Censorship’s Silver Lining

By now the numer­ous slights both delib­er­ate and acci­den­tal dur­ing Chinese President Hu Jintaos visit to Washington are well known: mix­ing up Taiwan and China when intro­duc­ing the National Anthem; the Falun Gong heck­ler; President Bush uncer­e­mo­ni­ously tug­ging President Hu around by his coat-​​sleeve; admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials doz­ing through Mr. Hus state­ments. What’s less under­stood, though, is the offi­cial Chinese reac­tion or really, lack of reac­tion –to these gaffes.
The slip-​​ups, and their pos­si­ble impli­ca­tions, have all been widely dis­cussed in the US and inter­na­tional media. But in the Chinese press, they havent been men­tioned at all.
In the West, the cen­sor­ship has been seen as a mea­sure of how seri­ous these insults are. The argu­ment is that the assorted inci­dents are so sham­ing and embar­rass­ing that keep­ing the inci­dent off Chinese screens was to save Hu Jintao from humil­i­a­tion, in the words of one Beijing-​​based ana­lyst.
Maybe. But the far more impor­tant point this cen­sor­ship com­mu­ni­cates is the value China places on its rela­tion­ship with America, and the direc­tion the gov­ern­ment wants that rela­tion­ship to go.
Chinas gov­ern­ment could have eas­ily used these inci­dents to spur anti-​​American, patri­otic sen­ti­ments within the pop­u­la­tion. They didnt hes­i­tate to do so a year ago, when demon­stra­tions over revi­sion­ist Japanese text­books engulfed the nation, or 7 years ago in the after­math of Americas bomb­ing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. In both of those instances, it would not have been dif­fi­cult for the gov­ern­ment to keep the pop­u­la­tion from learn­ing of the issues. However, stir­ring up nation­al­ist, anti-​​Japanese or anti-​​American sen­ti­ments suited the gov­ern­ments agenda at the time, and it didnt hes­i­tate to do so. However sham­ing or embar­rass­ing last weeks gaffes may have been, they pale in com­par­i­son to hav­ing your sov­er­eign ter­ri­tory (the Embassy) bombed and offer­ing only a few stu­dent pro­test­ers in response. But in the past, the gov­ern­ment was will­ing to swal­low the shame of these events in the inter­ests of its agenda. They almost cer­tainly would do so again if it fur­thered their plans few things will rally a pop­u­la­tion to sup­port you like ral­ly­ing them against some­one else. That they have cho­sen not to, and have rather gone to great efforts to hide the gaffes, indi­cates a desire to main­tain and improve their rela­tion­ship with America.
Broadcasting the insults would almost cer­tainly have given fod­der to hard­lin­ers within China to rail against the slap in the face. And its easy to imag­ine the reac­tion of our own China hawks to any anti-​​American demon­stra­tions that may have resulted. If Chinas cen­sor­ship of last weeks events indi­cates the gov­ern­ments desire to keep the ball away from these hard­lin­ers on both sides of the Pacific, it may be the sil­ver lin­ing to last weeks exhi­bi­tion of Americas inept diplo­macy and Chinas con­tin­u­ing free speech issues.
[My thanks to Ms. Lauren Keane in Beijing for help­ing develop this analy­sis.]
– Matthew Tompkins

April 27th, 2006 | Eye on China, Strategery | 31777 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/04/27/censorships-silver-lining/Censorship%27s+Silver+Lining2006-04-27+16%3A24%3A19wonk You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.