Forty years.

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Feast your spherical peeps on a tightly summarized saga of four decades of delicious China watching, courtesy of retired UCLA scholar and eminent US Sinologist Richard Baum.

That’s essentially what you’re getting in this 296pp cut of around-the-horn PRC goodness, China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom. Oh yes!

For the writer, it’s a veritable walk down memory lane which began right about the end of the chaotic Cult Rev years. Carrying through to Deng’s Reform and Opening years, it continued into the rip-roaring goodness of the Special Economic Zones/SEZ era.

Baum witnessed the Xidan Democracy Wall protests of the late ’70s, the acorn-collecting, squirrel-like saving eighties, the craven PLA turkey shoot on that enormous square in front of the ochre-colored Imperial complex bearing the portrait of that revolutionary dude (the same dude on the book cover above — and no, I’m not taking any sort of position whatsoever on the law-enforcing slaughter of hundreds of unarmed civilians), and Deng’s famous 1992 Southern Tour.

He wraps things up with China’s “in the wilderness” 1990s, its 2001 WTO ascension, the nation’s mid-naughts economic consolidations, the beginning of the Hu Jintao era, the SARS epidemic, the Sanlu milk scandal, the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the Tibetan and Uighur riots of the same year, the glorious Olympic Games (China’s neo-adolescent “coming out party”), all the way up to the bright harmonious koombayah future — hexie shehui-style.

Baum, moderator of the famous Chinapol listserv, opted to compile a decidedly non-scholarly work of non-fiction this time ’round tailor-made for the Zhongguotong (China Hand) and layman alike. What an impressive piece of work indeed! If Baum doesn’t publish again for the rest of his academic career, China Watcher will have been a fitting cap on a marvelous career dash. Still, if he’s not into the whole swan song thing, rest assured the author can publish again and I’ll be right back here with yet another snappy review.

The book is organized chronologically and reads for the most part like an autobiography.

While not clinging rigidly to the autobio genre nor being doctrinaire about time lines and similar nonsense, Baum leapfrogs across history, embellishing on lesser-known phases of China’s magical development story for the benefit of readers who aren’t as well-versed in Sinology, writ large .

While you’ll likely have heard of the bulk of events Baum faithfully transcribes, I was grateful for his “five sides of the coin” elaboration on stuff that’s now become lore in the Western contemporary historical canon. Examples? The aftermath of the Shanghai Communique of 1972, the on-again, off-again China-Taiwan kerfuffle, not to mention the months, weeks, and days leading up to that human cull which took place in that square in a certain northern capital on that certain summer day back in 1990 less one year. ;-)

What Baum does excellently in China Watcher is supply a wide-angle lens treatment to the major events of the past four decades, the sorts of things only a person who was actually on the ground at the time can write about credibly. Imagine getting the fly-on-the-wall play-by-play half-an-hour before the recording of the Zapruder film, and you’ll readily realize what I mean.

Rather than replicate Angilee Shah‘s stellar June 2010 review at China Beat, I thought I’d do another one of my famous chapter-by-chapter breakdowns for what’s quickly becoming a twenty-ten must-read.

CHAPTER LISTING:

1) The Occidental Tourist: Nice play on words here about the famous 1988 film. Baum describes in this chapter how he actually “fell” into China studies, rather than actively pursuing career Sinology. It all began as a dare to prove to his father wrong that the Chairman wasn’t anything like Stalin, that Mao was up to something better with his new movement. Like a good movie script, this was the inciting incident of Baum’s fateful meeting with noted UC Berkley China experts Bob Scalapino and Chalmers Johnson. Baum would never look back…

2) A Dissertation Is Not a Dinner Party: In 1966, Baum boarded a trans-Pacific flight with his then-wife Carolyn and infant son Matthew in tow, landing on the rainswept island of Taiwan, or what was then referred to as the Republic of China/ROC. As part of his dissertational studies, Baum was obliged to undergo intensive Mandarin training in Taipei as he boned up on his research methodologies. Basically, his writ was to glean as much information as possible about the PRC in the days before free visits to China were restricted only to “friends of China.” Lots of Hong Kong stuff features in this chapter. Baum got close to the People’s Republic, but didn’t get the PRC cigar. Peering over into the fishing village of Shumchun (then-Shenzhen), he longed to see the Chinese up close and personal though it wasn’t to be. For those keen on reading what Taiwan was like under dictatorship (and a KMT/GMD intelligence dragnet), this is your chapter!

