4 Findings
4.8 Framing of China in Time and The Economist
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Both newsmagazines showed a similar emphasis on China‘s politics, economy, and society, with Time focusing more on the political sector and The Economist stressing more on the economics sector. Further, China‘s environment and technology sectors received more and more coverage in both magazines as the Olympic Games neared. In terms of tone of coverage, findings indicated
that though favorable articles increased throughout the three periods in both newsweeklies, their overall tone remained negative, especially in The Economist, in which unfavorable articles were two times more than favorable ones all the way along.
Meaningful as they are, these statistics will be supplemented by an examination of the frames used to refer to China‘s politics, technology, economy, environment…etc. in the following section.
4.8 Framing of China in Time and The Economist
This section presents the frames used to cover China in the two newsmagazines by presenting the most covered topics in each category. For example, ―Human Rights‖
was the topic that had the most coverage in both magazines under ―Politics‖. After rereading the articles on human rights, a theme of ―China as a country that suppresses its people‘s rights‖ was drawn, followed by a discussion of relevant articles and the human rights situation within the country. Further, lexical styles were employed to describe China‘s human rights, investment, environment (shortage of resources and environmental protection), Internet, social problems, art, education systems, health (healthcare system and disease surveillance and control system). A ―Olympics‖ topic was also identified under the ―Politics‖ category to have a detailed picture of the journalist‘s or media‘s stances toward China. Similar analysis was made for the other 7 categories, except the diffusive ―General‖ category.
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A. China as a Country that Suppresses Its People‟s Rights
As indicated in Table 4.3, a majority of the political articles in both Time and The Economist focused on the human rights conditions in China, including jailing and freeing of dissidents, suppression of minority groups such as Tibetans and Uighurs.
From September 1992 to September 1994, the two years straddling Beijing‘s failure in its first Olympics bid, Time‘s coverage on China‘s human rights centered around the issue played in China-U.S. relationship, particularly on how the U.S. was using China‘s human rights conditions as a chip in renewing its most favored nation status and how China was turning a blind eye towards the appeal as the following nothing compared with Beijing‘s cosmetic woes. Just before the President decided to renew China‘s most-favored nation trading status, the People‘s Republic charm offensive melted like cheap makeup in the international spotlight. First a tour by European diplomats inspecting human rights in Tibet led to the largest protests in Lhasa since 1989. Then, even as China was about to release a well-known political prisoner, its heavy hand reached out to block an exiled dissident from speaking at U.N. headquarters in New York City. strong— and so was the provocation. This week, barring a last-minute change, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher will visit Beijing to talk about its progress on human rights. As if to show its obduracy on the eve of the visit, China detained several of the country‘s leading human rights activists.
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Department and the human rights organization Asia Watch issued harsh reports on China‘s human rights record. Asia Watch concluded that, far from decreasing, political repression is increasing and that 1993 was the worst year for political arrests and trials since mid 1990. (Time—Mar. 14, 1994)No Room for Compromise
As more and more dissidents speak out, Beijing angrily rejects U.S.
attempts to link trade and human rights
―History has already proved that it is futile to apply pressure against China.‖ Though the words evoked decrees issued by once proud dynasties that long ago turned to dust, they had a particular bite last week as intoned in Beijing by Premier Li Peng. ―China will never accept U.S.-style human rights,‖
he said after an afternoon of chilly talks with U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher. But what if Washington revokes China‘s most-favored-nation trade status? The Chinese leader sniffed, ―China can live without it.‖ (Time—Mar. 21, 1994)
However, one year before and after China‘s successful bid for the Olympiad, attention to China‘s human rights in the magazine shifted to how the country intimidated dissidents by removing them from their job positions if they published information deem to subvert state power, as in:
Silencing Dissent whose books and articles on economics—of all subjects—are bestsellers throughout China. After publishing A Comprehensive Analysis of China’s Current Social Structural Evolution in March, He was slammed for propagating dangerous ideas. Last month she was demoted from her position at the
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Shenzhen Legal Daily and had her salary cut. Editors around the country were warned not to publish her work. (Time—July 31, 2000)
Or threats from the government to make life worse for jailed families if other family members sought international help: wielding video cameras even followed them to the park where they often meet to chat during their morning exercises. Fearful of what the police might do, Liu didn‘t dare talk to her friend. (Time—Mar. 21, 2001)
Crackdowns on minority groups and its effects were also given attention during this period, which can be manifested by:
China‟s Own Islamic “Extremists”
It‟s never easy being a Uighur in today‟s China. Now it‟s even harder Today, Beijing fears that fighting in Afghanistan will encourage separatism in Xinjiang among the Muslim Uighurs that make up most of the province‘s population. In the days after the World Trade Center attacks, Beijing moved hundreds of soldiers into Kashgar‘s soccer stadium—not to reinforce China‘s narrow border with Afghanistan some 300 km away but, locals say, to put down potential local disturbances. (Time—Oct. 22, 2001)
One-Nation Divided
Since Sept. 11, Beijing has been cracking down in Xinjiang. Decades of repression have already made native Uighurs strangers in their own land.
