It was late on a Friday evening and I was about to head home from the ABC’s Beijing office when the telephone rang.
On the other end of the line was a man from the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission.
He refused to give his name but insisted one of the ABC’s Chinese staff write down the statement he was about to dictate.
The man told us our reporting had “violated China’s laws and regulations, spread rumours and illegal, harmful information which endangered state security and damaged national pride”.
It was August 31, 2018, and I had been the ABC’s China bureau chief since January 2016, working alongside reporter Bill Birtles.
Three weeks earlier the ABC’s website had been suddenly banned in China and ever since I had been pushing for an official reason why. The telephone call came, and there it was.
But the call also marked the beginning of something else: more than three months of intimidation until my family and I were effectively forced to leave China.
They wanted me to know they were watching
I am telling this story for the first time. After my departure from China I was reluctant to report what had happened because I did not want to harm the ABC’s operations in China, put staff at risk or threaten the chances of my successor as bureau chief, Sarah Ferguson, being granted a journalist’s visa to China.
But all that changed when Birtles and the Australian Financial Review’s Mike Smith fled the country this month.
My story — which occurred two years earlier — suggests there is more to their actions against foreign journalists than tit-for-tat reprisals as the Chinese portray it.
The fact is that every foreign journalist in China is under surveillance. But tracking of my activities picked up significantly after that Friday night phone call.
There is the kind of surveillance the Chinese government wants you to know about. When I was reporting on the mass detentions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, for example, the ABC team was surrounded by about 20 security officials, followed by midnight knocks on our hotel room doors and questioning about our daily activities.
But there is also the hidden cyber surveillance and occasionally I saw it in action.
One night in the early hours of the morning I woke to see someone remotely controlling my phone and accessing my email account. They searched and found an email from activists in New York that I was CC’d into requesting to have the famous ABC “tank man” footage from the Tiananmen Square massacre given a UNESCO heritage listing.
The email was left open so I could see it, which I believe was a deliberate attempt to let me know they were watching.
I continued to work as normal. I feel strongly that the moment you adjust your reporting to placate the Chinese authorities, it is the moment you should leave.
Our future was in the hands of Chinese authorities
One way the Chinese authorities try to force foreign journalists to self-censor their work is by threatening not to renew the 12-month residency visas.
I anticipated trouble, so submitted my renewal application six weeks before it was due to expire. If things were okay, you could expect approval in about 10 days. I didn’t get a response.
Instead, I was ordered to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for “a cup of tea”, a phrase that every foreign journalist knows is a euphemism for a dressing down.
When I entered the room, my government-appointed minder Mr Ouyang was standing with Ms Sun, an unassuming, bespectacled Chinese bureaucrat. She poured me a cup of tea.
Ms Sun had a pile of my story transcripts sitting in her lap. She drew them out one-by-one, referring to each in turn: “Re-education camps in Xinjiang! Political executions! Imprisoning of labour activists! Experts labelling Xi Jinping a dictator!!!” With each story her anger grew until she was enraged.
The session continued for two hours and it was quite a performance.
Ms Sun claimed I had abused all the people and leadership of China. I countered that I didn’t know how that could be possible considering the ABC website had been banned in China.
This infuriated her further and she went on to lay out a more serious charge: I had personally broken Chinese laws and was now under investigation.
As I left the meeting that day, I felt vulnerable. I knew my future, and that of my family, was now in the hands of the Chinese authorities.
I was berated for any ‘negative’ China coverage
Over the next two weeks I was called in twice more for “cups of tea”. The meetings were always angry and always lead by Ms Sun. But the focus had widened.
I was berated for any “negative” China coverage the ABC did on any platform and any program, particularly the Four Corners stories investigating Chinese interference in Australia’s democracy.
As the ABC bureau chief, the boss, they believed I should take responsibility for these stories. In their view I was an appointment of the Australian Government and as such could be pressured as a means of passing a message to Canberra.
In a country like China where media is tightly controlled, understanding the concept of independence — the fundamental difference between a state broadcaster and a public broadcaster like the ABC — is not straightforward.
In my last meeting, Ms Sun still would not tell me if my visa renewal was going ahead.
But she did reveal one important detail: the matter was now out of her hands.