3) Confessions of a Peking Tom: A key chapter colored by the backdrop of the higher-level political machinations which took place at the chaotic end of the Mao era. China opens itself to the world with the official exchange of diplomats between the US and China. The Kissinger-Nixon-Mao confabs, the changing of the Zhongnanhai guard, the trial of the Gang of Four (boo!), the Hua/Deng rivalry (yay!), and finally, Baum’s heartfelt admission about his bitter academic rivalries fomented around this time that would dog him for the rest of his academic career. We track with Baum as his renown swells within “China watching” circles, and he peppers us for the first time with his limerick-spinning abilities that were used like poison-tipped projectiles to offend his most stalwart detractors back in the day. Funny!

4) Through the Looking Glass: Baum enters China for the first time, crossing over the Friendship Bridge (HK’s Lowu crossing) in May 1975 along with a delegation of “95 of the world’s fastest, strongest athletes.” Just like that, he was suddenly inside. The delegation visited three large Chinese cities: Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing during the competitions, and it was great to read what those places looked and sounded like back in the late seventies. Communist Party (CCP) political machinations reverberate behind-the-scenes as Baum visits various scenes of past Chinese Cult Rev crimes. There are banquets, social customs, and Maoist political doggerel galore!

5) Democracy Deferred: The death of Mao. The rise of Hua, then Deng. China closes the books on 1966-1976′s Cultural Revolution. The Xidan (Democracy) wall. Democracy posters and placards. Civil unrest. Baum’s second and third trips to China, this time as a full-fledged accredited academic. The arrest of democracy advocates Wei Jingsheng and Fu Yuehua, foreshadowing the more brutal clampdowns that are to come a decade later on that large square at the center of Beijing where students and academics went on long hunger strikes and then built this tall statue thingy to commemorate a certain non-existent aspirational Chinese political ideology and then “taken away.” You know the place I’m talking about, right?

6) Capitalism With Chinese Characteristics: From ’84 to the late 1990s, Baum lectured aboard a Chinese cruise ship that would ply the country’s eastern seaboard. He was in China often to witness first-hand its workforce’s rapid evolution from a gaggle of faceless employees at state-owned factories (SOEs) to the nascent getihu entrepreneurs. Baum tells of the rabble-rousing CCP reformers Fang Lizhi and Hu Yaobang, and the CCP’s desire to avoid a catastrophic meltdown as had been steadily affecting the USSR. Then…the early days of those fateful big square demonstrations by Chinese students during that year’s spring. You know what I’m talking about, right?

7) The Road to Tiananmen: In February 1989, Baum is hastily flown to Camp David along with several prominent US Sinologists to debrief then-President Bush (I) about the latter’s upcoming China visit. He’s asked about the wisdom of inviting dissident Fang Lizhi to the US Embassy’s sponsored banquet. Baum vociferously advises against it — Fang’s a marked man, he tells the President’s handlers. But to no avail. The White House invites Fang anyways, but he’s prevented from attending the dinner by the Sinostapo. Later in May of that year, Chinese student protests commence in earnest in the Square, heralding worse things to come. Soviet Premier Mihail Gorbachev‘s visit to Beijing is a pretext for students to clamor for greater political freedoms. The poop is almost ready to hit the Chinese fan. D’oh!

