On the road with China’s Foreign Ministry
By Mary Kay Magistad ⋅ August 19, 2010
Follow along with Mary Kay Magistad’s special dispatches on her trip to the Uighur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, in China’s far west and the historically ethnic Tibetan province of Qinghai.
It used to be in China that the only way foreign correspondents could legally travel in the provinces was with government minders – or, if you will, facilitators. As time went on, China became more open, and more and more foreign correspondents bent or flouted the rules, the rules eventually changed. Since January 2007, foreign journalists have officially been allowed to go (almost) anywhere in China, and talk to anyone who’s willing to be interviewed. Almost anywhere – except Tibet. And local areas that make up their own rules – like, certain parts of Sichuan after the 2008 earthquake, or the southern Xinjiang city of Kashgar, or many places that have just put down a demonstration.
Still, when the rules on the books say you can go somewhere to report on your own, why would you, as a foreign correspondent, choose to go on a trip organized by the Foreign Ministry? My answer – it not only gives you access to people and places that would sometimes not be easy to visit on your own, it can also provide vivid insights into both how the Chinese government is dealing with a particular thorny issue, and the image it would like to project to the outside world about it – not always the same thing.
Case in point: the trip I’m on this week to the Uighur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, in China’s far west and, starting tomorrow, the historically ethnic Tibetan province of Qinghai. What do these two places have in common? The takeaway message of the trip is supposed to be that both are benefitting from the central government’s generous spending to reduce poverty, improve infrastructure and jump-start the local economies into new growth engines. Both, we’re told, are places where people of all ethnicities work together and deeply appreciate the help of the Communist Party.
Of course, there’s another part of the story. And that is that both Uighurs, who are Turkic Muslims, and Tibetans, contest the Han Chinese narrative – that the land that is now Xinjiang and Tibet (and ethnic Tibetan areas) were always part of China, that Uighurs and Tibetans have always been Chinese. They argue that they have their own language and culture, and had their own independent countries – with only intermittent occupation by Chinese forces until the last imperial dynasty, the Qing, which was really Manchu rather than Chinese anyway – and then, independence again until the Communists took power in 1949.
Since then, dueling narratives have been told. From the Chinese government – a story of courageous and patriotic settlers, enduring hardship to tame the wild western frontier. From the Uighurs and Tibetans – an invasion by Han Chinese troops and then waves of Han Chinese migrants, taking land, resources and jobs away from the local people, forcing (under Mao) or coercing (more recently) them to learn Mandarin, give up their old ways and assimilate into the dominant (Han) culture.
And yet – even many of those who do learn the language and accept current realities find these days they’re still often treated with suspicion. Hotels in Beijing often turn them away. At home, in Xinjiang, companies have been known to add lines to their “help wanted” signs that say, basically, “Uighurs need not apply.”
On this trip, I asked the manager of a huge cotton farm managed by the Production & Construction Corps – which started as a sort of para-military “tame the wild frontier” unit – how many of the thousands of workers on the farm are Uighurs. Less than one percent, he replied. And why?, I asked. Because, he said, Uighurs aren’t used to doing this kind of work, and anyway, we have enough people here. We don’t need outsiders. He was polite throughout – but the underlying tone of incredulity struck me as what you’d have gotten if you’d asked an American pioneer in the 19th century why he wasn’t getting more Native Americans to help him build his log cabin and plant his crops.
The two realities live side by side here – Han pride at the taming and development of the wild West, Uighur and Tibetan resentment about what was theirs being taken from them, with considerable loss of life, freedom and dignity along the way. Over the past couple of years, that resentment has erupted in violence – in Tibet, and ethnic Tibetan areas of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces (which were all part of the historic Tibetan kingdom), in the Spring of 2008, in Xinjiang in July last year. Crackdowns have ensued in both places since, with Tibetans and Uighurs getting stiff prison sentences even for posting details online or talking publicly about the crackdown. In one case, a Uighur journalist got a sentence of 15 years for talking to a foreign journalist.
The Chinese government was stung by the foreign outcry over both crackdowns. It cried bias and nefarious intent. China’s state-run television, just after the Tibetan riots, verbally attacked foreign journalists for reports that included the Tibetan point of view. The names, phone numbers and addresses of some foreign journalists were even leaked online – and several got death threats as a result. That didn’t exactly help China’s image, and the government seems to have learned from the experience. Last year, the Xinjiang government won points by allowing foreign journalists in to report freely in the capital of Urumqi (though, not in the southern, mostly Uighur, city of Kashgar, where several were held under hotel arrest and then put on planes out of town).
