Bingfeng Teahouse

update 12/2/05

thanks for readers who responded, your feedbacks are very useful for me to improve this blog. i will make a short note after the survey is closed.

pls help me do a 2-minute survey here to let me know how i could improve this blog in the next year. the online survey will be closed in a few days, so prompt response is very much appreciated.

or, pls leave comments here as what do you like me to improve with this blog.

thank you very much!

via: pjnet

Witt: What is the black and white perception of China? Is it good or bad? How does it manifest itself?

Gifford: My sense is that there is a lot of lingering sense that China is Bad - it is run by a Communist Party which does Bad Things and could possibly be A Threat to the world. These things may be true (I have seen evidence of them in six years living in China) but it is not quite that simple - you cannot say China is any more good, any more bad than you can say the US is 'good' or 'bad.' In the past it WAS mostly bad, because the Communist Party had various very bad policies, but it is much more gray now, and much less black and white - it can manifest itself in the language of the reports that can be very emotive and suggestive.

Witt: Do think the news media, especially here in the West can report the gray areas? If so how, what advice would you have? After all you have been reporting on China for six years.

Gifford: Of course. There are dozens of us out there (here) who report the gray areas - we report bad things and good things and things that are good and bad, and things that are good amidst a sea of bad, and bad amidst a sea of good. You simply can't take as your starting point that a country is BAD and so everything that goes on there is BAD - my advice would be get reporters out in the field. Of course an editor in New York cannot report the gray areas and tends to be influenced by whatever images he/she has in his/her mind, but reporting means getting people on the ground to report it as they see it.

not many as sharp as this guy, i have to say

Witt: How about the White House, what it says gets reported, often as fact. That of course influences perception. So this a dual question. Does the present administration understand the dynamics of China? If not, what's a reporter covering them to do?

Gifford: Ha, what a question. how much do any of us (even those of us covering China for years on end ) understand? But...yes, this is the danger, sometimes what the White House says is reported as fact, not as....'what the White House says'. So you simply have to present it as 'the White House says X' and get the other side of the argument. The Chinese Embassy should always be consulted, even if we happen to agree with what the White House said. It's pretty basic journalism really - consult both sides, present both sides, and THEN allow the listener, viewer, reader to make up their own mind...On top of that, of course White House reporters must ask difficult questions. If the White House spokesman/president makes a comment that needs challenging, it must be challenged - the weird thing is that it is all so basic, such basic journalism. Is it just since 9.11 that some of the basics of journalism have gone out the window? Or was it happening before that ?

we chinese already know that many years ago

Witt: I want to go back to an earlier answer. You said "relatively unbiased foreign reporting (is) perceived by some to be the 'liberal media' and (is) treated as such." How did you deal with this? What’s you advice to other reporters?

Gifford: My advice is always to just go on reporting the facts - you can't stoop to the level of people who politicize the news and say that because you say, for instance, the Chinese government did something that many Chinese people support (Shock Horror!!) that you are a communist...the main thing is to make sure you are CORRECT in your reporting - then they can't stand up their allegations, and they are exposed (though not always) for the ideologues with their own agenda (left or right) that they actually are - the problem is though, of course, that there are lots of pre-disposed ideologues in their audience who will simply believe them...there's not much you can do about that.

Witt: So, you probably know as much about China as any Westerner. What's your advice to editors everywhere and I, might add, to the audiences?

Gifford: Not sure I know that much, but my advice to editors is not to play down what their reporters should be reporting (I can't believe I even have to say that) and just to let reporters say the truth, the facts, even if that doesn't fit with our stereotypes - otherwise we might as well all pack up and go home, we are simply not doing our jobs as reporters and editors. To audiences, of course, I would also say, think for yourself, and be aware that the media (sadly) is not always objective - and CERTAINLY don't always take what your government says (whatever nationality you are) as gospel.

unfortunately most china reportings happened in an opposite way.

Witt: So much of the world's future depends on the West's relationships to China. However, given our biases, and theirs, and the complexities of the story, can Western journalists ever hope to get it right? And if they don't, what are the consequences?

