Hindustan Times
China and the chop factory
I put down my cell phone and ignored the laptop. In the age of broadband in the capital of the third-biggest economy with more netizens than the population of USA, it was once again time to switch on the fax machine, dig into a drawer and pull out my prized possession: a red plastic chop (seal).
When I stamp it on a letter faxed to an unknown, unnamed official, it prints a red circle with a five-point red star in the centre. Hindustan in Chinese and Hindustan Times in English is scripted in red inside the circle.
As a journalist in India, where the media routinely communicates over SMS and cell phone to officials including chief ministers and police commissioners, I didn’t know how to operate a fax machine.
I had queued at a window of the Public Security Bureau and paid 200 yuan (Rs 1,400) to choose the design from an official book soon after I landed in Beijing last April and heard that the official Chinese seal, a centuries-old practice, is still more important than signatures. After the rubber stamp, a Chinese fax machine could be the next most important asset in the age of Blackberries.
Last week, Beijing hosted a world media summit. The editors who flew in for a few days heard grand statements about a more open and hi-tech China compared to the reality in which a resident foreign reporter operates daily. As I wrote this blog, soon after stamping and faxing yet another letter for interview permission, the State-run Xinhua agency posted a commentary headlined: Clarion call for media responsibility, co-op in brave new world’.
“It is an ever-changing world…those who rest content will be left behind in this information renaissance,’’ Xinhua said.
I await an official information renaissance in my world, where it is futile to even ask for a government spokesperson’s name. The spokesperson officially doesn’t exist or if he or she exists, the media doesn’t deserve to know. Instead of communicating with people, I am always told to address the fax for interview permission or questions for comments, to a faceless department.
Government ministries with media affairs departments and English-speaking staff in Beijing can build higher Walls than officials in remote and less developed provinces. They first lecture you to ‘follow the procedure’ and send a fax. The procedure ends there. If you are lucky, somebody will call back and say the relevant department got the fax, before the relevant department forgets to do anything with it.
But veteran China journalists point out that covering China today is actually easier. Travel restrictions on foreign journalists eased just before the Beijing Olympics. From December 1, officials in south China’s pioneering special economic zone of Shenzhen could face penalties including dismissal if they do not respond to media requests, according to reports in the Chinese media last month. “We are determined to change the random, passive and disorderly situation surrounding government press releases,’’ Su Huijun, a media official in Shenzhen was quoted saying.
The Shenzhen experiment will be a milestone in a nation where the ministry of national defense with a double-digit budget got its first spokesman only last year, long after first acquiring nuclear weapons and fighter jets.
(7 votes, average: 4.43 out of 5)
Loading ...Posted by Reshma Patil on Sunday, October 11, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Filed under China · Tagged Beijing Olympics, China, China journalists, Chinese, english, hindustan times, USA, Xinhua agency
hi reshma ……………..i read your blog first time i really liked it……………………are you there for almost 1and 1/2 year……..???
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Reshma Reply:
October 12th, 2009 at 8:47 am
thanks. yes, bracing for my second beijing winter
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jasneet Reply:
October 12th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
have you visited hong kong????
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The media “are”
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” the official Chinese seal, a centuries-old practice, is still more important than signatures” - You are quite right and this is a suprising fact I learnt while on a working visit to China. People usually affix their seals on bank cheques, not their signatures! In fact, we detected an irregularity where a local body official was putting the Chairman’s seal on cheques even without his/her express consent or permission!
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