Image: from the photographer

H.S. Liu, or Liu Heung Shing (刘香成) was born in 1951 in Hong Kong. After emigrating to the United States Liu returned to China in 1976 to work as a photojournalist (and bureau chief) for Time magazine, and then for the Associated Press.

Liu was part of a team that took the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for a series of pictures on the attempted coup in the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Communist regime.

Moving recently into the Chinese domestic media realm, Liu has been made Group Editorial Director at Thomas Shao's Modern Media Group (现代传播), one of the biggest independently operated Chinese media companies (for more on the Group, see this interview with Thomas Shao, earlier on Danwei).

H.S. Liu talked to Danwei about bringing international experience to Modern Media, skewed foreign reporting on China, old Beijing, and new directions for Modern Media publications.

What do you think of Modern Media and from where do you see their success?

I’ve known Modern Media Group and what they do for a long time. There is something very unique about Chairman Mr. Thomas Shao, I find him is genuinely passionate about media and in what he does. It is now a leading weekly with more than half-million circulation.

In China, out of the 9,600 plus publications, I’d say that 99.9% are state-owned. Reform began six or eight years back, to separate traditional media, which falls under state affairs, with media that the state has now classified as enterprises.

Modern Media Group stands out as one of the most successful ones. It has been in existence for 15 years, and Modern Weekly itself has been in continuous publication for over a decade.

What will your new role be within the Group and what do you hope to achieve?

I will have a general role at Modern Media. I am delighted to have an opportunity to work with a group of existent magazines that are very successful. In the case of Modern Weekly, which has been running for more than ten years, I hope to help plan the next ten years.

What’s fascinating about Chinese media is that over the last dozen years or so Chinese people have had an insatiable appetite for international content. From how a Western girl dresses to international relations; and to how China interacts with the world community. It’s in this context that China becomes an increasingly more important player.

Being an editor, you need to be mindful of how you continue to translate or edit international content, and how you inform readers on why they should be learning about international news and why it is relevant to China. It should be by the fact that China is part of the puzzle and part of this world.

So I think the publications that we do should grow with the times. The world has changed, China has changed, and readers of the first ten years are changing too: they are gradually becoming more mature and sophisticated, and we will be leading this.

Modern Media magazines such as Modern Weekly have always had a lot of international content. My main role is to help the team find relevance this content has for China and for Chinese readers. The question we will ask is: why does international content matter for Chinese readers? This means we need more analysis and more interviews, talk to more newsmakers and analysts, and see what their take is – is there currency manipulation? What about environmental issues, cost of raw materials, cultural and social trends?

What do you think of Chinese news magazines, for example Sanlian Life Week and China Newsweek?

I think some of it is very good; some of it is very mixed. This is natural, because some of the editors simply don’t have any foreign experience, and some of the editors don’t have second or third languages to suck in all these materials, let it sit and think about what it means for China. I think that kind of global perspective is very, very important.

And Chinese people always cry foul when they read foreign media reportage of China. They immediately feel hurt. Some of it is justified but some of it isn’t, because you can’t expect editors in Paris or London to be equally informed about China. But I think it’s also because we don’t teach history, a full range of history, to the younger generation [in China]. For those reasons I decided to spend more than four years editing China: Portrait of a Country, which is a visual history of China.

When they don’t have the full range of knowledge then it is very easy for Chinese youth to be totally nationalistic, because they don’t understand the context or appreciate the nuances. But how can China claim to be a big nation when the nationalistic youth tend to react one way or another? The role of the media is to provide a platform for people to read in privacy or in leisure, to consult information on their own and to analyze and think about it. And media itself should provide as much information and analysis, which is how future generations can digest information without getting all worked-up.

You’re a photojournalist, and have worked for Time Magazine and AP in China, starting in 1976, the year that Mao died. What are your thoughts about being a photojournalist?