This week’s trip is yet another part of the government’s effort to improve its international image, to show “the real situation” in previously restive areas to foreign journalists, and thus the world. But old habits die hard here when it comes to pulling together this kind of trip for foreign journalists, sometimes to comic effect. More on that in my next dispatch.
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On the Road with the Chinese Foreign Ministry: Anatomy of an Explosive
By Mary Kay Magistad ⋅ August 20, 2010
Follow along with Mary Kay Magistad’s special dispatches on her trip to the Uighur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, in China’s far west and the largely ethnic Tibetan province of Qinghai. Part 2
Sometimes, how a story is told can tell you almost as much as the story itself.
So it was with an explosion that went off at 10:30am on Thursday, August 19, in the town of Aksu, in China’s far western region of Xinjiang, about 400 miles southwest of the capital Urumqi.
Context is everything, here. Xinjiang has for centuries been home to the Turkic Muslim ethnic group called Uighurs – indeed, it is officially called the “Uighur Autonomous Region.” But these days, Uighurs make up barely half of the region’s population. That’s because, for the past 60 years, the Chinese government has encouraged members of the dominant Han Chinese ethnicity to move to Xinjiang to tame and develop China’s wild west. They’ve built factories and farms, cities and industrial parks. And if Uighurs feel resentful that outsiders have taken their land and resources and marginalized many of them economically – there are also thousands of Chinese troops and military police in the region to keep them in line. Given all this, some Uighurs still pine for the brief period in the 1940s when Xinjiang was its own Soviet-backed country, East Turkestan.
“Despite our best wishes (separatists) have never stopped their attempts to separate Xinjiang from the rest of China,” Xinjiang governor Nur Bekri told a group of us visiting foreign journalists yesterday. “And I believe we face a long-term, and fierce and very complicated struggle in Xinjiang for this purpose.”
While Bekri was still speaking, Xinhua – the official Chinese news agency – snapped its first news flash on the Aksu explosion. Details were sketchy, other than that seven people had been killed and 14 wounded, and a suspect had been arrested. So our Foreign Ministry faciliators and their local Xinjiang counterparts quickly arranged a news conference for us.
And there, it turned out that details were still sketchy. Ms. Hou Hanmin, the spokesperson for the Xinjiang government, said she’d been in touch by phone with the police in Aksu, but she’d neglected to ask the name, age, or gender of the suspect. She had, however, determined that the suspect was a Uighur. She also said that those killed and injured were Uighur, too, and that the suspect had also been injured and was now detained.
Ms. Hou also said the explosion had been intentional — the police had told her so. But, when pressed, she didn’t know what the evidence was to support this conclusion. She admitted she had no details on what had exploded, or how, or in what circumstances, which led some of us to think there was still a chance it could have been an accidental explosion. Ms. Hou had other thoughts.
“The hostile elements are always there – in the past, in the present, and they will be there in the future,” she said. ”They are not targeted at one particular ethnic group, because all the injured people are ethnic minorities, so they are the common enemy of the people of Xinjiang.”
China correspondents both in our group in Xinjiang and back in Beijing and Hong Kong jumped on the story. One called the Aksu Public Security Bureau, where an unnamed woman denied the blast had even happened. “We in public security have never made such an announcement,” she said. “This is a fabrication. No such thing has ever happened here. It is nothing more than a rumor which has been spread by somebody. The flabergasted reporter pointed out that Xinhua, the official government news agency, had already run several updates to the story. The woman was dismissive. “It is not true even though it is reported by Xinhua. It will not be true unless the public security bureaus or our official website makes it public.”
Pause to appreciate this interesting definition of reality. Ok, moving on….
What the Aksu Public Security Department knew early and didn’t say until later, the reason they were convinced this was an intentional attack – was that the suspect, the Uighur driver of a three-wheeled vehicle – common in rural areas – threw what they’re calling a bomb at a group of 15 Uighur law enforcement personnel – seen to be doing the Chinese government’s work. Chinese military police and other government officials have been targeted in Xinjiang before, by Uighurs who see them as a source and symbol of their oppression.
Such sentiments led last year to violent riots in the capital Urumqi, which killed at least 197 people, most of them Han Chinese. In response, thousands of extra troops and military police poured into Xinjiang, and a crackdown on Uighurs began – not just on those who rioted, but even on those who have spilled their grievances online or to foreign journalists. One such Uighur got a 15-year prison sentence.
And yet, Xinjiang Governor Nur Bekri – himself a Uighur – proclaimed to us in his news briefing that Xinjiang welcomes foreign journalists to visit every corner of Xinjiang, to move freely, talk to people on the ground and understand the ‘real situation’ for ourselves.
