CHINA began to show up at the famous Frankfurt Book Fair as early as 1956, but in 2009 appeared for the first time as its guest of honor. Since March 2009, more than 100 prominent Chinese writers and translators had been touring around Germany giving lectures and attending academic symposiums. During the five-day session 200-plus Chinese publishers displayed over 10,000 titles, and 600 or more activities were staged to showcase Chinese culture. The last time China showed this much intensity in its participation in an international event was the 2008 Olympic Games.
As in other international gatherings, some attempts were made by authors, journalists and politicians to steal the limelight from China. A couple of dissidents were lavished with attention and there was a clamor to issue an official invitation to Rabiye Qadir, the mastermind behind the bloody Urumqi riot last July.
The world’s media coverage of China has been chronically biased and laced with slipups, intentional or inadvertent. As Mr. Wu Hongbo said: “China has a faint voice in the world, while incidents of ill-meaning media hype and vilification dominate. One underlying factor is that the Western media purposely block the airing of our opinions, and the other is that our voice is not ‘loud enough’. I think Chinese officials should speak so that China can be heard by more people in the world. You may disagree with our opinions, but you should not turn a deaf ear to what we say.”
It is nothing new that China’s image is distorted in the West. The latest examples include the July 5 Riot in Xinjiang. The New York Times website carried a photo showing a man put on drip in a hospital ward, who was identified as a Uygur injured in the bloody commotion. But the tag by his bed clearly reads: Bed 32, Liu Yonghe,” a typical Han name. Similarly the London Paper website transferred a video excerpt from CCTV (China Central Television) showing two blood-spotted girls consoling each other after assaults by rioters, but slapped on a caption saying the perpetrators were policemen.
The scope of fabrication by some foreign media can go beyond wild hyperbole. During the National Day parade, for instance, a journalist of German TV ZDF interviewed a Chinese male spectator near the site, who merrily said in front of the camera: “I would love to see it.” While the German “translation” turned out to be “This is a shame, I would love to see it,” referring to the restricted access. Fortunately, in the Internet age such manipulations are easily brought to light. Irritated by the BBC coverage of the Xinjiang Riot that played down the brutal killings and arsons by mobs, and inflated the justified peace-keeping efforts by police forces, Chinese netizens flooded the British broadcaster’s website with protest postings. One said: “The report is really regrettable. The BBC looks too happy to see trouble come to China, and meanwhile painstakingly tries to appear candid. It makes me sick.”
In response to the ZDF misinterpretation a Chinese under the pseudonym jwq603 wrote on the web: “Does the so-called freedom of the press in the West mean the freedom to produce false news?” Another one followed: “Where is the credibility of this television station? It is fooling the German audience.”
Seeing the imperative of airing China’s own accounts of significant happenings, more and more Chinese officials are approaching the media abroad. Six days after the Urumqi Riot, Chinese Ambassador to U.K. Mme. Fu Ying, frequent contributor to British media such as the BBC and Channel 4, wrote an article for the Guardian entitled “Unity Is Deep in China’s Blood.” “Different ethnic groups in Xinjiang have lived side by side for centuries like one big family. The relationship has been generally amicable, though, as in all families and multi-ethnic communities, friction occasionally arises. We call them ‘problems among people,’ meaning they can be solved through coordination and are not a life-or-death struggle,” she stressed, and commented that “The violence in Xinjiang had been horrific, but it was wrong to frame it as an ethnic conflict.”
On June 17, 2008, one day before the fourth round of Strategic Economic Dialogue with the U.S., Vice Premier Wang Qishan published an article in the Wall Street Journal on China’s IPR Regime, elaborating on the nation’s intellectual property strategies. On May 5, 2009, he wrote again for the New York Times. The piece, “Distant Neighbors,” expressed China’s “clear stand against trade protectionism at the second China-E.U. high-level economic dialogue.” On September 17, 2009, Chinese Ambassador Wu Hongbo gave an interview with Die Welt, calling for respect for diversity in the world community and the choice of nations taking different paths of development in light of their domestic situations. He criticized the arrogant attitudes of the U.S. and some European countries in handling international relations, and urged Western countries to make more observations before jumping to conclusions about China.
When put on line, his remarks were well received by German readers. Someone identifying himself as Mike wrote: “Everyone acquainted with China knows that its people are happy with their government. They love the way they are living; isn’t this democracy?”
Soft-spoken ambassador Mme. Fu Ying told the Sunday Telegraph in 2008: “The world has waited for China to join it. Now China has to have the patience to wait for the world to understand China.” But Chinese officials and the public alike are more aware than ever before that the traditional virtue of dignified silence doesn’t advance their cause in the world. China needs more polemicists to have its facts and views properly delivered and argued.
