Chinese and German Media Paint Different Pictures of Jiang's Visit to Germany

(Clearwisdom.net)

Friday, April 12, 2002

By Sabine Muscat

FRANKFURT. For the Chinese tourists who want to take lots of good pictures to show folks back home, there is little that can beat the sprawling palace grounds of Sanssouci in Potsdam. President Jiang Zemin of China paid a visit there, too, on Wednesday, although his photo album will be assembled in Beijing by the editors of China's state-controlled press.

The Chinese media started capturing the moments when Premier Zhu Rongji saw Mr. Jiang off on his way to Germany. Once he arrived in the German capital, Mr. Jiang spent a day in Berlin, a city "bathed in enchanting sunlight," according to "The People's Daily." Then, "on a mild spring day" he went to Potsdam, where he stopped at Cecilienhof Palace, "situated amidst the green and shadowy vegetation along the Jungfernsee Lake."

After he finished his tour of Ceclienhof and signed his name in the book for guests of honour, the paper said, he was met by visiting Chinese students carrying welcoming banners. The paper recounted the story of the palace, the site of the Potsdam Conference, drawing parallels between the division of Germany and the separation of Taiwan from China.

Mr. Jiang was quoted as saying "the great task of unifying China will be accomplished at an early date." Manfred Stolpe, premier of the state of Brandenburg, is said to have agreed and "expressed his confidence that China can completely be reunified."

Germans, however, got a very different picture of the trip via the evening news, which showed people in Berlin and Potsdam protesting against Mr. Jiang's visit. On the day Mr. Jiang arrived in Berlin, an unusual amount of broadcast time was given to the general secretary of the Society for Threatened Peoples -- a group that filed criminal charges Monday with the Federal Prosecutor General, accusing Mr. Jiang of failing to adhere to anti-torture conventions. German television also devoted time to Chinese democracy activists as well as to Tibetan and Uighur exiles and speakers from human rights organizations.

Mr. Jiang could have influenced the tenor of the news reports by agreeing to give a joint press conference with Chancellor Gerhard Schr der. The only words that Mr. Jiang addressed to the German public during this trip were delivered in a harmless speech at the German Society for Foreign Affairs on Wednesday.

Mr. Jiang then moved on to the eastern city of Dresden on Thursday.

According to German news agencies, protesters were driven away by police and a camera team was prevented from filming. Heavy security will escort Mr. Jiang on a tour of the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg and a bus ride through Goslar on Friday.

A Chinese ruler apparently can afford to ignore the German media. The only images that matter are the ones broadcast in Beijing.

All this recalls Mr. Jiang's July 1995 trip to Germany. Then, as now, the two governments signed agreements and sang praises to economic ties. In 1995, Mr. Jiang insisted that demonstrators be kept out of his sight. The Chinese premier at the time, Li Peng -- one of the main figures behind crushing the Chinese student demonstrators in 1989 -- during his visit to Germany in 1994 cancelled a trip to the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin for fear of protests. And then, as now, German officials mentioned human rights violations in China only in hushed tones.

This time around, the German media has had little to report on the official parts of Mr. Jiang's visit, other than the signing of two education and culture agreements. A spokeswoman for President Johannes Rau said on Tuesday the two heads of state spoke about human rights, among other things. But the English-language "China Daily" reported only that Mr. Rau brought up the two countries' common interests on the environment and terrorism.

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