Sha Lei (the man in the picture) and his team were followed on a trip to Xinjiang in late 2020, and the footage they shot was deleted.
Up until the last minute, I could feel the harsh reality of reporting in China.
As our family scurried to the airport, late and unprepared due to last-minute packing, plainclothes police watched us from outside our home, then followed us to the airport and all the way to the check-in area.
As is their wont, until the last minute the Chinese propaganda machine strenuously denied that I faced any risks in China, while at the same time they made those risks obvious.
“The Foreign Ministry said they were not aware that Sha Lei was under threat,” said China’s Communist Party-controlled Global Times, “except that he could be sued by individuals in Xinjiang for his defamatory reports.”
The chilling effect of such statements lies in the reality of its court system. As with the media, the court system operates as an extension of the Communist Party, and the idea of an independent judiciary has been dismissed as a “false Western concept.
The attacks by the Chinese Foreign Ministry have continued, and this Thursday they used the podium of their daily press conference to criticize what they called “fake news” from the BBC.
The Foreign Ministry showed a video clip from our recent interview with Volkswagen in China about its decision to operate a car plant in Xinjiang, which it called the kind of “reporting that would cause anger among the Chinese people.
Since the vast majority of the Chinese public doesn’t see any of our coverage due to a long ban, this claim is naturally unlikely.
But while all of this has brought my posting to a close amid anxiety and anxiety, it’s worth remembering that I’m just the latest in a long line of foreign media outlets that have left China in recent years.
And it is part of a larger battle that China is waging on the international stage over ideas and information.
The media becomes a battleground
“Economic freedom creates the habit of freedom,” former U.S. President George W. Bush said in a speech urging the World Trade Organization (WTO) to accept China’s membership.
“And the habit of freedom creates the expectation of democracy,” he continued.
When I first began working in China in 2012, this unrealistic assumption that a richer China would also become freer could still be heard from time to time in news analyses and academic discussions about China.
But in the year of my arrival, a new change made this prediction seem extremely naive. Xi Jinping was appointed to the most powerful position in China – General Secretary of the Communist Party of China.
While the dramatic changes in global trade patterns in recent years have undoubtedly brought change to China, setting off a whirlwind of economic and social change here, those expectations of democracy look more distant than ever.
President Xi has used China’s already tight political system to tighten his grip on almost every aspect of society, and with his term now open-ended, the media landscape has become a decisive battleground after 10 years in power.
“The Nine document, which was reported as a high-level leak, made clear early on the main target of that struggle: “Western values,” including press freedom.
And the BBC’s experience shows that any foreign media that reveals the truth about the situation in Xinjiang, questions China’s handling of the New Coronavirus and its sources, or gives a voice to opponents of China’s authoritarian plans for Hong Kong, will now be absolutely attacked.
Disrupting the democratic debate
However, while the Chinese propaganda attacks continued after I left, it is also notable that foreign language social media networks were widely used to amplify their message.
Ironically, at a time when the space for foreign media in China is shrinking, the CCP has been investing heavily in their overseas media strategy, taking full advantage of the easy access to free and open media.
While denying their own citizens access to these foreign-language platforms, their “war wolf” diplomats have unleashed a furious tweetstorm, lashing out at foreign coverage, as seen in this article from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Center. They use intensive, coordinated tactics across multiple platforms, as this report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre shows.
While outside China, state-owned media propagandists can publish and distribute their content without restriction, inside China relentlessly bans independent reporting, censors foreign television broadcasts and websites, and blocks foreign journalists from joining the country’s own social media networks.
Against this backdrop, my departure can be seen as a small part of a shaping, highly asymmetrical struggle for control of ideas.
The outlook is not good for the free flow of good and accurate information.
Shrinking access to information and authority will undermine our ability to understand what is really happening in China right now, while at the same time it is using the power of free media mechanisms to undermine democratic debate everywhere.
The Trail to the Truth
While there are no good solutions and the belief that President Bush’s prophecy came true has long since evaporated, there is still some hope.
In recent years, much of the revelation of what is really happening in Xinjiang has been based on its own internal documents and propaganda reports, despite China’s dismissal of it as “false.
In a system of mass incarceration, a modern digital superpower cannot leave no trace on the web, and the important journalistic work of uncovering these footprints will continue to be done at a distance.
A growing number of foreign journalists are now forced to cover China from Taipei, other Asian cities and even further afield, and I am now one of them.
Of course, despite the dwindling numbers, there are still brave and determined members of foreign news groups based in China who remain committed to reporting.
Most remarkable of all is that under increasingly tightening political control, there are a handful of extraordinary Chinese citizens who, at great personal risk to themselves, manage to circumvent censorship and do the most important job of all local journalism – telling the story of their country in their own words.
Much of what we know about the early days of Wuhan’s closure comes from these citizen journalists, people who are now paying the price for that bravery.
I was able to leave those plainclothes police officers in the departure lobby of a Beijing airport for what I hope will be the last time I deal with them.
In this new global struggle over ideas, we should never forget that the people who continue to face the greatest risk in telling the truth are the citizens of China.
Recent Comments