Your Questions: Ask CBC

Do you think perhaps that 'we' find it easier to criticise China than we do the US and if so would this be a matter of politics or just that the US is 'just like us '?
Mainstream media seems to have let the US have a bit of a free ride on Katrina,911 and Iraq. Questioning their relationship with Israel seems tabu. The Chinese on the other hand don't seem to spend much of their time criticising western practices and policies and yet are subject to criticism seemingly on every front.

Patrick Brown: I think broad generalizations about “The Chinese” or about “Us” tend to be inaccurate. Canadian attitudes towards China and Chinese attitudes towards Canada are both sometimes burdened with preconceptions. Some people in both countries are well-informed, others are less so.

The Chinese government speaks with one voice which, as I try to explain in my book, often has a shrill and defensive tone which is best understood by looking at the history of the past 150 years. On questions like human rights, electoral democracy, foreign policy, Tibet, and Taiwan, the Chinese government does in fact spend a lot of time criticizing Western practices and defending its own.

Chinese people, as distinct from the Chinese government, have opinions as diverse as people anywhere. Their views of their own government can sometimes be more critical and better-informed than any foreigner’s.

As for their views about “us,” there is considerable unanimity when people feel that China is being criticized unfairly, but on most subjects 1.4 billion Chinese come up with just as many different points of view as the rest of the folk on the planet.

With so many young people leaving the countryside in search of jobs in the south, how will rural life survive, and who will work the farms to feed a billion plus people?

Patrick Brown: What is happening in China mirrors what has happened every time an agricultural society has industrialized, but it is happening on an unprecedented scale and at an unprecedented speed. In the countryside many villages are populated by the elderly and the very young. Grandparents are looking after children whose parents have moved to the cities to work.

At harvest time in Sichuan province, I met combine-harvester teams from a province on the other side of China moving from village to village bringing in the crops. The fact that working-age adults had all left for job opportunities elsewhere, had created a job opportunity for the harvesting teams.

Many of those working in the cities are glad to escape the poverty of rural life, and many of those left behind are glad of the money that is sent home. This momentous movement of people is one of the things which makes China so fascinating and unpredictable.

These Olympics are often touted as "china's coming out" to the rest of the world. Do you believe this event will lead to more direct communication and understanding between the ordinary Chinese citizen and the rest of the world, or is the timeframe too short and the whole thing just too superficial to have any lasting impact? And do you think the two parties (Chinese and westerners) may be too involved with their own culture to be truly open to the other?

Patrick Brown: The Beijing Games are an event lasting just over two weeks, but they are part of a process which has lasted now for more than three decades beginning with the death of Chairman Mao Zedong in 1976.

There is infinitely more communication and understanding now than there was then. At the same time, I think it would be naïve to expect that hosting the Games will lead to dramatic changes in China, or in the policies of the Chinese government. Those changes are coming about in their own time, and in their own way.

As for the issue of whether cultures can be truly open to one another, I think the history of Canada is a wonderful work in progress illustrating the possibilities.

As someone who has lived in China for a long time, adopted the culture and learned the language, do you feel that there are journalists who may not fully understand a particular situation because they do not have the same knowlege and experience in China that someone like you might.

Patrick Brown: You will find in my book many examples of my failure to fully understand a particular situation because I did not have sufficient knowledge or experience. CBC resources simply do not stretch to a resident correspondent in every country, so I have covered many a crisis in a country I have never visited before where people speak a language I don’t understand.

All foreign correspondents find themselves in such situations from time to time, and we enlist the help of talented and brave local people to plug the gaps in our personal experience and knowledge.

Nevertheless, living in China for much of the past two decades, speaking the local language, having many local contacts do give me something of an advantage over competitors arriving here for the first time.

I have been in China on and off since 2001, and everytime I read now read the western press I cannot but help see the rote phrases "brutal dictatorship" "tyrannical regime" &c. &c. attached to every mention of China.

While China is obviously a large and varied country, nowhere I have visited meets those criteria, and in Shenzhen such idle allegations are obviously untrue and simply serve to open the western media to ridicule.

Care to explain this nonsense?

Cheers,
dba

Patrick Brown: Fortunately I do not have to answer for the journalism of others, only for my own. I see and report on much brutality and injustice, including the arbitrary imprisonment of those who call for greater respect for human rights, the heartless eviction of people from their homes and land by developers in league with corrupt police and officials, and the untouchability of those in government responsible for outrages such as the AIDS epidemic in Henan, and the deaths of thousands of children trapped in shoddily built schools which collapsed in Sichuan’s earthquake.

At the same time, China has seen an extraordinary increase in personal freedom and prosperity in the past 25 years. People can do and say things which were unimaginable only a short time ago. I agree that China is indeed a large and varied country, and understanding of it is not improved by decorating one’s reports with slogans and labels.

