China Hearsay’s Moratorium on Nonexistent News
Not sure how long this is going to last, but I’m up to my ears in really lame press accounts of nonexistent protests in China. Huge dramatic headlines are screaming at me whenever I log in to my RSS reader, and yet most of the articles themselves relate merely the absence of news.
If I read one more story about a non-event where a bunch of cops and journalists show up somewhere and stare at each other, I’m going to start beating my head against the wall. And by the way, those are the good stories. The bad ones inject into the “news article” what they would like to see over here in terms of raucous political unrest, as opposed to what is really going on (i.e., nothing). If you catch my meaning.
Kudos to DeWang at Hidden Harmonies for characterizing this as “. . . the Western media seem to be hypnotized . . . ” by the idea that the only way forward in China is something similar to what is going on in the Middle East. With the exception of a handful of very good (mostly China-based) correspondents, I couldn’t agree more. The most egregious offenses, as usual, are coming from headline-writing editors. Barf.
Yes, I understand that in the past few days, some journalists have been roughed up by the cops, who have over- reacted at times. But at the end of the day, that’s still a meta-story. The cops and the journalists happened to butt heads on that particular day at that specific location because of a non-event, something that we all knew wasn’t going to happen in the first place.
I think 90% of this is a waste of ink, and of our attention. I still have a couple of posts out there to be written about Clinton’s Internet speech and how the international community should deal with Net controls, but I’m going to push those off for a bit until this whole thing dies down.
Well, to see the government of such a big, harmonious and powerful nation fuzzing around for something that is not going to happen… it is quite News… weird news. Nothing happens and the road is washed again an again, and they put palm trees, and start a building site, and send more police than people is walking… Paranoia in a Goverment is news, look at GW Bush, he also made news in his paranoid evil axes thought and weapons of mass destruction theory…
Seems like most of the English language media analysis has concluded that nothing like what’s happening in the middle east is going to happen in China any time soon. DeWang must be reading the other “Western” media monolith. From what’s being reported and what’s been captured on video, it seems like it’s really the Chinese government that’s not so sure. I’m stateside, so to the extent that some of these stories/videos are factually inaccurate or misleading, I’d be interested to hear about it. To the extent that they are factually accurate, I would say that it’s pretty relevant news. I agree that there have been some exaggerated headlines, selectively quoted “bystanders,” and general over-reporting, but I i think we’re all used to that, regardless of the topic, and can distinguish between hype and good reporting. It also raises a chicken and egg question: non-event because notice and venue have been eliminated, or non-event because no one would have shown up in any case? Having lived in China for a while, I lean towards the latter, but I accept that it’s impossible to say with certainty.
For what it’s worth, I’d argue that in the age of multitasking and RSS readers, accurate headlines are more important than ever. In some of these reports, you have to read the entire article to figure out that the facts and the headline do not match up, and unfortunately, a lot of people do not have the time or patience to do more than skim the first couple of graphs.
Would appreciate it if you could tell this to the person who ripped out the three pages discussing China of the Economist magazine I picked up this afternoon…
@Tim, that must have been either Mr. Wang with badge number 3244756993 or an overly worried sales women at the hotel where you bought the Economist. Agree with Stan. Non-events are a serious problem in the capital and other places at the moment. It remains amusing to see the green suits all worked up about it though. However there are issues with inflation to be dealt with and protests are not gonna help. An awful thing seems to have happened, maybe another non event as I have not seen any official news about it. Cars from 1999 and earlier are supposed to be banned this year. In other words you can not pass the yearly inspection.
Would that mean that my beautiful 2-door imported Jeep will be taken off the road this year? If so I am going to stage a serious non protest together with another zillion citizens who have just been forced to buy something new which costs a hell lot more than a one more kuai inflated cabbage.
I think the gov’t understandably views any social network that it can’t moderate as potentially competitive, so I’m not surprised that it appears interested in making sure these stare-downs don’t morph in to social networking events.
To me, this is the latest in a long string of events indicating a very modest level of social tension. But given that these and other events are occurring while there is a ~10% GDP growth rate, and that history suggests a 10% growth rate isn’t infinitely sustainable, I think you have to wonder what one of these ‘non-events’ might look like if the economy was functioning at a much lower GDP growth rate.
The 12th 5-year plan trades GDP growth for wealth distribution, among other directional shifts and — I personally think — involves a lot more uncertainty than the 11th. I think all this probably entails that more rapid reform of state-run organizations yields meaningful stability insurance.
These non-event technicoloured non-revolutions and paying serious havoc with my internet connections at work and at home. Given the heavy paranoia, overseas access is dreadful out of Shanghai (the Great Firewall working overtime) and even access behind the Firewall within China is pretty poor. The CIA no doubt has a Trotskyite strategy of exaccerbating the contradictions within China, ramping up the paranoia levels by orchestrating non-events, then counting on the usual CCCP OTT response, with pissed off internet users, censored, slow and frustrated who will really spark a revolt. A very cunning plan…