Chinese media, advertising, and urban life.

The May issue of Yanhuang Chunqiu contains an essay by Zi Zhongjun (资中筠) on freedom of expression and institutional reform. Zi is a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and is the former editor of American Studies Quarterly.

Her references to the relatively open media in the south (read, Southern Metropolis Daily and its stable of newspapers and magazines) are particularly relevant following the recent controversy over Southern Metropolis Weekly editor Chang Ping.

I don't have much interest now in studying certain formulations in leaders' reports. I have only one attitude: look at how they are put into practice. Sometimes, some statements are not workable. I remember a few years ago, a newspaper organized a symposium, around the time that "scientific concept of development" and "people-centered" had just appeared. I spoke at the symposium and wrote up an article based on that speech, arguing that "people-centered" had to include human rights. And I said that good slogans and good formulations had to rely on the healthy power of society to be put into practice. When the healthy power of society is suppressed, even the best slogans cannot be carried out. Later, I was unable to publish this paper anywhere. Someone said that leaders' fine words were "promises" made to the people. I feel that the statements made in their speeches aren't promises that are made good simply by saying them. For example, they say they'll give the people the right of expression, but in practice, the right of expression is controlled as it always has been. To this day I have not found earnest action taken to allow and support the the right of expression. Even the most open newspapers in the south are frequently given yellow cards. Whether or not there is free speech is a touchstone; there's no point to further discussion of democracy. We talked about democracy in the past, but it's never been carried out.

Front Page of the Day is a daily review of the news on the front page of one Chinese newspaper. Beijing newspapers are obtained from newsstands in the CBD; front pages from other cities are found on the web.

South Metropolis Daily
May 9, 2008

Two big news items dominate today's newspaper front pages: Hu Jintao in Japan and the Olympic Torch on Mount Everest.

South Metropolis Daily printed a big image today on the front page showing a (unusually) beaming Hu Jintao holding hands with Japanese table tennis star Ai Fukuhara.

Ai Fukuhara is renowned both in China and in Japan. She has visited China several times for training. In 2005, she joined the Liaoning provincial team, and later the Guangdong team, to participate in China's national table tennis contest. Last year, she began attending classes at Waseda University in Tokyo and is currently enrolled as a student there.

Good-looking and speaking good Chinese with a northeastern accent, Ai Fukuhara has huge fan base both in China and Japan, though she has so far failed to win any medal in world level competitions.

Yesterday Hu Jintao, during his visit to Waseda University, showcased his great table tennis skills by beating Ai Fukuhara, and Chinese Olympic champion Wang Nan, together, with the Japanese PM Fukuda standing aside transfixed. Unbelievable, but this is what the media are reporting. According to Japan Today, an English language website:

Chinese President Hu Jintao entertained Japanese and Chinese youths by playing table tennis on Thursday with Beijing Olympics qualifier Ai Fukuhara and Chinese Olympic gold medalist Wang Nan, impressing Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and other spectators in an event at Tokyo’s Waseda University. It had been speculated that Fukuda, 71, might also grip the racket but Fukuda shied away from doing so, apparently after watching an energetic, serious-faced Hu beat Japanese teen player Fukuhara in five of the eight rounds of rally they had.

Fukuda later in the day told reporters that he "chickened out in the face of good players." He also called Hu's way of playing the sport "very strategic," apparently evoking a phrase Fukuda and Hu repeatedly used in the past few days to describe what they hope bilateral relations should be—"strategic, mutually beneficial." At the event planned as part of Japan-China youth exchanges, Hu, along with Fukuda and about 100 students from the two countries, was first watching Fukuhara and Wang play. But the 65-year-old Chinese president suddenly took off his jacket and glasses and surprised the audience by joining the play and hitting smashes.

Fukuda also told Fukuhara she seemed to be "overwhelmed" during Hu’s play. Fukuhara smiled and said, "Yes."

Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).

