China Story is my space for posting essays, news analysis and stories about China. It’s really a grab-bag of things, some of which are of passing interest, others of enduring interest and worthy of further examination. This online publication started out as the CCTV Follies, a daily review of the visuals and narratives of China’s leading news program. It was alternately enlightening and discouraging. So much hard work to produce so compromised a product. Part of the appeal of the evening news is the familiar rhythm it provides, following the same format week after week. But far too much of that is devoted to the tone-deaf, self-congratulatory praise of the party leadership which hogs up all the oxygen in the news and snuffs out more interesting human interest stories. The camera work made for good visuals, ranging from competent to outright excellent, but honestly the program is better appreciated with the sound off as the narration, heavy on the partyspeak, personality cult and general pro-party propaganda is turgid when not outright toxic. After almost two years of that, I’d had enough and moved on to other things.
Two years of that was more than enough, but there were times I found tuning in to the nightly news strangely addictive, even oddly reassuring, like TikTok for a member of the Boomer generation who grew up with the nightly ritual of watching the television news.
My interest in Chinese media dates to the 1980s when I freelanced for foreign news bureaus, most of which partnered, by necessity, with CCTV, Shanghai TV 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: the Tears of Spring” for ABC (1989) The latter two projects were filmed during the uprising in Beijing but had to be completed in Hong Kong.
Nowadays, I’m not even sure they could be produced in Hong Kong.
After that, I worked for NHK in Tokyo where I wrote and produced the pilot season for “China Now” a TV news round-up 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)
After that, I taught media studies in and conducted research in China and Japan as a Fulbright Fellow.
With support from the Knight Foundation, I was invited to give talks and observe studio practices at CCTV and other media outlets in 2001-02. I wrote a few widely distributed memos that might have helped steward CCTV’s reluctant move from pre-censored taped programs to live TV for its current affairs shows. I argued that the Great Wall wouldn’t come tumbling down if conflicting views were represented on air, and going live had the potential to make the program more interesting. In 2001 was asked to appear as a guest commentator to test the new live format and was a frequent studio guest and commentator for a decade after that.
As far as I know, there were two programs taken off the air on account of my unorthodox commentary. 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 around the time of the Beijing Olympics.
I also appeared on camera in “Cradle of the Revolution”, a CCTV documentary about Yan’an, Xibaipo and other historic sites for which I served as consultant. Someone somewhere in the system didn’t like my view on things and essentially gave the order midway to “lose the laowai.” I remained with the crew for the rest of the shoot but was not permitted to appear on air. The program, including the Yan’an segment in which I criticized Mao for going the way of dictatorship instead of democracy was aired, but soon taken off the air, replaced by an entirely new documentary on the same topic, presumably a more “respectful” take on the revolutionary base politics of Mao’s old stomping grounds. Coincidentally or not, both Bo Xilai and Xi Jinping visited Yan’an around the time we were filming, and visited many of the same sites.
In retrospect, it now seems amazing that I was invited to be on air as often as I was between 2001-2011 and I can only conclude that the powers-that-be weren’t paying attention, or perhaps things were perhaps more tolerant then.
PBS NEWSHOUR discussion of Chinese state TV (China’s Programming for U.S. Audiences: Is it News or Propaganda? May 22, 2012)
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
