Trip to China blog

My Final Post… For Now

Sorry for the long break between posts and the sudden group of them posted at once.  Shanghai was faster paced and possibly even busier than the time we spent in Beijing.  As of now we are in the Beijing airport after flying here from Shanghai.  We have another two hours before we board, and then an 11-hour flight to Seattle.  That will be followed by another three-hour layover, before our final venture back to Phoenix.  We will really be feeling the time difference by the time we arrive back home.  Our travels started this morning at 5:45 a.m. Saturday in China, and we will arrive at about 6:30 p.m. in Phoenix on Saturday evening after almost 24 hours of travel.

I did my best to break up some of the posts to make them shorter and more convenient for everyone to read.  Let me say that everyone who took part in this trip can say it was one of the greatest experiences of their lives.  The things we saw, the places we visited, and the people we spoke with were all things that many people will never do in their lifetime.  Many won’t ever make to China to begin with.

I want to thank the Cronkite School, Professor Leckey, Dr. Wu, and the Reynolds Center for the role they all played in the creation and initial success of this program.  I hope to see it continue to grow so that students can continue to experience China, arguably the most important country not only in terms of our own future, but the future of the World.  Perhaps what was most interesting, was not only our excitement to be there, but also some of the Chinese peoples’ excitement that we were there.  Speaking with the students, as well as a number of Chinese businessmen and journalists, it is clear that they have a desire to understand us as much as we should have a desire to understand them.              This much I can almost guarantee, the majority of peoples’ opinion in the United States couldn’t be further from the truth about our neighbors to the east.  I encourage anyone with the opportunity to ever visit China to accept without hesitation, it is truly something you will not regret.

We will be creating a website and multimedia project as a group assignment and I will be sure to post the link to it once it is complete to give you an even greater insight into our two-week journey.  Until then it has been a pleasure, I hope you all enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing, and thank you for your interest.  There will be one more post from Megan Thomas once again about our experience at Oriental Outlook, China’s equivalent to Time Magazine.

Coming To An End

Yuyuan Garden in Shanghai

Our final two days were bittersweet.  The majority of us were ready to go home, but at the same time disappointed to leave behind all that we had been able to learn.

Thursday was a day to ourselves.  Myself and few classmates decided to visit the Yuyuan Garden, an area just past the Bund consisting of much more traditional Chinese architecture and a plethora of stores for shoppers to choose from.  It was a very impressive area, a mixture of the classic Chinese buildings we often saw Beijing and the fast paced and aggressive nature of the Shanghai economy.

Friday during the day we visited the Oriental Outlook Weekly Magazine.  Dr. Wu’s old friend is currently the editor-in-chief and provided us the opportunity to sit down with the staff and have a very open conversation about journalism and both cultures in general.  Megan Thomas will be providing us with a more in-depth look into our visit there as soon as possible.

Perhaps the best part of the week was the final two dinners.  The second week in Shanghai we were given much more freedom to break off into small groups and explore China first-hand.  While it makes tasks much more manageable it was nice to sit down together catch up as a group and realize just how much we had all enjoyed each others’ company in just two weeks time.

The meal on Thursday was with a couple of former students that Dr. Wu had at Arizona State who had been living in Shanghai for a number of months and had become fluent in Mandarin Chinese.  We ate at a vegetarian restaurant, which I think was actually a pleasant surprise to many of us, especially myself.  I would have never imagined eating purely vegetarian for any meal… ever.  However, after spending two weeks eating cuisine I was almost entirely unfamiliar with it had almost become a don’t ask, don’t tell policy.  You just simply try it and you either like it or you don’t.

The second night we all gathered to eat at a restaurant near the magazine’s office in a new part of Shanghai, where we experienced our last traditional Chinese meal.  It was very light-hearted and full of laughter as we all reminisced over our experiences over the last two weeks, experiences that many will never be given the opportunity to enjoy.

