Page 2 of 2 Beijing's silly season
begins By Kent Ewing
would land them
in trouble if spoken in public or posted on the
Internet. In the past, authorities have employed
SMS surveillance systems to stop them. For
example, at the height of the SARS (severe acute
respiratory syndrome) epidemic in 2003, 100 people
were arrested for spreading "false rumors" via SMS
about the disease.
Last week, the CCP's
chief mouthpiece, the People's Daily, took the
crackdown on text-messaging a step further,
calling for a
registration system that
requires mobile-phone users to provide their real
names. Users can take advantage of the laxness of
the current system by registering with a false
name to spread pornography, fraudulent shopping
and business propositions, and other spam. But
they can also hide behind pseudonyms to share
political gossip and commentary.
To
underscore the central government's seriousness
about the issue, the party mouthpiece ran three
separate commentaries over a full page urging
adoption of the new system.
Talk of sex is
also taboo and has been ordered off the airwaves
by the State Administration of Radio, Film and
Television. The broadcast watchdog recently
censured two radio stations in Chengdu and Sichuan
for airing programs of "indescribably squalid,
erotic, and indecent content" and banned radio and
television stations from airing any program on
sex-related topics, including contraception.
In language that harkened back to the good
old days when communism and puritanism walked hand
in hand, the ban admonishes broadcasters not to
"design, produce and broadcast any programs or
columns on sex life, sex experiences and
contraceptives, sexual organs and sexual medicines
that go against morality and profane science and
civilization". Sometimes you have to blink and
remind yourself that this is a country that has
taken its rightful place among the world's leading
nations on the strength of nearly 30 years of
robust and sustained economic growth.
If
the crowning moment for Hu will come at the
October congress, the nation he leads will
celebrate its international coming-out when
Beijing stages the Olympics next summer. Will the
same paranoia reign then as now? If so, how can
Chinese officials hope to control the
20,000-25,000 journalists who are expected to
descend on the country to cover the event,
especially after giving assurances of press
freedom to the International Olympic Committee as
a condition for hosting the games?
Judging
by Beijing's actions so far, the plan is to muzzle
its own media and citizens so that the foreign
press has no one to talk to. Censorship has
increased in the run-up to the party congress and
is unlikely to ease before China's global debut
next summer. Just last month - again according to
Human Rights Watch - five Chinese journalists were
beaten by thugs and then arrested by police for
interviewing witnesses to a bridge collapse that
killed 36 people in Hunan province. The catalogue
of abuse, intimidation and censorship of the media
continues to grow.
Still, it is hard to
imagine how the central government can manage to
cover up all of the country's many warts during
the Olympics. Even the well-orchestrated plan to
reduce the capital's severely egregious air
pollution has proved subject to the vagaries of
fate. The aim of the plan is to create blue skies
over Beijing next summer by keeping more than a
third of the city's 3 million cars off the road
for the two-week period of the Games, but a
four-day trial run last month proved decidedly
underwhelming.
During the trial period,
cars with odd- and even-numbered license plates
were ordered off the road on alternate days,
resulting in little improvement in the city's air
quality. Officials blamed the elements - namely
lack of wind - for the disappointing result. The
experiment goes to show that, whether Chinese
leaders are planning a party congress or an event
as internationally important as the Olympics,
there are things they simply cannot control.
Ironically, there is no need even to try.
China's narrative over the past 30 years is
overwhelmingly a story of success. Let it be told,
warts and all. Indeed, the fact that the Chinese
leadership prevents important parts of that story
from being heard is the biggest wart of all.
Kent Ewing is a teacher and
writer at Hong Kong International School. He can
be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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