8) After the Deluge: The human cull happens. Fish in a barrel. Blood everywhere. International censure. Hell breaks loose in the PRC. Baum is bravely back in China by August 1989 and the country is under total dissident lockdown. Baum-er can’t get an honest word in edgewise about the spring’s events nor from any of the Chinese academics or CCP members who agree to meet him. They feel compelled to senselessly blather the government line, doing so for the “benefit” of their prominent foreign academic guest. It frustrates him, especially the faux-exhibits to the glory of the PLA he’s taken to during this trip. Excellent p152 breakdown of the various stages of Chinese “friendship or enmity” (friend, friendly personage/youhao renshi, “those who really love China but know all the vices of Chinese communism/not easily fooled,” “those people who love China but hate Chinese communism,” and lastly, “those who either didn’t know or didn’t care much about China”).

9) China Rising: Explosive growth of the Chinese economy in the wake of the month after May on the day after the 3rd, er…Incident (wink, wink). The fall of Soviet and Eastern European “Communism” for all-time. The Velvet Revolution and the bloodless handover of power in in the Eastern Bloc nations. China makes a Faustian bargain with its citizens: we continue to pump through strong economic growth and a life of wealth and privilege for you and your families, but you leave the governing and statesmanship to crooked us. The handover of British HK to China in 1997. Former HK Governor Chris Patten flipping the bird to Beijing. The NATO/US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, 1990. W.’s first Presidential term, and what that suddenly means for Sino-US relations.

10) God in the Machine: The rapidly improving state of the Chinese telecommunication network — especially mobile — and the origins of the Great Firewall of China. Pernicious Internet censorship and the more than 100,000 cops who monitor the Chinese internet daily. Forbidden search phrases, taboo web pages, and restricted foreign sites. Jing Jing and Cha Cha reminding Chinese netizens that certain material is potentially objectionable. The origins of Richard Baum’s Chinapol news group, with more than 900 subscribers in twenty-five countries throughout the Americans, Europe, Asia, and Australasia (and I quote from p178: 397 scholars, 262 journalists, 98 NGO and think tank analysts, 96 diplomats and government analysts, and a scattering of independent consultants, international lawyers, and others). Internet activism, Chinese-style!

11) The Wild, Wild West: In July 2001, Baum casts off for his first trip to Western China. He meets up with Kevin Stuart, who teaches English to a group of upwardly-mobile Tibetans out of his Xining, Qinghai apartment. Stuart is organizing a school for local kids who are game to improve their English speaking skills. Baum returns the following July 2002 “to visit five western Chinese provinces by air, train, bus, boat, taxi, and on foot,” toting along eight UCLA undergraduates, three graduate students, plus three faculty members to man the school in Xining where Stuart has set up shop. Baum witnesses first-hand China’s Great Western Development and how slow the process has been taking to get western Chinese incomes to rise to the level of those in its eastern cities. He’s warmly welcomed by the various Tibetan communities he meets along the way and is dismayed to witness how condescending the Han majority — specifically Beijing — is with its Naxi, Tibetan, and Mangghuer minorities, likening them to “little children needing the guidance of their Han parent.” The first rumblings of the riots which will soon rock Tibet and Xinjiang throughout most of 2008.

12) Beijing Revisited: Baum is back in Beijing during the fall of 2005 to collaborate in the establishment and running of the Joint Center for International Studies (JCIS) at Beijing’s Beida (Peking University) along with Professor Jing Qingguo. He inspires his Chinese students to read material that challenges the CCP line and inspires several of his students — which Baum discovers years later — to think divergently about the events that transpired at the end of the previous century. Baum also witnesses the massive changes which have taken place in Beijing since his last visit during the mid-’90s: the construction boom, the astronomical price of real estate, the hazardous pollution and atrocious air quality, and the manner in which the Party deals with annoying citizens standing in the way of its bold economic plans. The construction campaign for the 2008 Beijing Olympics is now in full swing.

