Yesterday, an editor at the venerable in-flight magazine of Trump Airlines published an article by one of its many, many, many useless contributors entitled ‘China Expert: I’m Drunk,’ in which the author has a chin-stroker of an evening with a China expert who admitted to having already sunk a bottle of claret and several jars.

The conversation indeed sounds like something one might overhear between Martin Jacques and a barstool around closing time at the Bull and Bear.

Other than being British, the writer of a recently “well-received book” and “not on Twitter,” the expert is unidentified but drunk, you say?

Sounds like he’s been drinking deep of the Cup of Tea.

This has the makings of a promising series: Maybe next week Forbes can huff paint with Dave Shambaugh and ask if he’s cracking up? Note: “Chinese conglomerate HNA Group is in talks to buy a controlling stake in the owner of the publisher of Forbes magazine”

Soon, this is how all China watching will be done

UPDATE 25/4 15.04 – A reader alerts: Forbes seems to have taken down the article without comment

As some readers may be aware, new measures restricting foreign content online in China (or “Administrative Regulations for Online Publishing Services”) are dropping March 10 – today. Over at China Law Blog, Steve Dickinson has answers to most of the major players and questions, but we felt obliged to follow up with Steve on a couple of local matters – for, you know, local people.

BJC: How will the rules affect the “expat rags” – English-language listings magazines — usually published in legally grayish partnership with a Chinese firm that has a proper “kanhao” (publishing license)?

SD: Foreign ownership of a print publication (e.g., That’s Shanghai, That’s Beijing, Redstar, City Weekend, Time Out, etc.) is illegal. All these magazines are owned and published by Chinese nationals and are subject to the standard PRC censorship rules. That is why they are so boring.

I am not aware of any foreign-oriented magazines that are published by foreign nationals. If such magazines exist, they are illegal and the publisher is subject to serious criminal sanction. However, I don’t know a printer in China who would take the risk, so I doubt that any such magazines exist that have any serious circulation. [Ed’s note: I know a few do exist but with tiny circulations and usually in Tier-3 type cities]

BJC: What about foreign-hosted websites that mainly focus on China-based content… like Beijing Cream? 

SD: All such websites are illegal in China. However, China does not exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction. Instead, China has created the Great Firewall by which it selectively blocks the sites that it decides are objectionable, based on criteria no one really understands. All activities of such websites within China are illegal and participants in such activities (reporters) are subject to either being sanctioned, jailed, or deported. This happens for the foreign political websites that are written in the Chinese language. I have not heard of anyone getting sanctioned for writing for a general interest English-language foreign website. It does, however, remain a possibility. This vague threat of a visit from the government serves to chill the expression of opinion. It is cheap and effective and widely used in single-party Leninist dictatorships.

So there you have it. You’ll still be able to flick through City Weekend and Shanghaiist while waiting for feckless friends to arrive late… for the immediate future. But you never know. Thanks to Steve Dickinson of Harris Moure for the help. (Image via)

Ursula Gauthier exiting China from Beijing Capital International Airport (photo via Fred Dufour, @freddufour_afp)

Ursula Gauthier, erstwhile Beijing correspondent for the French newsweekly L’Obs, left China for good in the early hours of January 1. It was not, as they say, of her own volition.

When the clock struck midnight on 2015, Gauthier’s press visa expired and was not up for renewal. According to official organs, she had offended the Chinese people with her November 18 article written in the aftermath of the November 13 terrorist attacks on Paris. Gauthier’s refusal to publicly apologize for remarks concerning China’s attempts to link Paris with its own problems in Xinjiang was taken as the final straw.

But her departure merely concluded a weeks-long saga of intimidation and mudslinging directed from the highest reaches of China’s propaganda and foreign affairs departments (a typical example here). In a statement, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC) summarized the campaign against Gauthier, in which her photograph and address were published on a military forum, and expressed its unqualified disgust: “Insinuating that Ms. Gauthier supports terrorism is a particularly egregious personal and professional affront with no basis in fact.”

Indeed, on the basis of this (to say the least) unbecoming treatment of an accredited journalist, foreign correspondents have presented a united front, whatever they might have thought – and privately grumbled about – the substance of Gauthier’s piece. So let us be as similarly bold, so there’s no confusion: China’s official response to Ursula Gauthier’s piece in L’Obs is puerile, petty, and idiotic.

It can’t be said enough: expelling journalists for their work is not only a bad look – puerile, petty, idiotic, one might say – but terrible policy. As this excellent China Law and Policy blog post explains, Beijing has used the typically broad strokes of its Foreign Media Regulations to libel Gauthier as “championing terrorism,” offering a pathetic veneer of legality to its shit fit, and signaling a re-hardening of attitudes toward any who dare approach the invisible red lines of China reportage (ethnic policy, finances of the leadership, etc). It’s interesting to wonder whether Gauthier’s visa would have been affected if her article came out in June – six months before she needed an extension – as China renews all press credentials at the end of the calendar year; certainly, the timing benefitted her critics. Still, if Gauthier’s expulsion was meant to be a warning, it’s not likely it’ll rattle journalists worth their salt: within days of the announcement came a New York Times report entitled “Xinjiang Seethes Under Chinese Crackdown.”

But nor is any journalist willing to ask serious questions of Gauthier’s reporting, for fear of validating the response. Unfortunately, this code of silence – though broken quite frankly in private – is not only sketchy ethics (“We always report fairly and objectively – unless it’s one of us”), it’s a gift to Chinese propagandists who prefer their critics to be a homogenous, hostile mass – “Western media” – than an independent and wholly diverse group of earnest scrutineers.

Gauthier’s article – her English translation can be found here, via China Digital Times – was fatally flawed in one way: she failed to differentiate between terrorism – defined as the violent targeting of innocent civilians for political purposes – and Terrorism™, the post-9/11 brand, which is an empty shell of counterproductive rhetoric.