Both evenings ending with an exploration of the Shanghai nightlife and an early bedtime as each morning game with an early wake up call.  As we gathered on the bus early Saturday morning you could see the bittersweet feelings on everyone’s faces with the anticipation of home, but the disappoint of leaving behind a place that many of us had grown to truly enjoy and respect in simply two weeks time.

An Evening in Downtown Shanghai

A shot of The Bund across the river after nightfall

Shanghai is quite a place.  There downtown area is referred to as The Bund.  It has some of the tallest skyscrapers in the world, and they are continuous for as far as the eye can see.  It is perhaps most incredible by night.  The only place I can compare the lights to is Las Vegas.

It is here, at The Bund, where the Pearl Tower is, perhaps the most interesting structure in the downtown area.  It is one of the world’s largest TV towers, and for a mere 150 RMB you can take an elevator to the top and get a 360-degree view of Shanghai.  On the way down there is a viewing platform that has a clear bottom enabling visitors to take a look hundreds of meters straight down.  For some the height is too much to overcome, and even standing on the sidelines and watching others take the step towards the edge is worth the price of admission.  This area is also home to the continuously growing Shanghai stock market.

Across the river is Nanjing Road and People’s Square.  This area had a few more tourists than we were used to seeing in Beijing.  The shopping here is what many of the girls were looking for since our arrival, and it provided everyone with an opportunity to grab souvenirs for all their family and friends.  Visitors here are often asked if they are looking for any of the latest “designer” bags, watches, etc. at a fraction of the cost found in retail stores.  Our final project will take a closer look at this underground economy that keeps Nanjing Road ticking.    The spectacular light show continues in this area as well, with neon lights making it appear bright as day up to about 11 o’clock at night.

While Shanghai, and particularly The Bund doesn’t appear to have the history of Beijing, it certainly appears to hold the future.  The growth of downtown Shanghai was expressed in a series of photos spanning the last 10 years and gave visitors an idea of how quickly the area has blossomed into one of the world’s largest cities.  It is an area that has a greater number of tourists and may be slightly more comfortable for first time visitors to China.  It certainly seems to have a more active nightlife.  Nonetheless, for me it is neither more or less impressive than Beijing, it simply has something different to offer.

International coverage from Beijing

BY MEGAN THOMAS

John Liu from Bloomberg's Beijing bureau

This trip has been a whirlwind of new people and experiences, and two notable people we had the opportunity to meet were Bloomberg News Bureau Chief Jon Liu and Thomson Reuters North Asia Editor Phil Smith. Both provided an insider’s perspective of what it’s really like to practice journalism and China.

Some Americans view China as an oppressive journalistic environment, but Liu and Smith said while practicing journalism in China has its constraints, the newsgathering and producing process is pretty much the same.

At Bloomberg News, Liu gave us insight into how operating a news agency in China is different than in the states. Bloomberg initially got their license to operate a news bureau in China from Xinhua News Agency, a competing Chinese news agency, Liu said. Licensing is now overseen by State Council Information Office, which somewhat removes the conflict of interest.

Liu also said state-supported publications like Xinhua News Agency and the People’s Daily are given reporting advantages from the government. He said they often receive information from government agencies ahead of their scheduled release, giving them the opportunity to report on it first.

Chinese laws also impact reporting schedules. In China, workers have to be paid overtime after eight hour work days. So when Liu and his staff are waiting for a critical news release and have to have staff on alert all hours of the day, it comes at greater cost to Bloomberg News.

While reporters in China don’t have to do anything like submit their work to a censor before publication, Liu said government officials will contact news agencies if it is displeased with an article. He told us a story about how one of his reporters traced a missile used by Lebanese militants to fire upon an Israeli ship back to the Chinese government. He said after the story was published, government officials contacted them and said there was no proof the missile came from China and that the report was unfounded, but no other punitive measures were taken. He told us about another Chinese journalist who once obtained the script for the Chairman’s speech to China’s legislative body and released it in advance. Liu said the reporter was arrested and sentenced to life in prison, but his term was later cut down to 15 years.

