DATELINE: HONG KONG
Xinhua journalists are just like us!:
John David former journalism trainer.
Summary: John David, who
has now retired in London, was a journalism trainer for twenty five
years, specialising in Third World countries. He first went China in
1979, acting for the Thompson Foundation, to help establish an
English language newspaper, China Daily, which would be "attractive
and interesting" for Western visitors. Within a year, Xinhua the
government newsagency which is also a Chinese government ministry
sought similar assistance. David established an English language
journalism training centre at the Beijing headquarters of Xinhua
which has more than one hundred international bureaux and a staff of
six thousand. Six hundred of these staff work in
English.
"Spot on. They [Xinhua journalists] never stopped talking about press freedoms and this astonishes most Western journalists. They are quite aware they have no freedom and quite aware that they have to change things. But of course you have a monolithic structure at the top and who knows if they will ever succeed. Journalists in the West must realise that journalist in China are rowing in the same boat as far as press freedoms are concerned."
Knight: But according to Marxist theory, journalists should be the arm of the Communist party, should they not?
"Marx said that what goes in newspapers will be matter which motivates the proletariat behind the policies of the party. he didn't want news in newspapers, he wanted text which he thought would influence people in their thinking and their actions. We were going in and saying, "Rubbish! If you want to sell your news around the world, and that is what they wanted, because they wanted the message of China around the world, then you have to write as news and you have got to have the topicality and style that is acceptable to Western news outlets."
Knight: How did Xinhua journalists react to this?
They were very pleased. The best were very good and as good as young people anywhere in the world in the use of English. Amongst themselves [freedom of expression] was a constant topic of conversation and of course Xinhua's leaders were always pressing the top Politburo to try and accept a liberalisation of the press but to no avail. But it didn't mean they stopped trying."
Knight: Is it true that Xinhua journalists marched in support of the students demonstrating at Tiananmen square?
"During the time of the protests the offices of Xinhua in Beijing [which usually employed about four thousand workers] were often completely empty because the journalists had all left their desks and marched off in a bunch in support of the students striving for democracy. These people risked their lives, their homes, their jobs, their families, everything by going on these marches. Can I add that the two top people of Xinhua after the Tiananmen episode were placed under house arrest for three months because the party claimed they hadn't done enough to dissuade staff from joining the protests."
Knight: Why is it then that Xinhua has such a bad reputation among Hong Kong journalists?
"The reason is simple in way. China has always regarded Hong Kong as Chinese property. They needed diplomatic representation in Hong Kong. They went to the British government and asked for an embassy. The British said that as a foreign power China was entitled to an embassy. China replied that it was not a foreign power and therefore rejected having an embassy. Instead China chose its only significant office already operating in Hong Kong. That happened to be Xinhua. So it became the defacto embassy in Hong Kong."
"However, there are in fact two distinct Xinhua offices, in different buildings in Hong Kong. In one is the bureaucrats and propagandists who work in the defacto embassy. Tucked away in a side street behind a market is the editorial office in which there are about forty people. The people in there act as genuine journalists, news gathering because that is the regional centre for southeast Asia. The copy is edited there and sent back to Beijing from which it goes all over the world."
"My concern is that this should be recognised by all Hong Kong people, particularly journalists. The people is the smaller office are journalists not bureaucrats. In fact less than one tenth of the Xinhua staff belong to the Communist party."