Writing On The (Great) Wall.

As China moves toward a market economy, Chinese journalism is starting to open up, too.

The evidence of continued control of the media in China is nearly impossible to ignore. Editors are disciplined for seemingly small transgressions. Coverage of controversial events is highly regulated. Media reports often read more like government news releases than independent reporting--probably because they really are government news releases.

At the same time, there is evidence among Chinese journalists of an openness to change. There seems to be at least some support for this in parts of the government. This openness in the long run may be more informative about the future of Chinese journalism, and maybe even China, than is the evidence of control.

The openness to change seems to be the result of the major economic revolution taking place in the country, and it may be necessary for the continuation of these economic developments. If this is the case, we can expect Chinese journalism to continue to evolve as the country enters the world trading market in the coming years.

I came to these conclusions rather tentatively from observations I made of two groups of Chinese journalists in May, one in the booming, vibrant city of Shanghai, the other in the more restrained environment of Beijing. In both cases, the Chinese journalists were inquisitive about journalism in the United States and elsewhere in the West, interested in its techniques, particularly as it related to the coverage of international business and trade, and fascinated with its possibilities.

My tentative conclusions have been substantiated by interviews I conducted with a number of individuals who have extensive experience working with Chinese journalists in recent years. Many have conducted systematic analysis of the changing Chinese media landscape. They share my sense that something of importance is taking place in journalism in this emerging economic giant.

The Chinese journalists I met, particularly in Beijing, were aware of the limitations of Western-style journalism and cautious about the applicability of this type of practice in their country today or even in the near future. But they were extremely curious about its workings in ways that suggested much more than idle curiosity.

In comparison with journalists I have met in similar workshops around the world in the last four years, the Chinese were decidedly upbeat, open, and outwardly oriented. In some ways, they reminded me of the journalists I had worked with in Latvia in 1999 and Lithuania a year earlier. The Chinese journalists saw possibilities and were excited about them.

The very fact that I was in these two cities with two American colleagues conducting workshops for journalists at the invitation of government officials in Shanghai and Beijing is itself a testimony to the change taking place in China. We were there in May--despite the Bush administration's decision to sell weapons to Taiwan, the controversy over the spy plane, and the international protests about the detention of western scholars visiting China. Our hosts, and the journalists, seemed much more interested in talking with us than at us, and in establishing a base for future contact.

To be sure, the journalists were working for media all of which in one way or another are owned by and controlled by the government. The topic of our workshops, which was suggested by our hosts, was externally focused--on coverage of international business and trade. It seemed clear to me that everyone understood that many of the things we discussed in our workshop--how to interview top government and business leaders--were not going to be directed toward Chinese government or business leaders at least in the short term. But it also was clear that this was a first step.

"I've noticed clear signs and trends for growing professionalism and openness to change among reporters and editors around the nation, despite various constraints upon them," Dr. Jonathan Zhu of the City University of Hong Kong told me. "Many of them are not content with the current practices. They want the media outlets that they work for to be more responsive to major events and public concerns. And almost everyone of them is thinking about what the domestic media landscape will look like and what role journalists will play after China enters the World Trade Organization."

Dr. Zhu, who has been surveying Chinese journalists since 1996, said the journalists today are particularly "excited about the challenges and opportunities of the Internet and other new media technologies." The questions we were asked during our workshops certainly were consistent with that observation. The Internet, of course, is harder to control than the older media.

A. Lin Neumann, in a story filed on the web site of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and included in the annual report of the Committee, Attacks on the Press in 2000, chronicles attempts by the Chinese authorities to control what is available on the Internet inside China. The outcome is difficult to characterize.

Participants in our workshop went to the USA Today web site while we were there to learn more about Owen Ullmann, editor of this magazine and an editor for USA Today, who was one of the workshop instructors. Neumann reports that during CPJ's visit the site of The New York Times was blocked, but many articles from the Times were available on the unblocked site of The International Herald Tribune. CPJ's web site was available, but the site of Human Rights Watch was not.

