Blogger Hu Xingdou calls for a boycott of the Jackie Chan’s May 1st Beijing concert in light of Chan’s controversial comments about Chinese people and their need to be regulated or controlled. In some way i am sympathetic to Chan, because an intellectual he’s not and he really doesn’t have either the brains or the position to speak his real mind about things, and yet he was stupid enough to open his big mouth anyway. Oh well. Here are the last two paragraphs of this blogger’s criticism, which I liked and have translated for your edification.

成龙公然为剥夺人民群众的话语权、知情权、上访权、参与权撑腰。他在香港、台湾受到狗仔队的追踪，不胜其扰，由此他当然十分感激在大陆作为“中国电影家协会副主席”享受的副部级待遇与特别保护，“慢慢觉得”很有必要“管”一下举报腐败、维权上访、追求国家正义与自由的“添乱之人”，认为只有这样国家才很“和谐”。但是我要问的是：如果成龙的亲人遭遇冤屈无法伸张，如果成龙受到打击伤害无处讲理，如果成龙家的房子土地被人强征而没有什么补偿，如果成龙是弱势群体，不能享有经济权利、社会权利、文化权利、政治权利，举报腐败会被迫害，网络揭露地方乱象会被千里抓捕，上访会被送进精神病院，他还会这样嚣张与猖狂吗？当然，这些仅仅是假设，他成龙事实上是强势群体，是权贵，是既得利益者，他在大陆以爱国主义、民族主义的歌曲作伪装，日进斗金，实际上是在歌唱强者对弱者的蹂躏。
一位缺乏最起码公民意识的影星居然成为成千上万民众崇拜的偶像、成为中国人的“代表”，一位奴才的丑陋表演竟然赢得台下工商领袖们的热烈掌声，大陆中国人该反省一下了，该加入到抵制成龙的行列中去了——为了捍卫大陆的自由、香港的自由、台湾的自由。

[Jackie Chan has openly joined the forces of those that would deprive the people of their right to speak, to know (i.e. to have information), and to petition. Since he’s always getting hounded by the papparazzi in Hong Kong, he must really enjoy the special treatment that he receives as vice chairman of the CHina Film Association, and thus gradually has come to believe that it must be better to control all the troublemakers that report corruption, defend their rights through petitioning, or attempt to achieve some kind of justice, because only then can society be “harmonious”. But there’s something I’d like to ask: if it was his family that were wronged or the victims of injustice, and if it was them who had nowhere to seek redress, and if it was him that had his home and property forcibly taken away without any recompense, and if he was a member of a disadvantaged group, that didn’t have much by way of economic, social, cultural, or political power, and was attacked for reporting corruption or arrested for exposing the crimes of local governments, or taken into an insane asylum because he went to petition, would he still be this arrogant? Of course, these are just assumptions, because in reality Jackie Chan is one of the privileged few, a member of the social elite, the establishment and its vested interests–and he comes to mainland China, singing songs of nationalism and pride, making money hand over fist–but what he’s really singing are songs that celebrate the triumph of the strong over the weak.

That a celebrity who lacks a basic understanding of civil society and the rights of citizens could become the idol of millions, and “represent” China, that a slave’s shoddy performances could so delight and entertain the captains of industry and business leaders ought to give pause to all the Chinese people and make them reflect on whether they should join the ranks of those who will boycott Jackie Chan–for the sake protecting the freedoms of the PRC, the freedoms of Hong Kong, and the freedoms of Taiwan.

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This magazine, considered a national level magazine, has been discovered by
some plucky reporters at the Youth Daily to be quite amenable to the idea that
you can publish something as long as you pay for it. Of course, not everything in the magazine–or rather, not all the space is up for sale, but you can certainly write a fluff piece about the CEO of your company, for the firesale price of 1rmb/character. They let you throw in a couple of nice pics to alleviate the boredom of your no doubt tendentious and overwrought spin prose. This was discovered when the Youth Daily went “undercover” and later, when they confronted the magazine’s editors about this more openly, the editors said “well you know how it is, we are in the same business, after all. This kind of thing happens everywhere.”

Of course it does, but on the other hand, paying money to get stuff published is the cardinal sin to the fourth estate, or at least should be. The problem is that everyone else is getting rich off what they have–their brains, their land, their looks, their talent–so if what you’ve got by way of resources are the pages of a nationally read magazine, then why not try to turn a buck off it?

However, they prefer that you write it. Then they give you some certificate and then you take that to the bank and wire them the money. It’s all rather painless. However if you need one of their journalists to write it for you, you’ve got to offer a down payment of at least 5000 rmb.

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Some interesting statements during the court proceedings:

　杨佳当庭直言：我是无罪的，是他们违法，有罪的是他们。（指警察，发人深思啊）
[Yang Jia: I am innocent, is they who are guilty of breaking the law.]

