China’s coal habit

Dear Ms Magistad, respectfully;

I caught what I believe was the first broadcast in the series last evening (Tuesday 30 November 2010, WGBH); and while it was both provoking and informative, I have a few questions for you/your editors. I at the moment am working on the basis of memory, so forgive me if I have forgotten a relevant detail or two.

1. In the first segment during which you interview a coal miner (possibly a retired miner), the voice-track for the interviewee begins “…bijiao pingheng” (relatively balanced/stable); but the voice-over began with a different comment altogether. (There was nothing in the reported/broadcast interpretation of that interview that matched “bijiao pingheng”.)

Indeed, apart from one interview of a Chinese-language speaker, the native-language interview clips seemed never to have any relevance to the English-language voice-over content. And so I respectfully ask: Have you or your editors assumed that PRI-listeners will not be able to discern the original-language content, and have therefore simply added bits and bites in the original language for color and “authenticity” only?

2. In the same segment, the voice-over content renders the interviewees words as “could not see five feet in front of you” (or something like that). This caught my attention for two reasons.

First, “feet” is not a unit of measurement a native-speaking Chinese language user would use — “five meters ahead” (“wu mi qian/zhi qian”), or, “ban ge mi” (“half a meter”), perhaps; “feet”, no. Also, “five” struck me as curious. “Five” (“wu”) is a homonym for “no/none”, and my experience is that native-speakers of Chinese will rarely use “five” as an approximation or generalization number. Indeed, as if intentionally to avoid ambiguity, my experience is that native-speakers will generally avoid “five”, and will very often use two numbers in sequence so as to eliminate the possibility of misunderstanding (“san si mi”, “three [to] four meters”, etc.).

This has led me to wonder about your/PRI’s policies for interpretation, and wonder also whether you yourself are a Chinese-language user. Are you doing or actively participating in the interpretation/translation, or are you hostage to a language facilitator?

3. In the segment in which a miner’s wife was interviewed, the sound clip from the interview suggests that she is nervous/laughing awkwardly in describing how he husband – when covered in ash and soot – is unrecognizable. (If memory serves, the sound clip included content with her expressing that her words were perhaps awkward or strange; but I may be misremembering).

I have conducted interviews of mainland Chinese in similar contexts, and what generally follows is a comment to the effect of “…looked black like an African” or “…like a Black person”. My reasonably informed and experienced intuitions tell me that this interviewee very likely made the same comment — hence the clearly awkward and embarassed sound of her voice.

So my direct question to you/your editors is: Did the interviewee say anything that? And if so, why did you edit it out? (See http://www.chinasmack.com search term Lou Jing, for content relevant to racism in China.) Assuming (and I grant that I’ve little warrant for so doing) that the interviewee did make such a comment and that the comment was edited-out, would you/your editors have intentionally withhold from the PRI audience content that might cast a negative light on the interviewee — and by (weak) extension, the Chinese?

Finally, a comment, if I may. If it is indeed the case (I do not doubt that it is) that the extensive use of certain kinds of coal by the Chinese is or will likely have a measurable negative impact on, say, the atmospheric health of the planet (etc.), then this is surely something that the international community (whatever that means) will want to address with Beijing, in the most relevant and appropriate forum and context.

Granting that much, where exactly is the problem with the Chinese… polluting themselves? (NOTE: This is a cold-hearted Realpolitik point I am making here — please allow that I offer it, now, *in arguendo* only.)

The one segment of this series I heard seemed to suggest strongly that the health- and human-toll of coal mining/burning in China is and should be a concern to people world-wide. But given the uneasy and complexly-evolving peace that Washington has with Beijing, should not the American people be *pleased* that – in pursuing their economic fitness at the expense of their citizens – China is creating conditions for *precisely* the kinds of internal “manageable entropy”/”domestic stress” that our intelligence community only wishes they could cause? And allowing that “China” is a “rival” superpower and the current linchpin of security and stability in the Asia/Pacific theater, then, should not Americans be positively *thrilled* that coal mining/burning is mitigating (if not weakening) a country that may yet prove one day soon to be not just an economic rival but a military enemy as well?

Unhappy thoughts, aye. But it always strikes me as curious that PRI (and NPR) content generally pays very little heed to the fact – and it is a fact – that national security is, in the final analysis, a zero-sum game; and, that though we may pity those Chinese nationals who are suffering the consequences of their nation’s coal policy, that very policy serves potentially to benefit US interests.

For that reason, pleading with Beijing to do right by its own people is clearly the wrong approach for any rational American to take — and I suspect that many Americans who listen to your thought-provoking series will want to…well, do what they do best: Step over their unfortunate fellow citizen and go abroad to “help”.

And *that* has long been and will for a time continue to be the main problem with our nation’s China policy: Not only do we insist on having a voice in affairs that are none of our business (Tibet, censorship laws, Google, etc.); the philanthropic impulse of the educated elite of our country is so strong that many have forgotten entirely that it is often wisest not to look gift horses in their mouths.

China plays the global game better, and I suspect that they will continue to harvest and burn coal as long as they wish to — and at the very same time accept whatever “aid” or assistance our nation’s league of globe-trotting do-gooders are willing to offer them. China will smudge their skies to feed their industrial furnace, and American (etc.) charitable groups will volunteer time and money (that could be used here at home) to remedy the harm China has done to the people who are in one sense the beneficiaries of the agent of their very doom.

Thus: China’s current Coal burning economy is “win win” for China; and if your series serves as a battle cry to those Yanks always keen to inveigle themselves into affairs not their own and beyond their ken, then your illuminating expose is helping China get what it wants.

Which, of late, it usually does.