news coverage and official statements are loaded with charged language. (Unfortunately, my language limitations mean that I have to use Xinhua and the China Daily, which are for foreign consumption, as proxies for broader press coverage. I would be interested in hearing if the Chinese language press is the same, better or worse.) Some of the language that has caught my eye in the China Daily in just the past three days:

“Japan Told to Face Up to Past” (April 13)

“…whitewashing of its wartime atrocities…”
“…bad practice and attitude…”
“…history of aggression…”

“Japan’s textbook revisions cause for concern” (April 14)

“… all its killings of civilians, exploiting, especially sexually, of women, brutalities…”
“… orgy of atrocity…”
“…the three bloodiest massacres…”

“Schroeder to Japan: Be self critical of history” (April 14)

“…heinous crimes…”
“…wanton slaughtering…”
“…germ wars…”

I’ve deliberately pulled these phrases out of context because that is how they work. It doesn’t matter how measured or balanced the language around them is. These are “villain words” that, repeated often enough (the essence of propaganda) will leave a deep impression regardless of efforts to balance coverage or to mitigate the impact by distinguishing between Japanese “rightists” or the government and the population-at-large. Charged words stick. When passions are sufficiently inflamed, the ultimate result becomes the following: Japanese historical crimes + you are Japanese = your crimes.

Also worth a look are the China Daily editorial cartoons of the past six weeks, several of which invoke Japan. I pulled them together on one web page here [link now dead, see original pages below -WM]. Samurai outfits and Tojo moustaches are caricatures of Japanese militarism (the cartoon featuring Koizumi being notable for its artistic restraint). The depicted attempt to “buy” a Security Council seat reminds me of anti-Semitic propaganda. The thread began on March 9^th, well before the demonstrations got going. (The original pages are here: March 9, March 16, March 28, March 30, April 7, April 12.)

Speaking of anti-Semitism, one sadly recurring outcome of this kind of propaganda is a pogrom. Charged language and imagery can be read as state-sanctioned contempt and, thus, as a license to violence. The Chinese should be sensitive to this situation, as their diaspora has been on the receiving end of this very tactic, most recently in the Indonesian riots of 1999. There is a reason why ethnic Chinese across much of Southeast Asia, who are often the backbone of merchant class, take local names and try very hard to assimilate and keep low profiles.

This may all sound a bit hysterical, and I don’t think that an actual anti-Japanese pogrom is going to erupt in China, but threats to people and property are escalating on both sides. Furthermore, the attitudes and prejudices that this kind of propaganda teaches do not go away. They just go out of view, to be expressed later as racism, violence and, if we’re particularly unlucky, future policy as another indoctrinated generation assumes power.

My xenophobes can lick your xenophobes
Of course the long-term consequences of this will be to drive Japan towards the US and further empower the Japanese right, the very element of Japanese society most likely aggravate Chinese fears. Thus the great circle of self-fulfillment might roll on.

None of this exonerates the Japanese government, which regularly seems to find ways to irritate neighbors who still remember the war. The Koreans, fellow victims of the Co-Prosperity Sphere and no slouches at nationalism themselves, are also fond of good anti-Japanese demonstration. In the years I lived in Singapore, I encountered many bad memories of the Japanese occupation and much lingering ill will. But no one is guilty of their father’s crime, even if they don’t apologize sufficiently for it, and a regional cycle of nationalism and escalating tension won’t do anyone any good.

I like to think of myself as an optimist, and I don’t expect a full-scale crisis. But it’s sad that the Japanese foreign ministry has to advise Japanese citizens against travel to China, and it’s worse that the abstraction of diplomacy has already become the reality of rocks through windows. My neighbors are Japanese. They have a three-year-old daughter who is infatuated with my cats and giggles so loudly that I can hear her through the walls. I wonder how they are feeling right now.

One final China Daily quote, from an editorial published on March 28:

“It is the young, after all, who urgently need to learn about the falseness of promises offered by nationalism and its romanticization of national glory.

The truth is, the past never disappears. In fact, it often returns to haunt one.

It is an unforgivable sin to turn one’s face away from past atrocities while many of the victims are still suffering from the abuse they endured.”

I couldn’t agree more.