Trip to China blog

Complications for foreign media outlets in China

By Christine Marie Harvey on May 26, 2011 in Academic Programs, Basics, Trip to China blog

Last week when Cronkite students visited The Wall Street Journal Asia office, the hot topic of conversation was the foreign media’s restriction on hiring Chinese journalists.

But today, when we visited Bloomberg’s Shanghai office, a different theme was on the forefront of the agenda: Companies neglecting foreign media outlets in China.

Stephanie Wong, bureau chief for the office, said one of the biggest struggles to overcome in Shanghai is getting access to information in a timely manner. She noted that in the United States, journalists can expect to receive certain press releases, trend information or market statistics on a regular basis. In China, however, that is not so much the case.

“Information doesn’t come in on certain days or times,” she said. “You have to be constantly looking for information on sites if you want it.”

Stephanie Wong at Bloomberg's Shanghai offices.

Wong said it helps that domestic news organizations sometimes know when and where the information can be found because reporters can then pick up stories and find the numbers based on that.

Another reason getting access to information is difficult in Shanghai is because companies tend to neglect foreign media organizations like both Bloomberg and Reuters. Wong said Bloomberg journalists are not always invited or even informed about the occurrence of press conferences and are sometimes even restricted from getting access to those meetings.

“They feel they don’t need us so they don’t want us,” she said.

That’s why Wong stressed the importance of foreign journalists establishing strong relationships with companies that operate in China. She noted that going to companies in person and setting up interviews with the executives is a key strategy in getting Chinese companies to open up.

Before concluding the discussion on foreign media, Wong gave one final piece of advice to Cronkite students and to any business journalists interested in working foreign news organizations.

“Learn to deal with your sources the best that you can,” she said. “That’s how you get the scoop.”

Conversations on the evolution of online media

By Christine Marie Harvey on May 26, 2011 in TrendingTopic, Trip to China blog

We’ve now been in Shanghai for over three days and it seems that here, more than in Beijing, the complexities that have arisen with the emergence of online media are a focus for news organizations and students.

On Monday, we visited Shanghai International Studies University, where the students discussed the disadvantages and advantages of China’s “great firewall.” While the firewall blocks the access to the networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, the students said they were all still familiar with the functions of those sites and actually, use many Chinese sites that are similar. When we asked what the most commonly visited sites were, almost all of the students responded with Sina Weibo, a Twitter clone, Renren, the Facebook of China and Baidu, the Chinese google. This signaled to me that the use of networking and blogging sites are becoming common within the country.

The problem with these sites, however, as noted by Michael Cronkhite from Burson-Marsteller — one of the largest public relations Firms in Shanghai — is that the information being spread throughout them is not always accurate and can create errors in communication. He said that as social media and online networks become a more frequent tool for spreading information, public relation firms and journalists should tread carefully.

When talking with Chinese students about blogging and social networking, the majority said censorship is not something they consistently worry about. A student named Evelyn said when she writes blog posts, she takes into consideration the things that may be censored but that doesn’t limit her ability to write what she feels. If she were to write about a sensitive topic or use specific words that are blocked by the government, those things will appear on the blog with a large “XX.”

Censorship wasn’t deep concern for the students. They were more interested and delighted that they have the opportunity to use Chinese networking sites at all. Christina, a Chinese student who will enter into her sophomore year in the fall, expressed her concern that access to those sites may be blocked in the future since Facebook and Twitter have already been censored by the government in China.

A graduate student from the same university shared similar concern but said she has a deeper understanding why those two social sites are already non-accessible to them. She believes the main reason for this type of censorship could stem from the government’s worry that an over abundance of information could stimulate negative energy in China.

But not having access to Facebook and Twitter is not something that typically upsets Chinese students, she added.

“We don’t have as much of a need for them and we don’t have as much time as people in America might,” she said. “So it doesn’t bother us as much as you might think.”

Understanding the value of money in China

By Christine Marie Harvey on May 26, 2011 in TrendingTopic, Trip to China blog

With each day that passes, the Chinese way of life heightens my interest in the country and the way it functions. And my perspective is limited considering myself and my peers have only seen two of the country’s largest cities — Shanghai and Beijing. That’s a small fraction of the massive country and yet, the information we will take back with us to America is so vast and is growing each day.