Song Qingling memorial: A video on Shanghaiist:

Song Qing Ling Memorial (宋庆龄陵园), a little known cemetery in western Shanghai home to the remains of Song Qing Ling, numerous other Chinese personalities -- and scores of foreigners who came to Shanghai mostly during its early boom years in the mid-1800s and early 1900s, some identified by simple gravestones, and some anonymous.

News reports with errors also need "breathing space": At the China Media Project, David Bandurski translates beleaguered journalist Chang Ping's latest op-ed:

It should be pointed out that the CCTV case has not been widely affirmed on the Internet, but instead has met with much suspicion. This is because CCTV, as a state media organization, is invested with government authority. [This raises the question of whether] the core of the case is about media reporting on matters of public interest, or about government authority in a standoff with private interests. More importantly, in many cases concerning government authority and incidents [or matters] of public interest, not even a drop of the spirit of the Sullivan decision is evident. In the April 28 railway disaster, for example, a Web user from Shandong province was detained by police for five days for posting inaccurate information (exaggerating the number of dead).

Limited edition

As China's foreign residents are complaining about visa problems, some Chinese citizens are facing difficulties obtaining the temporary residents permits they need to conduct business in cities where they do not have a hukou, or household registration.

The Beijing News reports today on the case of Mr. Zhong, who recently tried to apply for a temporary residence permit.

His first stop was the police station, which told him to take his forms to the local Migrant Population Management Office. He called the office at 11 am, and was told that he would have to wait until the next day, because the temporary residence permit department had already gone off work. The next day at 9 am, he arrived at the office only to be informed that the maximum 10 permits had already been issued.

Mr. Zhong, who took two vacation days without anything to show for it, complained, "The migrant population is so large, if they only work at a speed of 10 a day, when will it end?"

The newspaper visited the Management Office, located in the Beijing neighborhood of Balizhuang:

Yesterday at around 10 am, no one was lined up outside the Balizhuang Migrant Population Management Office to apply for a temporary residence permit.

One worker said that permit processing had already concluded for the day. The limit of ten permits was set by the local police station; currently there were lots of people who had pre-applied: "I'd estimate that the schedule is full for the next half a month." As for Mr. Zhong's problem, there was nothing they could do.

Yesterday, a police officer with the Gaobeidian station, which is responsible for police services in that area, said that the limit was due to insufficient system hardware. Going over the limit would make it impossible to update the records. If Mr. Zhong needed expedited service, he could fill in the form at the police station itself.

The Chaoyang branch of the Public Security Bureau said that it has never placed limitations on issuing temporary residence permits.

Police computer systems aren't the most technologically sophisticated, so the Gaobeidian station's explanation makes some sense, at least. But in this case, it's the PSB itself that issues notices reminding non-residents that they ought to register, so you'd think that if they want to sign up everyone, they'd be able to handle more than ten records a day without crashing.

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招聘需求

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Torch on the roof of the world

This roundup of the week's sports news is by China Sports Today

• The week in sports got off to a rough start for most people who tried to buy tickets in Phase 3 of Olympic ticketing. The BOCOG ticketing site didn't crash like last time, but seemed somewhat challenged by the traffic spike. And procedures at Bank of China outlets were a bit unusual. Tickets to all Beijing events were declared sold out two days later (full report).

• A doping test confirmed that 11 Greek weightlifters have taken banned substances. The national team coach has resigned and maintains that a Shanghai lab sold him tainted supplements (report).

• The Chinese diving team continues racking up medals at international events this spring. This Discovery Channel video attempts to explain why.

• In November 2006, Australian bank / securities firm Macquarie Group created a basket of Olympic stocks, whose values Macquarie expected to get a boost from the Games. The basket is not doing so well. Many of the 23 stocks in the basket, including Air China and Beijing International Capital Airport Co., are tumbling and still overvalued, according to a Bloomberg article (report).

• From mountain biking at Huangshan to football in Beijing and tennis in Shanghai, there are plenty of reasons to get off the couch this weekend if you want some exercise (report).

• Finally, the Olympic Torch has reached Mainland China, and the flame has already made it to the summit of Everest (report).

