Bale was in China for the premiere of his latest film, “The Flowers of War” by Chinese director Zhang Yimou, a lavish and at times graphic tear-jerker about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre which is China’s Oscar entry for best foreign language film ….

“What I understand is that the actor was invited by the director Zhang Yimou to attend the movie premiere. He was not invited to any village in Shandong to create news or make a film,” he added.

“If he wants to create news, I don’t think that would be welcomed by China.”

He did not answer a question about whether Bale’s actions might affect the chances of any of his upcoming movies being screened in China.

Writing at Forbes, Shaun Rein argued that it was CNN who should be ashamed by the incident. The network helped Bale carry out his expedition after he contacted them to arrange for a camera crew to accompany him.

The real problem lies with CNN’s behavior, because it plays into the widely held belief among many Chinese that Western media are intertwined with security organizations like the CIA to keep China down and intentionally portray the nation inaccurately. There even was a popular website set up several years ago called Anti-CNN, because so many in China felt CNN’s reporting on China lacked objectivity and distorted the truth.

As Adam Minter, of Bloomberg in Shanghai, tweeted, “News orgs that want to maintain their credibility in China don’t set up confrontations between cops and celebrities, at celebrity request.” Minter hit the nail on the head. Journalists need to maintain objectivity and cover both sides of a problem rather than become the story by being activists. CNN’s China coverage has lost what little credibility it had with this escapade, and that is a terrible shame, for the network has often shed light on areas that needed more light.

See also a critical response to Rein’s post at The Peking Duck.

The controversy does not appear to have seriously dented Chinese audiences’ interest in ‘The Flowers of War’, which beat Jet Li’s latest offering to top the box office in its opening weekend. From China Real Time Report:

“The Flowers of War” (金陵十三钗) scored big with moviegoers on its opening weekend in China, pulling in 152.1 million yuan ($24 million) for the four days ended Sunday, according to media-research firm EntGroup. (The film’s official release date was Friday, but movie theaters got a jump on the highly anticipated film and began showing it on Thursday.) In director Zhang Yimou’s (張藝謀) historical drama, the Batman star plays an American swept up in the events of Japan’s brutal occupation of Nanjing in 1937.

That beat “Flying Swords of Dragon Gate” (龍門飛甲), which came in second during the same four-day period with 141.7 million yuan. Mr. Li stars as a Ming Dynasty general in director Tsui Hark’s (徐克) 3-D martial-arts actioner.

See also The New York Times’ interview with Zhang Yimou about ‘The Flowers of War’.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-cnn, Chen Guangcheng, cinema, cnn, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, rape of nanking, western media, Zhang Yimou
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Actually, this is very good.

He [Ai Weiwei] has always annoyed me. What kind of artist and architect is he? He’s a hoodlum! Even his studio is called “f*ck”

I fear Ai Qing [Ai Weiwei's father and famous Chinese poet] couldn’t anticipate this! Two different generations.

Ha ha! Very good, very strong! Very yellow, very violent!

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, anti-cnn, grass-mud horse
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Liu Jing then asked me why the Western media gave less attention to Chinese student demonstrators who came out in support for the Chinese Olympic torch relay than to the pro-Tibet independence demonstrations. I said that part of the reason has to do with the fact that the Western media tends to pay more attention to people claiming to be wronged or oppressed, and generally gives less airtime to people representing or supporting power-holders. I did also acknowledge that Westerners generally don’t understand the patriotism of today’s Chinese students abroad, the reasons for their patriotism, and the extent to which it’s genuinely heartfelt.

[...] I also made the point that while the Chinese media has evolved and grown more sophisticated over the past couple decades, and while the Internet has created a very wide space for discourse and debate than ever existed in the past, the information environment is still very skewed. Chinese investigative journalists have told me about numerous stories their editors won’t allow them to publish. This includes the poisoned milk powder story which a Chinese journalist had been ready to break last spring, but was not allowed to do so – with the result that thousands more babies were sickened, their parents unaware of the danger when they might have been informed. Voices critical of central government policies are censored much more heavily on the Internet than voices of patriotic young people like the Anti-CNN, community. This results in a skewed information environment, reinforcing itself in a positive feedback loop.

A complete, unedited audio of the conversation can be found on her website, RConversation. Note: Audio is in Chinese.

For an interview with Qi Hanting, co-founder of Anti-CNN (no longer involved in the site), see this CDT post, “Interview with Anti-CNN Founder Qi Hanting.”

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-cnn, Rao Jin, Rebecca MacKinnon
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Translated from the blog of Anti-CCTV’s founder, Julian.