A “higher authority was in charge of the investigation”, she said, and was outraged by Australia’s new interference laws (some of the toughest in the world at that point).
Something was wrong
It was now a week before my visa was due to expire and with it the supporting visas for my wife and three children.
We booked flights back to Sydney for the following Friday night. The plan was to shield the kids from the drama and if worst came to worst, pick them up from school and leave straight for the airport.
We continued life as normally as possible. My wife, Catherine, was incredible under this pressure making calm, rational judgements all the way through the saga.
Early on Monday morning it appeared we had a breakthrough. I was told the visa had been approved and when I arrived at the office Mr Ouyang was waiting.
The atmosphere was tense.
He told me, with a cold anger, I had an extension of only two months (I’d asked for a year) and then added pointedly: “Don’t expect to return to the People’s Republic of China” and “don’t think this mess ends with you”.
Relieved the uncertainty and stress appeared to be over, Catherine and I went to the immigration police to have visa extensions stamped into our passports.
The official at the desk began entering our details into the system, but suddenly the mood changed. Something was wrong. We were told to immediately report to Public Security.
It was clear this ordeal was far from over. In fact, there had just been a major escalation.
Then the penny dropped
Once in the hands of Public Security we entered into territory where interrogations and detentions are the norm. As I mulled the possibilities, fear sank into my gut. If this is where our investigation had ended up, then we were in serious trouble.
We were instructed to report to a facility in north Beijing and told to bring my daughter Yasmine, who was 14 at the time, as she was now part of the investigation.
This felt like a line in the sand for me. I could not accept that they would involve my children.
At the same time I was frightened. It felt like part of the Chinese playbook: to go after family members as a way to exact punishment and revenge.
We turned up the next morning at 7:30am and walked into a large security complex. By this stage the Australian Embassy, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and my ABC bosses were aware of what was happening and were monitoring my movements.
The complex was newly built but mostly empty, except for the staff sitting dutifully at their workstations. It was so clean you could smell antiseptic. At end of a corridor an official told us to wait.
A short time later I was called into an office where three people were waiting at a desk. A woman, flanked by two older men, was clearly in charge. They did not give their titles or names. The woman told me in a tone that came across as arrogant that the investigation was about a visa violation.
Then the penny dropped — this is how I would be expelled from China: a visa violation would avoid a possible escalation with the Australian Government if I was charged with a more serious offence.
I had spent the past three years reporting on dissidents and Communist Party purges where the targets were often convicted of lesser crimes like arson or immoral behaviour.
‘You will be put into detention’
The most pressing question was to yet to be answered: Why my daughter?
Then the lead interrogator, the woman, replied in slow, strident English: “Your daughter is 14 years old. She is an adult under Chinese law and as the People’s Republic of China is a law-abiding country she will be charged with the visa crime”.
I replied that as her father I would take responsibility for her “visa crimes”. After all, I had put her in this position.
After a pause the woman answered: “Do you know that as a law-abiding country we have the right to detain your daughter?”
She knew she had total power over me and she let the words sink in. After some time she added: “I do have to inform you, Mr Carney, that we have a right to keep your daughter in an undisclosed location and I do have to inform you there would be other adults present”.
I told her any attempt at this, and I would escalate the situation by involving the Australian Embassy and Australian Government, which was aware of my case.
But if she was trying to terrify me, it was working.
As my final offering, I said to her that we would leave China the next day, no problem.
She laughed in response and said: “Mr Carney, you can’t leave the People’s Republic of China! You are under investigation and we have put an exit ban on your passport”.
Ok, I said. What happens when our visas run out this Saturday? I hoped she might say we would be expelled immediately.
Instead she smiled and said, “Well, you will be put into detention”.
Was it all just theatre?
Panic was setting in, but I had to pull myself together and come up with a plan.
In a break I made a pact with Catherine: we would never let Yasmine out of our sight or be moved to separate locations.
After a round of calls to embassy staff, Chinese colleagues and the ABC, we all decided the best approach was to confess guilt and apologise for the “visa crime”, with the condition that Yasmine stayed with us. She was mostly unaware of the severity of the situation.
I returned to the woman in the security office and did just that.