With Beijing intent on extending its crackdown, Xinjiang will grow only more divided. At a recent Uighur wedding party in Urumqi, the groom in his suit and the bride in her white dress were modern, wealthy and about as deeply embedded in the government‘s repression machine as young Uighurs can get.
He teaches politics at the local military academy; she works for the Bureau of
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State Security—the secret police. Most of the 150 guests came from those two work units and had dedicated their careers to working within the Chinese government structure. Yet not a single guest was Chinese. ―I guess they have their friends and we have ours,‖ said the wife of a writer for the military newspaper. Beijing might exaggerate the extent of the separatism movement—but in Xinjiang, it‘s impossible to overstate the divide between Uighurs and Chinese that makes it the mainland‘s most troubled spot.
(Time—Mar. 25, 2002)
Crackdowns on minority groups continued to be the focus of Time when covering China‘s human rights one year before and after the staging of the 2008 Olympiad, as the U.S. and the rest of the world were watching to see whether China kept its word of improving the human rights situation when it bade for being an Olympics host country. When the Tibetan protest broke out in March 2008, five months before the Games, stories in Time expressed doubts that hosting the Olympic Games could help improve China‘s human rights situation and that the world was uncertain about how the country will react to the protests in Tibet.
The Ghost of Tiananmen Western diplomat, ―is different than knowing exactly what to do when it comes.
I‘m not sure the leadership has a specific playbook for it.‖ Let‘s hope it doesn‘t reach for the one it used in 1989. (Time—Mar. 31, 2008)
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watched Lhasa burning in mid-March? Anger certainly. And worry about how the staging of the Olympics Games in August could be affected. But they were also surprised, shocked at how Tibetan resentment over Chinese rule had suddenly exploded into widespread rioting—not just in Lhasa but throughout regions with major ethnic Tibetan populations—spoiling what was supposed to be a positive, peaceful run-up to the Games.The authorities will no doubt make it virtually impossible for journalists to enter Tibet in the months leading up to the Olympics. But it remains unclear exactly how they intend to deal with the estimated 30,000 foreign reporters expected to witness the event, all of them eager to take advantage of Beijing‘s own regulations specifying that they can interview anyone Chinese who agrees to talk. ―They still don‘t have any idea what is going to hit them or how bad they will look to the outside world,‖ comments one senior Western academic who has close ties to the upper echelons of the Beijing establishment. If its conduct over the past year is anything to go by, Beijing‘s instinctive reaction to new problems will be to use its heavy hand once more. (Time—Apr. 14, 2008)
…The Games showed that outside pressure on issues like human rights and civil society has little effect on Beijing. Now the world will be watching to see it the Chinese people take matters into their own hands and really begin building a new China. (Time—Sept. 8, 2008)
Other evidence showed disappointing improvements, with Beijing applying Chinese officials offered vague assurances about learning to respect human rights. But the lessons have not sunk in. Hu Jia, an imprisoned writer, will soon
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stand trail on the un-Jeffersonian charge of ―inciting subversion of state power.‖
His apparent crime: writing a statement saying that the skyscrapers and venues on display in Beijing from Aug. 8 to 24 rest on a foundation of ―tears, imprisonment, torture and blood.‖ Hu‘s co-author, Teng Biao, was plucked from the street by four men in plainclothes and interrogated for 41 hours. ―Before they let me out,‖ a shaky Teng explained to TIME‘s Simon Elegant, ―they told me I should ‗speak as little as possible.‘‖ (Time—Mar. 24, 2008)
An Olympic-Sized Security Blanket
China‟s determination to keep the Games safe and free of dissent has taken some of the fun out of the host city
Old Zhao is one unhappy Beijinger. His father needs surgery, but the doctor tells him that all operations have been postponed until after the Olympics.