　法官问：你有什么补充意见？杨佳说：“这些警察之所以敢这样，都是因为他们的背后有你们”。
[Judge asks: do you have any thing to add to your statement? Yang Jia: "the reason the police dare to act the way they do is because
you guys stand behind them."]

　法庭最后陈述，杨佳说：“被这样的警察管理着的国家，一个遵纪守法二十几年的公民最后都会被判刑坐牢。” （说出了绝大多数民众的心里话）

杨佳最著名语录：你不给我一个说法，我就给你一个说法。

[Closing statement. Yang Jia says: "a country run by policemen such as this will force someone who has been law-abiding for twenty some years to end up going to jail." The blogger says: (these are the true feelings of the overwhelming majority of people).

Yang Jia's most famous quote: If you don't give me an explanation, I will give you one.]

Elsewhere, citizen blogger and journalist Zola reposts a general letter calling for amnesty for Yang. The letter states a few reasons for this, beginning with some general reasons (the world is generally moving away from capital punishment, even some war criminals were pardoned in China) and then moving to some specific issues relating to how the case was handled (judicial mishandling, interference). Zola states what most others have said about this case: that the tragedy of Yang is that he was an ordinary fellow that was driven to homicidal rage by the pigs. Left with no legal recourse, stymied by a system that was patently designed to thwart demands like his, he had no other choice but to exact his revenge in blood. This open letter was signed by the following people:

中华人民共和国公民：（按签名顺序排，第一批签名人员名单）

艾未未（北京艺术家）、茅于轼（北京经济学家）、杜光（北京离休人员）、于浩成（北京法学家）、戴晴（北京学者）、张祖桦（北京学者）、王俊秀（北京学者）、古川（北京编辑）、陈永苗（北京律师）、李苏滨（北京律师）、江天勇（北京律师）、黎雄兵（北京律师）、唐吉田（北京律师）、杨凤春（北京学者）、王治晶（北京自由撰稿人）、夏业良（北京学者）、冉云飞（四川编辑）、廖亦武（四川作家）、张博树（北京法学家）、萧默（北京学者）、刘序盾（北京学者）、李智英（北京学者）、李槟（南京教师）、孙岩力（北京教师）、王卫星（北京记者）、谭洪安（北京编辑）、于赤阳（黑龙江公民）、张辉（山西民主人士）、贾瑞明（河北农民）、谢军（深圳设计）、王靖禹（旅英学者）、华乔（上海摄影师）、释妙觉慈智（广东法师）、林树坤（瑞士出版人）、范冲（北京学生）、张志强（北京打工之友）、李勉之（深圳工程师）、曹王澜（广东民工）、张赞宁（江苏教师)、龚光云(广东学者)、郭玉闪（北京学者）、周曙光（楚国人）、淮生（北京自由职业者）、马萧（北京记者）

2008年10月20日

YOu can see that Ai Weiwei (Mr. I hate my bird nest and the fake Olympics) among many other scholars, writers, and intellectuals from around the country. There was only one person from Shanghai that signed it, and that was photographer Hua Qiao.

The story has gathered some steam and AFP and a bunch of other western media sources are running this story, noting that there were protests in Shanghai outside the courtroom where Yang’s trial was held:

Huang Xuemin, a grey-haired protester, complained police beat her when she tried to enter the court premises.

“You see how police were treating us, and you could imagine how badly Yang Jia must be treated,” she said, showing the assembled crowd scratches on her forearms that she said were from her scuffle with police.

Obviously, this is only the tip of the iceberg, and there are vast amounts of debates going on online … personally, I just want to know the truth about what happened to the guy. I want there to be an investigation into whether or not he was mistreated by the police. I think that’s what most of his supporters want. As to whether or not he should die–well, he did kill a lot of people, and I don’t think there is any justification even if you were insulted or beaten or otherwise felt your dignity to have suffered as a results of other people’s actions. That said, I am *almost* categorically against the death penalty, because I feel uneasy with the idea of the state arrogating to itself to mete out this kind of brutal punishment.

Oh well. Yang Jia will face the firing squad, a dead chicken for all the rebellious monkeys lurking in the underbelly of Chinese society. And for those that support or otherwise sympathize for Yang, that will just prove what they’ve been saying all along.

Technorati Tags: yang jia, 杨佳, crime, shanghai, murder, police, expression china, chinese, media, newspaper, reporters, journalist, government, corruption

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This too is a thread from Xici, and in it a reporter talks about the various things that he/she has seen or done in a ten year career as a journalist in China.

说不清我为什么要告别记者生涯，尽管在几年前我已厌倦了这份工作，但真正咬牙下定决心离开，还是年初的事。我揣着记者证，我的社会身份是“记者”，可是这些年来我何尝有机会做过真正的记者？两千多年前太史公秉笔直书不讳君恶，我们今天都做不到。不能真实地记录，不能自由地表达，我还算什么记者？无非是为稻粱谋而已！这样的“记者”生涯，为什么不向它说再见？

[rough trans: I left this work because even though I had been tired of it for awhile, I hadn't worked up the courage to leave until earlier this year. 2000 years ago, Taishigong could directly criticize the rulers, but we cannot do that now. We cannot truthfully record or express what happens, so in what sense are we journalists?]

