Eccentric Star: A Public Diplomacy Weblog

Hu US Visit: Which President Lost Face?

The answer, of course, is both.

It astounds me that with all of the personnel and resources available to the White House and the State Department, we can't do a more competent job of hosting a visit by a foreign head of state.

Hu's Visit: Bush's Chinese Diplomacy - Lost in Translation," by Melinda Liu (in Beijing) and Richard Wolffe (in Washington) - Newsweek, 1 May 2006 issue

President Hu Jintao can take comfort in one thing: most Chinese didn't see the excruciating reception he got at the White House. Not right away, that is. The state-controlled news media gave viewers at home only carefully chosen glimpses of last week's U.S. trip. Despite the concerted efforts of Beijing's 30,000-odd cybercops, however, the painful details—with streaming video—flashed among the country's Internet users. "To summarize my feelings while watching this live news: I felt like I was raped," wrote one participant in Tianya, a mainland-based Web forum. "But I don't know who did it, nor even where my pain is."

For face-conscious Chinese, the visit was a problem even before it began. Hu's retinue had hoped for a full state dinner. Instead, they had to settle for a luncheon. That snub was intentional, at least. A series of unplanned slights and slurs compounded it. The arrival ceremony on the East Lawn began with the event's American announcer misidentifying Hu's home country as "the Republic of China"—the formal name for Taiwan, the island state that for the past half century has been a major source of dispute between the United States and the People's Republic of China. (Bush's aides said the Chinese translation gave the country's correct name.)

The announcer's gaffe was overshadowed almost immediately when Hu tried to deliver his opening speech, only to be interrupted by a human-rights heckler who had slipped in using temporary press credentials. "President Hu, your days are numbered!" she screamed. She kept on shouting for several minutes until Secret Service guards ushered her away.

In the Oval Office afterward, Hu got a personal apology from his host. "This was unfortunate, and I'm sorry this happened," Bush said. Those words may pose a challenge to official translators in Beijing: the Chinese language offers at least four delicately calibrated ways to say "sorry," and the state-run press will need to consider precisely which shade of U.S. regret will save the most face for Hu. Even though the incident itself was blacked out in China, word of it is spreading quickly from Internet users to the unplugged masses. Some forum participants suggested that the heckler's outburst was part of an American plot—even though she spent the night in jail....

"In Hu's Visit to the US, Small Gaffes May Overshadow Small Gains," by Joseph Kahn - the New York Times, 22 April 2006

WASHINGTON, April 21 — The Chinese president, Hu Jintao, wound up a four-day visit to the United States on Friday with a foreign policy address at Yale that offered an upbeat vision of Chinese-American ties, as the two sides tried to shake off the lingering effects of protocol blunders during the White House reception for Mr. Hu.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington sent a delegation to the White House on Friday to demand a detailed explanation of how an adherent of the Falun Gong spiritual sect, which is banned in China, managed to infiltrate the welcome ceremony for Mr. Hu on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday and heckle Mr. Hu for several minutes before being escorted away.

While Mr. Hu appeared unfazed by the disruption and continued with his planned events Thursday and Friday, some analysts said the security breach might end up heightening the distrust between the nations that the visit had been intended to dispel.

"I'm worried that this could end up being the legacy of the trip," said Bates Gill, a China specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Whether it is perceived as a simple mistake or an intentional slight, it will underscore a pervasive sense of distrust."

The reception for Mr. Hu was further marred when a White House announcer confused the official name of China with that of its archrival, Taiwan, while introducing China's national anthem. Separately, photographs show that as the event ended, President Bush first steered Mr. Hu to leave the podium and then, realizing he had done so prematurely, grabbed the Chinese leader by the arm and pulled him back into the proper position.

The protocol problems may have had more resonance than the nature of the small slights would suggest because Mr. Hu's visit did not achieve any significant breakthroughs and the Chinese always emphasize careful staging of major political events.

"President Bush, Vice President Cheney and many cabinet members have come to China in recent years and they were not subjected to embarrassing episodes of this kind," said Pang Zhongying, a Chinese foreign relations specialist and former Foreign Ministry official. "For ordinary Chinese I'm afraid this kind of thing will not be easy to explain."...