Unable to drive because 90% of vehicles have been banned from the roads, Zhao bicycles slowly home through the August heat; guards at every intersection force him to dismount for security inspections. When he finally does get home, his favorite dish of kidney and beans tastes awful. Because of endless delays caused by inspections of goods transported into the capital, only low-quality food is available at the markets, his wife tells him. ―We can‘t even have a decent meal because of the Olympics?‖ Old Zhao says in a fit of anger.
―Do those foreigners who are coming to Beijing for the Games get to eat vegetables?‖
And how does the story of Old Zhao end? He finally gets help from a member of his neighborhood committee, which gives him a pill that puts him in a coma for a month—an option also taken up by most of his neighbors. When he wakes up the Olympics are over and China has won more gold medals than any other country. ―Not even a tiny accident had happened,‖ the Internet story goes. ―Foreigners were awed.‖ Perhaps Old Zhao should have stayed awake and taken his chances. That‘s the attitude of Xu [Guoqi], the history professor, who has been traveling around the country since July and arrived in Beijing on Aug. 4. Xu wants to witness the spectacle. Whether he stays, he says, ―depends on how much fun I have.‖ And that may depend upon Beijing‘s willingness to lighten up and enjoy the show. (Time—Aug. 18, 2008)
From the news articles, it is apparent that lexical descriptions of China‘s human rights from ―bid failure‖ to ―bid success‖ to ―Olympics hosting‖ are consistent:
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crackdown, heavy hand reaching out to block exiled dissidents from speaking internationally, detain, worsening human rights conditions, increasing political repression, silencing dissent, muzzling liberal thinkers, keeping family members of jailed dissidents under close police scrutiny, soldiers moving in to autonomous regions to put down potential local disturbances, repression, the Chinese government making it impossible for journalists to enter Tibet for protest coverage, and banning vehicles.
Coverage on China‘s human rights in The Economist one year before and after China‘s bid failure to host the 2000 Olympics was in a sense similar to Time in which jailed dissidents were used as a bargaining chip by both the Chinese and U.S.
government to reach a particular goal, as shown in:
Playing Games with Human Rights
After 1412 years in jail, Wei Jinsheng, a Chinese dissident, was unexpectedly freed from prison on September 13th. Up to a point, that is. On leaving jail Mr. Wei encountered freedom with Chinese characteristics. He was not allowed to rush home to see his parents, who were preparing a banquet for him. Instead, 40-year-old Mr. Wei found himself once more in police custody.
His family were eventually told by the authorities that it was not clear when Mr.
Wei would be back and that they could neither see him, nor speak to him on the telephone.
What happens if China wins the Olympic argument? Maybe there will be a clampdown on dissent, so that it can preserve a dignified face to the world, while foreigners enjoy themselves as guests of this morally dubious regime.
And what if it does not get the games? Beijing tends to react angrily to disappointment, so maybe there will be a backlash, and the West will have less leverage over the government‘s behaviour. Mr. Wei may have left prison, but Mr. Wu [Shishen, a journalist working for the state-run news agency, Xinhua, and whom was sentence to life imprisonment for leaking information to a Hong Kong journalist] has just arrived. (The Economist—Sept. 18, 1993)
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…Asia Watch says flatly that such prisoners are used by China as bargaining chips, to be released at key moments for maximum effect. It chides western governments for using releases as evidence of an improvement in human rights, ignoring the tens of thousands who remain in prison, and the hundreds of new arrests that take place yearly. (The Economist—Feb. 26, 1994)
…In February Mr. Wei [Jinsheng] infuriated China when he met America‘s human-rights man, John Shattuck, and asked him to use MFN to prod China on human rights. That meeting, combined with Mr. Wei‘s receipt of a $50,000 human-rights prize awarded by an American group, may have sealed his fate.
