Written evidence submitted by the Great
Britain China Centre and the China Media Centre, University of
Westminster
[Note: The GBCC promotes understanding between
the UK and China. It delivers projects and exchange programmes
to encourage best practice primarily but not exclusively in legal
reform, good governance and sustainable development. Its close
relationships with Chinese ministries and educational establishments
are based on over 30 years of engagement. The China Media Centre,
established in June 2005 with a grant from The Quintin Hogg Trust,
at the University of Westminster, specialises in research into,
and consultancy concerning the Chinese media.]
We make three suggestions that are, we believe,
low-cost and practical. They are measures that will enable the
UK to benefit from, and accommodate itself to, the arrival of
China as a powerful influence upon our lives and help us engage
with Chinese media and culture. They are:
REPORTING PARTNERS
How media in China see themselves and are seen
is really very different from other countries. Government people,
immersed in the history of the Chinese Communist Party, know that
control of the media has been very important in its rise to, and
consolidation of, power.
Thus, recent measures tightening up control
of, and limiting foreign investors' involvement in, the media
are not really very surprising.
Until recently the media were used in the Chinese
phrase "as the throat and tongue of the Party", effectively
to promote the Party's ideas.
Over the last 20 years the situation has become
much more complicated. Commercialisation and technological change
have resulted in the media become much more extensive, and more
varied, as elsewhere.
There are vast amounts of entertainment and
consumer information and trivia in which the Party has minimum
interest. Even in the areas over which the Party seeks to keep
tightest control, news and current affairs, there are public debates
and discussions of issues.
One of the most interesting developments has
been investigative journalism.
Investigative journalists of both TV and newspapers
use techniques familiar to viewers of BBC Panorama or 60 Minutes
or C4 Dispatches to expose corruption, abuse of power, exploitation
and expropriation. Their stories make very popular journalism
but they are also performing a political function.
For, since the mid 1990s, the Party has found
a new role for the media.
Journalists can assist it in overcoming its
difficulties in getting its policies implemented or even recognised
far from the capital.
So investigative journalism is recruited as
a kind of inspectorate and censorate, identifying abuses and highlighting
problems.
Journalism is taken seriously in China.
It is worth knowing that even when articles
and programmes are spiked, they are nevertheless distributed to
officials through a Restricted Circulation system.
The journalists who carry out this work are
in a very privileged position. They are an intermediary between
government and governed in a society where they are almost the
only such intermediary.
They are widely regarded by ordinary people
as a special kind of official, people who have access to, and
can circumvent, authority.
Perhaps journalists are becoming more influential.
There is a school of thought in policy circles
holding that the media are very powerful, that they set the agenda
and that the government has less influence on public opinion than
do the media.
The proponents say
journalists' revelations have driven government
policy, and the media has hyped nationalist and xenophobic sentiment
well beyond what the government finds convenient.
To bring together these observations:
The Chinese media may be an arm of government,
yet they are not a catspaw.
Journalists and their managers, in various ways,
influence the processes upon which they report.
After all, the role of the official who is an
honest and disinterested critic of society has a very long pedigree
in China.
And the journalists who investigate and reveal
scandals, and would like to do more investigating and revealing
than they can do—are foursquare in this tradition.
In angering vested interests they sometimes
show great courage. They should not be understood as subversives
or westernisers.
How is this relevant to the UK?
As the GBCC and the University of Westminster
have extensive experience of working with the Chinese media in
divers capacities. Very many journalists and media handlers of
various kinds want to learn more about their profession in other
countries, either by coming here or through courses at home.
They want, and their managers want, to raise
the level of their professional skills and to understand foreign
practices, in particular in preparation for the Olympics.
This offers an opportunity for our country to
set up a programme for journalists—let's call it REPORTING
PARTNERS—in which ours learn about China while theirs come
here to examine our approaches.
This would be a British equivalent for journalists
of the EU-China Legal and Judicial Cooperation Programme or our
own Partners in Science Programme.
The second suggestion is called LEARN WITH CHINA.
Because of China's size and economic dynamism,
developments in China need to be taken into account when our country
plans ahead.