The following article (from a Taiwanese newspaper) gives an idea of how Chinese might interpret some of what happened during the visit:

"Think Tank Wary on US Relations," by Chang Yun-Ping - the Taipei Times (Taiwan), 23 April 2006

Although the visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao to the White House didn't break any new ground, Taiwan can only be cautiously optimistic about the future of Taiwan-US relations and continue striving for more common bilateral interests, analysts said yesterday.

"It's obvious that China not only failed to obtain anything substantial from the US, but it also lost face during Hu's visit while the US has at least gained something with the huge trade packages China signed during the visit," Lo Chih-cheng, a political scientist at the Soochow University said.

Lo made the remarks at a press conference held by the Taiwan Thinktank to discuss the implications for US-China-Taiwan relations in the wake of the Bush-Hu meeting.

As much as Hu wanted to be seen as having the prestige of being able to stand side-by-side with the world's most powerful leader, the result of the meeting demonstrated that an unequal relationship still exists between the US and China; one between the world's superpower and a major power, he said.

"Look at the body language of the two leaders: Bush tapped Hu on the shoulder three times as if he was comforting an uneasy Hu, but Hu didn't tap back. The action of tapping his shoulder gave out the sense of a relationship between an elder and a younger person," said Lo....

Beijing Promotes Study of Mandarin in US, Asia, Elsewhere

The image of the US as a hard nut to crack for Hanban because of our decentralized educational system is interesting -- even a bit amusing. The partnership that Hanban struck with the College Board (through its AP Chinese courses) was an ingenious solution to that problem.

"The Mandarin Offensive," by Michael Erard - Wired, April 2006

A light snow is falling outside the windows of Cyrus H. McCormick School in southwest Chicago, but the second graders in Room 203 are not distracted from their lesson. May Cheung, an energetic teacher from Hong Kong, holds a cup to her lips and asks, "Wo he shemma?" (What am I drinking?) A forest of arms go up. "Cha! Cha!" (Tea!) An hour later, Cheung has kindergartners counting to 27 in Mandarin as she hands out Chinese New Year hong bao, the red envelopes that promise wealth, abundance, and good fortune. For most of the kids in this Mexican-American neighborhood, Mandarin is their third language - after Spanish and English.

The children at McCormick are part of the largest grade school Chinese program in the US. Seven years ago, after a post-college stint teaching English in China, Robert Davis wandered into the offices of the Chicago Public Schools and convinced the director to start a comprehensive Chinese language program and hire him to manage it. Now 3,500 Chicago kids, from kindergartners to 12th graders, learn Mandarin. "The days of everybody trying to be American are over," Davis says. "When you do business with or go to other countries, be prepared to work on their terms."

Far from Chicago - 6,597 miles to the west, to be exact - Ma Jianfei is pointing at a huge map on the wall of a plush meeting room in an otherwise dreary building in Beijing. Ma is the deputy director general of the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, better known as Hanban, and the map chronicles his success exporting Mandarin around the world. The map shows that the hottest markets for Mandarin are Thailand and South Korea, where all elementary and middle schools will offer Chinese by 2007. Europe, particularly­ France and Germany, is also doing well, thick with yellow circles (teachers), red triangles (test facilities), and blue squares (language centers).

There aren't many shapes in the US yet, but Ma is working on that. For the past two years, Hanban has been collaborating with the College Board, the nonprofit that runs the SAT and the Advanced Placement program; in 2007, high school kids across the US will be able to take the first ever AP exam for Chinese language and culture (this year they're prepping for the test in new College Board-accredited classes). In October, Ma was in the American heartland, inking an agreement to open a Confucius Institute, a center for Chinese language learning and cultural studies, at the University of Kansas. It'll be the sixth in the US, the 41st in the world. Soon there will be 100 such institutes worldwide.

Mandarin Chinese is already the most popular first language on the planet, beating out English by 500 million speakers. And it's the second-most-common language on the Internet. Now, just as China requires students to learn English, Beijing wants to make Chinese the must-take language for English speakers - and everyone else. Ma figures there are currently 30 million people around the world learning Chinese as a second language. Hanban aims to increase that to 100 million over the next four years.

