A Chinese photographer has learned the hard way that happiness is official, Rowan Callick writes. Artwork by Ray Hirst.

Early this year Cai Wu, the Minister heading the Information Office at the State Council, China’s cabinet, gave a televised press conference about the government’s progress towards greater openness. 

The Christian Science Monitor’s China correspondent, Englishman Peter Ford, acknowledged that phone directories of officials for particular areas of information (there are no general telephone books in China), and allowing freer travel inside the country, were good steps.

But, he said, the core problem remained: officials, even if you could get hold of one, never told journalists anything, never provided answers to the most routine, anodyne inquiries. They believed they owned all information.

Afterwards, Ford was surrounded by Chinese domestic journalists, wagging their fingers. “It’s not just you guys in the foreign media,” they said. “We don’t get meaningful replies from the government either!”
And that matters in a one-party state, whose core economic sectors and largest companies are state owned.

The Indonesian experience since Suharto’s downfall shows how eager Asian journalists are to question, once off the leash of state or party
control.

In China, journalists have some room to explore – especially concerning the environment, and to a degree, corruption. But many rooms in the information palace remain locked.

Cai explained at his conference how the State Council was organising training for spokespeople in Beijing and the provinces. He conceded that: “People don’t want more rhetoric and empty words, they want to be given facts.” He has been replaced by Wang Chen, former editor of the Communist Party’s flagship, People’s Daily – perhaps a safer pair of hands.

Two illustrations demonstrate problems with the authorities’ view of journalists. First, the introduction on May 1 of China’s national disclosure regulation, its version of freedom of information.This does not mean that the government has conceded the citizen’s right to know – only that it has accepted that, to improve governance, its officials should release more information.

A pilot program was introduced in 2004 in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Wuhan, three of China’s biggest cities, whose combined population is almost twice that of Australia. Only one journalist has lodged a request: Ma Sheng, a legal affairs writer for Shanghai’s Liberation Daily which is owned by the city’s Communist Party.

He sought information – most importantly, a map – from district planners, suspecting a corrupt deal to evict residents to build luxury apartments.

His bid was rejected, said Dr Cheng Jie, a constitutional law professor at Beijing’s Qinghua University, on the grounds that he was not an economic reporter.

Ma insisted he filed the request properly, but was ignored. He then began court action to require an answer, and wrote a public letter to the statesanctioned and party-controlled All China Journalists Association.

The China Youth Daily published Ma’s letter, attracting more publicity, including in Hong Happy snappers only need apply Kong. But Ma’s editors, embarrassed, said they had not authorised his request and, under severe pressure, he withdrew his legal action after a week.

The result was inevitable: Ma lost his job; the development proceeded.
Cheng says the new regulation does not concede the right to know, which would require legislation from the National People’s Congress or parliament. It concedes the need for better governance, and more participation by citizens.

She says 70 per cent of requests in the pilot cities had received responses. But one third were told the government did not have the information, others that the information had been transferred, principally to the archive bureau which is not covered by disclosure regulations. Another third were told the information was simply lost.

The second example concerns Beijing photographer Wang Lili.

Wang, 52, formerly a “model worker,” was this year assigned to cover Deng Naiping, the mayor of Tongzhou, a Beijing district,
presenting the local government’s annual “work report”. His photograph appeared on page two of the Tongzhou Newsletter, run by the district Communist Party committee.

He was accused of creating a political incident by photographing the mayor with his eyes downcast, perhaps closed. He had to read a public self-criticism to his colleagues, pay a $76 fine and was sacked. His editor said: “I can’t protect you.” His colleagues were shocked. One sobbed at the meeting.

A senior Tongzhou official told Southern Metropolis Weekly: “It was wrong in what it conveyed about the spirit of the meeting. It was not stimulating. Did the photo aim to tell the reader that work was done poorly in Tongzhou, that the mayor was bowing his head in acknowledgement of his guilt?”

Wang took 11 photos. “He basically read his text with his head bent. I couldn't ask him to look up so I could take a picture,” he said.