Can't touch this

Journalism.sg has published the transcript of an interview with Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister and still serving 'Minister Mentor' of Singapore. Titled 'What China can learn from our handling of Western media', it is a thoughtful piece, introduced thusly:

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew says Beijing can learn from Singapore’s approach:

1. Give access to the Western reporters;

2. Don’t over-react to their negative coverage, just deal with them on their own terms, as businesses with bottom lines to protect;

3. Focus on building your reputation among the world’s decision makers, who will see things differently from the Western media. Over time, Singapore's experience shows, media coverage will get more nuanced and respectful.

Lee does also mention his tendency to sue Western media organizations for libel or apply other commercial pressures when they publish articles he does not like:

So when you write an article with a little sting at the end, which is not true. I claim the right of reply. You have written 5,000 words, I claim 500 words. They refused, and in that case, I will restrict you. I will not block you because you will say I'm afraid of what you said. But I will restrict you and allow the other people, the other subscribers to photostat, fax, and now scan. So now you allow me the right of reply, I get the right of reply, the writer who puts in all these poison barbs no longer appears so smart. You can twist my arm, I'll wring your neck. So what are the facts? So, now we have reached a certain respect for each other.

Neck wringing — that's a metaphor that will appeal to China's media regulators.

And let's hope the Chinese government does not learn their sense of style from Singapore's elder statesman, who has this to say:

News gets out: “We are dull.”

Now, we are not dull, we are quite cool. We're going to have reverse bungee, all-night dining by the river and by the marina, two integrated resorts, Formula One. How do you explain that?

Reverse bungee! How cool is that.

Yesterday Danwei published a summary of an Asian Sentinel article saying that the Olympic torch had been extinguished in Shenzen, apparently in a act of protest.

Long time Danwei commenter Spelunker has this to say about the torch's southern campaign (emphasis added):

This is Spelunker reporting live from Guangzhou. I witnessed the torch relay twice in Guangzhou (Zhongshan Memorial Hall and Beijing Pedestrian Street) and saw local TV coverage of the Shenzhen relay.

Allow me to present the facts:

1. No foreign media are allowed to accompany the torch route in China, as only local Chinese press are allowed in the media vehicles that travel along the torch relay route.
2. The Olympic flame was extinguished 4 times in Guangzhou, and the torch route was changed twice due to overcrowding conditions. The live TV broadcast did briefly show torch bearer #197 as his torch went out, but there was no live broadcast of the torch when similar problems developed elsewhere along the route because TV broadcasts cut away to commentary by studio folks.
3. Local daily newspapers provided adequate explanations on May 8 for the 4 torch extinguishings and 2 minor route detours in Guangzhou.
4. There were no protests of any kind in Guangzhou.

I really doubt the Shenzhen torch extinguishings were due to any type of local protest, instead it is more likely due to overcrowding as was the actual case in Guangzhou.

The police perimeter was changed in front of Zhongshan Memorial Hall. This occured just an hour before the torch relay was due and upset local residents who waited for 4 or 5 hours at this prime viewing location. There was a brief scuffle between police and some feisty elderly Chinese who refused to move, but I did not stay to see the end result of that battle.

At Beijing Pedestrian Street I was able to enjoy a pleasant tug-of-war between police and an enthusiastic crowd that tightly sandwiched the narrow Olympic thoroughfare. This was definitely one of the best venues for getting a close-up view of the torch relay if you don't mind being a sardine for several minutes. I held up a big sign with 4 Chinese characters "You Er Ge Ge" as the torch relay runner and torch attendant brothers jogged by. Many photographers took pictures of me and my sign (I wore my "Lei Feng" T-shirt as well) but I haven't seen myself on TV, in newspapers or on the Internet yet.

Graham Earnshaw was the Daily Telegraph correspondent in Beijing from 1980 to 1984, and he's been looking through his clippings, which seem to prove both that China has changed completely and also that China has stayed exactly the same. This spring and summer, Danwei will be publishing a series of these reports from the past. This is today's resurrected item:

An official Chinese newspaper yesterday published a letter from an irate railway worker complaining that too many advertisements featured attractive women with outstanding figures. Such “titillating illustrations” were very unsuitable, the worker said.