13) China Watching, Then and Now: Admittedly, this was the most boring chapter of Baum’s entire work. Baum goes over the history of “China watching” as a career activity, recalling the centers where China watchers once reviewed the best material on offer about the PRC before free travel to China commenced in the 1970s. He talks about how some former hardcore Maoist ideologues have now recanted their ostensibly erroneous ways and the ramifications it has had for their academic careers and lives. Baum also complains about the current crop of China watching recruits, how they differ from his day and why. He maintains an undecided opinion about the state of contemporary Sinology. You decide.

14) The Gini in the Jar: This penultimate chapter was, conversely, the most interesting of the entire book. In it, Baum discusses the financial and societal costs of China’s sudden explosive growth during Reform and Opening, and selects Shenzhen as a ready example of what he means. Baum also reviews the state of you know what kind of rights legislation in China, and about the legacy of the human cull in that Square from a couple of decades back — you know which one I’m talking about. Bolstering his argument are a range of different statistics which point to the storm clouds gathering on the PRC’s horizon, and what could occur if the economy suddenly tanks and Beijing can no longer fulfill its promises to constituents about their collective future security. Will the whole edifice come crashing down? Will there be massive civil unrest? Baum’s views are worth a read.

15) Loose Ends: Anything which somehow wasn’t resolved in any the previous chapters is dealt with — just as the chapter’s name indicates — here. In case you were wondering what befell some of his colleagues, comrades, and fellow academics over the intervening years, Baum hammers through the list of notable personages we’d read about in previous sections, tying things up nicely. There was the divorce with Carolyn, the arrival of his grandchildren, and his future prospects.

The book’s final paragraph is a fitting bookend to this exquisite chronicle. I’ll quote it here in its entirety in closing (p291):

Blessed with an inquisitive nature, outstanding role models, rich opportunities, and abundant good fortune, as a young man I became powerfully drawn to the lure of contemporary China. Almost from my first classroom encounter with Arthur Steiner, China has been my passion, my calling, my own personal Shangri-la and Chimera rolled into one. Although three decades of economic reform and global engagement have made China’s political and social reality far more accessible — and far less bizarre — then they were in Mao’s time, the People’s Republic remains for me a profound puzzle. Ever changing, ever fascinating, and ever frustrating, it compels my attention even as it stubbornly defies comprehension. I cannot look away.

So what do you say? Will you be acquiring your copy of China Watcher today?

(The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers, by Richard McGregor, 273pp)

It’s depressing to realize how 273 tiny pages can raise the ire of the humongous Chinese Communist Party and kick up such a colossal domestic fuss, yet veteran journalist Richard McGregor‘s latest work of investigative prose succeeded in doing exactly that.

Going deep behind Zhongnanhai “enemy lines” in a way few foreign scribblers or Zhongguotong — those cliched “Old China Hands” — would ever dare to (on fear of reprisals from PRC authorities), McGregor serves up a red hot zinger of an indictment on the inner-workings of China’s Big Red Machine, the party tugging the levers of power inside the authoritarian capitalist country.

The book is the work of more than a decade of silent toil and research by the relentless Australian, a journalist who traveled to and fro between the PRC, Hong Kong, and his native Land of Oz, with family in tow, as he compiled interview after painstaking off-the-record interview for this comprehensive tell-all.

To be sure, The Party‘s already been banned across China; yet, then again, we fully expected it would be and, come to think of it, doesn’t it kind of add to its cachet in a very Zhao Ziyang-esque sort of way (let us know in the comments below!).

What kind of illicit treasures can be found inside this latest oeuvre of CCP criticism, you ask? What in tarnation is so taboo, you want to know? I mean, what exactly is the Central Committee so goshdarn afraid of?

All good starting questions…

McGregor — like other so-called “China experts” — knows several of the answers. All of this tracks back to that “sum of all fears” for the Chinese Communist Party: the fear of losing total control of the state apparatus and helplessly witnessing as the nation-state reverts back into the pre-revolutionary Armageddon-like times which reigned supreme during Chiang’s rule.

The CCP, oddly enough, permits practically anything and everything that doesn’t directly clash with its interests or harm its preeminent position within Chinese society.