One of the men with her, who had a friendly, chubby face, explained the visa violation had come about because I had not transferred the visa that was about to expire from my current passport into a new passport that I had just had issued, within a 10-day timeframe. Instead (as advised) I was applying to have the new visa placed directly into the new passport. Was I guilty? Oh yes, I was! I was just relieved there was no other serious charges.
My best hope was this interrogation was all just theatre, designed to scare and humiliate.
The woman then interjected and instructed us to return the next day when my daughter and I would be required to give a taped video confession.
I went in first at 9:00am. The chubby-faced man set up a camera and pushed record and answered question after question about my travel itinerary over the past year.
Finally, it was time to confess my guilt: “Yes, I didn’t put visas in my new passport.”
My daughter, with my wife beside her, was called in next to give her confession.
By this stage the man with the chubby face was quite friendly. If this was all it was going to be, then it felt like a good sign. But you never knew.
‘The investigation is over’
When the lead interrogator returned she told us she would consider our confessions, write a report on our case and send it to “the higher authority” for judgement.
To heighten the tension once again, she said a result could take weeks. Our visas were running out in four days and by now we knew the consequences.
We went home defeated and with no idea what would happen next. But at least we were all still together.
Then suddenly, early the next morning, we got a phone call.
“The investigation is over. The visa extension of two months has been granted. Come immediately back to the security office”.
The man with the chubby face was waiting for us.
My daughter and I were asked to sign and thumb print every page of the transcripts from our “confessions”, many pages long.
Then with a handshake and a smile he presented us with a certificate stating we were guilty of a visa violation. Our lead interrogator looked on sternly as we left the building, relieved.
A flight out never felt so good
There was one more twist to my story.
A program I made on China’s social credit system which uses digital technology to keep control of the population, was getting tens of millions of views around the world.
The Chinese woman I featured in the story as a “model citizen” threatened legal action against me in the civil courts for defamation. Her husband was an active and ambitious Communist Party member. Was this another way to intimidate me and the ABC?
I took advice from an American lawyer based in Beijing who urged me to leave China immediately. As soon as legal proceedings were lodged against me, an exit ban would be activated.
He claimed to be representing dozens of foreigners in a similar position, some who had been stuck for years.
I was counting down the days before we could leave China for good. This wasn’t the way I wanted it to end my posting, leaving behind one the world’s biggest stories and many good Chinese friends.
But boarding the plane for a night flight back to Sydney with my family on a cold December night had never felt so good.
Matthew Carney is the executive producer of Foreign Correspondent. From 2016-2018 he was the ABC’s China bureau chief.
Matthew Carney is the executive producer of Foreign Correspondent. From 2016-2018 he was the ABC’s China bureau chief.
Comments
28 responses to “‘You will be put into detention’: Former ABC bureau chief tells story of fleeing China for first time (ABC News Sep 21, 2020)”
Thanks for publishing here. I thought that it is foolish to take your family on such missions. Not only it can be dangerous and life threatening but also can compromise the integrity of such missions. For Matthew Carney’s honest recount of terrible episode (with proof) , one could see a lot of China’s authoritarian government’s sympathizers comments here. Many of their profile suggests that they always promote the current Chinese regime directly and indirectly!! Just be aware.
“….the fundamental difference between a state broadcaster and a public broadcaster like the ABC….”
Is this a dead give away is in Matthew Carney’s own words?
I love my ABC and will always defend the ABC for the right reasons.
The ABC Charter requires the ABC to be fair and neutral when reporting on domestic events. That qualifies the ABC as a public broadcaster.
On matters geopolitical, press neutrality is as far from the ABC as Pluto is from the Sun. That qualifies the ABC as a state broadcaster.
Interesting to read, thank you. China has a long way to go on how it deals with criticism, both legitimate and illegitimate.
If criticism is illegitimate, the best way to deal with it is to subject it to public and reasoned scrutiny. I personally find that many criticisms of China fail to survive reasoned scrutiny.
Matthew Carney got into trouble in China for doing what journalists do in Australia and the USA. The USA is in rapid decline and decline in Australia is somewhat less rapid. It is relevant to ask what role journalism is playing in that decline, since most information about government policy is filtered through them, and most opinion of persons in government is shaped by them.
