The Power of the State-Run Media in China

Here in America, a veritable army of reporters covers every newsworthy and sometimes not so newsworthy event. If something important happened in the afternoon, you probably heard about it on the radio on your drive home. Then, you saw it on your six o'clock news, followed by Tom Brokaw's analysis at seven, and if you were truly interested, you could always flip over to CNN for even more coverage. Even weeks later, you are still offered points of view from sources ranging from George Will to Jay Leno, from Larry King to Rush Limbaugh. One thing is for certain, no two sources will give the same exact opinion, and depending on whom you ask, every person you meet will have a slightly different take on the situation.

China is exactly the opposite in this regard. Every piece of news is filtered by the Central Government's propaganda machine. Sure, a report here and there slips through the internet, but for the common Chinese person, the state is the only source of information. My grandmother, who lives in Beijing, is an example of this phenomenon. When she turns on the state-run radio, or watches the central television stations, or the government controlled newspapers, she gets the exact same version of the story. One of her daily rituals is to walk down to the local newsstand every evening and pick up the latest edition of the "Beijing News Evening Edition." When I accompanied her on one of these walks, I saw an interesting situation. On a street corner stood a glass encased display, posting the current newspaper's main stories. There was enough space to hold several whole pages, and the amazing thing was, every article on every page of the newspaper expressed the same opinion! At the time, the hot topic was the bombing of the Chinese embassy. The newspaper that day included interviews with all kinds of experts, editorials, and even letters from readers. Every sentence expressed the same one sided opinion, and everyone who gathered around the corner spoke as if the United States army was about to lay siege to Beijing. The next evening, the same newspaper was there with different articles but the same content, so on and so forth for the week that I spent with her. When she is bombarded with the same thing over and over again, it is no surprise that my grandmother's version of the story, along with all of her neighbors' versions, were all exactly the same as the government's.

It is this daily bombardment of misinformation and propaganda that makes it so easy for the Chinese government to distort the truth to their own ends. There is no place too sacred or innocent for this brainwashing. My wife, who went to junior high school in China about twelve years ago, remembers her political science class (one of the six prerequisites for the entrance exams to high school), which required the students to memorize a textbook filled with doctrines. She recalls that one of the points that the textbook taught about the West was monopolies. It taught that while capitalism supposedly encouraged competition among businesses for the benefit of the consumer, in reality, everything was controlled by large monopolies. One of the case studies involved how U.S. companies routinely withheld new technologies, because the old technologies were more profitable. The numerous examples given by the textbook made the theory appear very reasonable and well-documented. She did not realize until coming to the United States that the Sherman Anti-Trust Act existed. Then, it dawned on her why all of the examples given by the textbook were from such distant times, and it never occurred to her that the textbook purposely withheld this information to make a false point.

When the government brought in tanks and opened fire on the students in Tiananmen Square, all of the Chinese media focused their attention on the soldiers that allegedly were killed by protesters, instead of the thousands of students that died that night. To a Chinese person that was not on the scene that night, given the lack of any outside reports available to them, the story that they were told was nothing like what actually happened. Instead of a group of students and peaceful protestors being mowed down by tanks and machine guns, the story that was told to them involved a faction of extremist hooligans starting a riot and murdering several soldiers in the process. In China, there is no independent media to expose the corruption and wrongdoings of the government officials. There is no judicial branch or legislative branch to keep the powers of the executive branch in check; the separation of power is purely nominal. If a person feels wronged by the government in the United States, he or she can always go to the courts or the press. In China, where does that person turn to? The courts, the media, the workplace, and the local government all belong to one single body, headed by a dictator who has near absolute power. All these pieces fit together to form a powerful entity that leaves no room for a person to express or even have their own ideas. If a person were improperly treated at the workplace in the United States, he or she can sue the company in the courts, write their congressman, or go to the local investigative reporter. Now imagine if all of these entities, instead of checking each other's power, were all under centralized control? When you make a wrong move, you are fired from your job, the newspaper incites public sentiment against you, the courts throw you in jail, and the government passes a law against you ever getting another job. Does that not sound absurd and frightening at the same time? Yet, this is exactly what is happening to Falun Gong practitioners in China!

When I first heard of the "self-immolation" episode in China, I was saddened by the senseless loss of human life. However, the more I saw the holes in the story, such as the amazing story of the 12 year old girl singing a song with a tracheal tube inserted into her windpipe, the more I believed that this is a fabrication of the government. At first glance, the assertion that this was all a staged conspiracy by the government seems like a far-fetched, Orwellian story, but in a society where it is considered acceptable and mundane to jail and torture innocent people for a simple, peaceful belief, is it really that difficult to believe? If the government can order the police to beat up old ladies and send pregnant women to labor camps, is it really that much of a stretch for them to set up an episode like this to discredit Falun Gong? In a country like the United States, where human life and individuality are so valued, it is very difficult to believe something like this could be staged. However, if one takes into consideration the track record of deceit and outright lies of the Chinese government, the gaping holes in the stories told by the government, and the enormous power that the government wields over its people, is it more unbelievable that this callous government can sacrifice a couple of lives to further its own ends, or is it more unbelievable that a group of people who place the highest importance in using every minute of their lives to cultivate themselves and enlighten others, chose to end their lives so senselessly?