Liu told us that at the Beijing branch of Bloomberg, they primarily hire bilingual journalists. He said while there are often more Chinese than American bilingual journalists, this trend was starting to change. Typically, Liu said, China has had more students going abroad than it’s had foreign students coming into the country to study. But recently more foreign students have been coming into China to study than the number of Chinese students going abroad.

Cyber culture was also touched on during our time at Bloomberg. The Internet is freer in China than most people know, Liu said. Online bulletin boards that were popular in America in the earlier days of the internet are still extremely popular in China. Liu said that these boards acted as collective journalism, with people sharing information more freely and linking to other news sources.

Along with online collective journalism has come cyber vigilantism. He told us two stories to illustrate the power of the Chinese Internet. In one story, he told us about how a crush film of a woman killing a kitten with stiletto shoes spread across China’s Internet community. The video created so much outrage that Chinese Internet users tracked down the woman who killed the kitten, the cameraman and the person who posted the video and harassed them mercilessly (and, if I remember correctly, made them lose their jobs). Another story he shared with us was about a woman who posted a long letter on the Internet describing how her husband had gone off with another woman and how cruel they were to her before she committed suicide. This too created outrage on the Internet community, and online users tracked down the man and his new wife and managed to get them fired as well.

In regard to the Chinese economy, Liu said that he believes that the current volatility in the Chinese economy and markets will eventually dissipate over the next 10 years. While some people argue that the Chinese economy is either going to become a giant bubble or the greatest economy in the world, Liu said he thinks it will fall somewhere in the middle. While the United States has been pushing China to revalue its currency, Liu said he doubted that it would happen anytime soon or as a result of the upcoming Strategic and Economic Dialogue. He said it was more likely that trade disagreements like the tariff conflict between America and China would be addressed at the SED and acted upon.

At Reuters, Smith gave us greater perspective on covering news in China. Reuters, like Bloomberg, initially got their operating license from the Xinhua News Agency before the SCIO started regulating bureau licenses. He said one of the most frustrating restrictions he dealt with on a regular basis in the newsroom was that Chinese nationalists are unable act as reporters for foreign news agencies unless they work alongside a foreign reporter and share a byline, making it difficult to send them on some assignments. He also said his reporters have to be careful about what financial numbers they report on, because any economic number can be considered a state secret by the Chinese government.

Smith said his phones are tapped and that he and his journalists were often followed. He seemed unbothered by this, saying that if you’re not doing anything wrong you don’t have anything to be afraid of. He told us he and his reporters play a game when they return to China from reporting trips. They write down the license plate numbers of black Audis (a common car of government workers) around them and see how many of them end up at the same location they’re going to, which often ends up being most of them.

In discussing the Chinese economy, Smith said he believes revaluation of the Chinese yuan is a long time off. When the revaluation does take place, Smith said he thinks the revaluation will only be somewhere between one to five percent. He also told us he thinks Japan and China will build more nuclear power plants in the future because more environmentally friendly power options don’t generate enough power to meet the countries’ demands.

Smith said that most of the reporters at Reuters’ Beijing bureau were bilingual, but that language expectations with editors weren’t quite as strict as they were behind a desk editing most of the day, allowing some of the editors to have only basic Mandarin language skill.

Getting to talk with these industry experts really opened our eyes to the reality of Chinese reporting, and we greatly appreciated their time and willingness to speak with us. They showed us that journalism in China isn’t necessarily good or bad in comparison to American journalism, just different.

We’ll be meeting even more fascinating people during our time at Shanghia. We’re all excited to see what the World Expo has to offer.  Haibao a.k.a. “sea treasure”, China’s World Expo mascot (whose appearance and name are somewhat controversial http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2010/04/28/shanghai_expo_designer_denies_mascot_copy_of_gumby/) greeted us as we arrived at the Shanghai airport. I’m sure we’ll be seeing lots more of him in the following days.