China is feeling so cocky about America‘s fumbles that it may even have the nerve to sentence Mr. Wei to another jail term not long after MFN is renewed.
(The Economist—May 21, 1994)
In ―bid success,‖ The Economist did not have a particular focus when covering China‘s human rights, with restrictions on people‘s rights frequently covered, while some stories indicated a sense of sarcasm about the issue. For example,
It was one of Mao Zedong‘s many big ideas, and thus far one of his most enduring. In the late 1950s, at the time of the ―great leap forward‖, China established its hukou, or household registration system, which required people to live and work only where they were officially permitted to. For a government intent on running its economy according to a strict central plan, it was well to have people stay where they were told. For China‘s hundreds of millions of rural dwellers it made leaving their village nearly as difficult as leaving the country. (The Economist—Sept. 1, 2001)
To the residents of Daling, a village in Hebei province, elections have brought nothing but misery. For opposing the officially approved candidates in the village council polls held seven years ago, dozens have endured beatings and threats by police and thugs. (The Economist—Sept. 29, 2001)
Some Milestone
It took China and the United Nations nearly two years to come to terms on the human-rights agreement they signed on November 20th in Beijing. The
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document, described by the UN‘s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, as a ―milestone‖, calls for a programme of educational and technical co-operative projects with Chinese police, prosecutors, judges and academics aimed at improving the protection of civil and political rights in China.
On another level, China knows it can score valuable political points by agreeing to such human-rights initiatives. The government in Beijing, says one western diplomat, ―is very good at exploiting our need for tangible results.‖
Indeed, foreign human-rights monitoring groups give warning that China‘s government often points to the existence of such paper agreements as proof of progress, even as it brazenly flouts their terms. (The Economist—Nov. 25, 2000)
However, from August 2007 to August 2009, The Economist paid a great amount of attention to protests in Tibet and Uighur, the deteriorating relationship of Tibetans and Uighurs with the Han people, and how the Chinese government dealt with the issue. These were especially true in the months the riots and Games took place.
Demonstrations in Tibet—Monks on the March
The most serious unrest in years shakes the Tibetan capital
If there is one city in China where the authorities are truly worried about serious unrest that might spoil the Olympic games in Beijing in August, it is the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. Around the ancient monasteries and in the narrow streets of the city‘s old quarter, filled with the shuffle and drone of pilgrims murmuring their prayers, residents say that security is being tightened.
(The Economist —Mar. 15, 2008)
Ethnic-Chinese shopkeepers in Lhasa‘s old Tibetan quarter knew better than the security forces that the city had become a tinder-box. As word spread rapidly through the narrow alleyways on March 14th that a crowd was throwing stones at Chinese businesses, they shuttered up their shops and fled. The authorities, caught by surprise, held back as the city was engulfed by its biggest anti-Chinese protests in decades. (The Economist—Mar. 22, 2008)
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Xinjiang—Chinastan
A crackdown in China‟s wild West, its Muslim-majority chunk of Central Asia
On the roads crossing the dusty fields of cotton and maize around the oasis city of Kashgar, China‘s police are on alert. Terrorists, as they call them, have been stepping up their attacks. Officers at checkpoints turn back foreigners venturing towards trouble spots. Citizens entering Kashgar line up by the roadside to have their identity cards scanned.
The Economist found a relative of one of the 57 near Kashgar. The police soon stopped the interview and detained those involved for over three hours.
One officer said he had not been home for more than two weeks because of the alert in the area. A Han Chinese, unusually for a rural policeman, he carries a pistol on his hip. (The Economist—Sept. 6, 2008)
From the articles, it is evident that lexical descriptions of China‘s human rights
From the articles, it is evident that lexical descriptions of China‘s human rights