记得第一次出京采访是到西安，参加武警总部召开在那儿召开的一次会议。几天的会议听来听去都是车轱辘话，刚出江湖的我还很认真地做笔记，但心里犯嘀咕：这样枯燥的内容怎么写成报道？等会议还没有开完时，有新闻干事已经把事先写好的通告给我，只要略作改动，署上我的名字就万事大吉了。我疑惑既然如此，为什么还要记者参加会议，由部队的新闻干事直接将通稿传真到报社不就得了？后来才知道，请记者特别是中央媒体记者参加，会提升会议的规格。记者，也就成了贾府装点门面的清客。采访和会议都很轻松，剩下的时间当然是要逛逛这个做过汉唐国都的古城，大雁塔、华清池、兵马俑，一个也不能少。对我触动很大的一件事是去秦始皇陵遗址公园，大门紧闭，外墙上被用石灰刷了 “杀人偿命”等大字，跪着一个妇女和两个孩子，披麻戴孝，后面立着一群愤怒的民众，大喊里面的人出来。记者的敏感让我前去问询，原来妇女的丈夫是附近村庄的农民，几天前去公园里叫卖，被抓入当地派出所，第二天通知家属该人在派出所病亡。家属和村民要讨个说法，遂有此一幕，看到我提问、拍照，村民可能猜出我的身份，将我围住七嘴八舌说个不停。这时和我一起参观的武警官员以及陪同人员，悄悄地拉我出去，说我们不是来管这些闲事的。毕竟在部委机关做过公务员，再不谙官场规则的人也知道该给东道主一个面子，何况刚当记者不知道没有单位领导授权的“管闲事”会带来什么。于是我从人群中溜走了。

[Here the writer talks about how, as rookie reporter, he once attended meetings and conferences of the Xi'an armed police division, and wondered how something as dry as a meeting could be written up as a report. He discovered later, that their media relations people had already drafted a report for them, and all that was needed for him to do was to change it a little as he saw fit. The writer, realizing that he didn't really have much work to do, went off to see the sights of Xi'an and ran into an incident where an angry crowd of people were demanding justice after a local villager had been detained and then somehow died in police custody. The writer took some pictures and the people, sensing that he was a journalist, surrounded him and told him what happened...but he of course was gently taken away by his companions and minders. This was none of his business, and after all he had to give his hosts some face.]

这样的“吹鼓手”做了几年后，我总结出一条经验，上面布置正面报道的任务中，一高和一低可以做。“一高”就是指对整个执政党大而化之的肯定或者是对最高处大佬们的颂扬，基本上不会有什么问题；“一低”指报道中赞扬这个机器链条中的小螺丝钉，如基层民警、普通战士或小官员，问题也不大。最容易出问题的是厅级和副部级官员，可能刚报道他的“光辉业绩”没多久，这人就被“双规”或判刑了。

最搞笑的一次是，某次人代会，我已经在后方当编辑，当时江西省检察长（副部级官员）丁某托人主动联系本报，要求在报上露露脸，我们一个记者写了篇报道，极尽吹捧之能事。稿子到了我手里，我建议不要刊发，理由是：一个副部级官员，一般说来不是靠媒体正面报道升官的，到了这个位置，低调，不引人关注是最重要的，否则会遭忌恨，因此他们往往对媒体的报道避之唯恐不及。而这次一位副部级官员主动要求在媒体上高调亮相，一定是他感觉到危机了，想一切办法抓救命稻草，也许他觉得被官方媒体刚刚正面报道过，有关部门为考虑影响会谨慎从事。即使采访他，也只能报道他作为一名普通人大代表的建议，而这篇稿件竟然赤裸裸颂扬其个人清正廉洁。可是，由于那位记者找报社高层公关，稿件还是发出来了。不到半年，这位专司反贪的省检察长自己被反贪了，《南方周末》长篇报道他落马的过程，而且大段引述了本报赞扬他的那篇报道。看到《南方周末》的报道，我的脸都红了，这样的报纸，有何“报格”可言？

[In this part the writer says that writing "high" and "low" reports are easy, meaning reports that extol the accomplishments of high level officials and cadres or really low level, grassroots cadres. The difficult reports to write are the mid-level ones, because there's always a chance that these people will get caught for corruption. One amusing event was one when there was a an offical that wanted to get some exposure in the media, and the writer could smell trouble in this guy. He knew that any official that wanted exposure that badly was in some kind of trouble, and was grasping at straws to save his career. A reporter wrote an especially laudatory piece about this official, and despite the writer's disapproval (the writer had been promoted to editor at the time)they piece went to press. Sure enough, a while later this official got indicted for something and Southern Weekend reported the whole thing, quoting the report taht the writer's newspaper had published at length. The writer says that his face turned read reading this report: and I wonder whther he means because he's embarrassed that their shitty report was used by a decent paper like Southern Weekend or embarrassed that Southern Weekend went so low as to use their report as part of theirs.