The theme of anti-cctv.net, as its name implies, is to “anti” the central television station. To borrow a sentence from www.anti-cnn.com ‘s front page, “We Don’t Oppose Media Itself; We Only Oppose Media’s Untruthful Report.” The theme of anti-cctv.net is the same. I guess that the principle of opposing the media’s untruthful reports should not be differentiated on national or regional bases. Should it?

Meanwhile, this site’s main content is also not focused on domestic or international reports about Tibet but gathers some of CCTV’s “untruthful” or even faked reports.

For instance, the slogan “做人不能太CCTV (Don’t Be Too CCTV),” was used earlier than “做人不能太CNN (Don’t Be Too CNN).” Through searching “做人不能太CCTV了” this slogan online, we can find one of CCTV’s most famous faked news events. Let me quote an explanation of it from Baidu Zhidao (Note: Baidu Zhidao is one of Baidu’s functions, similar to Yahoo! Answers):

http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/22892435.html

CCTV: The term originally refers to China Central Television. Its meaning has been extended as a verb describing the action of violating other people’s rights by using illegitimate methods (especially in voting or elections); it can also be used as an adjective to express “despicable and shameless,” which has its basis in CCTV’s cheating scandal against Sky (a Chinese E-sport player) in its online voting of “2006 Top Ten Influential Sports Figures.”

[...] Of course, precisely speaking, I intend to make a comparison with anti-cnn.com. Regarding CNN’s misleading pictures and reports, I have nothing much to say. I support the 21-year-old (Rao Jin) who made this website. [Note: Rao Jin was not 21 at the time of this post.] I also think that there is no reason or organization that can stop them from using their website as a foothold to express their voices and get people’s feedback.

However, in a society with free expression, it should not only be allowed to criticize foreign media but domestic media, as well. Apparently, criticizing CNN is much easier than criticizing CCTV. (I have to say that “trick” is the word I am thinking of in my mind.) It is just like the fact that you frequently hear about the popular movements to defend Diaoyu Islands, but rarely hear about any movements to protect the Stanovoy Range. 

In China’s Foreign Ministry’s March 27 [2008] press release, the spokesman Qin Gang addressed a journalist who asked “You may be aware that there’s now a non-governmental website,ANTI-CNN.COM, where people criticize the untrue reports on the Tibet issue by some foreign news agencies like CNN. Do you appreciate or support this website? Is the Chinese Government providing financial or physical support to this website?” Qin’s response was “[…] you won’t ask that if you take a look at the reports by the western media. It is these irresponsible and unethical reports that infuriated our people to the point where they voluntarily chose to voice their condemnation and criticism. […]” [Note: previously translated by CDT]

Qin Gang’s response is very mannered and moderate. I hope that based on the same reason, the website that I, an ordinary person, established to express my condemnation and criticism of CCTV’s irresponsible and unethical reports will also not get interfered with by certain departments and people — this is only really fair and reasonable. I hope Chinese people can also show some support for it.

Only with both Anti-CNN and Anti-CCTV can we be considered as having a complete picture of the news. If Anti-CCTV will be able to get as little interference as Anti-CNN has gotten, then anti-cctv.net will be just a reasonable complement to the anti-cnn website and also a perfect footnote to Qin Gang’s speech. 

Despite my original intention to “express voluntarily my condemnation and criticism” of CCTV’s “relevant irresponsible and unethical reports,” I have another means, that is to make a sample comparison test, to see whether the anti-cnn.com and anti-cctv.net websites will get the same result. I hope that anti-cctv.net will also be able to freely expose CCTV’s faked reports without interference. I hope to verify that the sentence “We Don’t Oppose Media Itself; We Only Oppose Media’s Untruthful Report” is commonly applicable.

As Julian mentioned in the end, his site successfully got the ICP license from the state’s Ministry of Information Technology. 扬子晚报 Yangzi Evening, a Jiangsu state media production, has also recently given a positive report of the site. The case may suggest to us that Chinese netizens’ voices can be distinct from the dominant voices in society.   

© Thome for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-cctv, anti-cnn, CCTV, truth
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Blogging China student Jenny Leung submitted the following questions to Qi by email. Qi chose to respond with one full-length response that refers to some of the questions but does not answer them one-by-one, thanks to Shilin Jia for the translation from Chinese to English.

Questions submitted to Qi Hanting:
Some people will describe your site as a part of “angry youth”? Do you agree? How would you describe anti-CNN? Truth-seeking? Patriotic? Why?
Where do you see the future of anti-CNN?
Can you describe the online community that anti-CNN is a part of?
What has changed since high school and college on how you view China and its system?
What are the valuable things have you learned from your anti-cnn site experiences?
Can you describe why continue you to moderate the site? Or what are you getting out of being a moderator of anti-CNN?
How is the forum moderated?
How politically involved are you offline? Are you active in other domestic social, political issues or other international issues?
How do you think anti-CNN has contributed to how Chinese people view the world?
Do you think Anti-CNN is successful in communicating the “truth” about China to others? Why or why not?
How do you feel the anti-CNN platform has allowed your personal voice, or others, to be expressed?