China wanting in on Terrorism’s™ endless war should not surprise anybody, because that “war” – for all its ceaseless costs and stupidity – is a stirring political success. Of course China’s ruthlessly savvy and shrewd politicians would like to be a recognized component of a globally legitimized campaign against Extremism. And naturally, when a journalist calls them out, they call her a hypocrite, kick her out of the country, and create a poll that asks, “Do you support expelling the China-based French journalist who championed terrorism,” then relish in the fact that 94% of respondents said yes. The War on Terror™ in the United States, by the way, has led to discrimination, censorship, lunacy, nationally televised bigotry, forfeited civil liberties, increased militarism, violence, and a real war that cost trillions and radicalized countless. But who cares, right? TERRORISM.™

In attacking China’s rhetoric on Terror™, Gauthier could have done herself a service by pointing out that this rhetoric is US-born and incredibly dumb. It’s not about using different yardsticks for China vs. “The West” – those yardsticks all suck. How is China’s War on Terror™ different than any other country’s? It’s not – it’s equally pathetic.

But Gauthier’s other, bigger mistake was the following passage, which – and many reporters, even those who vehemently support Gauthier’s cause, will admit this – veers too far from any factual basis to be considered good journalism:

But, bloody though it was, the Baicheng attack had nothing in common with the 13^th November attacks. In fact it was an explosion of local rage such as have blown up more and more often in this distant province whose inhabitants, turcophone and Muslim Uyghurs, face pitiless repression. Pushed to the limit, a small group of Uyghurs armed with cleavers set upon a coal mine and its Han Chinese workers, probably in revenge for an abuse, an injustice or an expropriation.

“Probably in revenge for an abuse, an injustice or an expropriation” is a sentence that will flunk you out of Journalism 101. (And how could these coal miners, among the most disenfranchised and vulnerable group of workers in China, possibly have it coming?) Even if this was a magazine column, where there’s room for occasional editorializing, the speculation probably outreaches the research. Ignoring this simply reinforces the “Us and Them” dynamic so beloved of state media’s criticism of the “Western media.”

And Gauthier’s kicker:

China is unlikely to win the sort of cooperation from the US and Europe that it garnered after September 11^th. Given the smothering control over Chinese society and territory that the authorities enjoy, it is equally unlikely that Islamic State jihadists will link up with infuriated Xinjiang residents. But so long as the Uyghurs’ situation continues to get worse, China’s magnificent mega-cities will be vulnerable to the risk of machete attacks.

Seen in light of the Baicheng attacks – in which scores of coal miners were knifed to death – the phrase “China’s magnificent mega-cities will be vulnerable to the risk of machete attacks” reads as tone-deaf, and dangerously close to the sentiment, Maybe they deserved it. (Gauthier doesn’t say those words, and maybe she would never try to imply it, but it’s a sentiment that some people hold, and that disembodied sentiment lurks in the context of what Gauthier did write.) For the record, there’s a way to say “repression can radicalize the marginalized” without sounding callous.

Should Gauthier have been expelled for publishing this? Absolutely not. Xinjiang is a place of swirling ethnic tension, where many Uyghurs have legitimate fears of “being labeled ‘a terrorist,’” as BJC columnist Beige Wind wrote last month. But the issue is with the label itself, and the War on Terror.™

China is not the first – and won’t be the last – country to politicize a tragedy. (They certainly could have picked a better time than post-Paris to point at their own terrorism problem, particularly a massacre they were more than happy to suppress at the time.) Then again, they didn’t come up with the original terms for the War on Terror™, and seem to have only the faintest understanding of what it entails. Blame them roundly for expelling Gauthier, yes. But let’s remember that they’re merely parroting a flawed rhetoric, one that a significant number of leaders probably don’t believe themselves, except for the political benefits that they deem theirs to share.

– ISIS captive, as told to an interviewer on the Chinese show On the Road.
The entire show has since been censored by Chinese authorities

Zhang (center left, wearing sunglasses) poses with Kurdish forces and members of his film crew

A reality show about a pair of millionaire tourists has been nixed from China’s Internet, after an episode depicting encounters with Kurdish forces fighting ISIS in Syria was broadcast on the mainland.

Married couple Zhang Xinyu, 38, and Liang Hong, 36, made their name crisscrossing the globe for travel show On the Road, getting about as far as possible from the stereotype of the bovine boor abroad: the pair have filmed themselves in unfashionable spots like Somalia and Chernobyl, enjoying their nuptials in Antarctica and recreating an iconic Buddha previously destroyed by the Taliban.

Zhang is a self-made entrepreneur who joined the PLA Air Force when he was 19. After leaving, he invested his savings in a tofu shop in south Beijing. Bean curd was still a relatively rare delicacy in those days and the business flourished. With a line of tofu-making machines and investments in trade, jewelry and construction, Zhang has been able to fund a passion for travel that has established him and his wife as minor celebrities.

Though the affable pair has probably done more for Chinese soft power than any effort by Xinhua, that hasn’t won them credit with the censors. After Syria, all episodes of On the Road were removed from streaming sites such as Youku and Tudou, their Baidu fan forum was shut down, and the show’s official Weibo account – as well as the couple’s personal microblog accounts – was frozen.

Kurdish forces near the Syrian battlefront

Journey to the Middle East

The most recent episode of On the Road depicted the well-tooled couple running with underpowered Kurdish troops in Syria, launching a drone into ISIS-held territory, and interviewing captured Islamic State troops shortly before their (off-camera) execution. It’s surprisingly bold TV – the sort you can’t possibly get away with in China.

While Beijing has condemned the Paris attacks, it’s not interested in having a conversation on terrorism back home. Beijing is as clueless about fighting Islamist terrorism as Western leaders, as bungling attempts to quell the insurgency among ethnical Muslims in Xinjiang well demonstrate. Short of any solution, Beijing is relying on brute censorship to quell all debate in the meantime. (When ISIS executed a Chinese hostage recently, censors played down news of the killing and suppressed any calls for a reprisal.)

Therefore it’s not a surprise that the show got yanked – the Syria incident crosses every red line on what Beijing considers acceptable for public consumption. What’s curious is it even got broadcast in the first place, given China’s much-ballyhooed Internet restrictions, or that some wishful thinker clearly didn’t think it would cause problems in the first place.

Below is an edited translation of crew member “Liu Feng’s” account of what happened during filming of the controversial episode (which was broadcast last week – the episode was still viewable on YouTube until this weekend; it is now only accessible to members*).