He went on: “One paper carried an advert for a type of cloth material which included a curvaceous woman with flowing hair standing on one side intentionally emphasizing her prominent breasts. If all adverts were like this, the effect on public morals would certainly not be good.”

Advertising returned to China three years ago after two decades of being banned as a bourgeois capitalist practice.

Editor's note:

The Beijing News (新京报) has been running a series of articles about the last 30 years of reform, each one quoting an old People's Daily article, a little like this series of Graham Earnshaw's old pieces.

Yesterday's article quoted a CPPCC member who in 1982 had this to say about the popularity of non revolutionary, non traditional pop music that was enchanting the masses in the early days of reform:

"Now they are playing love songs by Teresa Teng (邓丽君) everywhere. It's not only students learning to sing them, even old ladies are singing them, it's really bad..."

From Zimbabwe news website SW Radio Africa:

Minister claims controversial Chinese arms now in Zimbabwe

[Zimbabwe's] Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga on Sunday claimed that the controversial shipment of arms from China, initially blocked by South Africa, Mozambique and Zambia, was now in Zimbabwe.

Responding to criticism of the shipment during a panel discussion on Iranian sponsored 'Press TV' Matonga is said to have derisively retorted, 'in any case that shipment is already in Zimbabwe.'

Press TV's 'Four Corners' programme hosted a debate between Matonga, Briggs Bomba from Africa Action, Zanu PF apologist George Shire and an unnamed journalist. Bomba spoke to Newsreel Tuesday and expressed his disappointment at how Angola, contrary to its official position, might have helped Mugabe's regime get their hands on the deadly cargo.

The Chinese ship 'An Yue Jiang' was carrying 3 million rounds of ammunition for AK-47's, 1500 rocket propelled grenades and 3000 mortar rounds and tubes. Pressure from trade unions and civil society groups in the SADC region ensured the ship spent weeks failing to get permission to offload. Emerson Mnangagwa, the man in charge of Zimbabwe's terror campaign through the Joint Operations Command, is said to have travelled to Angola and met President Eduardo dos Santos last week, in an effort to have the shipment allowed through.

Angola officially declined to authorise the offloading of the Zimbabwean arms shipment, but no one knows if they kept their word. The picture continues to get to murkier with other reports suggesting the Angolan President's jet, a Falcon 900, was sighted in Zimbabwe Tuesday evening. No further details were available. Malawi's Nyasa Times newspaper added to the speculation by claiming intelligence agents from Malawi had travelled to Angola to help clear the shipment on behalf of the Zimbabwean regime.

The above mentioned Bright Matonga has been in the news for something else recently:

White woman joins eviction mob

In a bizarre twist to the forced removals of Zimbabwe's farmers, a white woman, believed to be British, took part in the eviction of a farm couple this week.

The woman, Anne Matonga, in her early 30s, screamed at Monica Schultz: "We are taking back the land you stole from us!"

Matonga is married to Bright Matonga, 35, a Zimbabwean propagandist. He worked as a sports reporter in London for the BBC but was recently recalled to Zimbabwe at the behest of Information Minister Jonathan Moyo to work for the state-controlled Herald newspaper, then the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation before being put in charge of the national bus company.

Vincent Schultz had been wrongfully arrested as the seizure of his farm had been ruled invalid on a legal technicality. Nevertheless, he was still in prison, pending a bail application, and his wife was alone on the farm on Sunday when the Matongas arrived and began hurling abuse at her.

Current TV has a new video about a city that causes superlatives to spring from journalists' mouths and pens.

As reported by Asia Sentinel, the Olympic torch has apparently been extinguished by local Chinese protesters while making the rounds in Shenzhen earlier today. Despite efforts to find local sources collaborating details of the story, nothing has turned up on the Chinese Internet. Pictures, video, and text all seem to have been effectively harmonized. Asia Sentinel has told Danwei it has and is preparing video footage of the incident for release.