Whether it be the way China tackles, or fails
to tackle, the environment, or how companies are developing, how
research is financed or how design undertaken we need to know
what is going on.
We are already trying to know. The various academic
books and courses on Chinese management styles and investment
practices are illustrations of that. DFID and Education UK are
both very knowledgeable about certain developments in China. There
are UKTI reports.
However, there is more to be done. In the introduction
for the book of the seminar series VALUING CHINA, [27]now
being held at 11 Downing Street, the Editor gives the example
of Higher Education.
He writes that instead of assuming that overseas
students, Chinese in particular, will continue to contribute so
much to our HE budget and our research brainpower, we should look
carefully at how Chinese HE is developing.
We must work out how we can adapt and find ourselves
niches when this mammoth operation really gets going.
So we suggest a LEARN WITH CHINA UNIT with two
functions. First, to commission studies of sectors of Chinese
economy and society in order to understand the implications of
their development to us, the lessons that can be learned and the
opportunities for the UK to adapt to a future in which China looms
large. Second, to establish a British equivalent of the EU's Research
Training Network, the key function of which is to ensure that
young professionals learn to operate, regardless of field, in
other countries.
CHINASCHOOL
Anglophone business people come back from China
and extol globalisation; tourists bemoan internationalisation.
But it is perfectly possible to travel around
China and never encounter a word of English or a cup of coffee.
There are decision-makers people in their thirties
who work in powerful, nodal branches of government who protest
that they speak no English and have no intention of ever doing
so.
If you move in this other Chinese world you
are very aware of how different Anglophones and Chinese are, in
their values, the nature and significance of personal relationships
and so forth.
Those of us privileged to visit it invariably
like and admire it.
But we appreciate that business, political and
cultural relationships with China that only involve the tiny part
of the country that is globalised will remain shallow.
Research by the British Association for Chinese
Studies has demonstrated just how little knowledge of China, or
study of the Chinese language, takes place in UK schools. [28]
The implications of this are, it seems to us,
that, in addition to the excellent cultural and exchange programmes
and other activities managed by DCMS, DFID, DFES and of course
the British Council, we need to think seriously about encouraging
widespread Chinese language study in our schools.
If China is to be as significant in world economy
and geopolitics as many predict we must have more than a few experts
speaking Chinese.
To get more people taking Chinese at university—and
combining it with other subjects—we need more Chinese A-level
students and, to provide them, more Chinese learners in middle
schools.
When our knowledge of China and Chinese has
a broad basis, then we will produce people who can operate in
any field, scientific or cultural, with Chinese.
And Chinese may be as important to public affairs
and commerce in 50 years time as was French in the 19th century.
What can be done straightaway?
In 2005 a National Meeting of Organisations
for the Promotion of Chinese Culture and Language in Schools took
place. Those present agreed to seek funds to set up CHINASCHOOL,
a permanent office devoted to the encouragement of the study of
Chinese in schools and the development of curriculum materials.
This needs a small amount of funding and can
start work the moment it has that.
CONCLUSION
To summarise the three suggestions:
1. Because Chinese culture is very distinct
from Anglophone and is likely to remain so as China grows in confidence,
the key to operating with China in the generations ahead is through
language—and the CHINASCHOOL proposal offers the best opportunity
to push this.
2. China is developing in ways that we must
study systematically, such that we need a unit with the remit
to do so—we have called it LEARN WITH CHINA.
3. Journalists are particularly important
in China.
The facts that:
— they want to learn about the West,
and
— our need to learn about China, and
— the common interest over the Olympics,
give us an opportunity to set up an important programme—REPORTING
PARTNERS—which will improve professional skills and raise
awareness in both countries.
Katie Lee
Director, Great Britain China Centre
Hugo de Burgh
Professor, and Director, China Media Centre, University
of Westminster
February 2006
27 The seminars are being organised by The Smith Institute.
The book is de Burgh, Hugo (2005) China and Britain: the potential
impact of China's development London : Smith Institute. Back
28
BACS (2004) Chinese Studies in UK Schools London (c/o Prof H.
Evans, University of Westminster): British Association for Chinese
Studies (BACS) briefing. Back
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