Two weeks in the People's Republic
Published:Friday | July 2, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Lavern Clarke, Business Editor
BEIJING, China: At 5 o'clock on a Saturday morning, Beijing is quiet, almost tranquil.
The streets are close to being bare of traffic, but even with open roads there is no rush to the next destination; no one is speeding - at least not by Jamaican standards.
But China is a place of contrasts, so while the capital city of 22 million people and seat of government maintains a fairly disciplined pace, on the roads, in the shopping districts and on the freeways, on the weekends and during the work-week, it would be absolutely different in Shanghai: noisy and congested and entirely familiar to dwellers of fast-paced Kingston.
That visit, however, is a week and a half away.
Right now, we are at the beginning of a two-week jaunt to China as guests of the government and hosted by the State Council Information Office, whose director Yang Zhoufan is our perpetual guide as we troop across cities, villages and mountains.
Nine media executives and senior editors from the Caribbean and Latin American make up this year's '5th High-Level Media Survey Delegation' to tour media houses, cultural and tourist attractions, small communities, big cities and to meet with central and provincial government officials.
We are told, ahead of the visit, no interviews allowed.
Our itinerary, held secret until our arrival in Beijing, would take us to the Great Hall of the People, home of the powerful politburo, where China's Communist government makes laws and executes policy, and where only the invited dare to enter.
It is an imposing structure, made all the more striking by the massive doors, high columns, riveting art and fantastic architecture that seem to dwarf the human traffic that moves deferentially within its halls.
The 1.85-million square-foot structure was completed in record time, 10 months, in 1959.
China is an increasingly powerful nation that is flirting with the idea that some day it could be a superpower.
It's a heady feeling, but the Chinese want to have greater input in how that message is handled worldwide.
Its interest, it seems, is a new world press order that is not so dependent on the established wire services and international media whose take on world events dominate the news.
"The voice of the press in developing countries is comparatively weak," says Ma Jisheng, deputy director general of the information department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a day ahead of the Great Hall visit.
The influence of media from developing states in crafting the news, Ma adds, appears to corelate with the strength of their countries in the global pecking order.
The message, subtly delivered: it's time to shake things up.
He stresses the importance of cooperation between China and media in developing nations, and, as the LAC group would hear several times over during the two-week visit from other state and provincial officials, the need for more direct linkages where his country's agenda gets relayed worldwide through its own voice and not the interpretation of others.
In China, media and government are intimately linked. At China Radio International, for example, there is an office for the 'Party Committee', referring to the Chinese communist party, one of our tour guides tells The Gleaner.
Media, we are told, should exist to serve the development agenda of policymakers, as a support arm of the government. For them, this position appears absolute, and it is an open secret that China strongly censors media reporting and internet traffic that is, or appears to be, critical of the state.
In western countries, media plays a different role: to be the watchdogs of government and other powerful organs of the state and society; to call them out on bad policy decisions and probe wrongdoing. Indeed, Jamaica takes pride in the independence of its press, and is recognised among its world peers as a strong member of the 'Fourth Estate', ranking 16th on the 2010 world list for press freedom, even ahead of the United States at 24. China is at 181.
But the People's Republic has long proved that its talk is generally followed by action. The meeting with Ma is on Monday, May 31, in between tours of media houses in Beijing. The dominant television service, CCTV, founded in 1958, is finalising plans for the deployment of 30 more regional bureaux around the world, adding to the 20 already up and running.
As an aside, as we meet with CCTV representatives, Jamaica is in the headlines as Tivoli and the wider west Kingston battle the security forces in defence of reputed drug lord Christopher Coke during the extradition stand-off. The video images of inner city Kingston, the smoke, army personnel rolling through the streets, were stark and distracting.
The largest newspaper, China Daily, launched in 1981 and now 29 years in operation, says it will be placing a bureau in Brazil. The paper's reporting is fairly aggressive and sometimes critical of government policy, but unlike other powerful newspapers worldwide, its editorials do not challenge action and its opinion pieces seem benign.
Already in Jamaica, there is talk of relay radio and television stations to broadcast in English and Chinese, but the Jamaican government in April said the discussions were, at best, preliminary.
Indeed, information officials in Beijing say the Caribbean is not seen as an important area for media expansion, at least not right now. The closest they will come is Brazil, a country of 200 million.
Media in China is almost exclusively state-owned, but CCTV officials tell The Gleaner that its operation "is self-financed, mostly from television commercials." It takes six billion yuan (J$76b equivalent) to run the programming section, and about twice that for the entire operation, a female representative of the media company says. Of the 15,000 staff, 3,000 are journalists.
Later, when the media group meets with Ma, he would voice concern about the selective nature of coverage of China by international media that did not comport with what his country saw as its development agenda.
Ma acknowledges that geographically, not all of China is advancing at the same pace, that poverty is still rampant in some areas, and that this gap could be seen across the country.
Official statistics indicate that about 43 per cent of China is urbanised; and that because of its large population of rural poor, per capita income is a low US$3,678 - well below Jamaica's US$4,390 - even as its class of billionaires grows.
A day later, when the media group visits the Great Hall for a courtesy call, the Politburo official would advance that message that China, though its economy is booming, remains a developing country. Almost reflectively, he speaks of China's challenge to maintain growth at a level that its infrastructure and environment can sustain, but which also benefits more of the 1.33 billion population.
Another aside: We are told to arrive at 2:55 p.m. for the 3 o'clock meeting at the Great Hall. But when we get there, our driver circles the block three times, not as it turns out as some form of ritual, but because we were early. We eventually drove through the gates at 2:55 p.m., at the specified time.
China is already considered one of the world's largest polluters, and while it fights its world peers on being held to the same carbon emission standards as the richest nations, it is also seen now seen as one of the most advanced in the development of green, or to use the newest buzz word, 'clean' technology that the globe seems headed toward.
The media group would, in the days ahead, be given superficial glimpses of the advances in front-office tours of facilities such as the science and technology zone, Suzhou Industrial Park - a higher-education town built in collaboration with Singapore - and its business incubation and research centre, BioBay, and the touted zero-emissions Silicon factory.
The packed two-week jaunt around China would also take in universities, offerings of the best foods in each of the provinces visited, highly rated hotels and small villages in transformation, meant to give journalists first-hand information on developments underway in the country, as a point of reference against packaged wire media reports.
>>> See Sunday Business for the completion of this article.