Gifford: Well, journalists are of course all human beings and very imperfect - we all have our own prejudices etc, which we try to minimize in our reporting. But China is a singularly difficult story to tell because there is SO MUCH good and SO MUCH bad all happening simultaneously - so which is real? Answer: they both are - we should of course be asking the questions such as 'Is China a threat?' but the problem is when we cross the line from putting forward the views of both sides and clearly tilt our reports one way or the other - certainly, if we keep going on about China being a threat in our reports, many people (including in government) will believe it, and act accordingly with government policy, and there is a danger of it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy -maybe it is true. But we need to assess that from the facts, put objectively, not from some skewed reporting that some editor has determined must add up to a report that presents China (or anywhere) in a particular light.

great interview

via: china daily

Fang said thousands of Internet users are creating their own spaces every day, and Chinese blogs may number 10 million by the end of this year. "We can think of blogs as Personal Websites version 2.0. Every personal website before was a separate place, but blogs gather people together by using links, quotes, comments and RSS."

In September, Bokee.com received US$10 million from three American venture capitalists, Hong Kong-based Softbank Investment International and a mainland investor, while Amazon.com subsidiary Alexa currently ranks it 102 in the world in terms of traffic.

Sina.com, Sohu.com and Bokee.com each launched their own blog competitions in September, with Sina.com even convincing movie, music, media and literary celebrities to start blogs in order to promote it -- something that has proved extremely popular.

Despite large numbers of bloggers in China, Fang said "only 2 out of 5 users update their blogs regularly" and welcomed ways to encourage more activity.

Chen Tong expressed doubts that blogs would become a significant media player in China. "Blogs are just a place for writing lovers to write, I can't imagine a day when people don't look for information from Xinhua News Agency or other providers," he told Qian Jiang Evening News on November 15.

Fang maintained that blogs would surpass traditional websites this year, and that their varying adaptations -- including podcasting and mobile blogs -- would guarantee their success.

related links: Report: Bush wanted to bomb Aljazeera 

via: horses mouth, eswn, zaobao news

note: sorry, i just find that eswn has already done a great job in translating all related reports and he also did a some in-depth analysis by himslef, his post is more comprehensive and interesting than this one below, pls go and read it. thanks eswn.

the horses mouth translated a list of 14 bird flu dead, based on an article from "boxun", a chinese web site:

China: 77 Avian Flu Patients Dead in Liaoning Province...Victim's Name Published on Internet

2005/11/21 

In Liaoning Province of China, 6 people were infected with H5N1 Avian Flu and had died recently, according to Nov. 20 report by an overseas Chinese language news site, Boxun, quoting the article posted by a poster.

Six victims were 4 students in Beining City, 1 epidemic-prevention worker, and another person whose identity is unknown. According to the post, the number of dead people from H5N1 Avian Flu in Liaoning Province has reached 77, including the six new victims. Furthermore, at one of domestic Chinese Internet site, the name of 14 migrant farm workers killed by Avian Flu were published on Nov. 19.

According to the post at Boxun.com,  government gives monetary compensation to victim's family in return for not divulging the nature of victim's death. However, if it gets ever revealed, not a single cent of compensation would be given, and would be arrested for endangering social order and security.

Of the 6 dead, the family of epidemic-prevention worker were given 240,000 yuan($30,000), and other victim's family were given 120,000 yuan($15,000). Those families who got less complained to Beijing government, and this led to the news leak to others.

The number of people who were suspected of Avian Flu and underwent a medical test or were quarantined for a short period of time has exceeded 150,000. Furthermore, rumors are spreading in the local area, which say that Avian Flu can now spread from person to person. This plunged the local residents into panic. The number of infected people in Liaoning Province is estimated to exceed those of Qing-hai Province during the previous Avian Flu outbreak(a few months ago.)

The name of 14 dead victims were published in a post at an Chinese domestic Internet site called 'Tienya Forum.' It said that most of the dead were farm workers from Sichuan, Hunan, Anhui Province, who were working at the area of Liaoning Province where Avian Flu is raging. The poster who published the list said that he did so in order to inform the victim's family of what happened. Its detail are as follows:

According to migrant farm workers in Liaoning Province, most of them has died from H5N1 Avian Flu or been placed in quarantine. If a person dies from Avian Flu and he does not have his family in the local area, he was immediately cremated, leading the victim's family to believe that he is just missing. Due to tight information control, I could only obtain the names of 14 dead victims. The list is as follows. All died from H5N1 Avian Flu and their bodies were cremated.

eswn had a post about how the rumor that 300 people died of bird flu in china was created and how the japanese scientist refuted the rumor:

The Masato Tashiro Statement  The New Scientist blast out with this headline: Expert says bird flu has killed 300 people in China.

