Canadian-Asian Affairs

The problems of China coverage indicated below are not intended to dismiss the exercise entirely. Rather they are intended to point out some weaknesses within the media's coverage of China. Only with these weaknesses in the open can journalists and editors address them, and consumers take them into account when encountering China coverage.

We have seen that China coverage often lacks nuance. It does not provide important cultural context. Rather it unnecessarily frames some story elements as foreign and indeed sometimes beyond comprehension - remember the inexplicable red sashes. China is considered a monolithic entity, where the government can and do whatever it pleases. Furthermore outside of a few minority peoples, the government is often considered the genuine voice of the people. A sense of threat - especially economic - pervades China coverage. It is characterized as a competitor, an international other who is in the process of overhauling the international system.

The media engages in a national discourse when covering China. By covering China as it does it places Canada within a certain international framework, and thereby contributes to public international perceptions. These perceptions are clouded by propaganda, censorship, and an uneven flow of news. Ed Harriman said it well when he argued that: "if journalists and editors wrote about them [international incidents] in more down-to-earth terms and dropped their cliches and - all too often - their clapped out Cold War rhetoric [in our case the globalization rhetoric], then people who depend on newspapers and television for their news would be a lot less confused, a lot less intimidated by the rest of the world, and a lot better informed."¹ One can only hope that Canada's China coverage will mature and internalize some of this advice.

1 Ed Harriman, Hack: Home Truths About Foreign News, (London: Zed Books, 1987), p. 1.

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Chinese coverage is not only problematic in that it helps to define the nation and place the nation within an international framework. It also demonstrates some broader issues common to the media and its influence on international relations. Mark Alleyne suggests that the media is problematic for international relations because: 1) the media is a potential propaganda conduit; 2) the media claims to be free of censorship; and 3) the media contributes to an unbalanced global news flow.¹

China coverage clearly demonstrates these three problems. The first two - propaganda and censorship - are often encountered in the Chinese perspective when reporters rely on the official Chinese press agency: Xinhua. A number of the reports from the Globe featured below used Xinhua as a principal - sometimes the only - source. As the state run media agency in a somewhat autocratic one-party state, Xinhua is not an unbiased source. Not only should its reports be confirmed, they should be very clearly qualified so that readers understand the providence of the information reported. But Xinhua is not the only culprit. Many Chinese would consider Western reports on politically sensitive issues - such as Taiwan or Tibet - as anti-Chinese propaganda.

Alleyne's third problem - the unbalanced flow of news - is also clearly evident in China-Canadian media relations. The global flow of information is preponderantly from the North and West to the South and East. That is to say, from developed countries to developing countries. As a result, the Chinese media has a disproportionate coverage of international stories vis-a-vis international coverage of China. While it is outside the scope of this examination, a comparison of China's coverage of Canada with Canadian coverage of China would be interesting. Without having undertaken any quantitative analysis and relying simply on my anecdotal experience I would suggest the coverage is close to equal, which is surprising given that China is a key world state with a population of 1.3 billion compared to Canada's relative unimportance and population which is rivaled by some Chinese municipalities.

1 Mark D. Alleyne, News Revolution: Political and Economic Decisions about Global Information, (New York: St. Marten's Press, 1997), p. 3.

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The broad trends within China coverage in Canadian media, as demonstrated by the Globe, speak to the way the media helps to construct national identity, and subsequently place the nation within an international realm.

Benedict Anderson indicates that print media is one of the key elements in the development of national consciousness.¹ By drawing citizens together, distributing uniform knowledge, and relying heavily upon national categorizations, the media helps to create imagined communities such as Canada.

Key to this task in present-day media - which operates in the late nationalist era - is the national framework used in reportage. News is either regional, national or international. Stories that happen outside of Canada are categorized by national origin. Thus, anything occurring within China is by definition both international and Chinese. This framework seems natural to contemporary readers, and enforces national categorizations and enhances international differences. More importantly for a study of Chinese coverage, this national framework clearly defines China as an other.

The Chinese other is not only a different country, it is the key state in a different - some would say competing - civilization. On top of a national framework the media often utilizes a civilizational framework when it speaks of the "Islamic world" or "European countries" or "Asia" as some sort of distinct unified entity. While it is doubtful that many reporters have internalized Huntington's Clash of Civilization's thesis and are actively pitting civilizations against one another, a civilizational framework has similar end results as a national framework. It creates a distinct 'us' and a distinct 'them.'² China coverage in Canada often displays this civilizational framework. It speaks of an impending rise of Asia led by both China and Japan. More nuance - as always - and a recognition that the national and civilizational frameworks are necessary evils would help the media to present a less divisive, more enlightening view of China and other foreign regions.

1 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, (New York: Verso, 1991), p. 43.
2 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, (London: Simon & Schuster, 1996).

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The media repeatedly portrays China as a foreign exotic location. This exotic portrayal combined with the distillation of China into a few main trends - principally economic and political development - is indicative of a sort of modified Orientalism. Said's Orientalism indicates an Orient created by Occidental discourse which essentialized the mystic, sensual, foreign nature of the Orient.¹ This new-age media orientalism retains the sense of foreign. It also categorizes China as part of an Asian resurgence. This categorization alone acts to define Asia and China in oppositional relation to the West. In addition, the media essentializes China by focusing over-closely on stories of economic and political developments. China is first and foremost an economically developing nation which is both central to the global economy and in competition with Western powers. Secondly, China lacks key human rights which both deprive its citizens of universal human rights as defined by the West, and give it an organizational advantage in geo-economic affairs. Afterall, China is able to quell political dissent, focus on economic development and ignore calls for labour rights and sustainable development.