(-: 发表于：2008-10-18 13:51:54
告别圈养的记者生涯
2008-10-18
十年砍柴

我去人事处退记者证时，人事处的老兄把证件上的照片撕下还给我，说：“留个纪念。”照片上的我二十八岁，看着照片上清瘦还有些朝气的面孔，我的眼睛有些湿润。原以为自己不会有什么感伤。感伤，是因为我把九年半的岁月丢在这个大院，犹如一块石子投到了深不见底的潭水里。

车拉着两个纸箱，像往常下班一样驶出大门，岗哨上武警还是那样如雕塑一般伫立。流水般的日子里，这个岗哨上有多少茬新兵成为老兵，然后复员，再来一拨新兵，曾记得多少次我忘了带证件和哨兵交涉。那些退伍回乡的哨兵还好么？他们在为生计打拼中，是否会偶尔记起这个岗哨？

纸箱里面是几千张照片，十几本采访笔记，五十万采访札记，一摞摞会议材料，还有几十本红红绿绿的获奖证书。九年半的历史，就这样简单地打包了。

说不清我为什么要告别记者生涯，尽管在几年前我已厌倦了这份工作，但真正咬牙下定决心离开，还是年初的事。我揣着记者证，我的社会身份是“记者”，可是这些年来我何尝有机会做过真正的记者？两千多年前太史公秉笔直书不讳君恶，我们今天都做不到。不能真实地记录，不能自由地表达，我还算什么记者？无非是为稻粱谋而已！这样的“记者”生涯，为什么不向它说再见？

回家整理那些照片和采访札记，很多有趣或者愤怒的事情想起来了，近两年来，我很少去触摸这些记忆，因为惭愧。照片记录了我这九年走过的地方，全国包括港澳台在内，我只有四个省区未曾涉足。可是纵横万里路，又留下些什么?除了看了些不同的风景，认识些不同的人。那些和我亲密地挨在一起微笑着合影的人，有一大半我想不起他们是谁了。而当时在酒桌上，我们一定是频频碰杯谈天说地好似多年的老友，等到照片留下时，就是戏散场的时候，我这些年四处采访，和“心连心艺术团”巡回演出也没有太大的区别。

记得第一次出京采访是到西安，参加武警总部召开在那儿召开的一次会议。几天的会议听来听去都是车轱辘话，刚出江湖的我还很认真地做笔记，但心里犯嘀咕：这样枯燥的内容怎么写成报道？等会议还没有开完时，有新闻干事已经把事先写好的通告给我，只要略作改动，署上我的名字就万事大吉了。我疑惑既然如此，为什么还要记者参加会议，由部队的新闻干事直接将通稿传真到报社不就得了？后来才知道，请记者特别是中央媒体记者参加，会提升会议的规格。记者，也就成了贾府装点门面的清客。采访和会议都很轻松，剩下的时间当然是要逛逛这个做过汉唐国都的古城，大雁塔、华清池、兵马俑，一个也不能少。对我触动很大的一件事是去秦始皇陵遗址公园，大门紧闭，外墙上被用石灰刷了 “杀人偿命”等大字，跪着一个妇女和两个孩子，披麻戴孝，后面立着一群愤怒的民众，大喊里面的人出来。记者的敏感让我前去问询，原来妇女的丈夫是附近村庄的农民，几天前去公园里叫卖，被抓入当地派出所，第二天通知家属该人在派出所病亡。家属和村民要讨个说法，遂有此一幕，看到我提问、拍照，村民可能猜出我的身份，将我围住七嘴八舌说个不停。这时和我一起参观的武警官员以及陪同人员，悄悄地拉我出去，说我们不是来管这些闲事的。毕竟在部委机关做过公务员，再不谙官场规则的人也知道该给东道主一个面子，何况刚当记者不知道没有单位领导授权的“管闲事”会带来什么。于是我从人群中溜走了。

现在看来，我的“处子访”已经为我的记者生涯定调。这不是真正新闻学意义上的采访，而是充当一场戏的某个配角。秦始皇陵遗址公园那一幕一直是我心中的一个阴影，有时我安慰自己，即使我留下来采访了，也十有八九发不出去。可是反过来又想，就算不能发表，但如果尽力了就问心无愧，但我没有尽力。

那一次西安之行，我还特意抽时间去西北政法学院一趟，见识了著名的雕塑“宪法顶个球”，现在翻出这张“顶球”照片，宛若隔世，一晃这些年过去了，我和我所在的国家，究竟走过了一条什么样的路？