“What happened in Paris yesterday has been going in Iraq and Syria every day for the past five years. On the Road’s Season 3 crew drove to Iraq this May, after breaking through Taliban blockades in Afghanistan. A month later, with the help of Iraqi Kurds, the team entered Syria ‘with no permission,’ heading straight to Kobani, the frontline of Kurds against ISIS,” Liu writes.

“The battlefront is very long and not heavily guarded, though everyone was very hospitable to we Chinese, with many saluting us. [The Kurds] lived in very modest sheds and called each other ‘comrade.’ They even prepared tea for us.

“A 14.5mm machine gun was the only ‘heavy weapon’ in the Kurds’ camp, which jammed very frequently. Their weapons were very old and outdated: most of their ammunition was almost 40 years old. Put it this way – the Kurds are fighting a 2015 war with 1960s weapons, whereas their rivals ISIS, after capturing Mosul, took over local Iraqi and Syrian government arsenals, which included many arms left behind by the US army, including chemical weapons.

“The Kurds were fascinated by our crew’s filming drone. They sent the drone above ISIS territory and filmed for a while […].” Three days after the crew left, though, disaster struck the Kurdish team. ISIS “used mustard gas on the Kurds. Seven soldiers who were just drinking tea with Zhang days ago died.”

The team also visited a camp of female Kurdish soldiers, aged 17 to 27, described as “highly limited” in their physical ability to attack ISIS but psychologically effective because “ISIS would most hate to die at their hands… in the world of ISIS, a man killed by a woman will never go to heaven.” When the crew gifted the women their bulletproof vests, “the Kurds had obviously never seen one and had to test them by shooting at it.”

The team decided to help their Kurdish allies seek out some “real action” by sending a drone deep into ISIS-held territory; when the enemy fired on the aerial camera, light tracers betrayed their position (miraculously, the drone escaped completely intact). Soon after, the crew got to meet the enemy face to face.

“[The Kurds] agreed to let us interview a couple of ISIS captives. Yes, real, bona fide ISIS members. We wanted to see what they look like, what they think, how they act, how they face death. Three men were brought into our room, all blindfolded.

Zhang (left) waits to interview one of the seated captives

“We knew they were all going to be executed”

“The first came from Turkmenistan, was extremely handsome and looking not the slightest bit brutal. He had been in ISIS for a long, long time but we couldn’t communicate with him, as he did not speak Russian, Arabic or Turkish.

“The second was from Tunisia, and was strong. He said he had been a house painter before… after the Arab Spring a year ago, he went to Syria and joined the [Free Syrian Army] to fight against Assas. There he was recruited by ISIS and had an ISIS-arranged marriage. During battle in January, he was injured and captured.

“‘Have you killed anyone?’ [On the Road host] Zhang asked. He answered that, because they just randomly opened fire in battle, someone could have been unknowingly hit but he didn’t directly know if he’d killed someone – though perhaps he was trying to play down his own guilt. ‘So do you think ISIS is Muslim?’ He kept shaking his head. ‘Some extremist things that ISIS does is against Islam. This is not Islam.’ He then lowered his head and murmured that ISIS had tricked him: he missed home and he missed his mother.” (Reports from defectors suggest that disillusionment is quite common among overseas recruits)

“The third one pissed us off. He was 24 and a Kurd from Turkey himself. He was studying engineering in Turkey and didn’t even know Koran well. He just watched some ISIS promotional videos at school, contacted some extremists… then just left school and joined ISIS in Syria. On the first day, an ISIS officer asked if he was willing to be a human bomb and go to heaven, and he said no. He was then sent to rookies’ camp for two month. The first time he was sent into battle, he was captured. He considered ISIS simply a rather extremist form of Islam but not wrong. He also thought ‘beheading’ was simply the Islamic form of execution… Zhang asked if he knew what would happen to him. He bit his lip. ‘Do you miss your mother?’ ‘Yes.’ Then he began crying. Because ISIS doesn’t exchange POWs, we knew they were all going to be executed. We heard three gunshots in the camp when we left.”

One of the three ISIS hostages later believed to have been executed by the Kurds

While Weibo searches for the show produce no results, Zhang and Liang’s many fans are using the social media platform to make plain their disappointment at the show’s suspension and express concerns about their personal safety. During the third season of On the Road, Zhang and Liang made global headlines by “recreating” the destroyed Buddas of Bamiyan for their Kurdish friends, and were said to have been captured by ISIS, a rumor they dispelled by attending a book launch in the capital in late October. Instead, they have now vanished from their own country’s cyberspace.

Valentina is a journalist in Beijing. Follow her @valentinaluo

* UPDATE: Reader @Pennyfeathr kindly points out that episodes of the ISIS trip are back on YouTube, albeit at a different account. Watch the two parts here:

If you’ve read a story about China in the last couple of years that seemed just too good to be true – that smelled, in fact, a lot more like horse manure – it probably came from the Augean stables of Central European News (CEN), a Vienna-based “news agency” whose bluff just got called in exhaustive length by BuzzFeed UK investigative reporters.

Although their offices and staff are in Austria, CEN’s scope is worldwide, with stories from Russia, Argentina, India, Macedonia and the PRC, where it regularly elbows Xinhua aside to publish the least likely version of events.

According to numerous examples cited by BuzzFeed, CEN was the dealer first pushing the “walking cabbages to cure depression” hoax from 2013 (it was, as the Chinese sources originally noted, a long-running piece of performance art that happened to occur at a music festival), as well as the Mail’s story of a tapeworm infestation in Guangzhou caused by a sashimi binge (the accompanying images, according to Snopes, were actually lifted from X-rays published in the British Medical Journal depicting the “aftermath of a parasitic tapeworm infection caused by… undercooked pork”) and, of course, that ridiculous piece of click-bait about an attractive backpacker sofa-surfing through China looking for “temporary boyfriends.”