It's an audacious goal, and the government is backing it by funding - to the tune of nearly $25 million a year - the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language. Last year, Hanban sent 1,042 volunteer teachers to France, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Mauritius, Nigeria, Colombia, and 16 other countries. This year, it will top that number.

Hanban provides schools, centers, and Confucius Institutes with seed money, textbooks, and game-based learning software. College kids and adults play Great Wall Chinese, while middle school students get a game called Chengo Chinese, which Hanban developed through a partnership with the US Department of Education. Nearly 15,000 American kids in 20 states helped beta-test the game, and it's now used in Mandarin classes offered through the accredited Michigan Virtual High School.

Beijing isn't doing anything different from what the British or the Americans or the French have done - sending emissaries abroad to spread its language and culture. It's not the first time the Chinese have pushed their native tongue, either: In the 17th and 18th centuries, imperial China brought several Chinese languages to much of Southeast Asia. But this 21st-century push is more global in scope, as befits an emerging world power. "This is the linguistic equivalent of sending a person to the moon," says Oded Shenkar, a professor at the Ohio State University and author of The Chinese Century.

Chinese bureaucrats take their evangelism seriously. The country is "merging into the world," Zhang Xinsheng, China's deputy minister of education, explained to reporters before the first World Chinese Conference last June. The event attracted diplomats and teachers from 65 countries - all there to partake in China's efforts to export Mandarin. "China, as the mother country of the language, shoulders the responsibility of promoting [the language] and helping other nations to learn it better and faster."

Chinese authorities also see spreading Chinese as an important part of the country's "peaceful rise," says Elizabeth Economy, the director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York foreign-policy think tank. This was the philosophy articulated in 2003 by China's president, Hu Jintao. China wants to emerge as a global power without threatening global security. "I think the Chinese have been very careful and thoughtful about assuaging the fears of the rest of the world," says Economy. "There's a benign element of the language work: to help educate."...

If Hanban exports Chinese around the world, then the main American importer is Gaston Caperton. He looks like Bill Clinton - though thinner - and speaks, once he gets talking, with an unchecked southern accent.

Caperton caught his own version of Chinese fever on his third visit to the country in 1994, when he was governor of West Virginia and traveling to China as part of an international trade mission. Expecting to return to the raw, poor country he'd seen in the 1980s, he instead found people drinking Coca-Cola and using com­puters, and the hotel was as lavish as any in the West.

Normally you'd find him in New York at the College Board, where he's president and unofficial promoter for Chinese-language education. But ever since the AP Chinese course was established, he's been on the road, trying to solve the shortage of qualified Chinese teachers in the US by prodding American universities to offer certification programs and persuading elementary schools and colleges stateside to offer more Chinese language classes. He's recently been in Beijing, meeting with Hanban officials about their volunteer-teacher program. But today he's in Shanghai with his wife, Idit Harel Caperton. She spent the fall teaching software engineering at a university here and is a consultant and major investor (along with MIT's Nicholas Negroponte) in a language software company based in China.

The College Board is among the few organizations that can have national impact in a public school system where most decisions are made at the local level. So Gaston Caperton hopes that the Chinese AP will spur interest in the language in high schools - and even trickle down to elementary schools. "The future is in Asia, and we have to know Asian languages," he says. The point is to keep the US competitive. Learning Chinese isn't just a way for Americans to get jobs in China, but for them to do business with Chinese companies and compete with Mandarin speakers from other countries.

Hanban contacted Caper­ton in 2004. At first, the Chinese government was frustrated by the fragmented US public school system. "They said to me, 'In China, we made English the second language,'" Caperton says. "'So why don't you just make it happen in the US?'"

Caperton is working to spread Chinese however he can. After becoming president of the College Board in 1999, he urged the organization to offer courses and exams in more languages. Given the importance of standardized tests, decisions by the College Board inevitably filter down to high schools and even elementary schools. Hanban also wanted to import the curriculum they'd developed directly into US schools. But Caperton persuaded them to abandon their one-size-fits-all approach. The Chinese were "aggressive" about helping, he says. After speaking for a few moments, Caperton backtracks and changes aggressive to progressive. What's the difference? "Progressive is moving forward and up. Aggressive is simply getting what you want."