Today what caught my attention is the way the Chinese value money. In a class discussion with Xu Wu and Andrew Leckey, both journalism professors at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, they explained the difference in the way Chinese and Americans view money.

A picture taken by Cronkite student Blake Wilson, who was comparing American and Chinese money.

The first interesting element to consider is the amount of cash the Chinese keep on hand or in a bank account. The idea of saving money resonates more with the Chinese than with Americans, who rely heavily on loans and credit accounts, rather than saving and using their own money. In my opinion, the Chinese just seem to have a greater respect for monetary value.

Wu pointed to a story written last week in China to highlight this point. The story noted that in Beijing alone, there are some 200,000 families with over $2 million U.S. dollars in their bank accounts.

He also noted that in China, the salary of workers only account for about 30 percent of their income, on average. Instead, he said a large part their income is accounted for by bonuses, stipends and the fact that there is no tax in China.

In America, taxes cause the loss of a substantial amount of money on a total paycheck. Leckey noted that Muhammad Ali received only about 30 percent of what he made due to heavy taxes. He added that taxes are such a huge issue in America but in China, they’re virtually not existent.

“Taxes are very capricious from state to state,” he said.

In addition to the information listed above, I also find it interesting that China’s salary is set up in a very unique way in comparison to America. Here workers are paid for 14 months of work in any given year. They are paid a “double salary,” in the last two months of the year and are even given free gifts, like ham for example, on major Chinese holidays.

The notion of a “double salary” in America probably wouldn’t go over too well with many company executives. In China, though, it’s the normal practice.

Wu also noted the difference in the value placed on money between China and America. He said it will be interesting to watch how the American dollar exchanges with the Chinese Yuan in the future.

The Great Wall of China

By William D'Urso on May 26, 2011 in TrendingTopic, Trip to China blog

One of the biggest questions we’ve been asked since we’ve been here is: Why is there such a great communication gap between the United States and China?

When climbing the Great Wall one can understand why there has been such a communication gap. China has a long history of isolationist behavior, and Westerners have not been in Asia for all that long. Greek history and culture have more application in the United States because many Americans are descendants of those countries.

Nevertheless, there is a great sense of history attached to China’s most famous structure.

Traveling to the Great Wall is no easy task. the drive from Beijing was around an hour, and the bus labored up the steep mountain side to reach the ancient structure. The Great Wall is a site to behold, and it snakes across the top of mountainous terrain and has defensive structures on the side to allow for arrows to be fired from safety. The terrain is nearly impassible even without a giant wall sitting there.

The Great wall took several hundred years to build, is thousands of miles long and would take over a year and a half to walk.

Though the path along the wall does make traveling the rugged terrain more convenient, it is by no means an easy walk. The steps incline so dramatically that great care is required to navigate most of the wall.

As Bill Rodgers once said, ” The marathon will humble you.” Obviously he never met the Great Wall.

Doing a little back-alley shopping in Shanghai

By William D'Urso on May 26, 2011 in Academic Programs, TrendingTopic, Trip to China blog

When walking the streets of Shanghai it is impossible to avoid the masses of locals looking to sell Westerners knock offs of luxury brand items.

To follow one of the local guides on a tour of the back alleys of Shanghai is to enter into a different world. Between the modern buildings of Shanghai are crevices that seem to belong in a different time and place.

Shanghai alley on a rainy day. Photo by Flickr user edans

During one of our visits to a section of the city’s downtown, we were approached by a man who called himself Jerry Tours. Tours had business cards and identified himself as a personal guide, and led us to all the back alley shops.

All the Shanghai guides persistently prod and harangue people to follow them and once they hook a potential customer, they take their quarry to a series of hidden shops located in the bowels of Shanghai. Often these shops have lookouts standing by the door, and many of them can only be opened from the inside.

Counterfeiting luxury goods in China is illegal, but it is either not heavily enforced or very difficult to keep down. A walk down the alleys indicates that much of the counterfeit business continues to exist regardless of regulations.

All of the merchandise appeared very real, making me wonder: Is it stolen or counterfeited? Determining the authenticity of purses is a skill I don’t happen to posses, but the question still remains, and either way, these back alley peddlers are very careful.