What appears to be the House Special at CEN is Bobbiting – tortuous tales of todgers lost, ideally accompanied by graphically pixelated photographs. If it has “(NSFW)” in the headline and no penis, CEN is all over it like Loretta on John Wayne: an aunt who castrated her nephew in Henan, “a 26-year-old Chinese man named Yang Hu who had allegedly chopped off his own penis due to frustration with his nonexistent love life,” or, most recently, a “man whose penis was chopped off twice in the span of a few hours.” And it helps that those pixels, sparing fragile readers the gorier details, also cover up any pesky watermarks.

The agency’s MO, as BuzzFeed describes, appears to be guileless – CEN accepts any viral social-media story it sells as de facto, no questions – and, of course, profitable (translate, sell, screw the hat-tip) but is actually disingenuous, often materializing eyewitnesses and juicy quotes for that added value. When CEN reports from China, helpful “police spokesmen,” hospital staff and garrulous bystanders are always on hand to offer the Austria-based press agency the straight dope.

Example: an underwear thief is taught a righteous lesson when his victim catches him, and forces him to parade on camera covered with his loot. Victim posts the pix on Weibo, the story appears on Xinhua and, sure enough, gets picked up by CEN – except their enterprising stringer manages to interview a neighbour and jimmies the following pearl from the cops: “We don’t condone vigilante activity but in this case it seems to have turned out OK.” Certainly it did for CEN, who also marketed another story involving a Shandong farmer whose goat birthed a two-headed kid, which came complete with “digitally enhanced” pictures. BuzzFeed says CEN also sourced this from an uncredited Xinhua. The farmer wouldn’t talk to the state agency for some reason but was happy to mouth off at length to a Croatian Times reporter, “despite the story taking place in a remote rural community a six-hour train ride from Beijing.” (The CT reporter forgoes any byline for this modest scoop.)

CEN is run by Michael Leidig, journalism’s answer to Grant Shapps, an Internet spiv who’s his own greatest online cheerleader. Like Shapps, Leidig has a “frequently updated” Wikipedia entry (sources include the Austria Times, owned by Leidig) and enthusiastically doctored edited by a user called Bylinebandit, who has the same handle as the Twitter account of one “Michael Leidig.” Its sole tweet asks a cromulent question:

But don’t ask this self-powered hamster wheel of bullshit: if you want to be certain of anything CEN reports, check it with Xinhua first.

The King of Bullsh*t News (Buzzfeed)

I love this GIF.

This was President Barack Obama’s reaction to Xi Jinping stonewalling New York Times reporter Mark Landler, and it captures — in two inches of movement, half a second, a tilt of an eyebrow — so many of our feelings about Chinese politics and journalism: yeah, it’s opaque and dreary and venal and debasing to common intellect, but what are ya gonna to do? Eh? Not like revolution has historically been any better, so best to leave em to their devices. Or as New York Times reported:

“The Chinese say, ‘let he who tied the bell on the tiger take it off,’ ” Mr. Xi added, in a somewhat enigmatic phrase that was not immediately translated into English. It is normally interpreted as “the party which has created the problem should be the one to help resolve it.”

But man, that shrug — a shrug without budging the shoulder, a shrug that belongs on the Mount Rushmore of shrugs, a ladleful of amazing, pure poetry of body movement, what Chinese politicians can’t begin dreaming of attaining because that would require they sleep, because then we’d have evidence they were human beings, humans able to express basic bafflement, irony, lighthearted acquiescence – that shrug is a fucking mynx.

ABC News has a video of the above: basically, Xi Jinping’s central processor shutting down before our eyes as he removes his earpiece and turns toward the obsequious Chinese media while others in the press corps chuckle at his face with tactful viciousness.

Outside of all the obvious things we can say about this, I’ll humbly submit: it wasn’t even a hard question. Landler, possibly understanding he wouldn’t get a response anyway, asked about visas. Not censorship, Hong Kong, or human rights… just journalist visas, which was apropos considering the US just relaxed its visa policy (10-year visas now available to Chinese travelers).

But Xi – adhering to his weeklong, surely deliberate (and deliberated upon) strategy of staying as aloof as possible, like a 13-year-old hipster at a family picnic, way too cool for those gauche monkey bars – gave his best sulk-and-simper, mope-and-dope, and pressed his “system restart” button. You can easily envision the look without seeing it, how it begins in the eyes, the frumpy old ayi of his soul throwing close those windows and loudly latching them from the inside, muttering under her breath a curse of the self-imposed prison to which she owns the keys; how it spreads, like the widening radius of an infestation, into his brows and cheekbones, causing skin to sag with the weight of profound understanding and grievous regret that life exists and living things live; followed by, finally, a resigned acceptance that the adult world outside his magic fort abides by a set of conventions set through human concert, human strain and effort; oh what the crippled heart will never know; how our eye level can seem like a mountain’s peak to the quadriplegic. We know the look too well.

How fortunate, then, that the cameras focused on Obama, and that reaction, and that GIF. Goddamn I love it to bits.

As a twentysomething American, I take my Facebook newsfeed for granted.

The fact that one friend can link to an article criticizing US drone use in the Middle East below another friend’s posting of cats in costume below another’s picture of Hong Kong blanketed by protesters seems completely unremarkable.

But living in China can give you a new perspective on the things you take for granted.

~

I work for a sub-branch of CCTV geared toward international video news, and we have several TV screens in the office that run 24-hour feeds of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Al Jazeera and others – ostensibly to keep up with the competition. But I returned from our canteen this past Sunday evening to find six or seven of my Chinese colleagues glued to a screen showing a live-feed from CNN.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Something is happening in Hong Kong,” said one of my colleagues, a 25-year-old Chinese woman who studied English at a university in Wuhan.

Normally, my office mates, to put it politely, less than enthusiastic about keeping up with international news. Few scour the Internet during work hours to cross-check stories against international outlets, and even fewer read the news in their free time. So to see my friends avidly watching CNN while on the clock was decidedly out of the ordinary.

“You mean about the protests?” I replied.

“What protests?” called another Chinese colleague who wasn’t watching.

“Yeah, come see,” said the first girl.

A CNN reporter stood live from Central Square in Hong Kong amid a sea of students wearing plastic coverings over their eyes and mouths. I had kept up with the story, having seen pictures like this on my Facebook newsfeed for the past several days, mostly from Hong Kong friends who were proud of the protesters and shocked at the sudden intensity of the police response. But I realized this must have been the first time many of my colleagues had seen these images.