The crescendo of conflicting dissent in countries like the USA commonly reflects the private interest of those who employ journalists, and is regularly passed off falsely as the public interest. This has undermined government to such an extent that it can’t implement the recommendations of experts in many areas of policy. Neither government nor expertise is trusted. The rule of expertise that once made the US an advanced country is slipping away rapidly. Journalistic attacks on government are partly responsible. The authority of office is lessened, and uninformed people, whose cooperation depends on obedience of, rather than concurrence with good laws become uncontrollable and policies like those which can defeat epidemics cannot be implemented.
The response of the Chinese Government to Matthew Carney’s work may be what is to be expected from a governable country to somebody who is seriously undermining its governance.
I am glad to see this article and find it interesting. As with everything in life, there is always 2 sides to the story, and I would love to know the Chinese side.
There are many foreigners living in China who love the country and respect what the party has achieved for the people. Henry Litton, a highly respected British retired judge of HK’s highest court of appeal, is one of them. These foreigners understand Chinese culture as well as their own.
Then there are other foreigners, both living in and out of China, who see China through their own cultural lenses, and have nothing good to say about China. I have not read Andrew Carney but I would be interested to know what effort he had made to give a voice to the Chinese perspective in each of his articles. Has he ever written about good things, how much the Chinese communist party has accomplished to lift 700 million people out of poverty into the middle class, about how over 90% of ordinary Chinese people approve of their government. When he writes about Xinjiang, has he ever written about how there has been no more incidents of terrorism In Xinjiang for past 3 years and compare this result with the West’s endless and very bloody war against Terrorism?
Do foreign journalists in China have a right to publish anti China accusations in every article without evidence?
If ever a document deserved to be labeled ‘self-incriminating’ it is this one, as these statements demonstrate:
Considering that the entire ‘Tiananmen Square massacre’ story was cooked up by Matthew Carney’s co-religionists, it is no wonder that he was berated. Nobody died in Tiananmen Square. The whole story is ridiculous on its face. See http://www.unz.com/article/tiananmen-square-1989-revisited/
What does getting tens of millions of views is a perversion of journalism. Your job is to tell the truth, and China’s social credit system which, like everything in our lives including wrist watches uses digital technology, but not to keep control of the population.
As implemented by China (with the enthusiastic support of 90% of Chinese–ask a Chinese friend) it is quite different in intent and operation. The Social Credit system’s most significant aspects are:
1. It’s essentially an Amazon Review of everyone by everyone they’ve ever dealt with. It’s exactly like the ‘reviews’ we give friends (behind their backs?) constantly updated in the same ways.
2. It ranks not only every citizen who chooses to participate, but every government official, cop, judge, department, corporation and shoeshine. It’s truly universal. There’s no privileged, hidden operator that’s spared, and no-one pulling the strings. Government departments, officials, cops, corporations, Supreme Court justices, Congresspeople–everyone gets social credit if they want it (participation is voluntary). Doesn’t this sound better than our system, where private corporations rate us and sell the information to other private corporations and government agencies without our permission and with limited access–but offer no reciprocity? Ask TRW for a vendor rating and see how far you get.
3. It’s a popular initiative as much as a government initiative: the Chinese are the most trusting people on earth and they’re tired of being scammed online for billions each year. (They’re especially trusting of their government which 86% of people say works for everybody and not just for a fortunate few).
4. It’s 90% carrot and 10% stick: the higher your score the easier your life becomes. Japan and the Netherlands, for example, now offer expedited visa processing for Chinese travelers with scores above 750. Landlords waive deposits if you’re over 800…and so on.
5. It’s part of China’s 2,000-year-old plan to create a datong society in which (to be brief) everybody is taken care of and nobody needs to lock their doors at night–a goal that every Chinese supports and which the government hopes to deliver by 2049.