由于报道的领域是时政，得采访一些官员，有时候也不能免俗和官员们合影，很多官方媒体的记者热衷这个，好像一张合影就是一张虎皮或者护身符。看合影中或者我镜头下的那些官员大多神采奕奕，好多现在已落马。

西安回来后不久就去昆明采访，参加某中央单位召开的行政监察的会议，当时的云南省省长李某到会发言，这是个说话直率的彝族汉子，他发言中出现口误，将云南是个“多民族的省份”说成“多民族国家”，我们记者看热闹地观察台下的高官们一脸尴尬，事后议论说中央来的官员会不会怪罪滇抚有不臣之心呀。几年后的故事大家都知道，因贪腐这位巡抚被判死缓，当然和口误无关，但贪腐也未必是真正的原因。几年后再次去云南，一位彝族干部还惋惜李某是他们民族最可能成长为全国人大副委员长或政协副主席的人物——因为建政五十多年来，彝族干部最高位到正部，而彝族的人口和藏族、回族差不多。然后他又说：我们这个民族太听话了，要是维族或藏族的高级干部，有这点事上面也不会动他们。后来我到广西去，当地一些干部对成克x伏法，亦做如是感叹。

有一年和国家药检局一位司长去江西进行医疗器械打假报道，一周的接触，觉得那位司长低调随和，有儒雅之气，对其印象颇为不错。回京后，刚开始还打过几个电话，渐渐地疏于联系了，最后一次看到他是在电视上，他被判刑，一头白发形容憔悴。我心底里一声叹息。

第一次参加人民代表大会报道，心里还很激动，似乎觉得是在见证历史。住在会上，报社一位同事引荐一位黑龙江某市新闻办主人来找我，这位主任陪着市委书记来开会，市委书记除他，还带了好几个随员。新闻办请我去采访他们的书记，书记侃侃而谈该市的发展思路。这是我第一次对人大代表的制度设计产生疑惑。因为民意机关存在的目的就是为了监督行政、司法机关。而一个地方党委政府及司法机关的领导人成为人大代表后，他如何履行监督自己的职能？再看到这位书记的消息时，这位书记作为省人大副主任，因受贿被查处。

我们一位同事更神奇，他采访过的厅级、副部级官员中，大半落马，被誉为“高官杀手”。

这样的“吹鼓手”做了几年后，我总结出一条经验，上面布置正面报道的任务中，一高和一低可以做。“一高”就是指对整个执政党大而化之的肯定或者是对最高处大佬们的颂扬，基本上不会有什么问题；“一低”指报道中赞扬这个机器链条中的小螺丝钉，如基层民警、普通战士或小官员，问题也不大。最容易出问题的是厅级和副部级官员，可能刚报道他的“光辉业绩”没多久，这人就被“双规”或判刑了。

最搞笑的一次是，某次人代会，我已经在后方当编辑，当时江西省检察长（副部级官员）丁某托人主动联系本报，要求在报上露露脸，我们一个记者写了篇报道，极尽吹捧之能事。稿子到了我手里，我建议不要刊发，理由是：一个副部级官员，一般说来不是靠媒体正面报道升官的，到了这个位置，低调，不引人关注是最重要的，否则会遭忌恨，因此他们往往对媒体的报道避之唯恐不及。而这次一位副部级官员主动要求在媒体上高调亮相，一定是他感觉到危机了，想一切办法抓救命稻草，也许他觉得被官方媒体刚刚正面报道过，有关部门为考虑影响会谨慎从事。即使采访他，也只能报道他作为一名普通人大代表的建议，而这篇稿件竟然赤裸裸颂扬其个人清正廉洁。可是，由于那位记者找报社高层公关，稿件还是发出来了。不到半年，这位专司反贪的省检察长自己被反贪了，《南方周末》长篇报道他落马的过程，而且大段引述了本报赞扬他的那篇报道。看到《南方周末》的报道，我的脸都红了，这样的报纸，有何“报格”可言？

从事“圈养记者”几年内，认识了许多其他中央媒体的同行，而且许多人成为很好的朋友。这些人当年多是大学的优秀毕业生，刚入行时，也有一番新闻人的抱负。但时间一长，多数磨得没有棱角了。所求者，要么是利用身份挣点钱，要么和权力部门搞好关系，熬到处级调到权力部门做公务员。有一年，和新华社和中国日报两位记者一起去河北某市采访该市人大，公事完毕三人在宾馆大堂闲聊，等待车来送我们回京。这时一个便衣过来，对我们喝斥：你们马上离开这里！一幅凶巴巴的样子。我们知道是中央一位重要领导人到了该市视察，可能要来此宾馆，当地警方负责清场。对这种拿着鸡毛但令箭的公差，没人不反感。我问他：你是谁？你在执行什么公务？你啥都不说，我们凭什么要听你的。他可能没想到有人还敢这样问他，嗓门更大了，说：我没必要告诉你们，让你们滚蛋就得滚蛋！那位在未名湖边呆了几年的新华社记者火了：我们不滚蛋怎么了？我看你怎么办。我接着打圆场，说：“你起码要说明一下身份，我们才知道你在执行公务，这是执法的基本素质呀。”同行的《中国日报》的记者是个漂亮妹妹，接话茬说：“你给他这样的人讲素质，岂不是对牛弹琴？他可能都不知道素质两个字怎么写。”气得这位公差满脸通红，这时候该市人大的工作人员前来解围，一场风波消弭。几年后，那位女记者出国了，那位愤怒的男记者，进了“海”里，成为了宫中小黄门。——愤怒的记者总是要成熟的，在这样的体制下，这样的选择也无可厚非。