The CNN reporter then said, “Now we’ll turn to an elderly resident of Hong Kong who says that the movement reminds him of the deadly 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing…”

Suddenly, the screen went blank.

My colleagues and I blinked at one another. We all instinctively looked over our shoulders, toward the doorway, into the corners of the newsroom. Was somebody from the inner government here – inside the offices of our state-run enterprise – cutting off the feed?

Moments later, the picture returned. It was that same CNN reporter in Central, but clearly waiting in the silence that comes after a live interview has finished.

One of my other colleagues, a 70-year-old veteran journalist who was among the first Chinese to be sent abroad to study, a man who cut his journo teeth on assignments across Africa in the ’60s, said, “Headquarters! CCTV headquarters must be watching the channel, and they cut the feed as soon as Tiananmen was mentioned…”

After that, everyone became noticeably less engaged in the story. We had all been reminded that, despite the routine and normalcy of our daily work, the unspoken but widely understood guidelines as to what to write and what not to, we were still newswriting in a society where information can be dangerous, and something as innocuous as a TV interview can carry far-reaching consequences.

I went home decidedly fazed. Pulling up my Facebook feed and looking at pictures of the latest round of umbrella-carrying students ducking through tear gas, I felt slightly sickened — not just by what was going on, but by the very fact that I could see it, follow it, and form opinions about it. Every day, I consume vast amounts of information and knowledge with little thought that, in some parts of the world, information is as rare and precious a commodity as water in the Sahara.

J. Stevens is a philosophically-minded journalist in Beijing searching for glimpses of Daoism in the cracks of modern Chinese society. He lives in Beijing.

The finger is now being pointed at Rui Chenggang

The arrest of another journalist in China is normally cause for concern: as the news is shared across social networks, tweets of sympathy accumulate, human rights groups and lawyers protest, and diplomats may even issue statements of public concern.

But the detention of economics anchor Rui Chenggang (pictured), reportedly “dragged” from his offices by investigators just hours before his show was due to go live, has prompted almost the opposite – the overwhelming response, as the NY Times’s Ed Wong noted, has been one of schadenfreude (xingzai lehuo, “feel happy about someone’s disaster”). In a rare show of alliance, Western journalists and Chinese state media have instead issued a steady drip of allegations and gloating commentaries about Rui’s supposed misdeeds.

“It’s just breathtaking how many people feel disgusted or offended when he’s mentioned,” tweeted anti-censorship commentator Michael Anti while neatly skewering China’s own public-relations problem: “Such a classic example of negative PR, and yet Rui’s hailed as some icon of the nation’s soft power. There you have it, China’s rise.”

If a man is judged by the company he keeps, Rui was always keen to share his circle with the world. On his blogs, acquaintanceships with the likes of Bill Gates and Kevin Rudd were dropped with the frequency of one who has something to prove; his conversation is said to be similarly peppered with, “As Bill [Clinton] once told me…” or “As I said to Henry [Kissinger]…”

“[He’s] the biggest name-dropper I know,” said a former colleague at state mouthpiece CCTV, where he was a frequent presenter of Economics News Broadcast. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the colleague described her former peer in none-too-impressed terms: “Arrogant. Snobby. Climber.” And then there are his close relationships with many who have already fallen victim to the purge that is scything through Chinese society under the banner of a corruption crackdown (Rui is said to have boasted, for example, about his friendship with Bo Guagua, at least before the senior Bo was charged with corruption).

Still, none of this behavior qualifies as criminal – merely distasteful. Under the microscope, though, are apparent financial transgressions formerly considered de rigeur in Chinese media circles.

According to financial records reviewed last week by Tencent Finance, Rui helped set up a PR company called Pegasus and owned 30% of the firm. Pegasus later made the “Top 1o Chinese PR Firms” list compiled by the China International Public Relations Association and, since 2009, numbered among its clients — perhaps unsurprisingly —  Rui’s employer, CCTV Finance Channel for its Davos coverage (cutting Rui loose on LinkedIn, the WEF’s managing director had this to say on the matter).

Alan VanderMolen: issued denial

Edelman’s owners, via DJE vice-chairman Alan VanderMolen (who inked the purchase of Pegasus while running the firm’s Asia-Pacific operations), later confirmed to PR industry publication the Holmes Report that “Pegasus was engaged by corporate sponsors involved in underwriting CCTV’s presence” at Davos in 2009 and 2010. VanderMolen declined to identify the sponsors and added that there was no commercial relationship between CCTV and Pegasus “to my knowledge.”

Also taken away that fateful day was Li Yong, the Deputy Director of the Finance Channel, where Rui had worked since 2003, bringing the total of those at CCTV under investigation to nine – including its director Guo Zhenxi, producer Tian Liwu, and now its youngest presenter, the once-fragrant female anchor Ouyang Zhiwei.

Rui may have named his company Pegasus, the mythological wingéd horse, but a more apt classical analogy might be Icarus, the youthful highflier doomed by arrogance.

The well-connected 37-year-old presenter, who has been a regular at Davos World Economic Forum since he was 22, did not appear to envisage his own downfall, which was so sudden that his chair and microphone were still in place, awaiting him. In the event, the show aired at 20:30 on July 11, with his co-host taking on sole presenting duties.

Equally ignorant, apparently, were his colleagues: “We kept phoning him before the programme aired, but the calls never went through,” a CCTV staffer told Thepaper. “That’s why we didn’t even take down his mic.”

But his boss, Guo, had been detained on June 1 – a sure sign, at least, that trouble was imminent. Ever the showman, Rui batted off the rumors, issuing a denial through his assistant while taking to Weibo to quote a conversation between two ancient Zen masters (thus, of course, alluding to his own wisdom): “Hanshan asks Shide, ‘People libel me, bully me, insult me, trick me and neglect me. What should I do?’ Shide laughs: ‘Bear with them, avoid them, tolerate them, respect them and ignore them. Give it a few years, and let’s see.’”

In fact, Rui was only given a few weeks. Meanwhile, he was, at least, wise enough to hedge: his wife and child left for the US in June, according to elite gossip, and are not expected to return.

