Maybe the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games will be another example of there being only one thing worse than not getting what you want – that’s getting it.
Well, that’s at least what it might turn out to be for the Chinese totalitarian leadership.
I got an inkling of this a week ago when I gave a talk on media law to a group of 20 officers from the Beijing Public Security Bureau – or police force.
They were from the media-management section and are in Australia to learn the ways of western media so that they might make their Games run more smoothly.
When you talk to an Australian audience about media law, most of the interest is the relationship between the private citizen and the media, particularly defamation, privacy and other complaints about media behaviour.
The Chinese were much more interested in the relationship between the arms of government and the media.
A huge amount of foreign and local private investment is pouring into Chinese industries, with one notable exception – the media.
A couple of months ago the Chinese Government issued a clarifying statement about earlier statements encouraging foreign and local private investment in cultural industries. Many thought the earlier statement would pave the way for foreign Chinese-language magazines, the establishment of local privately owned newspapers, more freedom for the internet and foreign and local shareholding in newspapers and television stations.
The clarifying statement put an end to that.
It said, “Non-public capital can not invest in, set up or operate a news agency, newspaper, publishing house, radio station, broadcasting signal station, signal relay stations, broadcasting satellite, etc. Such capital cannot be behind the management of a newspaper content page, radio and TV frequency channels and programs. Nor can it “operate” import businesses such as book, newspaper, magazine, movie and TV drama, audio visual products.”
Essentially, the Chinese media remains government-owned and its content government-directed. The idea is that media outlets are an integral part of working harmoniously towards socialist perfection.
Sure, the Chinese media has occasionally reported matter critical of the Government, but only after the Government itself had fessed up to short-comings and dealt with them. Thus the reporting of the SARS outbreak took a sudden turn from silence to noise after the Government was forced to acknowledge SARS and round up a few scapegoats for ritual sacking.
Coming from that environment, it is easy to understand how our guests from the Beijing Public Security Bureau were non-plussed about several aspects of western media.
I explained that in Australia anyone can start a newspaper without government permission (if they have the money). You only need a government licence to broadcast television or radio because otherwise the frequencies would get jammed, not because licences could be used to control political content.
They were quite puzzled by the role of the ABC and SBS and the way their journalists can criticise the Government.
“Why does the Government bother to finance the ABC and SBS if they can criticise the Government?” one visitor asked through an interpreter.
Some members of the present Federal Government might say, “Good question.”
I pointed out that voters would punish any ABC-abolishing government.
The Chinese police expressed even greater interest and puzzlement about the law on the way journalists work, particularly the law of trespass and dealing with police directions at a crime scene.
I talked about the general freedom in Australia for journalists and camera crews to film whatever they like from a public place (putting aside occasional defamation problems). I explained that camera crews had to obey the reasonable directions of police officers at crime and emergency scenes which apply to public at large. But the direction had to be reasonable, that is, directed at preserving the crime scene or public safety, not directed at what should be covered or how it should be covered.
Then came the questions. What if the camera crew gets there before the police and started filming? What if police order the media to leave the area completely?
I explained there was no police power to order the footage to be destroyed or to order journalists further back than necessary or order them to stop filming once they have moved back far enough to preserve the crime scene or for safety.
Our visitors were perplexed. It was simply out of their radar that media crews would not obey whatever police ordered for whatever reason. Police could act to direct non-coverage in their world.
So why will the Olympics be so bad for the totalitarian regime?
The regime wants the Olympics to go well. It has therefore sent lots of people, like our 20 police officers, to places – especially Australia – where the Olympics have been run well.
In doing so it has not sent them with an open mind but with a view to learn and admire. That may not pose a difficulty for the regime with technical and sporting stuff, but it will with culture and ideas.
I sensed the mood of these 20 Chinese was not to reject the way the Australian media work and the way police deal with it, but to try to accommodate it – not on an ideological level, but simply to make the Games run well.
They want to anticipate and avoid confrontation. They will compromise with free-media values, rather than risk incidents at the Games or for that matter associated western media coverage of China at the time.
The Games could easily be a catalyst for the end of the China’s contradictory journey down the capitalist economic path and the socialist political one. China will inevitably import some liberal democratic ideas – that’s what happened in South Korea after the Seoul Olympics in 1988.