UPDATE:

See the comment by Spelunker below for an eye witness account.

Front Page of the Day is a daily review of the news on the front page of one Chinese newspaper. Beijing newspapers are obtained from newsstands in the CBD; front pages from other cities are found on the web.

The Beijing News
May 8, 2008

China's president Hu Jintao is currently on a state visit to Japan. The visit resumed top-level contacts after a decade long hiatus and is being hailed by the Chinese media as a “warm spring" trip with the implication being that the harsh winter of the two countries' tense relations is now over.

An article on the front page of today's Beijing News reviewed a historical event: In 1984 China invited over 3,000 Japanese people to visit. The article is mainly based on an interview with Jia Di'e (贾棣锷), who was the Youth League International Coordination Department director at the time of the visit. Below is a translated summary of the article.

On November 26, 1983, Hu Yaobang, then president of China made a state visit to Japan. He spoke to more than 4,000 people at the headquarters of NHK TV and first brought up the idea of inviting 3,000 young Japanese people to visit China.

"The Japanese audience was very surprised. They were not sure if they had heard right, and thought the number he mentioned might be 30 or 300. They didn't expect China to take such a big move" said Jia Di'e, "Now in retrospect, China made the right decision. The surprise effect was just what we wanted. It embodied the Chinese people's resolution to build a strong and friendly relationship with the Japanese people."

"We had thought about something even bigger, like 10,000 or 30,000 ... But comrade Hu Yaobang was being very practical, he told us to do research. And we found that it was impossible to accommodate 10,000 or 30,000 foreign visitors"

Though the Japanese government responded positively to Hu's proposal, it was still a huge challenge for China — still relatively closed, and recovering from the economic stagnation of the Cultural Revolution — to receive foreign visitors on such an unprecedented scale: 217 delegations, totaling 3,017 people, including 63 were journalists.

"The most difficult part of receiving the foreign visitors was transportation and accommodation. Beijing didn't have enough buses, so we asked Tianjin to send over some of their buses. There were only few hotels that foreigners could live in, Beijing Hotel, Xinqiao Hotel, Minzu Hotel, that's all. So we had to use the Zhongnanhai State Guest House, and the guest houses of the PLA."

Moreover, there was also a shortage of interpreters, but the organizers finally managed to find more than 300 interpreters from foreign language schools all around the country.

Jia said: "The Japanese government wanted send a policeman with each delegation. We agreed. They wanted the policemen because they were worried that the visitors would be brainwashed."

Hu Jintao meeting Japanese actor Ken Utsui in 1984

"In order to avoid arguments, we talked very little about communism or socialism. We asked for instructions from the top about how to deal with sensitive issues like Anti-Japanese War. We postponed the visit to late September to skip sensitive dates like July 7 [the day of the Marco Polo Bridge incident, marking the beginning of the Anti_Japanese War], and September 18 [the Manchurian Incident when Japanese forces blew up a railway and blamed it on a Chinese warlord]. Comrade Hu Yaobang also said we should not completely avoid history, so we arranged four delegations to visit Nanjing Massacre relics. [The Japanese visitors] responded strongly, saying that now they know more about history." The Japanese also visited Chinese schools, factories, and Zhongnanhai, though "the route was pre-arranged".

"The Japanese had meals at farmers' homes, in factory and school canteens. They didn't have any problems with Chinese food."

The 1984 National Day celebration was the first such celebration after the Cultural Revolution [mass spectacle with a military parade etc.]. The Japanese visitors were also invited to Tian'anmen to view the celebration and the military parade. That night, a dancing party was held for both Chinese and Japanese young people. It lasted until 2 am.

"These Japanese youth didn't say anything bad about us after they went back." said Jia Di'e. Also according to Jia, about one third of the people in the 1984 group of visitors are now heading Japanese-Chinese Friendship Associations at different levels in Japan.