Fellow anchor Ouyang Zhiwei, led away by prosecutors in June, also appears to be in the soup

 ~

It should not be surprising that his career has almost certainly peaked at the comparatively early age of 36. Rui Chenggang was always an early developer. Born in 1977, he began learning English when he was 10, and according to his own claims, was reading English-language books, including Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by the time he reached middle school.

The top gaokao (university entrance exam) scorer in Hefei, his hometown, Rui entered the Foreign Affairs University in Beijing in 1995, where he had a chance to see the world through an international debate contest. He was, he says, shocked to find how Western youth were educated to express their opinions freely, and told Southern People Weekly he felt like an idiot

In 1999, Rui graduated and, turning down offers from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Bank of China, chose to work at an emerging arm of the state-owned CCTV: the English Channel.

A former colleague there, according to the same article, recalls a man “extremely good at the language [English] and quite smart. He… often said things like he ‘wanted to become the bridge of communication between the East and the West.’” Rui was also an avid self-promoter, says the colleague. When interviewing, he’d hand out copies of his book, urge them to watch his programmes and collect photographs of himself with foreign luminaries.

Four years after Rui began at CCTV English, he was talent-spotted by Finance Channel producer Wang Lifen to host Global News Bulletin, a new current-affairs show. He quickly made a name for himself, scrutinizing the scripts and frequently digressing from them, a practice all but unheard-of among Chinese anchors. A pattern in his work behavior began to emerge: superiors such as producer Qian Xi, who has worked with Rui since 2003, called him “the symbol of the Finance Channel’s internationalization,” even while colleagues and underlings recalled an aloof, distant figure.

“He gets close to the leaders, but stays very distant from common coworkers, barely even saying ‘hello’ to them,” said one peer, who asked not to be named because he still works for the channel.

With a 200- to 300-million-strong audience, Rui’s domestic admiration mostly stemmed from public associating himself with world elites at Davos in 2008;  he enjoyed almost rock-star status among younger viewers. But Rui’s link to Davos wasn’t limited to a role in front of the cameras. By then, Pegasus – the firm he still held a 36% share of – had become the executive service provider for CCTV, reportedly finding a studio for the station a mere 200 metres from the main venue in Switzerland. Tony Blair (pictured) apparently called it “the most cozy and comfortable studio in all of Davos,” according to Tencent. Rui reportedly only sold his Pegasus shares in 2010.

British ex-PM Tony Blair with former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks, recently acquitted of phone hacking

Sources in CCTV also told thepaper.cn that Rui’s family set up their own PR firm, with the sole purpose of commercializing Rui’s interview subjects, their schedules and campaign content. Certainly, he is believed to enjoy a close personal friendship with politician Ling Jinhua’s family that has been subject to longstanding rumors.

Such conflicts of interest appear at odds with his role as a journalist, at least in foreign eyes – but then Chinese media is saturated with such misbehavior. Is it against the law? Even the Global Times wondered. “Did [Rui] know that such behavior was illegal?” asked an unsigned editorial on Tuesday. “Perhaps he believed he was in a gray area where some seek personal gains by exploiting their positions. But the anti-corruption campaign not only targets ‘black holes,’ but also gray areas.”

~

Advertising and public relations (gonggong guanxi) is one of the murkiest industries in China (and also, to be fair, elsewhere). The word guanxi implies connections, the ability to enjoy a string-pulling reach that bests rivals: How many journalists and celebrities can you guarantee at a product launch? Which newspapers can be bought off to stay quiet about a scandal?

Ding Shumiao, for instance, the Shanxi businesswoman accused of colluding with the disgraced railways chief Liu Zhijun over projects worth 180 billion yuan (HK$226 billion), reportedly collected nearly 4 billion yuan securing contracts for the high-speed network with Liu’s help. Her company, founded in 2008, became practically the exclusive advertisement agency for high-speed rail, reaped 120 million RMB in 2010 alone from state-owned companies attending the seventh World Congress on High Speed Rail in Beijing, all thanks to Liu.

One of the Finance Channel’s trademark shows, the annual Consumer Rights Gala on March 15, had become another income source for Guo and his gang. Notorious for its toothless exposes of “scandals” usually perpetuated by foreign firms – while ignoring the egregious antics of domestic giants – the show has been widely mocked in recent years for its clumsy nationalism and reporting techniques.

According to Caixin, local governments and companies routinely inquire before annual tapings to see if their products were on the CCTV “blacklist,” and then offer to pay a gagging fee. Other programmes, such as the praise-singing Economic Figures of the Year, are essentially paid services available to the highest bidder. One website operator told Caixin that Guo had often used his influence to ask portals to delete critical posts about companies that had approached him, or other presenters familiar with him, for help (a practice known in China as “black” PR).

The downfall of Rui and his mentor, Guo, can be seen as part of the aftermath of Li Dongsheng’s arrest and, behind that, ex-Politburo security czar Zhou Yongkang’s own (still unofficial) downfall. Li had worked at CCTV for 21 years, since 1978, and eventually became the vice chief of the state channel. He took off quickly from there and moved on to state censors, the then-SARFT, and the Ministry of Propaganda.

It was in 2007, says Caixin (in an article already deleted), that Li hoped to join the Central Standing Committee of the Communist Party, but was hindered by his rivals, who tipped off ministers that his daughter was studying in the UK thanks to illicit “sponsorship” and his brother, who was running an advertising agency, was also benefiting from his positions.

Li’s trouble, however, was “handled, thanks to a senior leader’s help,” according to a source of Caixin. This “senior leader” is now believed to be none other than Zhou Yongkang, once henchman-in-chief of China’s sprawling security apparatus, and whose power network has been steadily eroded since retirement via a series of arrests and investigations (Zhou himself has not been seen in public since December).

Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai – two ex-Politburo heavyweights, now tainting anyone in their midst

The source, however, could not confirm how close exactly the two were, nor the validity of the rumor that Li introduced Jia Xiaoye, the then-CCTV Finance Channel producer, to Zhou, 28 years her senior; the pair later married.

On June 14, just three days after the capture of Rui Chenggang, Li was announced together with Jiang Jiemin and Wang Yongchun, two former chiefs from the CNPC, as being formally investigated. Both had worked for many years with Zhou.