In short, Carney is interpreting yet another Chinese policy in Western terms. China is nothing like us. Nothing. It’s a different civilization and it does things differently. Read “China’s Social Credit System: An Evolving Practice of Control.” By Rogier Creemers, University of Leiden. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3175792
Plus the ‘reporting’ on the Xinjiang hoax and the comment ‘three years reporting on CCP dissidents’ and the description of the anti-corruption drive (arson is a ‘lesser’ crime?), his ‘reporting’ of China was entirely negative and slanted by his own admission
I always marvel at responses like this. Xinjiang hoax? What possible motive could one have for denying the suffering of an entire population to defend a repressive regime? People here have argued about the extent, but few other than Godfree pretend the Chinese regime is beneficial to the Uighurs.
Please look at this report in the New York Times. Of course Godfree and his fellow travellers will dismiss it as hallucinations or fake news, partly because of its sources, but look at the photographs which show the build-up of prisons. Or do you claim that they are doctored or something else?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/world/asia/china-muslims-xinjiang-detention.html
And, incidentally, this latest report on Christians.
https://news.barnabasfund.org/Chinese-authorities-close-net-on-Christians-with-cash-rewards-for-tipoffs/?utm_source=BF+NEWS+AU&utm_campaign=3873e38302-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_09_08_09_32_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6df7ca30db-3873e38302-152713481
US Ambassador Chas. H. Freeman, Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981:
. 8/31/18 https://supchina.com/podcast/legendary-diplomat-chas-w-freeman-jr-on-u-s-china-strategy-and-history-part-3/
The smear is part of a wider campaign aimed at anyone questioning Washington’s Uyghur-Xinjiang narrative and the US’ attempt to use it to undermine China. It follows a very specific playbook.
Step one – deny there is a terrorism problem in Xinjiang, China.
Step two – cite reports based entirely on anecdotal stories.
Step three – never mention these stories and reports are created wholly by US-based, US government-funded organizations.
When western countries criticized China for mistreating the Uyhurs China repeatedly invited them to visit Xinjiang for fact-finding missions but they repeatedly rejected the offers. They kept on criticizing though.
Representatives from 50 countries, many of them Islamic, visited Xinjiang and they returned with full praise of China, that their ambassadors lodged a letter of protest against the 22 western countries in the Human Rights Commision.
https://jamestown.org/program/the-22-vs-50-diplomatic-split-between-the-west-and-china-over-xinjiang-and-human-rights/
100 Islamic scholars from Xinjiang wrote a letter of rebuke against Mike Pompeo for his baseless accusations. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1158473.shtm
I wonder why we should have to rely on anecdotal evidence, given that China is such a free, open society (according to you)? The video and other evidence, including shackled prisoners on their way to the detention centres, convinces me.
For someone so swift to condemn US propaganda, you are amazingly supportive of Chinese propaganda. Who knows what sort of pressure the Islamic scholars were under.
I went to China in 1991, loved the place and the people. But I was accompanied by two security guards everywhere I went. I did not ask anyone to criticise the regime, but they would have been mad to do so.
Anecdotal? That’s evidence from the man who ran the program, the US Ambassador.
What video do you find convincing?
You can criticize the government of China as much as you like–that’s a constitutionally guaranteed right–but not lie about it or take money from a foreign power while attempting to overthrow it. Does that sound repressive or unfair?
Video? For example, this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2019/sep/23/footage-blindfolded-shackled-prisoners-china-video
I suppose for you these are bondage enthusiasts having a wonderful time, entirely voluntarily.
And the link I provided above showing the massive increase in the size of the detention centres.
Second, you can criticise the government of China as much as you like? This is the sort of statement that makes me think you are on happy pills. Isn’t it odd that so few do. Unlike, for example, the US and Australia that you so despise, where lots of people complain loudly and constantly, as is their right in a proper democracy. I can see 2 explanations for Chinese silence: yours, that everyone in China is simply ecstatic and can’t think of anything to complain about, and mine, that people who complain know what happens to them or their families. Or you don’t even have to complain – just expose an embarrassing fact like the now-disappeared bloggers who exposed the virus in Wuhan. Or the doctor, now dead of the virus, who tried to alert the authorities and was silenced. These don’t fit your narrative, so I suppose for you they are inventions of the western media.
Believed? Believed? By whom? On what basis? Why does the Guardian not share the video metadata to confirm those beliefs-from-nowhere? Enquiring minds want to know.