Alexander Feldman saw this behavior firsthand when, as the US government's coordinator for international information programs, he was touring a new library at the State Institute for Islamic Studies of North Sumatera in Indonesia. On the third floor, an "American corner" was stocked with books, magazines, and computers with Internet access. Feldman suggested to the university's chancellor that videoconference equipment be installed in the empty space next to the corner. That's a good idea, the chancellor said. But about a month after the American corner was built, the Chinese were here and proposed a Chinese corner, which would sit right next to yours and have more resources than yours, he said. "There is a bit of friendly competition," Feldman mused later. "Competition is a good thing, both in business and in public diplomacy."

US Public Diplomacy on China Must Begin at Home (Tom Plate Column)

"China and America: Convince Me," by Tom Plate - 'Pacific Perspectives' column for AsiaMedia, 21 March 2006. AsiaMedia is a website hosted by the UCLA Asia Institute.

Los Angeles --- Is China only playing nice with us now in order to buy time and consolidate its power so that it has the capacity to hurt us later? You'd be surprised how many Americans think this -- or maybe you wouldn't!

Who knows about China for sure? Unlike hindsight, paranoia isn't always perfect, and neither are pundits. This column, for a decade now, has advocated the maximum degree of engagement with China. But punditry about Beijing's true intentions is about as dicey as predicting the fertility of mating pandas.

Optimists can look to the soothing presentations of Chinese high priests such as Qian Qichen. Qian recently dropped by Los Angeles to promote China's views on foreign policy, as well as his book Ten Episodes in China's Diplomacy. He is a highly influential former vice premier, who during the nineties was virtually the vicar of the articulation for Chinese foreign relations.

His most recent articulation of Chinese foreign policy in Los Angeles spurned any mention of "communism" or "socialism" and, according to the silver-haired Qian, his country will threaten no one, take no prisoners (because there will be no war), and somehow make everyone wealthier as it gets wealthier (but watch your wallet, I say).

The overall idea under conveyance to the hotel-ballroom audience was that China and America need to emphasize the steady process of cool and reasoned diplomacy, exploiting the benefits of overlapping national interests while minimizing and managing the disruptive, if not conflict-creating, impacts of differences in interests or perspectives.

But is such a pastoral vision a realistic and sustainable formula for the Sino-U.S. relationship? Many Americans will doubt it, for it seems too good to be true.

But the alternative is too depressing to bear: It's an old-man's grumpy vision of a bilateral relationship that puts China in the bad-guy role formerly held by the late Soviet Union (the "evil empire") and triumphantly hands America the good-guy role of the world's savior. Are the dynamics of world politics today so primitive that a new cold war is the only way forward?

Sympathy for such a grim view -- for turning back the clock, for taking sides and for dividing the region into pro-or-anti-red -- is hard to find in Asia. Recently, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ran just that idea up the Australian flagpole in trilateral talks that included otherwise amenable Japan, but found that the Aussies were notably unenthusiastic -- an emotion that doesn't come easily to them when Americans ask for help.

So too, India has almost zero interest in serving as a China counter-weight, much less joining the anti-red team....

Qian's vision of pastoral persistence is a much better sell than Rice's intimations of a new bipolar world. This is also the view in another excellent and timely book: Power Shift: China and Asia's New Dynamics. Its author, David Shambaugh of George Washington University, is one of America's most level-headed China experts. He is perhaps most famous for emphasizing that if we wish to make the Chinese into our enemy, they will become one.

Like it or not, he notes, the new power balance in Asia has been shifting from Tokyo toward Beijing -- and away from Washington. This shift is not complete and it needn't become total or alarming. America still has a huge and vital role to play in Asia unless it misplays its cards, creates an enemy out of China and in the process alienates much of the rest of Asia.

The key for us in the United States is to begin the process of serious and sustained public debate over what is an optimal Chinese-American relationship. Rather than seeking to enlist Asians in a China-hedging coalition, our national government needs to enlist the American people in a huge and historic national effort to understand how to maximize the harmony and minimize the friction. Public diplomacy -- for the all-important China question -- best begins at home, not abroad. We have to convince ourselves of what our vision is before we can convince anyone else of what their vision ought to be.