In your opinion, what are the common grounds in which Canada and China can work together to promote world peace and mutual respect between our nations.

Patrick Brown: I wish I had the formula for promoting world peace. I think we move in the right direction when our policies are based on clear and consistent principles, rather than on pursing simple commercial interests or posturing for domestic political advantage.

Patrick,

Great job in being our eyes and ears in China for so many years. In the last few days, I particular like your and Peter's joint interview with Bao Tong in "Tiananmen sympathizers - Dissenting voices in China".

This may not be an easy question to answer objectively, but my question to you is how does CBC's coverage of Chinese matters compare to other media from around the world (BBC, NHK, CNN, CBS, NBC, etc.)? Am I right to still think we tend to be more willing and interested in reporting on Chinese matters (the goods and the bads) compare to say CBS, ABC, etc?

Thanks.

Patrick Brown: I do think our coverage stands up extremely well in comparison with the networks you mention, and we receive a considerable amount of audience mail from people across the border who see and hear CBC radio and television and log on to cbc.ca telling us exactly that. Of course I wish we had the resources to deploy more people in more places, but I am genuinely proud of what we do with what we have.

I've always thought that the Chinese government and its people need a coordinated national communications strategy to combat hyper-partisan and prejudicial reporting by Western media. In other words, spin. The usual retorts by robotic spokespersons and ultranationalist bloggers just don't work to persuade Westerners to move beyond stereotypes. Any thoughts?

Patrick Brown: You may be pleased to hear that many Chinese officials I know agree with you. One senior person I spoke to recently admitted to groaning each time a spokesperson responds to a perceived slight with shrill rhetorical flourishes reminiscent of the 1970s.

I would say though that such retorts are not reserved for prejudicial reporting which would be better ignored, of which there is plenty, but also for legitimate and accurate reporting about things which happen in China that the government would rather cover up.

It seems to me that better governance would be a more useful response, from the average Chinese citizen’s point of view, than better spin for foreign audiences.

China is indeed a complicated story. For a country with over a billion people, we can't reasonably believe that they're all the same. But for most of us, stereotypes are the only way to sort out the many details. How should the media meet the challenge to show a representative, diverse picture of a people with all the other stories competing for airtime?

Patrick Brown: From your lips to our editors’ ears! The world is a complicated story, which we try to tell several times a day in newscasts of fixed duration, and I have a partisan interest in getting more air time for stories about China.

I would add that we try to portray China as it is today by telling the stories of as many diverse, representative individuals as we can, rather than pontificating about “The Chinese.”

Being in China for this amount of time. Do you find yourself perhaps being absorbed in some of their beliefs?

i won't say brainwashed, but it is perhaps the closest of a word i can come up with.

(don't get me wrong, i love China and have been trying show to many who critisise that this far- eastern land is not and perhaps more than what most people perceived)

And, have you been to Taiwan?

Patrick Brown: I have been to Taiwan many times, and as far as I know have not been brainwashed in either place. I like to think I have grown in sympathetic understanding of China by spending many years here, but I never forget that I am a reporter, not an advocate.

Do you think we in the west were presented a fair and completed picture of China by our western media? While watching the Olympics, I noticed that the Chinese are very happy and proud people, don't look a bit like people living under brutal dictatorship, or oppressive regime, or a giant prison.

My overwhelming impression from our media is that Chinese people have very little freedom, they hate their government very much, and the Chinese government is doing everything wrong, including hosting the Olympics.

But what suppressed me is that a recent poll showed that 80% of the Chinese think their country is going in the right direction and their government is doing a good job. I find it's hard to accept the argument some suggested that the 1.3 billion people are brainwashed. What is your explanation?

Patrick Brown: From reading Canadian newspapers, I have the impression that some Canadians believe their country is going in the right direction, and some hate the government. The same is true of Chinese.

Many Chinese are in prison for expressing their views, and many others are extremely pleased with the economic progress they and their families have made. There is no inconsistency in reporting on both the successes and the failures of any country.

If your point is that journalists more often focus on what is wrong than what is right then I would have to agree. On the other hand, I have seen, read, or heard umpteen reports about the extraordinary progress China has made, and filed many of them myself. If some newspapers or broadcasters are inaccurate or prejudiced, then that is the price we pay for having press freedom, something China does not yet enjoy.

Many experts predict that China's economy will surpass the US sometime mid century, and so become the dominant power in the world. Do you see this happening or do you think they might stall for some reason?

Patrick Brown: I cannot predict with any accuracy what will happen in China tomorrow, let alone in mid-century. China’s rapid economic growth has already created enormous environmental and social challenges. I think simply extrapolating the growth of GDP is a narrow and short-sighted way of imagining the future.