The journalists in our workshops, as well as senior executives we met at a major media enterprise in Shanghai, were extremely interested in almost all phases of media operation in the United States. One topic particularly fascinated the executives I met on this and an earlier visit to these two cities: how the U.S. media have learned to survive in a competitive environment.

The reasons for an interest on the part of the Chinese media leaders in American competitive tactics are pretty simple. As Tsan-Kua Chang, a professor at the University of Minnesota notes, only a handful of the Chinese media continue to get government financial support. "The market is now highly competitive," Dr. Chang said. Despite some recent crackdowns on competition, Dr. Chang said he believes the Chinese government "will allow media to continue to compete as long as they stay within boundaries." The media cannot "rock the boat politically," Dr. Chang added. They cannot "challenge the authority and legitimacy of government."

In a forthcoming book, China's Window on the World, which will appear in a series I edit with Hampton Press, Dr. Chang presents a detailed analysis showing that the national China Central Television in the last decade "broadened its content diversity" and "depoliticized the programs to cater to the needs and wants of potential viewers and consumers."

Dr. Paul S. N. Lee, professor and director of the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, also was in mainland China in May, visiting Shanghai and Nanjing. He was able to compare his observations with those he had made on his trip there in 1987. "There have been great changes," according to Dr. Lee. "I sensed that China is now like Taiwan in the 70's. People are very vocal and conscious of their rights. Although in public they still pay lip service to the official line, in private, they simply ignore it."

"As regards the Chinese journalists," Dr. Lee said, "those young fellows I came across are mostly open-minded, admiring the press freedom enjoyed by their colleagues in Hong Kong and the West. I discovered that most local papers and television stations are adopting more or less the news definition of the West. Only those big official party papers still opt for the communist model, which is not popular among the common masses."

Dr. Lee also ties his predictions about the future to economic changes. "With further growth of the economy, and privatization--possibly much faster after China's entry into the WTO--the journalists will exercise more freedom in their reporting in the future."

Todd Carrel, who has worked as a journalist in Asia for more than a decade and in 1999 served as a Knight International Press Fellow based in Hong Kong, was a bit more cautious in assessing the press situation in China. During his training stint, Carrel returned to Beijing, where he had been beaten by plainclothes police while covering a protest on Tiananmen Square for ABC News in 1992. "The young Chinese journalists I met were all interested in learning much more about Western forms and techniques of reporting," Carrel observed. "They were most interested in the concept of fact-based reporting. But equally, they realized that is nearly impossible to do inside China at the moment."

The journalists in our workshops were fascinated particularly with the nitty-gritty of economics reporting. When my colleague at the University of Georgia and workshop instructor Dr. C. Ann Hollifield, a former business journalist, showed them how to read a company annual report, they were delighted. When she told them that they could get these reports on the Web, provided the company fell under the jurisdiction of U.S. regulators, as many international companies do, they were surprised. Even rudimentary information of this type does not exist in China, the journalists said.

In fact, the need for this type of business information may be crucial in understanding why we were invited to China in the first place. "In the emerging information economy, information has become critical in all business processes," Dr. Hollifield said. "My research on the way managers use

information shows that information about other businesses and the competitive environment is of most value to them."

Dr. Hollifield said she suspects the Chinese are aware of this. "As they look forward toward their movement into WTO and greater integration into the global economy, either consciously or unconsciously, they are recognizing that it is going to be necessary to have a more open and more complete flow of business and economic information." Without an open flow of information, Dr. Hollifield said, "it will be more difficult for Chinese businesses to be competitive in the global economy and it will be more difficult for global businesses to locate and operate in China."

Some of the interests of the journalists in our workshop were clearly more mundane. They loved Owen Ullmann's stories about interviewing Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Like journalists everywhere, they enjoyed the concept of journalistic story swapping.

In reality, there was no exchange. The Chinese journalists, even in Beijing where several senior reporters were present, did not tell inside stories about interviews of their top officials.

Openness still has its limitations, it seems.

Lee B. Becker is Director of the James M. Cox, Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research at the University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. The Cox Center conducts research and training programs around the world.