For context, see:

"Rice Seeks to Balance China's Power," by Steven R. Weisman - the New York Times, 19 March 2006

PAGO PAGO, American Samoa, March 18 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held talks on Saturday with Japan and Australia to deepen a three-way regional alliance aimed in part at balancing the spreading presence of China.

At the same time, American officials said the United States was also looking at the meeting of top envoys of the three countries in Sydney, Australia, as a means to draw Japan into improving relations with neighboring countries still suspicious of its intentions 60 years after World War II.

Heading toward the end of what aides said would be one of the longest trips by a secretary of state, Ms. Rice joined with the foreign ministers Alexander Downer of Australia and Taro Aso of Japan in welcoming China's "constructive engagement" in East Asia. Australian and American officials acknowledge, however, that the phrase understates the Chinese sphere of influence.

"The tenor of the discussion was how to make China a positive force in the region," said Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, briefing reporters on the secretary's plane to American Samoa for refueling. He said the discussion was an effort to add to the web of American alliances in the area, to enhance stability and not threaten China.

Nevertheless, in Indonesia earlier in the week and then in Australia, where Ms. Rice spent nearly three days, she was repeatedly asked by the local news media about American intentions toward China, which has signed an array of economic deals with countries on its rim.

At a news conference in Sydney on Thursday, Ms. Rice reinforced those concerns, criticizing China's military buildup, economic policies and human rights record. Asked if China would see Ms. Rice's trip as a cause for concern, another senior official, speaking anonymously under briefing ground rules, said, "I think we certainly hope so."

Ms. Rice's visit to Australia, from Wednesday night to Saturday afternoon, was long compared with other stops. But American officials said Australia, an ally that has sent forces to Iraq and Afghanistan, had been feeling neglected, and Australian leaders appealed for Ms. Rice to do some public diplomacy to prop up the sagging American image.

China Sets Further Limits on Internet Content

"China Sets New Rules on Internet News" - Reuters (Beijing), 25 Sept 2005

China set new regulations on Internet news content on Sunday, widening a campaign of controls it has imposed on other Web sites, such as discussion groups.

"The state bans the spreading of any news with content that is against national security and public interest," the official Xinhua news agency said in announcing the new rules, which took effect immediately.

The news agency did not detail the rules, but said Internet news sites must "be directed toward serving the people and socialism and insist on correct guidance of public opinion for maintaining national and public interests."

Established news media needed permission to run a news Web site, it said. New operators had to register themselves with government information offices.

China has a dedicated band of cyber police who patrol the Internet with the aim of regulating content. Postings that criticize the government or address sensitive topics are quickly removed....

RSF: Yahoo Helped Silence Chinese Reporter (Updated 9/13)

"Yahoo 'Helped Jail China Writer'" - BBC News (UK Edition), 7 Sept 2005

Internet giant Yahoo has been accused of supplying information to China which led to the jailing of a journalist for "divulging state secrets".

Reporters Without Borders said Yahoo's Hong Kong arm helped China link Shi Tao's e-mail account and computer to a message containing the information.

The media watchdog accused Yahoo of becoming a "police informant" in order to further its business ambitions.

A Yahoo spokeswoman, Pauline Wong, said the company had no immediate comment.

Shi Tao, 37, worked for the Contemporary Business News in Hunan province, before he was arrested and sentenced in April to 10 years in prison.

According to a translation of his conviction, reproduced by Reporters Without Borders, he was found guilty of sending foreign-based websites the text of an internal Communist Party message....

Western internet companies have regularly been criticised for agreeing to China's strict rules governing the internet, which Communist Party leaders fear could be a tool to spread dissent.

Microsoft was criticised in June for censoring what bloggers write.

The companies say they have to abide by local regulations, and point out that since China is set to be the world's biggest internet market, they cannot ignore it....

Also see RSF's press release:

"Information Supplied by Yahoo! Helped Journalist Shi Tao Get 10 Years in Prison" - Reporters Without Borders, 6 Sept 2005

For some background on Chinese attempts to control Internet content, see China's Net Censorship.

Added 11 Sept 2005:

"Yahoo Says It Gave China Internet Data," by Peter S. Goodman (in Hangzhou, China) - the Washington Post, 11 Sept 2005 (registration required)

A co-founder and senior executive of Yahoo Inc., the global Internet giant, confirmed Saturday that his company gave Chinese authorities information later used to convict a Chinese journalist now imprisoned for leaking state secrets....

