Thanks to Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet
Project at the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of
Journalism and Sophie Beach at China
Digital Times for taking the time to translate and post Southern
Weekend's interview with Zhang Yimou, the once renegade movie maker who
took on the job of organizing the opening ceremony of the Beijing Games. The
excerpt is called "The Way Art Works," and it turns out that the way art works
in
Whatever you think about the controversy surrounding the ceremony--the lip-synching, questionable ethnicity, digitally altered special effects, over-the-top pageantry--Zhang's readiness to do a frank interview and the newspaper's readiness to ask some serious questions about the machinations behind the ceremony says a lot about the media in China. There is a growing space for public discourse, despite the government's interference.
A prime example of that is the publication that interviewed
Zhang. Nanfang Zhoumou (or Southern
Weekend) is part of the Nanfang Daily Newspaper Group, which runs some of the
nation's most commercially successful newspapers like Nanfang Dushi Bao (Southern Metropolis News), and Ershiyi Shiji Jingji Baodao (21st
Century Business Herald). They are published in the southern city of
Even with their links to the state for publications like
Southern Weekend, there is a great distinction between them and the truly
official Chinese media. At the national level, Xinhua news agency, China Radio
International, China Central Television, Guangming Daily, and People's
Daily are party controlled, with copy strictly regulated by the Central
Propaganda Department. At the local level, provincial and municipal authorities
run their own newspapers and television stations.
The point here is that Chinese journalists and media companies do push limits. You miss an important part of China if you just see China's press as a gray amorphous mass. Even with the government's obsession of controlling its image with more than 20,000 visiting foreign journalists in town, their Chinese colleagues are still trying to break new ground.
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Thanks for writing this.