China Story is my space for posting essays, news analysis and stories about China. It’s really a grab-bag of things, that started with the CCTV Follies, a daily review of what China’s leading news program was telling its own people about China and the world.
Two years of that was more than enough, although the nightly news becomes strangely addictive, and rather predictive, after a while. The “news” instructs, instills fear, reassures and mollifies what is considered to be the biggest TV audience in China, and probably the world. It does not endeavor to entertaining, though it is so weird at times as to be inadvertently funny, if not absurd. From time to time I’ll share some LOLs about what’s being said on state TV, but not on a regular basis as before.
My interest in Chinese TV dates to the 1980s when I freelanced with foreign news bureaus that partnered, by necessity, with CCTV and local media handlers. My production work included credits on “Changing China” for NBC (1986), “China Odyssey” for CBS (1987), “Rape of Liberty” for BBC and “Tragedy at Tiananmen” for ABC (1989) The latter two projects were filmed in Beijing but had to be completed in Hong Kong. Nowadays, I’m not even sure they could be produced in Hong Kong.
I wrote and produced the pilot season for “China Now,” a TV news program co-produced by CCTV and NHK in Japan in 1991. I was a consultant and contributor to the PBS documentary “The Gate of Heavenly Peace” (1995)
As a Knight Journalism fellow assigned to China for a year, I was invited to give talks and observe studio practices at CCTV and other media outlets. I helped promote CCTV’s reluctant move from pre-censored taped programs to live TV for its current affairs shows. When I argued that the Great Wall wouldn’t come tumbling down if conflicting views were represented on air, I was asked to appear as a guest commentator to test the new live format.
Two programs I appeared on were taken off the air on account of my comments. One was a discussion with a retired general about China’s disputatious maritime claims, the other a discussion of Mao Zedong’s behavior; both incidents occurred in 2008 in the wake of the Beijing Olympics. A CCTV documentary about Yan’an for which I was a consultant and interviewed on site was also yanked and replaced by a more orthodox report. Coincidentally or not, both Bo Xilai and Xi Jinping visited Yan’an around the same time. It is to my lasting surprise that I was invited to be on air as often as I was between 2001-2011, and I can only conclude that they weren’t paying attention or things were more tolerant then.
Barbarians at the Gate podcast about the CCTV Follies
China Project text of interview about CCTV
-Phil
Philip J Cunningham
email: jinpeili (at) yahoo.com
Twitter: @jinpeili