~

While at Yale for a year in 2005 – he is still a World Fellow – Rui was remembered as a self-styled fenqing (“angry youth”), promoting and defending the motherland on a personal mission, whenever he heard “anti-China” voices. He took one law professor to task for calling China “not a democratic country”; Rui argued “Americans always think there’s only one type of democracy, which is the American kind. But democracy has different meanings and different stages.”

On his popular blog, a large part of which is devoted to conversations and photos with his star-studded Rolodex, Rui’s best-known piece is still the one published in 2007, calling for Starbucks to be ejected from the Forbidden City. (That didn’t prevent Rui from having his cake while eating it, boasting of email exchanges with Jim Donald, the coffee chain’s new CEO, as if the pair were close friends.)

Indeed, according to one guest who shared a banqueting table with Rui, the host frequently referred to former US President Bill Clinton as “a very good friend of mine.” Like most of his associates, which once included Kevin Rudd, George W. Bush and Warren Buffet, Clinton seems unlikely to come to the defense of his “friend” in his hour of need.

Former Rui associates include Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Rupert Murdoch and Henry Kissinger

Question marks even surround the true extent of Rui’s wealth. The TV star, who purportedly enjoys an official salary of around 150,000 RMB a year, is known for his cost-cutting ways. At the aforementioned banquet, a well-lubricated Rui is said to have finished two bottles of wine before a Sinopec executive at the table that he could polish off a third. The stake Rui demanded? A Sinopec card, so he could fill up for free in perpetuity.

If that seems grasping for someone who famously drives a foreign-made Jaguar, it may be worth noting that surface is very often illusory, especially in China. One user of Zhihu – a kind of Chinese Quora – claims his client was constantly being hassled to lend his car, a Land Rover, to a wealthy neighbor: one Rui Chenggan.

And perhaps due to his domestic celebrity, Rui sometimes over-estimated his influence abroad. A hotel management student at the University of Nevada recalled that, when Rui stayed at the Las Vegas hotel where she was interning, he made an indecent proposal. When she declined Rui’s offer, the host allegedly became incensed at what he inferred as the suggestion he couldn’t afford the asking price.

According to a PR manager for Emirates Airline, Rui purchased an economy-class ticket to visit Brazil but demanded a free upgrade to first class. Unsurprisingly, he was rejected, but took his grievance to Weibo (writing that “Emirates’s A380 feels really so-so. Although the plane is a bit bigger and looks new, there’s no enhancement to comfort and the space division makes one feel suppressed… Emirates’ trademark fake-mahogany interior feels like only faux luxury”).

Li Yong, the deputy director also arrested, never even made it to Brazil: he was reportedly stopped at customs en route to report on the BRICS summit, though it’s not clear what exactly for. The local rumor mill suggests his arrest may actually be unrelated to Guo’s; the two are said to dislike one another.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” was one of several Shakespeare quotations Rui was fond of tossing into speeches. (In his autobiography, Rui professes to be able to recite entire sections of Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and Bertrand Russell). Alas, it seems that Rui has now exited the stage, apparently pursued by a bear even he can’t tame.

Follow Valentina @valentinaluo (H/T RFH)

On April 14, New York Times reporters Kirk Semple and Eric Schmitt published an article titled “China’s Actions in Hunt for Jet Are Seen as Hurting as Much as Helping” that quoted two government officials — one from the US and one from Malaysia, both unnamed — who said China has not, to put it nicely, contributed much to the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. It was a disturbing piece, not least because it seemed to signal the search may have entered a new phase in which the frustrations and difficulties of finding the missing jet could spill into finger-pointing and politics.

No one was doubting that the Chinese had the best intentions in mind, but the truth — an unfortunate one that no one seems able to deny — is that they lacked the expertise and technology to help. (So did other countries, of course, like Malaysia, so its government official’s quote — “‘Really helpful, aren’t they?’ he said sarcastically” – seems diplomatically tone-deaf.) The New York Times article wasn’t exactly groundbreaking, but there was nothing offensive about it. Notably, the journalists did their due diligence:

• China’s foreign ministry was given a chance to comment but chose not to.
• Balance:
  

  “The scope, scale and expense of Chinese operations exceeds anything that China has undertaken to date,” said Jonathan D. Pollack, senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “The Chinese are at least as intent on achieving definitive results as anyone else.”

  “It’s possible that this has led some Chinese personnel to reach premature judgments based on limited or inconclusive observations,” Mr. Pollack said. “But this hardly seems unique to China.”

• And most importantly: high-level officials in national governments apparently felt the need to speak publicly about China’s involvement. That makes the story newsworthy.

Not everyone agrees — namely, People’s Daily, the official paper of the Chinese Communist Party. It decided the Times were guilty of exploiting the tragedy to “launch a few cheap shots at China,” as it wrote this morning in a piece called “People’s Daily Journalists address provocative New York Times report” (as tweeted by NY Times reporter Edward Wong). For whatever reason, instead of using text, the piece (“op-ed”? we’re not sure what to call this) is a series of screenshots:

Yes, it does appear the People’s Daily actually called the Times’s PR department and asked – demanded – that reporters turn over their sources. The US justice department has had less success getting journalists to comply, so People’s Daily really had no chance here.

The problem, once again, seems to lie in how China views the role of media. Here, newspapers are expected to leave inconvenient truths unsaid for fear of being rude, or — to put it less nicely — they are trained lapdogs for the government’s use. There is little to no self-awareness, no concept of a public editor, and practically no loyalty to truth, or “facts.” In that case, perhaps we should commend People’s Daily: at least they made a couple of calls, and sent an email.

A Guardian sub-editor overdosed on caffeine while writing the headline to a humdrum taxi-app story. How else to explain this?

Popular app for calling taxis shakes the foundation of China’s one-party rule

China’s one-party rule has survived market reforms, the killing of students, Wukan, and Bo Xilai. But it currently quakes at its foundations because you damn people can’t stop using Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache.