This is the reason why, for instance, visitors to China can observe such things as LGBT bars in the ‘jing, yet no organized national gay pride parade exists for China. This is also the reason why Chinese citizens are legally permitted to freely practice their chosen form of religion…provided they link up with one of China’s wholly (holy?) state-sponsored places of worship, be it a church, a mosque, or a Buddhist shrine. Say you’re a Roman Catholic? No problemo, provided you don’t recognize the Pontiff as your spiritual shogun with the lone direct hookup to the Man Upstairs. A proud and practicing Muslim? Cool beans, so long as you don’t buy into the drivel Rebiya Khadeer has been popularizing in the Western mass media. And, oh yeah, you can’t be a member of that group with its first initial before the letter “G.”

The basic “silent agreement” between the State and these various religious acolytes is that all must avoid demonstrating for greater faith-based openness in that Big Square which sprawls out in front of the Forbidden City — yeah, that one. Or else!

Crazy Eights:

McGregor unfurls his argument in eight exquisite chapters. He deems these to be the eight key areas in which the CCP’s influence pervades Chinese society. In order:

1. The CCP’s relationship towards the Chinese State.
2. The CCP’s capitalist leanings in the wake of the Deng-era (aka, “China Inc.”).
3. The CCP’s iron-fisted control of its personnel files.
4. The CCP’s relationship towards the People Liberation Army (PLA).
5. The CCP’s total dominance by “The (notorious) Shanghai Gang.”
6. The CCP’s relationship with towns and regions far away from Beijing.
7. The CCP’s capitalist shell surrounding its so-called “socialist” core.
8. Tombstone:  The book which revealed the true death toll from Mao’s Great Leap Forward (>30 million citizens).

Salient Points:

Rather than supply a detailed breakdown of all eight chapters — thereby ruining the fun for you, dear reader, as you track down your illicit copy of The Party — why don’t I summarize what you can expect to find in each, thereby whetting your chops for the bigger feast to come?