A small reminder—Danwei currently has a number of good job opportunities in media, research, advertising and marketing in both Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou.

• Shanghai: Interbrand Shanghai is seeking a Branding Director
• Suzhou: The that’s group is recruiting for a number of key posts
• Shanghai: Summer 2008 Internships at the US-China Business Council’s Shanghai Office
• Beijing: a boutique research firm is seeking Writers/Reporters in IT and retailing industry
• Beijing: The Economist Group is seeking an Econometrician for the China Forecasting Service
• Beijing: The Economist Group is seeking a Director for the China Forecasting Service
• Beijing: US Embassy is seeking a Commercial Representative
• Beijing: Deputy Director of the Research Councils UK Office in China
• Beijing: Managing Editor wanted

If you want to place a job ad on Danwei, please go to to this page. Go here for all current job listings.

Popular blog host Blogspot is blocked again in China (see this Danwei post for chronology of Blogspot's availability in China).

On the other hand, Google Video seems to be working in China for the first time ever since it's launch. So you can, for example, watch this discussion from 2006 hosted by James Goodale with Rebecca MacKinnon and Timothy Wu titled: Did Google Sell Out in China?

Update: The embedding function still does not work in China. As readers have pointed out by email, Google Video's availability may be a result of Google policies, not the Net Nanny's interference.

The South China Morning Post whose moribund website is behind a paywall has a new section.

Subtitled Your Passport to the Beijing Olympics, it's all about the Games and is all accessible without a subscription.

Below is a review by Linda Jaivin of the recently published English translation of Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem, winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize. The review was first published in The Australian Literary Review, on May 7, 2008, and is republished here with their permission, together with an introduction written for this website by Geremie R. Barmé.

You might also want to listen to a much more positive review of the book from NPR, or read Jonathan Mirsky's review in which he says "Wolf Totem is the best Chinese book I've read for many years and the only really good novel." You can buy the book on Amazon.

Linda Jaivin’s review of Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem is a timely intervention on a subject that has been a hot China topic in the international media. Again, it is one that touches on the issues of non-Han ethnic cultures, this time dealing with a novel the author of which finds succour in what writers like Rae Yang (see her memoir Spider Eaters) and Yuan Weishi (the Zhongshan University historian attacked in early 2006) have called “wolves’ milk” (langnai). That is, the atavistic politics of passion and rhetorical violence fostered by ideologues, media carpet-baggers and the “engineers of human souls” in the guise of supporting righteous patriotic fervour.

Wolves in chic clothing have been around for most of the “open door and reform period”, an era that marks its thirtieth anniversary this year. Indeed, contemporary Chinese cultural producers have been making a meal of borderland themes and peoples to express cutting-edge artistic and ideological views since the 1980s. Some writers and artists have sought in various borderland ethnic Others an invigorating tonic replete with the essence of the masculine, the swarthy and the heroic, one they hope can infuse the peoples of the Central Plains (Zhong Yuan) with greater vigour and militancy (and make them a buck and a name in the process).

This is an Al Jazeera segment on Beijing's new and not particularly effective no smoking rules. And here is a video of Beijing band Carsick Cars singing 'Zhongnanhai' — the name of the capital's favorite brand of cigarettes.

Graham Earnshaw was the Daily Telegraph correspondent in Beijing from 1980 to 1984, and he's been looking through his clippings, which seem to prove both that China has changed completely and also that China has stayed exactly the same. This spring and summer, Danwei will be publishing a series of these reports from the past. This is today's resurrected item:

Author's note:
The following item very much reflects the feel of the early 1980s, when China was hardly open and relationships between foreigners and Chinese were virtually non-existent. The headline, written not by me but by a sub-editor in London, is crude, but general xenophobia was quite strong in those days. China officially had been isolated for so long, accusing the US and Europe of being imperialists and the whole Soviet bloc of being hegemonists. Its only friends until quite recently had been Albania and Yugoslavia.