Speaking at an Internet conference in this eastern Chinese city, Yahoo's co-founder, Jerry Yang, said his company had no choice but to cooperate with the authorities.

"To be doing business in China, or anywhere else in the world, we have to comply with local law," Yang said, responding to a question about his company's role in the case. "We don't know what they want that information for, we're not told what they look for. If they give us the proper documentation and court orders, we give them things that satisfy both our privacy policy and the local rules."

"I do not like the outcome of what happens with these things," Yang added. "But we have to follow the law."

Yang's explanation drew spirited applause from many in the mostly Chinese audience -- made up of several hundred Internet executives and investors, who represent some of the better-educated and wealthier people in the country....

Added 13 Sept 2005:

"How the Web is Taking Off in China," by Charlotte Windle - BBC News (World Edition), 13 Sept 2005 (A report on China's 5th Internet summit)

Chinese See US Differently as Economy, Confidence Grow (Updated 9/10)

"As China Changes, So Does Its Image of US," by Robert Marquand (in Beijing) - the Christian Science Monitor, 7 Sept 2005

As President Hu Jintao prepares to visit the US next week for the first time as China's leader, he represents a country whose popular understanding of America has become more diverse, yet whose negative impression of the US as a "bully" and "rival" continues to deepen, particularly among young people....

[V]iews on the US have intensified as many Chinese feel more pride about the rise of their nation, say experts and ordinary people.

"Most Americans are very kind," says Luo, a philosophy student whose comments were typical. "But now [after 9/11], the Americans don't care about the rest of the world, what is happening in other places, except when it concerns their own lives."

"What I hear is, 'I want my kids to go to school in the US, I want to go there on vacation,'" says a Western diplomat. "But at the same time [Chinese say] America is acting like China's enemy...."

Yet even at English Corner [a weekly gabfest of English students from all over Beijing at People's University], deep suspicions are articulated about the US. "Anti-Americanism is building, and getting bigger," says a graduate student who did not give his name. "This feeling used to be due to propaganda. But now so many Chinese feel it, that no propaganda is needed...."

Current popular anti-American sentiments are almost a complete reverse of feelings in the 1980s, scholars say, when US-China relations were warming. "We thought the US was our future," says one.

This friendly sense peaked after the Tiananmen massacre of June 4 [1989], when, in the words of one European diplomat, "The general sense of the Chinese people was that the US government was more a friend to them than their own government was." Chinese leaders were so concerned about this sentiment that an aggressive propaganda policy was pursued to reverse it.

Yet after the Asian monetary crisis; the US accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war; after the downing of a US spy plane in 2001; the war in Iraq; and as the US has currently intensified relations with Japan - America is perceived in China as pursuing "a pattern of aggressive policies."

A recent public poll of Chinese in five cities found that Chinese who see the US as "a friendly country, a model of imitation and a cooperation partner," were 10.4 percent, 11.7 percent, and 25.6 percent respectively. Some 57 percent felt the US was "containing China," according to the poll, overseen by an American studies institute at the China Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing and the Global Times....

Added 10 Sept 2005:

"China Shocked at Border Officer's Acquittal" - AP (Beijing), 10 Sept 2005

China expressed shock at the acquittal of an American border officer accused of roughing up a Chinese tourist and said it will closely monitor her $10 million lawsuit against the U.S. government.

Homeland Security officer Robert Rhodes was found not guilty on Thursday of violating the civil rights of Zhao Yan, 38, a businesswoman who was touring Niagara Falls near the Canadian border in July 2004.

Rhodes told the court in upstate New York that Zhao took off running when he ordered her inside his inspection station to question her about a drug suspect with whom he thought she might be associated.

He was charged with using excessive force after he allegedly sprayed her with pepper gas, threw her against a wall and struck her head on the pavement.

Pictures of Zhao's bruised face appeared in Chinese newspaper along with accounts of her ordeal. The Chinese consulate in New York issued a statement on its Web site Thursday condemning the officer.

"The New York consulate-general expresses its shock and regret and hopes the U.S. side truly safeguards the legal rights of Ms. Zhao," the statement said.

