Propaganda that Kills by Ching Cheong

The following article appears in Strait Times on 30th September 2008: Propaganda that kills By Ching Cheong (程翔), Senior Writer, The Straits Times (2008-09-30) HONG KONG: The tainted milk scandal shows China lacks something that even its years of spectacular economic growth cannot make up for. What is missing is a moral dimension in the country's growth without which China cannot hope to command respect or admiration from others. But this moral dimension would be hard to come by unless the country resurrects the human values it lost during the decades when class struggle was the order of the day. Despite calls for a people-based policy, the lack of political reform has allowed inertia to set in. The political system continues to put the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its leadership first, never mind the people and human values. This latest milk scandal bears striking similarities to the deadly Sars outbreak in 2003, both being the by-products of an archaic political system. When the first instance of Sars broke out in the autumn of 2002, the CCP was about to hold its 16th national congress to decide on its top leadership. The event was deemed 'a matter of great significance in the political life of our country', according to the CCP's Central Propaganda Department (CPD). To create a favourable socio-political environment for the congress and the National People's Congress in March 2003, the CPD issued a list of dos and don'ts for the nation's media. One of the don'ts was not to report on epidemics. Flu was in fact specifically mentioned in that document. The directive effectively blacked out news on the looming disease. As a result, the deadly Sars spread far and wide. The CCP at first denied that there was a serious outbreak. Ambulances carrying Sars patients played hide-and-seek to dodge World Health Organisation inspectors in Beijing. A retired army surgeon and veteran CCP member, Dr Jiang Yanyong, wrote a letter to Time magazine to reveal the magnitude of the Sars epidemic in Beijing. He sent his letter to Time after it was ignored by a state TV station. His simple act of telling the truth did much to stop the spread of Sars and began the process of containing the epidemic. In the milk scandal, it is now reported that the problem came to the notice of Sanlu, China's major dairy producer, as far back as December last year. When Sanlu's foreign partner, New Zealand's Fonterra Cooperative Group, found out about the contamination in August, it sought a product recall. This move came just days before the Olympic Games were due to start on Aug 8. Months earlier, the CPD had again instructed Chinese news media against reporting 'negative news' that could mar the Beijing Games. It was said not just to be a premier sporting event but also 'an important political event' for China. For this reason, Sanlu could do little and local authorities kept mum about the milk powder contamination cases. Weeks passed until New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark intervened and told her people to alert the authorities in Beijing directly that the tainted milk powder cases had come to light. In both the Sars and tainted milk cases, many lives could have been saved if the Chinese media had been informed and allowed to report the truth. Aside from remedying the problem in the milk industry, which is now taking place, the CCP must get to the crux of the problem. It should seriously reconsider its long-established propaganda policy, one that has brought harm, not just once, to both the people of China as well as many other countries. Professor Jiao Guobiao, a former lecturer in media studies at the Beijing University, blasted the CPD publicly in 2004, listing 14 grave consequences of its propaganda policies. One of them was 'sabotaging the country's rise'. Two years later in February 2006, a group of retired CCP veterans well versed in CPD operations - including Mr Li Rui, Mao Zedong's former secretary; Mr Zhu Houze, a former CPD boss; Mr Hu Jiwei, a former editor of the official People's Daily; and Mr Li Pu, a former deputy head of the state-controlled Xinhua news agency - jointly signed a letter to President Hu Jintao asking him to ease rigid media censorship as a means of building a truly harmonious society. The milk scandal once again testifies to the truth of their appeals.