(H/T RFH)

Reporters Without Borders released its latest version of the World Press Freedom Index, and apparently China has cancer. It ranks sixth from the bottom, at 175, below Vietnam, Iran, Cuba, etc. To give you an understanding of how bad Reporters Sans Frontières believes the situation is:

At the other end of the index, the last three positions are again held by Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea, three countries where freedom of information is non-existent.

China is three spots away — only separated by Somalia and the Syrian Arab Republic — from having “non-existent” “freedom of information.” Nonexistent.

Let’s point out, politely, that for as much as we all hate censorship, saying China has nonexistent freedom of information is a stretch. This is a country that actually allows foreign media, after all. To compare its press freedoms to, say, Yemen doesn’t do anyone justice, least of all the reporters on the ground here who deftly navigate the limits of what’s publishable on a daily basis.

“Chinese Big Brother is watching, and exporting its methods,” reads the subtitle under the Asia section of RSF’s report. Give it a read for a summary of all the reasons you hate government restrictions on press freedom. Then remember that sensationalism is really only useful for eye-catching heat maps.

Here’s another via Business Insider:

“The smog has become so thick in Beijing that the city’s natural light-starved masses have begun flocking to huge digital commercial television screens across the city to observe virtual sunrises.”

Lied The Daily Mail in an article last week. Although they gave no proof for this assertion besides a photo, their horrible reporting inexplicably caught on at Time, Huffington Post, and CBS News.

There’s so many things I want to say here.

• First, this isn’t the first China lie that gets picked up and broadcast by Western news media. Mike Daisey’s fabricated NPR story on this American life comes prominently to mind. This is what happens when you cut foreign bureaus and let playwrights and people who know nothing about the country #Chinasplain on reputable platform.
• Second, it took the blog Tech In Asia to take down this story. It’s not even their beat. Hell yeah blogs. Even though we don’t have the kind of staff that these news organizations (don’t worry, I don’t count HuffPo or The Daily Mail) a good blog can sometimes get it really right.
• Third, we derive a good deal of satisfaction laughing at Global Times headlines, but when US news outlets get it wrong we don’t call them on it with enough force. At least Global Times is reasonably straightforward about being a state-run propaganda rag (with some nice people at it).
• Fourth, everything Quartz said in “Westerners are so convinced China is a dystopian hellscape they’ll share anything that confirms it.”

So start making a hit list of news sites not to read on China. You might have a place to start.

“Several Western journalists who faced expulsion from China were issued renewed visas by the Chinese government Thursday, ending a months-long standoff,” writes William Wan for Washington Post. Yay!

Austin Ramzy, a journalist who previously worked for Time magazine, has not been given press accreditation or a permanent visa since he joined the Times, according to journalists in Beijing.

When his journalist visa expired at the end of December, he was given a temporary visa at the last minute, which does not allow him to report from within China. Once the temporary visa expires at the end of January, he will be forced to leave, after reporting for more than six years from China.

Well shit.

In Ramzy, Beijing is poised to lose a cyclist, trivia-goer, and all-around good guy, though we remain hopeful that something will come through. Obviously unable to comment himself, we asked one of Ramzy’s friends to tell us a little more about the man. Here’s what he had to say:

His uncle Hossam Ramzy produced a version of Khosara Khosara that was sampled by Timbaland for the Jay-Z track Big Pimpin.

On a more banal note, I think most of his problems started when Bolton were relegated in 2012. And when he got kicked out of his hutong home. Those two things may or may not be connected to his current visa problems.

As a postscript, the Washington Post reminds us:

The Times’ bureau chief, Philip Pan, has not been given a journalist visa for China after almost two years of trying. And last year, reporter Chris Buckley was forced out of the country after he left Reuters to work for the Times.

Philip Pan’s very much working though, visa or not, byline or not. Buckley, of course, regularly files articles. There’s hope yet for everyone.

China renews Western journalists’ visas after months-long standoff (Washington Post)

Paul Mooney, Edward Wong, Bob Dietz, and Sarah Cook are in Washington DC to participate in a panel discussion organized by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. “China’s Treatment of Foreign Journalists” begins at 3:30 pm ET today (Wednesday) and can be streamed live here. It’s a bit early for you China people — 4:30 am — but may be worth it if you have nothing better to do.

They will almost certainly address the rumor that the New York Times may, sooner than later, be kicked out of China (their journalists can’t get visas, after all).

Paul Mooney, Freelance Journalist

Edward Wong, Correspondent, The New York Times, Beijing Bureau

Bob Dietz, Asia Program Coordinator, Committee to Protect Journalists

Sarah Cook, Senior Research Analyst for East Asia, Freedom House

“Is Beijing about to Boot the New York Times?” asks the headline to this Foreign Policy article (not paywalled!) by Isaac Stone Fish. It’s a fair bit of speculation: 12 Times journalists are apparently anxiously waiting for their annual visa renewals, as revealed by two sources speaking to FP on background. (Emphasis on either “anxious” or “still waiting,” depending on your level of cynicism about media / China.) About a dozen Bloomberg journalists are reportedly in the same boat.

The current round of difficulties began, the reporters said, after the Nov. 13 publication of a story about J.P. Morgan Chase’s alleged link to Wen’s daughter. “My guess is they concluded in recent weeks that they needed to take another step because they thought we hadn’t gotten the message,” one of the journalists said. The other concurred: “Everything was going fine” until the second Wen story came out.

Of course, the speculation could also be called premature. Kicking out a paper of the Times’s stature would be a huge embarrassment to China, any reasonable person would think. One of the interviewed NYT reporters called it the “nuclear option,” suggesting that, despite the recent commotion, China may not be willing to go that far. Why would the country risk this becoming a diplomatic issue?

On his trip to Beijing in early December, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden raised the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and publicly chided Beijing, saying the United States has “profound disagreements” with the “treatment of U.S. journalists” in China.

“I think Biden’s mention helped,” said one of the New York Times reporters. “It put it at the top of the agenda, and let the Chinese know that there would probably be repercussions.”

Then again, the Chinese government doesn’t “play nice,” said one of the NYT reporters. Yeah, thing is, political journalists don’t either. This will be an interesting story to follow.

Is Beijing about to Boot the New York Times? (Foreign Policy)

Also see: The New York Times Has Lost $3 Million In Revenue Since China Blocked Its Website