Why do you find an anonymous, unsourced video of someone somewhere ‘convincing’? I suggest that you find it so because you have been conditioned, since childhood to believe in Bad China, the land of man-made famines, massacres, and brutal crackdowns–none of which existed or exist today. How were you conditioned? Consider this:
News about China reaches us through the filter of linguistic and cultural differences. Instead of a government, China has a regime which doesn’t fire officials but purges them. Its leaders don’t strengthen laws, they concentrate power. Its media don’t report news, they spew propaganda. They are not patriotic like us, but brainwashed, poor things. Instead of challenges, China faces threats to its rule. We have deterrents while they have nuclear weapons, and our corporations don’t bribe politicians, they lobby them.
Then there’s good, old fashioned money. Carl Bernstein[1] says that more than four hundred American journalists and virtually every major US media outlet carried out assignments for the CIA. Victor Marchetti[2] testified that the Agency spent a quarter billion dollars annually on NGOs like The Asia Foundation, for “Anti-communist academicians to disseminate a negative vision of mainland China[3]”. Udo Ulfkotte[4], Editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, says no significant European journalist in, including himself, is free of CIA influence.
Publishers add their own disinformation, says Ann Lee[5], “A reporter and friend of Michael Massing[6] who worked at the Beijing office of The Wall Street Journal told him that the editors in Washington regularly changed material information and opinions in his articles. Given the twelve-hour time difference, by the time his stories went to press in the West, the editors had replaced all the Chinese interviews with statements from American talking heads who work at think tanks promoting anti-China perspectives”.
While researching in Kashgar, Xinjiang Province, China, engineering Professor Patrik Meyer[7] saw in real time how anti-China perspectives are created:
Everything you have read or heard about China has passed through that filter before reaching you, and it’s bullshit, propagated by people whom you know to be professional–not amateur or accidental–liars.
__________________________________________________________
[1] “The CIA and the Media: How America’s Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up”. Carl Bernstein. Rolling Stone, 1977.
[2] The CIA and the cult of intelligence – 1976. by V. Marchetti. (It is the first book the US Government ever went to court to censor before its publication).
[3] Some of those writings resurfaced in 2017 when China’s censor asked Cambridge University Press to retract three hundred journal articles about a non-existent massacre in Tiananmen Square. Claiming academic freedom, Cambridge refused and the censor yielded.
[4] Gekaufte Journalisten (Bought Journalists), Udo Ulfkotte. Kopp Verlag. 2014. The English language edition, Journalists For Hire: How The CIA Buys The News, has been suppressed.
[5] What the U.S. Can Learn from China: An Open-Minded Guide to Treating Our Greatest Competitor as Our Greatest Teacher, by Ann Lee, 2012
[6] Michael Massing, former editor, The Columbia Journalism Review.
[7] Western Journalistic Confirmation Bias: Reporting on Kashgar’s Old Town Renewal Project. By Patrik K. Meyer. September 19, 2016
Godfree, I accept that I am partly conditioned by Western media, and that often the narrative about the CCP may be exaggerated. Where is your lens coming from? I don’t believe in bad China, though, and I don’t believe the lens distorts everything. It seems to me that much of the narrative is not distorted, and where my background gives me some understanding is the treatment of China’s Christians. This is a bit like the Roman Empire: persecution ebbs and flows, and tends to be local rather than national, but it is a constant possibility anywhere.
For the Uighurs, it is more than a possibility. Are you suggesting that video is confected? Do you have any grounds other than your own ideology? You claim that China invited Western observers who declined, to which I reply that the obvious reason is that the observers were not free. Do you remember Theresienstadt, the Nazis’ show concentration camp they used to persuade the Red Cross and other observers that the prisoners were well treated?
Here is how Amnesty International put it:
It has been nearly three years since China launched an unprecedented
campaign of mass detention of Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups. This has taken place in Xinjiang – the Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China.
During this time, details about the treatment of the estimated 1 million or more people who have been held in “transformation-through-education” or “vocational training” centres have continued to trickle out. But the true scope and nature of what is taking place in Xinjiang remains obscured.
The Chinese government originally denied the existence of the detention camps. Later, it began claiming that the facilities were “vocational training” centres to help rid Uyghurs and others of their “extremist” thoughts and provide them with job training – even highly educated intellectuals, businesspeople and retirees.
