East Asia

China’s media strategy

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Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Xiao Qiang director of the University of California, Berkeley’s China Internet Project, about China’s strategy for handling media coverage of the protests in western China. He says the Chinese government is allowing international journalists to cover the unrest, while cracking down on press coverage.
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LISA MULLINS: Chinese authorities are trying, though sometimes failing, to control the information that comes out of Urumqi. Xiao Qiang directs the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley. He says that Chinese bureaucrats learned a lesson in propaganda from last year’s unrest in Tibet.

XIAO QIANG: They learned to focus on an external enemy. They also realized that the fact they banned all the photojournalists to visit Tibet, didn’t came out very good, for Chinese government. This time they tried to do it differently. So they tried to facilitate to the shows the journalists what they want to see.

LISA MULLINS: But there’s a problem with that. I mean–

XIAO QIANG: [OVERLAPPING] There’s certainly problemary risk about that.

LISA MULLINS: Wait, wait, let me ask you about that. Couldn’t the Chinese government simply say, we don’t care what the outside world think, we don’t want you to go to talk to any of the Uighurs, we don’t’ want you to go to the capital of this region? I mean, what were they responding to when they said, yeah, we’ll even [INDISCERNIBLE].

XIAO QIANG: [OVERLAPPING] They could. I believe that one of the consideration is that, they see the most victims are Han Chinese, therefore they feel in a certain degree are confident to have those things being reported to the world, but in a way that under their control. And coming out from foreign journalists, it’s also better coming out of China State of Media in terms of credibility.

LISA MULLINS: Because the outside world will trust the foreign journalist more than China State Media.

XIAO QIANG: [OVERLAPPING] That’s right. So there’s a two strategy involved. One ism what to say to the Chinese people. And another is, what to say to the world. And of course Internet changed that equation quite a bit. Now, you are focusing on different audiences, but the unattended audience also gets the same message. That’s why they blocking Internet so much.

LISA MULLINS: Well hold on, because Chinese authorities are allowing the Chinese equivalent of Twitter called Fun Fu [PH] to continue operating.

XIAO QIANG: Well, they filter out all the key words.

LISA MULLINS: Like, which key words?

XIAO QIANG: Like Urumqi, like riot. Or, the particular contents they’ll delete right away. So it’s very heavily policed, Internet environment. As a matter of fact, this is even more severe than last year in Tibet. It’s probably the most severe in online policing I have ever seen. Urumqi is a capital relatively more developed region. It’s very wired, it’s very connected city. There’s a lot of people using Internet and using cell phones and using Twitters. So, to completely cut out the communication, or filtering out a communication from that region is much a harder task. It’s not like the government haven’t done this before, in terms of black out of the Internet, in a situation like this. It had done in Situn, when the Tibet situation happened, in certain counties. But these are very isolated places, therefore, there’s not much consequences. But Urumqi is a large city, lots of economic activities and everything else to entrap the communication services there, to preventing more violence, it’s probably top priority of Chinese government.

LISA MULLINS: Well, jest to reiterate the fact that the Chinese government cannot control everything. I mean, we heard about the Ouiger women breaking through to some of the foreign journalists to let them know what is happening to the Quigers themselves, something the Chinese government obviously doesn’t want out. But what does the Chinese government fear most, if news like that does get out?

XIAO QIANG: [OVERLAPPING] Well the more they try to control in policing the information, the more people believe the rumors. And there’s no way to clarify what’s really going on. And there’s no public forums to sort of express those views, will get any kind of, sort of, clarification or expression. And there’s always uncontrollable factors coming up. Not only those 200 Ouiger women can suddenly just spontaneously showed up and disrupt the government arranged, sort of, tour of the journalists. And the Hun Chinese wants to go on the streets to fight. And there’s, you know, all kinds of comments or opinion, public opinions still spreading on the Internet, whether they’re supporting government or against the government.

LISA MULLINS: What do you think represents the biggest threat, technologically any way to the Chinese government right now in terms of the insemination of information as to what’s happening among the Ouigers and the Han? Would it be Twitter, which is being allowed with some censorship? Would it be the Internet? Would it be the mainstream media?

XIAO QIANG: No, it was not gonna be mainstream media, because governments do have a very solid control on those. Will be the Internet and the cell phones. But it’s not just both technology, it’s those kind of a technology in the dating situation. They are used for all kind of thing, people buying things, people communicating, people social. People has their interest groups. But in the situation of conflict, or crisis, all of those social networks and communication platforms become immediately a mobilizing tool, or information communication platform.

LISA MULLINS: Thank you very much. Xia Qiang is a professor at the University of California, Berkley’s graduate school of journalism. He directs the University’s China Internet project. Nice to speak with you.

XIAO QIANG: Thank you.

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