When I was last in China, I was informally told that it would be acceptable to ask government and Party officials about virtually anything I wanted – unless of course it involved one of the forbidden “three T’s.”
“T” for Taiwan, Tiananmen, and Tibet.
All were apparently “T” for Taboo.
I guess someone forgot to tell the Tibetans.
In any event, that particular “T” has begun to boil over of late – and faced with vigorous Tibetan protests, followed by equally vigorous global criticism of their repressive response, China’s top officials countered in a most modern and predictable fashion with an all-out, full-tilt media offensive aimed at controlling both domestic and international perceptions of the ongoing conflict.
On the international front, the Chinese government responded by blocking foreign broadcasters such as CNN and BBC, cutting off websites such as YouTube, and denying journalists access to the Tibetan region — even going so far as to stop CNN reporters when they were still hundreds of miles away. In addition, top officials, including the region’s governor, attacked Western coverage as “ridiculous” at a press conference.
Domestically, after trying first to minimize the uprising, the Chinese government soon shifted and began to promote intense but one-sided television coverage, airing hour after hour of footage of last week’s riots in Lhasa. Employees at the state television service CCTV “were instructed to keep broadcasting footage of burned-out shops and Chinese wounded in attacks,” as Tania Branigan reported in the Guardian. “No peaceful demonstrators were shown.”
Meanwhile, authorities in other areas of western China with large Tibetan populations banned all reporting of the protests and asked foreign journalists to leave, according to a report from Radio Free Asia, which also noted that the government referred to demonstrators as “the enemy” in an editorial in the Tibet Daily, the Communist Party newspaper in Tibet.
“These lawless elements have insulted, beaten, and wounded duty personnel, shouted reactionary slogans, stormed vital departments, and gone to all lengths in beating, smashing, looting, and burning,” the paper said. It also repeated the official line (Premier Wen Jiabao accused the Dalai Lama and his supporters of provoking violence to taint the Beijing Olympics and promote Tibetan independence) that last week’s rioting was instigated by the Dalai Lama, who is recognized by Tibetans as both a spiritual and political leader.
“Their atrocities are appalling and too horrible to look at, and their frenzy is inhuman,” the paper concluded. “Their atrocities of various kinds teach and alert us to the fact that this is a life-and-death struggle between the enemy and ourselves.”
Meanwhile, the international media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) attacked China’s media blackout, noting that Beijing had stopped issuing permits for foreign correspondents to enter Tibet, and that at least 25 journalists, including 15 from Hong Kong, had already been expelled from Tibet or Tibetan areas.
“The freedom of movement for foreign journalists had been one of the few positive developments ahead of the Olympic Games,” RSF officials said in a statement. “But this is now being flouted by the Chinese government facing Tibetan protests. Yet again the Chinese government is trampling on the promises it made linked to the Olympics and is preparing the ground to crackdown on the Tibetan revolt in the absence of witnesses.”
As with other governments faced with legitimate dissent from its citizens – recent examples include those of both Myanmar and the United States — the first reaction to unrest is to try to control and contain information. The Pentagon even has a name for this tactic: information dominance. In China, where the media is directly overseen by an Orwellian Ministry of Information, along with the State Council Information Office, edicts are often issued telling media outlets what subjects they can cover, how they should be covered — and perhaps more importantly, which must be avoided. And the “three T’s” have topped that list for nearly two decades.
With the advent of the World Wide Web, it was thought that such barriers to information would topple. Instead the Chinese government created what has ironically come to be known as “The Great Firewall of China,” a well-funded, sophisticated, and ultimately successful effort to control the Internet and ensure that reporting and discussion about Tibet and other sensitive subjects such as relations with Taiwan — or what really happened at Tiananmen Square — remained severely constrained.
Will the world media now allow the Chinese government to establish “information dominance” over the Tibetans – and the rest of us? Or will the protests succeed in focusing world attention on China’s human rights record ahead of the Beijing Olympics — intended by the Communist government to boost its international image?
As one US State Department official told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, “The Olympics is an opportunity for China to put its best face forward and show progress to the world” on human rights. “To be successful, they’re going to have to address some of these issues while the world is watching China. And the world will be watching China.”
But if the world’s media and citizens acquiesce in the face of the Chinese media offensive, what pictures of China – or of Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen Square – will that watching world be permitted to see?
Prime Minister Wen now says that Lhasa was returning to normal and “will be reopened to the rest of the world.” But he is not saying when, and he is not saying how. I’d like to ask him-but it’s apparently forbidden…