The Chinese government has steadfastly resisted calls to admit independent monitors into the region, allowing only carefully stage-managed tours for select journalists and diplomats. Meanwhile, friends and relatives of people believed to be detained remain cut off from information and unsure where their loved ones are.
Read the full article here:
https://bit.ly/3czH1az
Recall that China represents the first truly existential threat to Capitalism since Capitalism was invented. If China achieves its goals for 2021 (poverty eradication with 100% home ownership), 2035 (Gini below Finland’s) and 2049 (best in the world at everything) then it’s game over for Roman Capitalism/imperialism.
Confucius called the result leadership by admiration, or virtuous hegemony.
To combat this the West, by far the biggest human rights offender on earth as the 30 Articles in the Universal Declaration attest, makes up atrocity stories.
The West daily: assassinates people like Anwar al Awlaki, his 8-year-old daughter Nawar and his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, separately, without trial, because of Anwar’s opinions of America’s mass killings of Muslims.
Even if the Western narrative were true the Chinese would not be in that league.
Mr Zwartz,
Unless one was born yesterday and came down with the last shower, it doesn’t take much to notice that Western Allies, which have been fighting the global “War on Terror” against Muslims for almost 20 years, literally overnight became “Defenders of the Muslim Faith”.
Did anyone noticed the guns on the “War on Terror” suddenly went silent on the western front?
Even the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, one might rightfully call the “Defenders of the Muslim Faith” representing almost 2 billions Muslims, could not support Washington’s sudden conversion to the Islamic cause in Xinjiang.
No doubt you can.
Ah yes, I see your problem. For you, it’s all a matter of geopolitics, so anything Washington supports is bad.
For me, and many others, it’s a matter of simple human decency. Persecution and cultural genocide is wrong. It’s sad that you can’t see that. My support for the Uighurs is not because Washington supports them – Washington did not lead the way on this. I learnt of it through rights groups, and Washington’s attitude is a matter of indifference to me. Though it is good to know it can be right sometimes.
To me, and many of my Muslim friends, the OIC silence on this is shameful, and testimony to China’s rising power.
I am very gratified that P&I has run Matthew’s account, which I previously read on the ABC. I think it shows the integrity of the website, as the narrative runs counter to the usual columnists. Congratulations.
Sir,
I am sorry to hear of your traumatic experience in China. Again, I think that your case is one of cultural misunderstanding. I do not presume that I have a great understanding of Chinese culture but I believe that I have enough understanding to provide another point of view; for what it is worth. It is very offensive to them to have a guest or visitor in their country (as it would be in their home) to write and broadcast negatively about the way they do things in their own home. I believe that they are not fully schooled in the ways of Western diplomacy; hence the treatment that we see as crude and threatening. The fact is, “Is the Pope Catholic?” Do we choose the rules of engagement when we are in another people’s country? In your writings about Chinese ways, were your articles equally balanced about the positive things about them? Would you accept a Chinese journalist being posted in Australia to write that we have been treating certain sectors of the population badly or that we have little right to do this and that? You would, and we have indeed, considered such activities as foreign interference in our domestic affairs.
I dealing with each other, we have found the relationship as agonising as they have because of the cultural chasm. We do have a choice of whether we want to engage with them or not. If we do want to for economic reasons, then the heat comes with the kitchen. A reasonable person would wonder how is it that we have had such a cordial relationship with them for decades before the relationship started deteriorating. When relationships sours, we (both sides) look for ill intents and we usually find them. One sided views are never satisfactory or fair.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
Dear Teow Loon Ti
Certainly Chinese journalists are free to write negative things about Australia, and do. Just look at the Global Times. We do not admit foreign journalists to Australia with an unwritten rule that all coverage must be positive. Much coverage is simply factual, and neither negative nor positive, such as coverage of the terrible bushfires last summer. But where a journalist wants to criticise Australia, possibly through a lens we don’t understand, we don’t intimidate or expel them or try to control them. And indeed Australia has often been criticised, and not only by Chinese.
So in this, there is no equivalence between Australia and China.