A respected Japanese scientist, who works with the World Health Organization, says 300 people have died of H5N1 bird flu in China, including seven cases caused by human-to-human transmission.  He says he was given the information in confidence by Chinese colleagues who have been threatened with arrest if they disclosed the extent of the problem. 

Masato Tashiro, head of virology at Tokyo’s National Institute of Infectious Disease – a WHO-collaborating centre for bird flu – told the meeting of virologists in Marburg, Germany, on 19 November that “we have been systematically deceived”. His comments were reported in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.  He told the stunned meeting, called to mark the retirement of a senior German virologist, that there have been “several dozen” outbreaks in people, 300 confirmed deaths and 3000 people placed in isolation with suspected cases.

In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung via ProMED-mail, the quote was:

Dr. Masato Tashiro, a Japanese WHO consultant, believes that China has had 300 human deaths from avian influenza and is hiding the true extent of the disease from the rest of the world. Dr. Masato Tashiro, Director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Influenza at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo, and head of the Department of Virology of the National Institute of Infectious Disease (Japan), astonished colleagues with this information.

In turn, Masato Tashiro posted a response at ProMED-mail:

I am surprised to read the report in ProMED-mail, Avian influenza,human - East Asia (180): China, RFI [part 1] {archive number 20051123.3399).  

First of all, it is not correct. Therefore, I would ask you to correct it.

In my presentation at the meeting in Marburg, I stated that WHO's official numbers of H5N1 human cases are only based on laboratory confirmed cases. It should be therefore an iceberg phenomenon. Due to poorly organized surveillance and information sharing systems in many affected countries including China, it is reasonable to consider that more cases have occurred actually. We have heard many 'rumors' or unauthorized information which we cannot confirm. In this context, I talked about a few examples of non-authorized information and rumors about Asian countries which I received through private channels. I clarified that I do not know the original sources and I cannot confirm whether they are true, how these numbers were derived and what laboratory tests and epidemiological investigation were done.

What 300 hundred deaths?  You have already read all about it here at EastSouthWestNorth on November 15, 2005 at The 'True' Statistics About Avian Flu In China.  If you tally up the number of deaths in the statistical table, the total is 310.  Those were the '300 hundred deaths.'  As I pointed out in that post, this is totally unverified and unconfirmed, and I suggest that any reader can fake any set of numbers, send it to the same channel and it will be published.

Here the chain of custody: Unverified Chinese web posting (at Boxun) of a statistical table that did not even look good; an off-hand mention by a scientist as an example of unverified data; report by a mainstream newspaper; magnification by a popular scientific journal; prominent publicity from Boxun as proof that an experts support the 300 deaths figure (see Boxun); an angry denial from the scientist.  The only remaining question is whether Boxun will publish the denial and identify the data source (namely, itself) and explain why scientists would find it inadequate.

in a press conference held today, the ministry of health department, Gao Qiang, harshly criticised the unfounded report about bird flu by "boxun":

he said, "we have noticed the unfounded and malicious report. china doesn't have any cover-up about the bird flu cases".

he also indicated that the boxun report, which said there are about 70 bird flu cases in liaoning province and 14 of them dead and published each one's age, address and gender, was verified by the local public security bureaus based on teh addresses it provided, 9 people (who live in the addresses provided by boxun) responded, 7 people don't exist at all (name not match with the boxun list), there is no such people in the local census statistics, another 2, one is a migrant worker in jiangsu province, another one married to chongqing 6-7 years ago.

then boxun reported again that a beijing pigeon raiser was infected 24th and died 27th in the sino-japan friendship hospital. the health department asked the hospital verify the case immediately and the hsopital report showed that there were 6 people dead from 24th to 27th, 5 of them 70 years old people and only 1 of them was a twentysoemthing, died of blood cancer. there was no 35-year-old patient dead of bird flu like what boxun reported.

here are all the information, who is lying , you decide.

i hope chinese won't draw a wrong conclusion from this case and take a "bomb the boxun the rumormonger" attitude.

while more openness leads to more rumors, it's the same openness that offers Mr Masato and Mr Gao a chance to rufute the rumors and prevent the public misled by those rumors.