Ashamed, he hid his dismissal from relatives. “There's not much news to take in Tongzhou, it's all repetitive stuff. You have to rack your brain to find some way to make the old stuff new again. You shoot what's there. I never thought that would lead to problems.”

Yet “positive” news is sanctioned: a leader opening a new building or conference or road, making – like Mayor Deng – a speech, people
applauding, smiling and shaking hands.

Politics and religion are taboo. The editor or producer’s usual response to potential controversy (an understanding second nature to Chinese journalists) is to ignore, or use “kosher” material from the state news agency Xinhua, or the national broadcaster China Central TV.

Commentary or analysis is rare, at least not until the story’s trend is apparent, until a party-sanctioned academic or writer has shown the way, leading the rest to the dance floor. Media coverage is expected to be confined within tramlines, not to step outside the expected. The Olympics are covered as a sports event, an occasion of pride and prestige for China. Forced relocations as Beijing is made over in the
lead-up cannot be covered.

Lower-level media cannot report malpractices by higher bodies. A city newspaper cannot reveal corruption by provincial officials. Almost allcorruption stories are only reported after the Communist Party’s discipline department has released the news.

Foreign policy is usually left well alone by media. When Kevin Rudd came to China in March, there was substantial interest, and his speech in Chinese at Beijing University was reported, but very straightforwardly, without comment or analysis. Just a couple of provincial papers later ran carefully centre-line reviews of the visit.

Economic issues are more open –within boundaries. Only party publications tend to have the licence, and thus the confidence, to express views beyond present policy.

Often, Chinese newspapers run the same Xinhua reports on page one – sometimes with similar layouts. Editors receive, often several times  a week, messages from the party’s propaganda department listing forbidden topics.

Journalism attracts many young Chinese, but does not enjoy an especially high reputation among other professions.

Journalists in the official media are viewed as “reporters to the leaders,” somewhat remote from ordinary people. Indeed, Xinhua employs many journalists who provide discrete reports for the central government and party leadership, not for mass distribution.

Party propaganda departments ultimately administer all public media. And in a tightly controlled market – there are no media in China in which private interests hold a majority stake – where competition is partial, notoriously corrupt opportunism thrives.

Journalists expect envelopes with cash to offset their “expenses” and free meals to attend press conferences. Some are accused of blackmailing companies – that they will file a negative story unless the company, or individual, provides envelopes or buys advertisements.

The most committed journalists tend to work for economic and business publications such as Caijing Magazine that breaks many important stories.

International contacts are often channeled through the All China Journalists Association, which like all other para-trade union bodies is
party controlled.

Truly well-connected members of China’s new party elite do not tend to become journalists, a career with few prospects. Conversely, many who are drawn to the profession, have a genuine sense of vocation. They want to uncover what’s going on, they want to shine a light on people, events and issues that affect lives. It’s not their fault that they are so regularly, and so systematically, frustrated in their attempts.

Because the rules are not always spelled out, the authorities can rely on self-censorship doing their job for them. But some journalists
test the limits. The sacked photographer’s story had a good run in the southern media, away from Beijing.

lthough international journalistic values are increasingly appreciated and pursued by Chinese journalists whenever possible, such journalists are unable to get near the people in power – who usually grant regular access to “insiders” at Xinhua or People’s Daily. The chief editors of such organisations are usually party appointed and may or may not be journalists.

It is inevitable that media products reflect a comparatively narrow range of perspectives, and as a consequence – with the internet also subject to intense scrutiny and censorship by the “net police” – Chinese people’s views of events should seem limited, sometimes almost uniform. Boundaries are being tested, but this is a long, slow project.

Journalism is not especially well paid. Compared with many positions in joint ventures with international companies, it sits in the lower middle class bracket. But, as in Indonesia, just watch this space if the doors are opened on information and opinion as they are on economic opportunity.

Rowan Callick, who won the 2007 Walkley award for coverage of the Asia-Pacific region, is The Australian’s Beijing-based China correspondent.
Ray Hirst is an artist with the Adelaide Advertiser.