If only it were that easy.
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How to hold a news conference, Chinese provincial style
By Mary Kay Magistad ⋅ August 24, 2010
Follow along with Mary Kay Magistad’s special dispatches on her trip to the Uighur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, in China’s far west and the largely ethnic Tibetan province of Qinghai. Part 3
You’re a Chinese provincial leader. A group of foreign journalists is coming through, and you’re supposed to meet them. What do you do?
Judging from what we’ve encountered on this trip, you book a formal reception room in your provincial capital’s top hotel, then sit in a sprawling armchair up front, under glittering chandeliers, with the “leader” of the journalist “delegation” sitting next to you, a phalanx of local officials lined up in slightly smaller armchairs in a long row to your left, and journalists lined up in a long row of the same sort of armchairs to your right.
Hire young women in red silk Chinese dresses, called qipaos, to pour tea. Have at least two or three, so they can talk in whispers near the table in front of the speakers, where journalists put their recorders, since you didn’t leave enough room on the little table to the side of you, so it interferes with the recording. Have one of them wear white gloves, and carry the cordless microphone for journalists’ questions on a silver tray.
Have local journalists from state-run media film and photograph the event, which is set up to look like you are graciously receiving a delegation of supplicants for polite discussion rather than holding a news conference.
Speak in a monologue for as long as possible about the strengths and achievements of your province. An hour is good. Then say there’s only time for a few questions. Deflect or evade the sensitive ones. At the end, congratulate the journalists for their hard work and welcome them to visit again.
I first found out about this novel approach to giving a news conference when one of the Foreign Ministry facilitators of our trip pulled me aside a few days ago and asked if I would be the “representative” of our journalist “delegation.
“But we’re all equal here,” I protested. “I don’t represent anyone but myself and my own media organization.”
“This is a matter of protocol,” he persisted. “We can’t have an empty chair next to the governor of Xinjiang. Someone needs to be there, to thank him for meeting us, and make introductory remarks.”
“But this is a news conference,” I said.
“No, not a news conference, exactly,” he replied. “It’s a dialogue. But you can ask questions. On the record.”
Even in Beijing, the Chinese State Council and Foreign Ministry do the straight-forward official-at-podium or speakers-before-a-table thing, either with room for microphones up front or with a good sound system that journalists can plug into. In our meetings with the Xinjiang governor and Qinghai province vice-governor, the microphone was on a little side table, several feet from the official’s mouth, and cameras were kept well back, so the local state-run media could get the shot they wanted, of their local leader having a friendly if formal chat with a delegation of attentive foreign journalists. After each meeting, we found our photos from these encounters showing up on Chinese news websites.
Ok, so we were being used for propaganda. None of us felt comfortable about that. We consoled ourselves with the fact that we were getting access and interviews that might otherwise have been hard to get, even if, in return, they were getting photos to help the Chinese government burnish its image, at home and abroad.
But there were limits to how much any of us felt comfortable being props in a propaganda photo. In the end, someone from the Chinese Foreign Ministry took the seat the official had been trying to get me to fill in Xinjiang, and a Japanese journalist, who seemed to be more comfortable with the pageantry of protocol, took the seat when we met the vice-governor of Qinghai. Better him than me. Better still, if local governments grow confident enough to just let a news conference be a news conference, and realize that the best way to burnish their international image is to let the facts speak for themselves.
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On the road with the Chinese Foreign Ministry
By Mary Kay Magistad ⋅ August 25, 2010
Follow along with Mary Kay Magistad’s special dispatches on her trip to the Uighur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, in China’s far west and the largely ethnic Tibetan province of Qinghai. Part 4
On the road with the Chinese Foreign Ministry: the good, the bad and the struggle for the soul of a story
It was around midnight, on a bus, coming off a plane near the end of yet another 14-hour day traveling on a Chinese Foreign Ministry-organized trip through the western region of Xinjiang and province of Qinghai, when a fellow journalist turned to me and said, “What were they smoking when they came up with this schedule?”
It’s a thought that had been going through many of our minds this week. The most generous interpretation was, of course, that our Foreign Ministry facilitators wanted to make our trip as rich as possible with varied experiences – trips to farms and factories, news conferences with local officials, cultural shows.
A less charitable interpretation might be that there was a reason we were spending hours on a bus each day, with long stretches of time at places like an almost deserted peach orchard or desert reclamation site, but very little time talking to ordinary people, especially in towns inhabited predominantly by Uighurs – the sometimes restive Turkic Muslim ethnic group native to Xinjiang. (Indeed, Xinjiang’s formal name is the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region). If we were scheduled wall to wall with official briefings and bus rides, we couldn’t wander off and see how the Uighurs were feeling about their place in the midst of China’s modern economic miracle, or how they felt about the presence of an ever-growing number of Han Chinese migrants in a region that had, historically, been theirs.