1. The CCP’s relationship towards the Chinese State: Nothing that happens in China occurs without the CCP’s blessing. Any organization, body, association, business, and/or any dealing with any foreign power — either in the Southeast Asian region or internationally — always occurs via the CCP’s direct intervention. Party membership is coveted by business types as it affords them access and needed connections. The Party bills itself as the preeminent force preventing China from teetering back into Century of Humiliation-like anarchy. Like an octopus, and in emulation of Lenin’s dictates about the Communist Party of the Soviet Union being everywhere at all times, the CCP penetrates every facet of Chinese society.
2. The CCP’s capitalist leanings in the wake of the Deng-era (aka, “China Inc.”): Being accepted into the CCP’s ranks is no mere ideological progression. Rather, it’s a step up the ladder of corporate and commercial success in China. Former State-owned enterprises that were gradually privatized are still run by a silent cabal of Party loyalists who duly take their instructions from on high in Beijing, despite any decisions these firms’ various boards of directors or CEOs might make regarding the strategic direction of the company they preside over. The Party always has final say. And a company director can always be overruled by the most senior Party member on the board. CEOs carrying membership also receive the coveted “red hotline” in their offices, the direct line from Beijing. Their phone numbers are so exclusive, that they’re limited to just four digits. And when that red box rings, you better pick up.
3. The CCP’s iron-fisted control of its personnel files: Being in total command of information flows is also a key CCP characteristic: all the better to avoid unexpected media leaks or to parties with an aim to toppling the CCP’s legitimacy via a coup. Personnel files are fiercely guarded in Beijing-area buildings that don’t even carry distinctive visitor-friendly markings on the outside. The merits and demerits of its several thousand members — hand-written on paper cards — still remains one of the nation’s most fiercely guarded secrets. The Party uses these cards to award concessions, favors, or privileges or to dole out punishment to its adherents and members.
4. The CCP’s relationship towards the People Liberation Army (PLA): The PLA exists solely to safeguard the Party, not the Chinese people and neither the integrity of the Chinese state. Believe me when I tell you these various strapping youths are expressly recruited for their stature and capacity to intimidate. I witnessed with my own eyes how these Tiananmen Guards strike fear into thousands of onlookers because at whose behest they serve (i.e. the Party’s). The PLA remains the Party’s vanguard force, tasked with protecting the Party from all threats both from within and from without.
5. The CCP’s total dominance by “The (notorious) Shanghai Gang:” Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin was the exemplar of the might of Shanghai politics in the Communist Party’s upper ranks. Once he become President back in October 1992, Jiang moved quickly to entrench Shanghai’s position amongst the capital’s power elites. Shanghai went from being the bastard child of the new People’s Republic — the city most despised by the Communist Party for all it represented during the interwar period — to a thriving, thoroughly-modern colossus. It’s no mere coincidence that Shanghai and its gorgeous Bund views are the most recognizable thing about China outside of the Forbidden City and the Great Wall.
6. The CCP’s relationship with towns and regions far away from Beijing: The infamous Sanlu (“Three Deers”) melamine scandal, in which a form of plastic was added in lieu of protein to bolster the consistency of this company’s milk is a recent example of this. Regional Party members seek to leverage their power within rural Party fiefdoms strictly for gain. It’s what one anonymous Chinese blogger called the “black-collar class: their cars are black. Their income is hidden. Their life is hidden. Their work is hidden. Everything about them is hidden, like a man wearing black, standing in the black of the night.” A ranking compiled by most popular Chinese portal sina.com of the numbers of people seeking information about particular government jobs revealed that “…of the top ten government bodies which received the most expressions of interest for positions, eight were provincial tax bureaux, topped by Guangdong, all of them along the prosperous coast; and two were customs bureaux of Shanghai and Shenzhen. The bottom ten which attracted the least interest, were all provincial statistics bureaux.” With Beijing so far from the regions, who notices when things go awry until it’s too late?
7. The CCP’s capitalist shell surrounding its so-called “socialist” core: The Party in 2010 isn’t the same Party of Mao. In fact, today’s CCP bears little resemblance to the revolutionary mass organization which won the hearts of WWII-weary Chinese citizens back in the late 1940s. This is a more business-oriented party. Fully corrupt. Swayed by profit. Droning on fulsomely about its socialist roots and leanings, meanwhile it erects ever-larger, ever more luxurious, and ever-megalomaniacal infrastructure projects across the breadth of China. Now that the government is flush with cash, it’s begun spending on the population: roads and hospitals, for instance, yet this is a relatively recent phenomenon.
8. Tombstone:  The book which revealed the true death toll from Mao’s Great Leap Forward (>30 million citizens): Tombstone: Yang Jisheng‘s account of the true death toll from the Great Leap Forward. A fitting end for The Party because of how it handily summarizes the main themes of the previous chapters: the CCP’s rigid control of information as it forged data about the Great Leap. How the regions were quick to avail themselves of their distance from Beijing to falsely report only information Beijing wanted to hear. How the Party sought to silence those who has the power to knock it off its pedestal. Yet this intrepid Xinhua journalist — yes, an insider! — devoted fifteen years of his life to meticulously notate over one thousand pages of stats from regional bureaus as the core material for his book. McGregor cites the (only Hong Kong, for now) publication of Tombstone as an example of how the Party appears to be morphing over time. Yang’s heretical work would have surely been destroyed — with Yang himself likely imprisoned or killed by the state — more twenty years ago. Does this seemingly permissive act hold out future promise for the Chinese Communist Party? McGregor appears to want his readers to decide.

Should You Buy This Book?

Yes! Just don’t get arrested buying it. There’s enough incendiary information contained within its pages to fully indict the Party for its misdeeds, sundry corruptions, and other flagrant recent abuses of power. Short of a few random hardcover copies flitting around Beijing-area indie bookshops, don’t expect to find this on Chinese bookshelves — either in its original English or in translation — anytime soon.