Any country, including both Australia and China, has aspects worthy of criticism, and it is a sign of maturity to accept that. In this area, China is both insecure and immature. If China wants only positive coverage, it should expel foreign journalists and put out a constant propaganda feed which no one trusts. Precisely, in fact, as it is doing.
I’m not sure if your condemnation of one-sided views was a reference to Matthew Carney, but if so I disagree. He was reporting on what happened to him, and how scared he was. It was a factual, personal story
Mr Zwartz,
Would you believe that I had expected such a response from you. Thank you for providing another pov. However, I don’t know about Global Times. If I want news about Australia, I certainly won’t go to a propaganda machine. If I want to find out what Australians think about indigenous people, Muslims or Chinese, I definitely would not ask One Nation. I know that the Pope is Catholic and I would not dream of going to the Vatican to complain about Catholicism or Afghanistan/Pakistan to criticise Islam. I am sure that for journalists they do not have a rule that only positive coverage is allowed. I am sure that you are very proud of Australian ways. So am I. But, other people are not Australians and do not necessarily have to live by our norms.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
I’m still not sure I have understood you properly. What you seem to be saying is that China is not like Australia, with its relative freedom of speech, and that this is a matter for China. And as a consequence of that, Australian journalists in China should abide by Chinese cultural norms, and not offer critical coverage. That seems to be the conclusion of the bottom of the first paragraph of your first post.
My reply to that remains as above: if foreign journalists may only provide CCP-friendly positive coverage, there is absolutely no point in sending any there. Surely it is better if Australia can send journalists to China who report openly for consumption in Australia, not China, as they think best and using an Australian lens. And I argue equally for such freedom for Chinese or Russian or Indonesian or NZ journalists in Australia. So your suggestion that I would consider critical coverage by foreign journalists to be foreign interference is way off the mark, quite untrue. My friend, it happens very frequently, and so it should!
Obviously I come from an occidental background, whereas yours is largely Asian (you have identified yourself as Malaysian/Chinese/Australian), and we may have different cultural backgrounds when it comes to free speech. My career as a journalist has partly been spent trying to break down obfuscation and report matters powerful people would rather were not reported. But I’m afraid that I stand my ground that most censorship – and the sort of intimidation Matthew Carney reports – are very bad things.
Mr Zwartz,
I wish, but do not expect, every country around the world to be democratic like Americans or Australians. If only one can clone humankind into uniformity with the same values, behaviour patterns, likes and dislikes. Yet, I believe diversity is healthy for humankind, even the “bad” ones. Parochialism is incestuous. We made a huge step forward by allowing gay marriage because we finally saw diversity as something normal and healthy.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
I fear that is just being evasive. Matthew Carney’s experience of intimidation has nothing to do with diversity or gay marriage. It is his first-hand account of what happened to him, which was extremely ugly. If you believe in moral values at all – and perhaps you don’t; I shouldn’t presume, because relativism has made great grounds – then those values apply in both Australia and China. Eg, if betraying someone who has been kind to you is wrong, then it is wrong in Australia and China. If murder is wrong, it is wrong in Australia and China. If the sort of carefully calibrated intimidation Carney suffered is wrong, it is wrong in Australia and China.
Like our politicians, Matthew Carney is a professional liar. I have studied China all my life, its constitution, governance, economy, and culture.
Mr. Carney’s accounts of China are
1. Word-for-word transcriptions of US State Department PR handouts and
2. Either fabrications or hallucinatory distortions of what’s happening in that country.
We don’t really notice or care. We love a good yarn, a good stoush, a good villain more than we care about literal truth. That’s our tradition. Why do you think Boris Johnson is Britain’s PM?
Our tradition of permitting–even professionalizing–public lying and incompetence is at least 3000 years in our culture. Blame Alcibiades.
Their tradition of requiring public speakers to tell the truth is 2500 years old. Blame Confucius. That’s why China’s government and its media are the most trusted on earth.
https://i.imgur.com/OYJCPkf.png
Leaving aside that Alcibiades lived in Athens less than 2500 years ago, this post is more than usually desperate. And absurd. But China loves a good lapdog. Isn’t the Pekinese one of the oldest breeds?
China loves a good lapdog more than the US?
Apparently. You should know.