[Here the writer talks about how people start out with ambition but how, after time, they lose that ambition, and the people who are left are just out there to use their status to earn some money or else cultivate guanxi with powerful people, with the aim of becoming civil servants. e recounts another incident where he and two other colleagues were sitting in a hotel lobby after conducting some interviews. Suddenly, a guy walks in and tells them that they have to leave, and he's rather rude about it, so they ask him why, and who he is, which in turns infuriates the man even more, who says 'if i tell you to get out, you had better get out'. Eventually, someone from a government office comes and explains that some official is coming to this hotel and that they have to leave. The writer's colleagues castigated the rude guy, saying some quite obvious things, like that he doesn't possess that basic "qualities" (suzhi) that someone in his position ought to have. In the west we would just call that professionalism and common courtesy. The writer says that of these two colleagues, one went overseas, and the other went into business. I guess once you see where you stand in this society, as a journalist, and the people that you have to cozy up to in order to do your job, the only rational thing to do is get out while you still can.]

The writer ends his essays on a melancholy note, wondering whether or not everything that he dreamed of was just an illusion. He then ends his essay with these famous lines from the HOlocaust Musuem (in DC?):

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
起初他们向共产主义者而来，我没说话──因为我不是共产主义者；
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
随后他们向犹太人而来，我没说话──因为我不是犹太人；
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
随后他们向工会成员而来，我没说话──因为我不是工会成员；
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
随后他们向天主教徒而来，我没说话──因为我是新教徒；
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
随后他们向我而来，那时已没人为我说话

Technorati Tags: press, freedom, expression, china, chinese, media, newspaper, reporters, journalist, government, corruption

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Just saw this on a Xici thread.

Basically, the story goes like this: Cheng Weixiu (成维秀), a migrant worker from Lin county in Shanxi province（陝西臨縣) was supposedly beaten to death by a coal mine boss Xue Sanwei (薛三卫) in 2007. Cheng’s relative (cousin?) Cheng Yunqiang (成运强) and some other relatives paid a visit to a hotel that Xue owned to seek redress, conflict ensued, and the local police detained Cheng Yunqiang on the grounds that they were inciting violence or crime. However, Cheng managed to escape to Beijing, where he got in touch with civil law journalist Jing Jianfeng (景剑峰) to discuss his case. However, the Lin county police came to Beijing and discovered Cheng’s whereabouts, detained him, and since Jing Jianfeng was there, detained him as well.

After Jing was taken, various rumors were spread around; some say he was extorting the mine boss for 7 million RMB.

The post then encourages people to pay attention to Jian’s case, because he is going on trial October 24, 2008 in Lvliang City, Shanxi province (山西省吕梁市临县) on three counts: obstruction of justice, hiding known fugitives, and receiving a bribe of a 8700 RMB valued laptop computer.

The writer of the post then encourages people to pay attention and stand up for Jian because, as a reporter, anyone of us could be next!

After reading this, I decided to find and read some other reports that Jian has written. The few that I have cursorily read are all quite interesting. There is one written this year about Foshan in Guangdong province, where a former village named Buxin (布心) was made part of Foshan city and all the former villagers given city hukous. However, they lost their livelihood in this process: formerly collectively owned agricultural land has been requisitioned by the government. This happened in 1992, and according to the report, the people of Buxin feel that their standard of living has suffered since then: one person said “before 1992, our lives were getting better day by day. And since 1992, our lives have been getting worse day by day.“

The developers are associated with the government. They gave the villagers compensation for the property and objects on the land, but crucially, not the land itself: in 1992 the land was worth 35,000 rmb per mu, and with 4000 mu or so that comes out to 150 million RMB. The price of land now is worth 450,000 RMB per mu, which means that their former land is now worth about 1.8 billion RMB.

In the beginning, the two development companies had given the villagers some jobs, but after some SOEs went bankrupt or laid off workers, most of the villagers lost their jobs, and being unemployed were not qualified for any compensation. Despite their low incomes they were not given any basic social welfare. Even though they have the hukous, they don’t have basic medical insurance, unemployment insurance, or retirement/old age insurance.