During my trip into these shops I was forced to cover the lens of my camera, but I was still able to capture some video from the video camera on my smart phone.

The shops sell every type of brand name luxury item: Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton. Purses, shoes, bags, iPods and even underwear were all available.

Negotiating is a major component of back alley shopping, and a persistent buyer can often win items for six times less than the original asking price.

At the end of our excursion Tours handed out his business card and was more than willing to pose for us while we photographed him. The manufacturing of fake items is illegal, and the police even offer rewards for people who identify these outfits.

Pushing beyond stereotypes: Becoming curious about the real China

By Christine Marie Harvey on May 26, 2011 in TrendingTopic, Trip to China blog

As we near the end of our study abroad trip to China, it’s becoming clearer to me that America is lacking the full picture of China.

In some ways, there is a level of ignorance by many Americans about what China is, what it represents and what it eventually will become. And this ignorance is creating communication problems.

We increasingly hear that China is a nation to “fear” in the future but what do many Americans truly know about China?

As Americans we may think in stereotypes, that the Chinese run around wearing rice hats and doing kung fu. We see pictures of Mao Ze Dong wearing cowboy hats and think of a funky sounding language. We see communism, censorship and an oppressed culture. This doesn’t even begin to describe the “real” China.

The back alley of a market near People's Square in Shanghai

Though it’s true that China is nearly impossible to understand because it is so complex and is developing so rapidly, people in America need to develop a hunger for learning about the Chinese culture — mostly because as the country moves forward, business cannot be understood without it.

China already has the largest car market and is the manufacturing hub of the world. The country is setting the price tag for consumer products worldwide and will continue to affect all global markets as it progresses.

The problem with the country’s progress is that the “perception gap,” as journalism professor Xu Wu calls it, will increase if the people living in our society do not awaken to the reality that China is and will continue to be a major player in the global sphere. To begin understanding, it is key to view China in three different lights, Wu said.

“There is the developed China, the in-line China and the remote China,” he said.

Wu also noted that even he, a native from Beijing, cannot fully understand China because there are so many areas that must be taken into consideration just to scratch the surface.

It is his hope that this study abroad course will give Cronkite students a better understanding of his country and enable us to spread the desire to become more curious about China and not to just rely on stereotypes for a matter of fact.

As Wu puts it, we will be the generation to either bridge or further the gap between America and China. Considering the current state of that gap, it (more…)

Establishing relationships in China

By Christine Marie Harvey on May 19, 2011 in TrendingTopic, Trip to China blog

Christine Harvey (left) and her new friend Serena talk about shedding cultural boundaries at the International School of Business in Beijing.

We traveled to the International School of Business in Beijing early this morning and met with the students majoring in mass media.

Over the last year, Professor Andrew Leckey has been meeting and talking with students and the dean of the school in hopes of setting up an international exchange program for international business journalism. And after talking with the students today, I realize it would be to the benefit of those at both the Walter Cronkite School and the School of International Business to begin this type of program.

I feel this way because while talking with the Chinese students, I recognized two commonalities among them. The first was that they all, regardless of what career path they feel is best for them, have a strong desire to promote better cross-cultural communication. The second is that they all seem to be somewhat unfamiliar with the history of American journalism and of the fundamental workings of its role in the United States.

I spent most of my lunch hour talking with a Chinese student from Dali who goes by the American name of Serena. She chose the name because she enjoys watching the show Gossip Girls and said Serena is her favorite character. She asked me various questions about whether or not the American way of life mirrors that of what is portrayed in the show. Never having watched Gossip Girls, I wasn’t sure how to answer. I explained that television shows are typically an exaggeration of the stereotypical American lifestyles. We shared conversation about the barriers that both her and I have both experienced in communicating and understanding each other’s way of life.

Serena will be traveling to America this study to summer and I can only hope that during her trip, she is able to develop her own perceptions about the American culture. A few of her classmates traveled to America last year and detailed their experience.

The library at the School of International Business in Beijing

One young man who called himself Jeffrey explained that when he visited America last summer, he was very overwhelmed by the political coverage.

“Journalism and politics are interesting in America,” he said. “I saw a lot of untrue stereotypes about China and also about the U.S., but through communication on both ends we can help this.”