"The consulate-general strongly condemns the person who inflicted harm on Ms. Zhao," it added. "The consulate-general continues to monitor closely the situation of her civil lawsuit...."

Businesses in China Battle Rumors, Smears

Although this story is about marketing inside China, what it says about public communication and countering rumors and slander is relevant to public diplomacy practice as well.

"In China, Some Global Brands Assailed by Consumers, Media," by Tim Johnson - Knight Ridder (Beijing), 31 Aug 2005

It's been a year of consumer scandals for big global brands in China, and Haagen-Dazs, the specialty ice cream purveyor, faced a doozy earlier this summer.

A newspaper report in the southern city of Shenzhen slammed the ice cream maker for keeping a toilet near a production kitchen and for failing to have a sanitation permit. The report, some of it unverified, quickly spread on the Internet.

"I shut down the kitchen. I destroyed all the product. But then it became a national and international issue," said Gary Chu, managing director for Greater China for General Mills, the food giant that owns Haagen-Dazs.

Try as Chu did, he couldn't quell the bad publicity, even after a public apology.

"It really damaged our reputation," Chu said, still simmering over what he claimed were attempts to manipulate the issue to shake money out of the company.

Some of the biggest names in global business - Heinz, Procter & Gamble, KFC, Colgate-Palmolive and Lipton instant tea - have faced consumer crises this year, calling attention to the unpredictability of China's consumer market. Confronting sudden attacks in newspapers and on the Internet has become a vital tactic in doing business here.

Missteps by companies, such as fostering relationships with careless suppliers or placing misleading advertising, have triggered a few of the scandals. But other factors have come into play, experts say. China's government doesn't want to be seen as catering to multinational companies, local competitors sometimes play dirty and Chinese journalists generally can seize on consumer issues without fear of the government censors....

Colgate-Palmolive, which has a major share of the China market for toothpaste, found itself reeling in the spring from state-run media trumpeting stories about a "cancer scare" in toothpaste. The reports, which hurt Colgate sales, were later traced to a reporter who embellished a few lines from a British tabloid.

Concerned with the rising tide of attacks, the American Chamber of Commerce in China hosted a seminar in mid-August on "Foreign Firms Under Fire." One expert, Martin Alintuck of Edelman, a global public relations firm, urged executives to monitor Internet bulletin boards, where negative reports spread, and "aggressively attack misinformation" about their companies.

Chu, the General Mills executive who oversees 47 Haagen-Dazs stores in China, paid little heed when he saw a few companies get hit by consumer scandals last year.

"I thought, `We're a high-quality manufacturer. It'll never happen to us,'" Chu said. But then the Shenzhen newspaper report came along, and Chu discovered that "a tiny thing like this can blow up like an atom bomb."

Soon, even the state-run China Daily newspaper was declaring that Haagen-Dazs had made "a mockery of China's law on food hygiene."

Chu said he believes a Haagen-Dazs manager who'd been fired decided to extract revenge by going to a local newspaper.

While a sanitation license had lapsed in the facility in Shenzhen, where local ice cream cakes are decorated, Chu said the rest of the news report "was an exaggeration."

"They said there was a garbage can in the processing room. Every kitchen has a garbage can," Chu said. "Our bathroom was far away from the processing room."

The small Shenzhen newspaper offered to squelch the story if Haagen-Dazs pledged advertising money, Chu said, but he dismissed the offer as a shakedown.

Such efforts to inflate a consumer scandal also hit Chinese companies. But Chinese executives squelch rumors aggressively, hiring specialists to intervene in Internet chat rooms or go after journalists spreading rumors. "In China, we use a very Chinese way: We `talk' to the reporter and make them be silent," said a local publicity professional, who requested anonymity. "Giving them money is the most direct way...."

Chinese Media: A Thousand Channels Bloom (Updated 8/31)

"China's Breakneck Media Revolution," by Dan Griffiths (in Beijing) - BBC News (World Edition), 19 Aug 2005

...Ever since the communists came to power in 1949, television, radio and newspapers in China have been little more than a heavily censored government mouthpiece.

Now widespread economic reforms and the arrival of the internet might slowly be weakening the government's once tight grip....