It is quite telling that many of the villagers in Buxin are actually envious of the neighboring villages, which have not become part of any cities, and therefore are able to keep their agricultural land, which provides a basic source of income, and which allowed them to create several enterprises as well.

There’s another interesting report Jian wrote about the so-called Guangzhou phenomenon, which basically means that down in Guangzhou, the representatives/legislators are encouraged to speak the truth. They are encouraged to openly communicate rather than repeat the same tired cliches and nostrums. They are encouraged to speak their minds, even if what they say could be–gasp!–wrong, or erroneous.

Further proof that in many regards, Guangzhou is the vanguard of Chinese political culture.

I don’t think that Jing is a real muckracker, but in a place like China, one wonders if not this whole business has not been vetted or at least conveniently ignored by the powers that be, and if that has anything to do with what Jian writes. I don’t know enough about Jian or his work to say. I think it’s safe enough to say that he is being placed on trial on account of this Cheng Yunqiang business, even though that is absurd as it is.

jian jianfeng, press, reporters, freedom, china, chinese, media, crime, coal, miners, mine, law, trials, court

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PressThink: National Explainer: A Job for Journalists on the Demand Side of News

I noticed something in the weeks after I first listened to “The Giant Pool of Money.” I became a customer for ongoing news about the mortgage mess and the credit crisis that developed from it. (How one caused the other was explained in the program’s conclusion.) ‘Twas a successful act of explanation that put me in the market for information. Before that moment I had ignored hundreds of news reports about Americans losing their homes, the housing market crashing, banks in trouble, Wall Street firms on the brink of collapse.

In the normal hierarchy of journalistic achievement the most “basic” acts are reporting today’s news and providing current information, as with prices, weather reports and ball scores. We think of “analysis,” “interpretation,” and also “explanation” as higher order acts. They come after the news has been reported, building upon a base of factual information laid down by prior reports.

In this model, I would receive news about something brewing in the mortgage banking arena, and make note it. (“”Subprime lenders in trouble: check.”) Then I would receive some more news and perhaps keep an even closer eye on the story. After absorbing additional reports of ongoing problems in the mortgage market (their frequency serving as a signal that something is truly up) I might then turn to an “analysis” piece for more on the possible consequences, or perhaps a roundtable with experts on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer. I thus graduate from the simpler to the more sophisticated forms of news as I learn more about a potentially far-reaching development. That’s the way it works… right?

Wrong! For there are some stories—and the mortgage crisis is a great example—where until I grasp the whole I am unable to make sense of any part. Not only am I not a customer for news reports prior to that moment, but the very frequency of the updates alienates me from the providers of those updates because the news stream is adding daily to my feeling of being ill-informed, overwhelmed, out of the loop. I respond with indifference, even though I’ve picked up a blinking red light from the news system’s repeated placement of “subprime” items in front of me.

This is a terribly important point that has not been made enough, or if it has has not yet managed to seep into popular consciousness (much less journalism education for undergrads, grads, and cub reporters)—but I think, properly realized, it would really impact the whole industry or, if you’re in the mood for hyperbole, the entire way that we relate to the world, since how we relate to the world is fundamentally mediated through this input/output process that occurs between us and the media, broadly construed.

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Olympics in Pictures via kwout

This picture is from the Times UK photographer Marc Aspland: quite nice and painterly. He’s photoblogging the Games but if you’re in China you probably have to use a proxy to read his typepad.com blog.

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美国侨报：世界应无恙，当惊中国殊——百度新闻搜索 via kwout

I was looking at this Baidu news page, scanning through some of the headlines. You notice that most of them are about how impressed the world is with the Olympics, with some obligatory fellow-feeling from the overseas Chinese newspapers. You might as well go ahead and call this the “Beijing Consensus”—though that term has been used elsewhere—to wit, the consensus that China is on the way up and has found its place in the world, espouses values of mutual non-interference, peaceful and harmonious dialogue to solve conflicts, etc. It’s enough to make you sick.

One of the headlines at the bottom talks about China’s “soft power”—the term coined by the Harvard scholar Joseph Nye—about non-military forms of power and influence that countries, e.g the American dream, Hollywood, blue jeans, rap music, etc.

I’ll be honest here—I didn’t go and read the articles. I really just can’t stand to anymore, which is unfortunate because there are times when I think I could have something to offer to the English speaking world with regards to what I see and what I think about China—but for the most part, everything that is written in China I tend to find repulsive.

I was re-reading Ernest Becker’s Escape from Evil today and there is a part about words–he argues that without words, actions stop dead. The project of individual immortality, the causa sui project of the individual—finds a cultural continuation in the hero-systems of the culture and society at large. The hero system in China—well there are different types of heroes and different types of meaning-systems that sustain them, but one of the most obvious ones, especially now, is athletics. Li Ning commercials, among others, are quick to use and abuse the word “hero” (英雄) to hawk their wares. Liu Xiang is a hero. Yang Wei is a hero. Yao Ming is a hero. Those who bring back the gold and write themselves into history books are not valuable as individuals, but because the entire Chinese race can vicariously share in their immortality.