For any aspiring China Hand, amateur Sinologist, or Sinophile, The Party makes for deeply engaging fare.

But for all you vets out there, this book will only serve to reinforce the message you already know that the CCP isn’t a object to be trifled with.

You see, unlike us bloggers who are more commentators than journalists, Ms. Branigan has the benefit of running around to the scenes of where the news actually happened, observing and interviewing the people involved. She does this professionally, which is something few of us bloggers can boast. In the hierarchy of first-hand, second-hand, third-hand observations and information, she’s often at least one level ahead of us all. While we can read their work whenever we want, we don’t always get to meet them in person, and get to know them as a person.

Emerging from the Nanjing Xi Lu Line 2 Metro station, I found Tania waiting at the No. 1 exit, having just purchased three books from a nearby carpet vendor. We shook hands as she commented about Beijing being more difficult to find people selling books off the streets (outside “Sanlitun expat world”) and I expressed surprise. Tania was shorter than I imagined as we rounded the corner onto the redeveloped end of Wujiang Lu and headed straight for the nearest coffee shop, Costa Coffee, to fulfill our plans for “meeting for coffee.” We ended up ordering two Mango-Passionfruit slushies (er, blended drinks).

So much for coffee, eh? I probably could’ve used it too, since I was still feeling a bit out of sorts from a rough night before (old friend in town). This “out of sorts”  also served to make me self-conscious for the rest of our conversation that afternoon as, in retrospect, I largely stuttered like a confused Hugh Grant throughout the entire meeting, ending every other thought coming out of my mouth with “but…yeah.”

Tania, of course, was a class-act, but I’m willing to entertain the notion that it’s just the British accent. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed sharing and hearing her insights on a wide variety of subjects ranging from the recent Urumqi riots to pop music to journalism to interracial “relationships” in China, amongst other things.  I won’t regale you with how Tania got her start in journalism by reviewing pop music (oops, just did) or our discussion about interracial power dynamics, but I can share one interesting insight into the recent Urumqi riots I hadn’t previously thought of and to which I must credit Tania:

Early on in our conversations, Tania explained that she reads CNR and reached out to me just to hang out (because I’m a cool guy and all). As she said this, she also told me how she thought I went easy on the Huffington Post article I recently reviewed, not quite taking Alexander Davenport to task as I should have. We agreed on the points that Davenport brought up as being relevant, but she suggested another angle neither Davenport nor I had considered:

Lhasa got more sustained coverage than Urumqi because…

1. There was more access to Urumqi than Lhasa last year. Journalists this time around were able to go in and talk to the people involved themselves, to learn more about what the Uighurs and Han and the government thought of the situation.
2. Likewise, more information came out of Urumqi more quickly in the first few days than in Lhasa. Was there more coverage of Urumqi in the first few days than there was of Tibet in its first few days? This then is about distribution of media coverage over time.
3. Related to the above, there were subsequent civil disturbances and rioting outside and after Lhasa last year. Did did media coverage for Lhasa seem “more” just because journalists kept revisiting it each time these things happened that didn’t for Urumqi?

I think these are good, realistic contributing explanations to the apparent disparity in Western media coverage that Tania raised to help us better understand what happened and why, specifically because they also don’t boil down to simple Western bias. To be fair to Davenport, he does acknowledge these points when he wrote that “China has become much more sophisticated in its engagement of the press since Lhasa”. However, it is clear that Davenport’s piece set out to highlight Western biases as they related to the coverage and not more mundane explanations as Tania offered above.

Tania has been in China for over a year now, usually based in Beijing, and she plans on being here for at least a few more years, relishing in the journalism she is able to do here, the breadth of stories she’s able to report and share. Much of her work specific to China, along with that of her photographer cohort Dan Chung, can be found in The Guardian’s “China at the crossroads” series, featured in both English and Chinese.

Read and watch more of Tania Branigan’s work at The Guardian »