THE VIEW FROM CCTV IN BEIJING: NEWS OF THE WORLD ON MAY 30, 2014
China is rising, peacefully for the most part, but there's been
considerable muscle flexing and elbow-bumping between China and Japan in recent
months. No longer does the Deng Xiaoping maxim of keeping a low profile and
biding one's time seem to apply. The profile is high and the time is now.
A glimpse of how the brass new China views itself in the world
can be gleaned from the increasingly strident, orthodox tone of state run
television. Nationalism is increasingly worn on the sleeve, or in the case of
newscasters and spokesmen, in the form of China flag lapel pins.
Consider “Midnight News” the first broadcast of the day on
CCTV's "Xinwen" channel, China's answer to CNN. The round-the-clock
news service begins its May 30, 2014 news coverage of the world with a series
of strident reports about Japan. The program opens with a troubling report
about how Japanese pilots have been engaged in provocative behavior threatening
the legitimate passage of Chinese aircraft on the high seas.
The neatly groomed announcer points out that China has been
acting with restraint and very much within in its right, conducting a
legitimate air-sea drill in the sea off its shores. The first bulletin of the
day goes on to accuse Japan of a series of "irresponsible and dangerous
maneuvers," including the twin incidents of May 24 in which a Chinese jet
came within 50 meters of a Japanese surveillance plane, and cites another case
in which a "Japanese warplane" came within 30 meters of a Chinese
jet, iIlustrated with stock footage of the aircraft in question, The report
states that Japan’s outrageous provocation is only the latest in a series of
"deliberate close encounters" inside China's "Air Defense
Identification Zone."
As if the danger of collision, inadvertent or otherwise, weren’t
obvious enough, the report brings up a previously undisclosed case dated months
earlier in which saw two aircraft come within ten meters of each other, a
hair’s breath in aviation terms. The report suggests it was all Japan's fault,
as China was engaged in professional operations conforming to policy and
regulations. China scrambled its jets for identification in accord with
internationally accepted practices.
A repeating loop of file footage showing Chinese and Japanese aircraft
doing maneuvers in flight adds drama to the breaking news story.
This hot lead is followed by an indignant piece of analysis
about how Japan Prime Minister Abe is single-handedly trying to change
collective self-defense to allow Japan a more aggressive international role.
China's smooth and unruffled Foreign Ministry spokesman, Qin Gang, wearing a
red flag pin on his lapel, denounces "An-be" as the
Japanese prime minister is called in Chinese, in plain, no-nonsense terms that
suggest a fit of diplomatic pique. The accompanying images of the Japanese
Prime Minister, though drawn from file footage, do not show to his advantage.
The Beijing-based chastisement of Abe is followed up by a
satellite link report with a CCTV reporter in Tokyo who interviews a Japan
antiwar activist whose position happens to hew close to the Chinese one. The
cursory vox populi is aired in the original Japanese, translated with
subtitles. The Tokyo report then cuts to a news clip of a small but lively
Japan demonstration against Abe's unwarranted shift in policy, which is
evidence, CCTV concludes, that among Japanese ordinary people, (minjian) there is
opposition to Abe’s proposed changes.
The two lead stories with a focus on bad news about Japan have
now run nearly ten minutes, an eternity in news time. As if to capture the
flagging attention of the late night viewer or random channel surfer, the news
puts an emphasis on striking visuals and arresting catch copy. The just aired
pieces cut from the narrator to show a series of bombs and jets and Top Gun
maneuvers drawn from impressive TV file footage of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces
exercises. The Japanese Hinomaru flag, and its likeness as an insignia on
jets, planes and ships, is displayed prominently in many shots.
The virtual war scenes, stitched together from innocuous footage
and the TV producer’s imagination, are followed by actual horror of war scenes
as the first news report of the day turns other big stories of the day. The
youthful, well-groomed announcer turns his attention to Ukraine, where wire
services footage of bombings, fleeing civilians and wanton destruction on the
ground offer a harrowing, unglamorous counterpoint to the slick illustrated
theatrics of Sino-Japanese tensions in the previous segment.
The next story in the top of the hour lineup features Edward
Snowden, talking to NBC reporter Brian Williams in Moscow. It includes a
subtitled clip of Snowden explaining in English how your phone can be turned on
remote, how people can be hurt by unwanted electronic intrusion and unfair
profiles based on metadata
Next up is a brief pro-Russia PR segment about how Russia is
strengthening its good relationship with former Soviet states of Kazakhstan and
Byelorussia. This glowing coverage is in tune with over two weeks of positive
coverage and optimistic pronouncements reflecting an upswing of mutual
admiration dating to the Shanghai Confidence Building Conference that was
boosted by the attendance of the image-conscious leader Vladimir Putin, who
enjoys considerable popularity in China.
The report makes note of a prospective Sino-Russian pipeline and
gas deal worth hundreds of billions of dollars, a possible game-changer in
global energy fortunes, and The pro-Russian reportage caps off a news cycle
that has been demonstrably favorable to Russia, with a segment about the joint
Sino-Russian naval exercises recently held in the South China Sea, and serves
as a geopolitical context for the opening report on the aerial near-miss with
Japan.
A final tidbit of Japan news is presented, again showing
pictures of Abe, saying Japan will ease sanctions in return for more
cooperation in finding evidence of Japanese kidnapped citizens in North Korea.
The subtle uptick in Japan-North Korean relations in the context of a broader
honeymoon between China and Russia suggests a departure from the Cold War
alignments, but the Cold War norm of a world divided into camps still seems to
apply. China-North Korea relations have cooled sufficiently, and Japan’s
foreign policy moves have been met with sufficient official outrage and
skepticism to leave doubt in the mind of the viewer about the true intentions
of Japan’s delicate rapprochement with its long-time bete noir, North Korea.
The Xinwentai’s Midnight News report on the state
of the world of is followed by a few short clips of domestic developments in
China, making it an almost exact reverse of the flagship nightly news at seven,
Xinwenlianbo, which is almost entirely focused on domestic news, with a just
a few minutes to cover the rest of the world at the end of the program.
There’s a report about the record-breaking heat wave scorching
Beijing and many parts of the country.
Next is a cultural item about fabled Chinese writer Qian
Zhongshu, whose magisterial novel "Fortress Besieged" describes
China during the time of Japanese invasion. Qian's extensive foreign language
notes and manuscripts have been published. The midnight news program closes
with a series of brief clips touching on transportation, including China's
ever-expanding high-speed train network, regulations for truckers, a clip of
Google's driverless car and some stunning footage from the Kazakhstan launch of
the Soyuz spacecraft, shown at liftoff and docking with the International Space
Station.
The closing bumper, with its feel-good good-news of advances in
transportation, is of a piece with China’s hunger for new technology and
visionary, if not slightly insane, projects like building a high-speed train
line from China to Alaska via Siberia, an alternative to the Panama Canal in
Nicaragua, and planned moon shots. As has been the case with already executed
mega projects such as the Three Gorges Dam, which is silted and near capacity,
new pipelines and a rapidly expanding high-speed rail network, short shrift is
given to environmental worries and the downside of development.