In Turpan, a desert oasis, and mostly Uighur, town, we were promised lunch and “interviews with Uighurs” at a Uighur’s home. If our destination was a home, it looked an awful lot like a restaurant, complete with a little police office out front, a performance stage with giant speakers in back, and enough tables to seat a wedding party. We sat on cushions at low tables, under the shade of a grape arbor, and ate kebabs and spicy ragout and bowls of handmade noodles, and watched the Uighur owner and his 10-year-old daughter perform local dances with considerable grace and verve. Interviews? Not so much. After lunch, it was straight off to spend two hours at an unpopulated desert reclamation site – more time than any of us felt we needed.
Mutterings of discontent grew a little louder at this point. Why, asked some of us, did you tell us there’s “no time” for us to wander around Turpan and interview locals, when there’s two hours to do something like this? And why were we told there was “no time” to fly down to the ancient Uighur city of Kashgar, where a part of town that dates back to the Silk Road is now being torn down to make way for what the Xinjiang governor promises to be “the Shenzhen of the west” – a crowded, hyper-modern city of migrants – when we’re spending more hours on a bus than it would have taken to fly there?
The Foreign Ministry official traveling with us listened patiently and explained that his office tries to listen both to what foreign journalists want on a trip like this, and what local officials want, and then merges the two.
That may well be. But the purpose of Foreign Ministry-organized trips has long been to sell a certain way of looking at an issue. The more sensitive the issue, the more careful the organizers tend to be to make sure foreign journalists don’t have time to stray off-piste.
But things have come a long way since the first Foreign Ministry-organized trip I took, in 1996, to an area whose population was going to be resettled for the Three Gorges Dam project. It was basically man-on-man defense, with as many minders with us as there were journalists. We would be bussed into a village and told we had time to interview locals – but it was always with a Chinese minder hovering at our shoulder, often whispering suggested answers to the villagers.
There’s much less of that on this trip. When I opted out of a couple of activities that seemed to have no apparent news value, our Foreign Ministry facilitators accepted it without argument. And when some of us, having been originally told we were going to be interviewing Tibetan herdsmen, found that the arrangement was instead to interview the Tibetan Communist Party chief in a small town near Qinghai Lake, said we were going to walk down the road to talk to some herdsmen, no one objected, and no one followed us.
But there were still some echoes of the more controlled trips of the past. I felt them most strongly at Qinghai’s Ta’Er (Kumbum in Tibetan) Buddhist monastery, the most important Tibetan Buddhist monastery for the Gelugpa or “Yellow Hat” sect, which the Dalai Lama leads. Whenever I tried to talk to a Tibetan there, two or more local officials would immediately be at my elbow, listening in.
Some of this is a throw-back to the days, not so long ago, when foreign correspondents were only officially allowed to do the interviews the government said they could do, especially when traveling in the provinces — even if most flouted the rules most of the time, without consequence. New regulations on the books since January 2007 have thrown everything open, so we can, in theory, interview anyone who’s willing to talk to us. In practice, the old regulations were only selectively enforced by the government, and the new ones selectively ignored – in both cases, when what the government feels “sensitive issues” are involved.
One Foreign Ministry official traveling with us told me he’s a big fan of openness, of foreign journalists being able to travel anywhere in China. “But I can understand the feelings of local officials here, “ he said. “When foreign journalists talk to Uighurs at a sensitive time, it might stir up unrest. And if foreign journalists talk to Uighurs at times like that, it’s less like journalism and more like politics.” I argued that it’s exactly like journalism – talking to people from all sides of an issue, especially at a sensitive time. “But they might try to use you,” he said. I smiled. Yes, well, I said. Many people try to spin journalists. All we can do is be aware, and try to find the center of gravity nearest the truth.
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Xinjiang one year after the protests
By The World ⋅ August 26, 2010
It’s been more than a year since riots in the western Chinese city of Urumqi resulted in at least 200 dead and 1,600 people injured. Urumqi is the capital of the region of Xinjiang – home to the Turkic Muslim Uighur population, and an ever-growing number of Han Chinese migrants. Most of the rioters were Uighur, and most of those killed were Han Chinese, but each side tells a different tale – both of who started the violence, and of what lay behind it. For the Han Chinese – it’s terrorism and separatism. For many Uighurs – it’s decades of being marginalized and treated as second class citizens in their own land. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad just visited Xinjiang, and has a tale of two narratives.