In fact, you don’t even need the “vicariously” modifier, because in fact none of us is guaranteed immortality, biologically—the only game in town is the culture game. And that has long since been the way in China, what with its illustrious 5000 years of history of emperors, sages, knight-errants, poets, generals, ballers, and hurdlers. This was the way it always was, the system of manufacture is a bit different now that we have this thing called “professional sports” which lives off the blood infusions given to it by this thing called “the media”, including the internet, which allows it or rather
insists that it become part of our lives, 24/7, omnipresent, forever accessible, exponentially reproducible.

Becker’s thesis is that much of this has to do with self-esteem. Self-esteem in Becker’s sense isn’t about being able to walk up to a girl and ask her to prom, but about the kind of value that we, through the medium of culture, give our own lives. It’s the way that we beat what he calls “animal futility”—the knowledge that once we tear away the fig leaf of culture, nothing but animals. Sure, we rise above most of them and have done some pretty impressive things on this planet, but that doesn’t change the fact that we are animals that eat, sleep, fuck and shit and cannot escape the animal constraints that nature has placed on us–at least not yet, if the sci-fi writers are to be believed.

Becker goes on to talk about culture-types and I think that for me, this is the only real framework I’ve found that makes sense for describing what Chinese people are like. He talks about aggression and social evil with relation to weak, unindividuated types—something that we’ve seen all around the world, from Columbine to Saudi Arabia—and I am not saying that Chinese people are this type. But they are a certain culture-type, to be sure. That kind of wounded, self-embattled, we got beat up yesterday but are coming back to school confidence is, to me, pervasive. The mentality behind excoriating anyone who supports the Dalai Lama, or talks about human rights like they really matter, or suggests that democracy might be good for China, or that France and Germany aren’t all that bad—that mentality is all over the place. You overhear it in cafes and restaurants, you read it on Twitter or BBS’s, you see it in blog comments.

And that’s why I realized that no matter how purely Chinese my blood is, how I will never really be “Chinese”—I am not part of that culture-project.

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I was just reading through a blog post from the Phoenix TV reporter Lvqiu Luwei (闾丘露薇) writes about the changes that occurred in Beijing as a result of the Olympics. She hopes that the changes, whether it be better signs and transportation to more polite people and better service attitude, will become permanent. Fair enough. Then there’s a paragraph where she mentions the issue of foreign media broadcasting live from Tiananmen Square during the Olympics. It seems they are allowed to as long as they submit and receive approval. She says that perhaps some Chinese people will not understand why it’s such a big deal that they be able to broadcast from the Square. Her answer: because no skyline, however magnificent, could compare to the visual impact of the square, and broadcasting from there would make viewers understand that China has changed, become more open—because this place is a “complex” and a “symbol”.

I don’t know if there is anything really worth pointing about this. Of course, it’s more than just a symbol. It’s a place where history was made. It’s the unofficial national stage, where a great many national dramas are enacted. And it’s a place where people died. There’s almost no point in even writing this–what does one expect? There are clever ways of skirting the issue, and in any case, the blog post is not about the square per se. We can’t be clear about the real historical significance of the place and hence its value to western reporters who want to be able to broadcast live from the square. But to say that it’s a “complex” and a “symbol” is an accurate and fairly innocuous way of putting it. Here’s the original paragraph in Chinese:

虽然中国政府已经同意，经过申请的外国媒体可以在天安门广场进行直播，但是还是有不少的媒体在抱怨，限制太多，比如限制直播的时段，这样让和中国有时差的欧洲国家，没有可能利用天安门作为背景进行直播。也许很多人不明白，为何外国媒体如此执著于天安门广场，这是因为，再多的高楼大厦，再完美无缺的开幕仪式，都比不上外国记者，站在天安门，为自己国家的观众发回报道造成的视觉效果更加强烈，人们会因此而感受到中国变了，更加开放了的，因为这个地方，是一种情结和象征。

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So I subscribe to Shanghaiist events and i got this newsletter from SmartShanghai.com and this is what the first paragraph said:

Hey Shanghai!

Check yo’ delf! So many clubs opening in Shanghai I can’t even keep track of
them all.

But before we get to that – more importantly – “The Dark Night” opens in
theatres TONIGHT, son, and it’s going to melt your face OFF.

I’m going to go see it in on Saturday and am expecting fun in a theatre of
the calibre I haven’t enjoyed since dressing up like a Klingon to go see
“Passion of the Christ.”

Anyway, people asked me once why I don’t work for Smartshanghai and i think from now on I should just point them to this when they want to know why the answer is NO.

I have three thoughts about whoever wrote this:

1. He’s ill-educated
2. He’s a tosser
3. He’s not quite as funny and entertaining as he thinks he is.

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