The country's staggering economic growth has lead to a rising middle class, interested not in old-style state propaganda, but leisure, fashion, celebrities and the outside world.

Economic reforms have produced sweeping changes across the media industry, with many new television channels available as well as hundreds of newspapers and magazines covering everything from football to fashion.

Beijing-based media analyst Rowan Simons said everything had suddenly changed in recent years.

"The average urban citizen can receive over 50 channels covering everything from news to sports to the movies, and there are even more niche channels now like travel channels and shopping channels."

The media here now also has more freedom to report on previously taboo subjects like crime, HIV/Aids and official corruption.

Some newspapers have developed a reputation for hard-hitting investigations. Talk radio has become increasingly popular, and callers can ring up and speak their mind on all sorts of issues without having to reveal their identities.

But state censorship has not gone away. If you go too close to sensitive political topics like democracy or Tibet, the penalties are severe....

Programming from many international broadcasters is often censored as well....

But the arrival of the internet may slowly be reducing the government's ability to censor media content.

China already has more than 100 million internet users, making it second only to the US in terms of the number of web surfers....

Some analysts believe that the Chinese government is already starting to lose the battle over internet control, particularly with the advent of mobile web technology, which is much harder to regulate than fixed line access to the internet....

For more on the Chinese government's attempts to control Internet access, see China's Net Censorship.

Added 26 Aug 2005:

"Chinese Media Resisting Party Control," by Robert Marquand (in Beijing) - the Christian Science Monitor, 26 Aug 2005

A rare protest by Chinese journalists at a leading national newspaper offers a window into the intensifying severity of information control in China and the sometimes sophisticated resistance to it by Chinese journalists.

A frank 19-page letter by Li Datong, a senior editor at China Youth Daily, details a struggle between the news staff and senior party officials over policies that the journalists say would encourage propaganda. The paper has been seen as a progressive organ within Communist Party media, tackling stories on corruption.

Mr. Li's letter, leaked Aug. 17, took issue with a new "appraisal system" introduced by chief editor Li Erliang. It would tie promotion and monetary reward to praise by party officials. In the new "pay for praise" policy, reporters would receive 50 pay credits for high reader response, but between 90 and 120 pay credits for stories praised by communist youth league officials. The youth league is the party group responsible for the paper.

"If you don't change this appraisal system, our paper will become a complete fake," Li wrote in the dissent, which received strong backing among many staff reporters who are too junior to survive making criticisms in the hard world of Chinese state-run media.

The larger backdrop is a nearly two year push by the powerful central propaganda department to more firmly control and limit expression....

China Youth Daily itself has steadily been reshaped to be more of a party organ than a newspaper. In the past year senior editors at the paper have resigned, free exchanges between internal news departments have been banned, and Chinese political leaders have started being praised in language reminiscent of the brutal Cultural Revolution period....

While many protesting journalists, including Li, praise President Hu for his genial persona and for understanding how modern media works, they are opposed to what appears to be a move in the central propaganda department to allow deification and worship of Chinese leaders. They point out that Chinese youth find such language old and silly, and that it actually decreases respect for the venerable paper....

Added 31 Aug 2005:

"In China, It's Mongolian Cow Yogurt Super Girl," by Robert Marquand - the Christian Science Monitor, 29 Aug 2005

For nearly three hours Chinese society stopped - and voted. No, it wasn't a political revolution, but a mass thumbs up to a 21-year-old from Sichuan who belts out the song "Zombie" from the rock band "Cranberries" as part of her act.

China's "Super Girl" is an American Idol-style TV show whose grand finale of dancing and singing drew 400 million viewers here last Friday night, roughly equivalent to every person in the US and Britain....

Some 8 million, mostly younger, Chinese paid the equivalent of 2 cents to send a "text message of support" (the word "vote" is avoided) via cellphone for one of the three Super Girl finalists....

Super Girl owes its popularity to its raw authenticity, to indirectly giving voice to individual Chinese through a vote, and to its unscripted creation of a feeling of "happiness," according to a dozen young Chinese interviewed on campus and inside Beijing restaurants on Friday.

The program did not, for example, emerge from the Beijing studios of official Chinese programming, but from a provincial station in the gritty heartland of Hunan, that has a satellite uplink....