Qi Hanting’s response:
First, I want to clarify that I was involved in the establishment of Anti-CNN (hereafter referred to as AC), but I’ve already quit the job. My ideas weren’t fully implemented at AC, but I think all the ACers did it with the mindset of facilitating communication. AC’s original slogan was “Do not oppose media, but oppose factual distortion.” Certainly it may have gone astray later on, but the original intention was good and also played a role. In relation to my explanation of AC, you can search it on the website “ohmynews”, where an old lady who invented the term ‘netizen’ interviewed me and posted it there.

The AC website was born under those certain historical circumstances. We should say that the masses were relatively angry at that time. AC initially started with the front page plus the BBS. Under such circumstances, I can’t deny that most of the audience and participants were “Angry Youth,” but we can’t say that AC is an “Angry Youth” website. If you are interested, you can search for the “Carrefour” event after the Olympics torch was assaulted in April. During the whole process, AC constantly opposed the call to boycott Carrefour and further opposed going to Carrefour to do any damage. We had the attitude that to boycott or not to boycott any merchandise voluntarily is a personal volition. Some of the website founders boycotted, and some didn’t. However, calling for a boycott didn’t help solve the problem. I mentioned this point in the Phoenix TV program too–boycotting is okay, but we don’t endorse a boycott. On the other hand, the site also launched a large-scale activity to protect the torch. We can say that the will of the AC management was to hope to, “be reasonable, be powerful, and also be moderate.”

AC’s current readers have decreased a lot. Before I left at the end of April, I was always rethinking one problem; was AC named correctly? The fact that AC had such a great influence was first because “Anti-CNN” at that time was what many people wanted to say in their minds; the second reason was that the name “Anti-CNN” was able to get the attention of the western media. However, a website cannot build on the foundation of simply opposing somebody. Therefore, I think that the success and failure are all due to one factor. This problem can answer AC’s future. But Anti-CNN played its historical role, providing lessons from experience to many websites afterward, and even providing direction. This is also what I am now carving out. The ideal situation is: AC does not belong to any particular group but to all people. My new website’s name is Global-netizen-media, which is based on this idea.

Chinese education, to make a comparison, is just like the communist party. Many people are dissatisfied, and many think they can do better. But actually [China's system] in the current stage, although not the best, is the only one that is relatively applicable. My view of Chinese education hasn’t changed too much.

The main experience I got from AC relates to the netizens. Netizens are a group that are very prone to reflecting the butterfly effect. Netizens also, to a great degree, represent the “people’s voice;” I am trying to understand their discipline.

The forum is administrated by volunteers. There are four ranks of volunteers: administrators, moderators, club members, and non-club members. The club member registration is very easy. Some volunteers become moderators by selection. The administrators are Rao Jin and me–the two founders. There is keyword censorship when publishing posts; after that, every moderator will take control; provocative or abusive content will be deleted.

I personally participate in politics to some degree. I attend some meetings and write some articles. I care about facts and further care about some fundamental problems such as energy and food.

In a “Media Criticism” class held by the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University, the professor conducted a survey in the first class asking how many people believe Chinese media, and how many think that the western media is objective and just. It turned out that only 10 percent believed the Chinese, and over 50 percent believed western media. Those (surveyed) were a group of people who have pretty high media literacy in China; those elites in the society also commonly think this way. However, after three months, I believe nobody would think this way anymore. Actually, it is not AC’s contribution but rather was just accomplished by western media itself. All media works for its own profit; all reports are from the reporter’s own angle and bias, I believe. Including AC.

AC’s daily viewers surpassed 5 million in April. Among them, 40 percent came from foreign IP addresses. Surely those would include Chinese students abroad and overseas Chinese, but we can also believe that there was a huge number of foreigners. AC did not necessarily present the real China, but it did two things: Let some people realize their perceptions of China were wrong and break the discourse hegemony, and provide people afterward an opportunity for equal communication.

I’ve only directly participated in AC’s news once. That was the time when AC was attacked by hackers’ DDOS and forced to close down. Normally, I only censored news netizens submitted to AC to guarantee their truthfulness. Usually, I would ask them to provide unprocessed photo and video documents. For any unconfirmed information, I would rather not publish it at all.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: angry youth, anti-cnn, Lhasa unrest, nationalism
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