I think whether you’re a photographer or a journalist, you are essentially a storyteller. You tell a story in a single image, or a set of images, or in one article. As storytellers we need platforms. Either these platforms are owned by Time Warner or News Corps or others, it really makes no difference. The challenge has always been “let’s try to get it right”. I think a true story well told will always have an audience.

Photography is a visual language, a very, very powerful instrument. Now the world we live in is saturated with images. To me this doesn’t mean that there are lots and lots of good images, especially with the onslaught of the digital images. We are drowning by images, but a good image will always stand apart against the crowd of monotonous recording of things and objects.

What do you think it takes to be a good photographer?

I’ve never been one to walk around with cameras. I’m a photographer who dislikes cameras intensely. I never stop looking with my eyes [to look for a good image].

When you go into Afghanistan and the wars, you go everywhere with your camera, but it don’t stop you from looking and looking, again and again. It doesn’t stop you from gelling with the subjects in war or in peace.

Being a China veteran, what do you think about the change in the infrastructure and architecture of Beijing compared to decades ago?

I go home everyday, and I pass by the hutongs and walk my dogs to the Forbidden City moat. I used to see people ice-skating there, and now they’re all gone… but change is good.

Hutongs and courtyards are a good example. In most of the courtyards the people who live in pingfangs (single-story buildings) want to get out because of the sanitary conditions, because the water pressure is very low, the electricity is bad, and there’s no heating. Nostalgia is good but it makes me wary when people talk about protecting the antiquity of houses and neighborhoods: people who yell the loudest are not the people who have lived there.

One of the most pressing issues of Chinese media today is freedom of press. What’s your opinion on the development of media freedoms in China?

Concerning this I usually use one illustration; to friends who are not from China I use the imagery of the mandarin ducks in Beihai Park. They are very calm and regal on the surface but underneath the water the paddling is frantic – that’s very much China. When we talk about freedom of press one has to talk about what it was like, ten years ago, twenty years and thirty years ago, then no one would have difficulty reaching a conclusion. Whether it’s two steps forwards or one step back is not really the point, because the general trajectory is more important. Is it going forwards? Yes it is.

When I first came here there were all these rules. We wanted to go to Sichuan but had to apply to the Bureau of Foreign Affairs, but now when journalists come they just go there and that’s huge. If you report on any country I think time will give you the depth.

For certain things you just need time to absorb. You may advocate reform but you need to understand how the Chinese do it rather than say any reform is good.

You also have to know the players in the stories. The players act a certain way because they want to get promoted, and all governments want to stay on the conservative side rather than rock the boat.

What are the challenges in foreign media reporting now?

The last U.S. Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson was told by the Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Qishan, at the Strategic Economic Dialogue, something along the lines of “in our interest your investment will be properly safeguarded”. The next day headlines read “China Tells U.S. to Get Economy in Order”.

Wen Jiabao went to the Davos World Economic Forum, and a similar occurrence: the headlines read: “Chinese Premier Blames Recession on U.S. Actions”. I don’t know what those editors and copywriters are telling us. It’s like, you can park your trillion dollars here but you have no right to say anything. Foreign investors in China frequently urges the government to have better government regulations to protect their investment.

Recently GAPP announced that all for-profit publicly-owned media outlets may go private in 2010. Given your figure that 99.9 per cent of Chinese media is state-owned, or at least part state-owned, what do you think this would mean for the domestic media industry?

I understand that this is a very important year for China: the 60th anniversary for the founding of the People's Republic of China, and the 20th of anniversary for June 4th. So I don’t expect any changes. I do believe that when and if the Chinese government would sanction the private ownership of the publishing license, then the Chinese media industry will truly take off impressively. It is only when the publishing license, either modified, or regulated on a basis which is different than today’s, will the private investments pour into publishing because the investment will then be protected by laws. For China, as leaders constantly proclaims the need for a cultural renaissance, or the need to develop its “soft power”, which is commensurate with a country the size of China, it is extremely essential that the government slowly encourages the development of a robust media industry and that people can discuss their views and opinions either on air or in print, but do so in a calm manner, instead of being immersed in slogans.