From today’s much more open perspective, it is interesting to get a feel for Chinese-foreigner relationships all those years ago. Confucius and Chairman Mao between them had left the Chinese people looking at the world in a hierarchical and combative way. But this report indicates much progress in the past 27 years. Racial attitudes have largely softened as Chinese people have gained greater awareness of the world. And while then, just a sports victory could result in aggressive pushing and shoving of foreigners, now even the purposeful official incitement of anti-French sentiment results in no violence, and only a postponement by a few days of a shopping trip.

The xenophobia of China today has come to the fore once more in recent weeks during demonstrations after sports victories and over the vexed question of marriage between foreigners and Chinese people.

For hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, the Chinese automatically considered anyone from outside their country to be a barbarian, and remnants of the extreme racial concept still exists today.

China's successes in the recent women's volleyball championships in Tokyo were the occasion for unprecedented marches by thousands of youths through the streets of Peking and other major Chinese cities.

Some foreigners who mingled with the crowds were roughly jostled and even beaten, and on the day China beat the United States volleyball team, a crowd of several hundred gathered outside the American Embassy to shout "Long Live China."

The demonstrations were mostly innocent fun by young people glad of an excuse to make some noise. But to foreigners who were also in Peking in the late 1960s they brought back terrible memories of Chinese mobs which turned on foreigners without a thought.

The average Chinese has a not-quote subconscious belief in the innate superiority of his race which has been battered but not extinguished by the indignities suffered at the hands of foreigners over the past 200 years.

Ordinary Chinese people still seem to rank the races of the world in their minds, although unlike the old days, they are not so sure about who is number one.

One African student reported being told by a Chinese university intellectual: "We have to be frank. White people are better than us, but we are better than you."

Front Page of the Day is a daily review of the news on the front page of one Chinese newspaper. Beijing newspapers are obtained from newsstands in the CBD; front pages from other cities are found on the web.

Shenyang Evening News
May 7, 2008

Today's Shenyang Evening News ran an editorial on its front page about CCTV defeating a lawsuit in which a towel factory sued the state-owned broadcaster for libel.

The news was first broken by The Beijing Times on May 6 with the headline 'CCTV exempted from apologizing for its untruthful reporting'.

CCTV's Weekly Quality Report is a weekly program that exposes defective and low-quality products. On March 27, 2007, the program reported that towels manufactured by a company in Jinzhou (晋州), Hebei Province, contained cancer-inducing chemicals. According to an official test report released after the broadcast of the program, though the towels were of low-quality and failed to meet the standards, there was no evidence that the towels contained carcinogenic substances.

The towel factory subsequently sued CCTV, claiming that their report had hurt its reputation and caused business losses. They also demanded a public apology. The Beijing First Intermediate Court dismissed the charges, saying that "manufacturers should tolerate sharp criticism from the public and the media."

The Shengyang Evening News editorial celebrated the court's decision as a
victory for supervision of public opinion. It argues that no media can guarantee 100％ accuracy, and it would be impossible for the media to function if no small mistakes are allowed. "The media is not a law enforcement department, therefore could not obtain evidence by force" the article says.

The article also mentions the public's concern that the case may undermine media ethics by giving it more leverage to get away with untruthful reporting.

Beijing Times
May 6, 2008

Another editorial in Beijing Youth Daily compares this case with the 1960 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan case, which extended the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech to libel cases brought by public officials, and reshaped the American libel law. The rationale behind the Supreme Court's judgement was that "debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials." (Justice William J. Brennan Jr.)

The Beijing News also ran an article about the case today. The article argues that in this duel between the media and company, the media side — CCTV — is overwhelmingly more powerful than the other side, which is a small, unknown towel factory. The article says that the result would have been different if the plaintiff was one of the prominent, large state-owned companies, if the defendent was a less influential media organization, or if a local court had presided over the case instead of a Beijing court.

Different from the United States, case law is not in China's law system, which means judges don't need to follow precedents. So even though CCTV won its case, it doesn't mean any other media will be immune from similar charges.

The big question of how much more reporting latitude China's media will get is still far from being settled.