This new-age media Orientalism not only defines China in oppositional terms, it also leaves us with an impoverished discourse on China affairs. This in turn plays into greater media trends to both confirm and construct national identity and the national role within the international realm. Next we will turn briefly to these issues.

1 Edward Said, Orientalism: Wetsern Conceptions of the Orient, (New York: Penguin, 1978).

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Ten years ago there was a conference on US-media coverage of China. It was hosted by American University’s School of Communication, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and National Committee on United States - China Relations. The conference encountered many of the issues apparent within the present day Canadian media coverage of China. Those who spoke on behalf of the Chinese at the conference indicated that Chinese officials were upset by the preponderance of negative stories in American media coverage of China. On the other hand, American media representatives suggested the American media was simply trying to present the whole China picture and covering those stories they feel are important and interesting for their audiences.

The increase in China coverage noted by the conference has continued over the past decade. As we witnessed in the Globe's coverage, the shortcomings of China coverage also remained over that decade. The conference indicated that " reporters' unfamiliarity with Chinese language, history, and culture; the bias of an ideological framework; excessive responsiveness to an agenda set either by Washington, D.C.-based editors or by the U.S. government; the effect of market forces and the resulting need for drama and pictures; and control of the U.S. mass media by the U.S. government or corporate elites" were all possible reasons for lackluster China coverage.

I would build on that list of potential biases by suggesting that China coverage is defined by China's categorization as an other to the Western self. Because China is so foreign to the average Canadian experience, including the experience of many journalists, coverage of stories relating to China cannot help but be influenced by this sense of the foreign. The next post will examine this issue in more detail.

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It is time to move on from the examination of the characterizations of China within the Globe and engage in a more analytical discussion of our topic.

The preceding examination of the Globe and Mail's China coverage reveals some interesting trends. Most striking of these is the Globe's treatment of China as a single monolithic entity. Rarely is the reportage detailed enough for readers to gain an appreciation of the range of nuance China deserves.

We have also seen the Globe repeatedly characterize China as an economic frontier with hot markets. This sort of economic reportage is often tinged with a sense of threat or superiority. China's rise is, on the one hand, seen as threatening to Western interests. On the other hand, reporters infer that China's economy has yet to truly develop, and that backwardness and shoddy standards remain the order of the day.

Human rights are yet another trend within the Globe's China reportage. Press freedoms, and jurisprudence rank high on reporter's list of concerns regarding China's human rights record.

All of these elements, a monolithic China, economic frontierism, and human rights dialogue, are in recent times often told through the Olympic narrative. As the Beijing Olympics draw closer, it is increasingly popular to relate stories about China back to the Olympic games.

These various trends are overwhelmed by the most important one. Most important of the trends evident in the Globe's China coverage is the concept of China as both foreign and threatening. There are few explanations of the socio-cultural differences that, if misunderstood, confuse and complicate China stories. Stories which depict China as threatening, different, and incomprehensible seem popular. Ultimately this sense of foreigness and threat pervade China stories and influence how readers come to understand China.

In the next installment we will examine some academic discussions pertinent to our topic.

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Yesterday's Globe featured three length articles on China. The first touches on the familiar Olympic theme. On a recent visit to Vancouver the IOC chief Jacques Rogge claimed that China's human rights record is something to be optimistic about. While China may only have have a glass of human rights, Rogge insists "the glass is half full." Rogge tries to provide some useful contextualization for the human rights debate, arguing that China's human rights record has been steadily improving and that the Olympics has brought new freedoms including freedom of movement for foreign journalists. This story is another example of the current Olympic fever, and the expectations that the Olympics should act as an agent of change in China.

The next story isn't strictly a China focused story, but it does provide a useful anecdote and continues on the Olympic theme. In a larger report on attempts to control the weather, Ken Hunt reports that China regularly controls rain fall using silver iodine cloud seeding. Hunt suggests this technology will be crucial for the Chinese to present the perfect Olympics. Later in the article this sort of climate tampering is likened to playing God with a complex system we do not yet fully understand. Chinese applications of science are often framed this way in the Western media discourse. While the West is oftentimes skeptical of genetic engineering, China has no such qualms and engages in large scale experiments and production of GE crops. This, like the climate science application, is often characterized as careless and hubristic by the foreign press.

The final story continues the Olympic theme and is potentially the most interesting of all today's articles. Geoffrey York reports on the opening of Beijing's new airport terminal. York characterizes the new terminal as a product of China's "Olympic frenzy." This sort of terminology is often used in relation to Beijing's Olympic preparations. I would suggest that similar reports on, for example, Vancouver's Olympic preparations use more refined verbage. Next York comments on the staff who for the first arrival dressed in red sashes to welcome the first set of passengers. York claims they are dressed like "beauty queens." He ignores the fact that red sashes are often used in China as a symbol of good luck and welcome. Presumably, as York is the Globe's principal China correspondent, he is aware of this significance. Nonetheless he uses an outlandish characterization in his report. This again demonstrates how China reportage takes on a very 'foreign' flavour even when the report focuses on fairly universal phenomenon such as airport construction.

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