This was a view shared by many students in the school. They were all willing and open to hosting American students at their university and spoke many times about how they hope that the friendships we made today would be everlasting.

Though I didn’t get her name, I remember the quote of one student that will forever stick with me.

“It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, as long as we share the same interests, we are friends forever,” she said.

That quote, in itself, represents the type of relationships we have already begun to establish in China. And they are relationships that I am sure, will continue beyond the borders of our countries as we move forward in our journalism careers.

A visit to Tiananmen Square

By William D'Urso on May 19, 2011 in TrendingTopic, Trip to China blog

Conducting interviews in China's Tiananmen Square

The vast expanse of Tiananmen Square inspires equally in depth and complex feelings. The protests of 1989 have ripped a hole in the fabric of the Chinese isolationist culture and suppression through which the entire world can see.

On our first day in China, we experienced how sensitive the government is about Tiananmen Square. While walking through the square, ASU students conducted an interview which immediately caught the attention of Chinese authorities. For the next 15 minutes or so, Chinese authorities steadily accumulated around the group and forced students to delete video taken of an interview. The man, 75, a resident of a small town in China had never seen an American before and was curious. Authorities took him aside and reprimanded him; he was told that he should not bother foreigners, and scolded for doing the interview.

This incident opened up a lot of questions within our class about freedom of speech and expression in China. While many Americans find such oppression offensive, China remains very united. Why the country is united is hotly debated, but it is true that government censorship is very thorough. A Google search of Tiananmen Square is totally blocked by the government, and the recent uprisings in Libya and Egypt have been purged from media coverage in China.

While government restrictions and oversight have been greatly diminished in business, there is still very little freedom of the press.

International reporters and academic experts detail China’s hot topics

By Christine Marie Harvey on May 18, 2011 in TrendingTopic, Trip to China blog

A visit to Reuters' North Asia bureau

The issues surrounding China’s economic growth — inflation, population, urbanization, media censorship — are the main topic of conversation as we converse with people living and working in the country.

In a series of lectures, Phil Smith of Thomson Reuters‘ North Asia bureau and Andrew Broome from The Wall Street Journal Asia Edition shed additional light on coverage of these hot issues and also offered their own perception of China’s position in comparison to the rest of the world.

Smith said that while the world perceives that China has multiple issues of focus, it really does not. Instead, he called them “sensitivities” and noted that this perception is not so much influenced by topics like inflation but by the world’s fascination with watching the way the country continues to develop.

Historically, there is no country that matches the demand and the speed of China’s growth over the last 30 years. By 2010, the population grew to 1.34 billion, according to the Chinese Bureau of Labor Statistics. And China could surpass the U.S. to become the world’s largest economy.

“The world is interested and fascinated by China and the challenges its growth is giving to the West,” Smith said.

Smith said China’s main challenge is rising prices. He called it an export-driven economy and said it needs to begin moving toward more domestic consumption in order to combat the negative effects of a growing economy. Smith compared China’s growth to Europe’s expansion some 200 years ago, when it was undergoing a series of transformations during the industrial revolution. By looking at the effects Europe experienced during the revolution, he said journalists can detect important areas to focus on when covering China.

Andrew Broome inside The Wall Street Journal's Asia bureau

Broome also discussed the importance of journalists’ coverage when we met with him at The Wall Street Journal’s Asia headquarters this morning. He said the journalists reporting on China are sitting on stories that impact virtually every world market. These stories, Broome noted, all stem from China’s ever-growing demand.

The chronical problem on the media front though, he said, is that foreign publications like The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, are restricted from hiring Chinese journalists and must hire foreign reporters. Broome said media restrictions aren’t as severe as they were before 1989, but in the last year there has been a “backward lurch” in the media’s freedom of coverage.

Xu Wu, a professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and also a faculty director on our study abroad trip, said the recent tightening on the media is mostly a result of the upcoming transition in the generations of leadership. He said it’s a “conservative time” and as China prepares for its next transition it will be a country to continue observing.

As our trip in China progresses, it is my hope that we will be able to observe some of the country’s preparation for this transition and later offer insight on what journalists may or may not expect to see in the upcoming year.